Soil wealth | Why North America Feeds the World

North America is blessed with a disproportionate share of the world’s best agricultural soil. It is no coincidence that the U.S. is one of the few countries that’s a net exporter of food – North America has 17% of the world’s arable land, but less than 7% of the world’s population. As the human population […]

Alberta has huge shale oil, gas resources

* Duvernay, Montney, Muskwa among major formations * Oil majors are amassing lands to unlock reserves * Technology, economics will determine what gets produced By Jeffrey Jones CALGARY, Alberta, Nov 6 (Reuters) – A new study has identified immense oil and gas resources in Alberta’s emerging shale prospects, suggesting a string of recent takeovers and […]

Cecil Adams: What’s the Latest on Peak Oil?

What’s the current thinking on peak oil? Your column six years ago led me to think the petroleum tap was running dry and we’d soon be trading in our cars for bikes and roller skates. Now high-profile opinion types like David Brooks and Fareed Zakaria are making it sound like we’ve got nothing to worry […]

Man’s Eternal Need to Explore for Resources

Eternal Landscape Humans have always needed to explore for new resources — new hunting grounds, new sources for tool-making flint, new sources of salt, of wild herbs and food plants, new sources of clay for pottery, of iron for blades. Modern industrial societies have a driving need for energy. Humans stand at a fuzzy boundary […]

Why Not a ‘Lewis and Clark Project’ for Energy?

It amazes me to hear people talk about “drill here, drill now, pay less” or support an “all of the above” energy strategy, yet when asked, “drill where to find what?”, the response is oftentimes a blank stare or a generic, “on federal lands.” Many people would be surprised to know that regarding our “frontier” […]

NZ Maari Oil Field to last another Decade

OMV New Zealand, a subsidiary of Austrian oil giant OMV, announced Thursday that the offshore Maari oil field in the Taranaki Basin, New Zealand has produced 20 million barrels of oil since production started at the field in 2009. The company also confirmed that it expects Maari – which is currently the largest producing field […]

Reason for Military Intervention by the West in Libya and not Syria: Oil

U.S. Reason Against Intervening in Syria: “White House press secretary Jay Carney announced (7/24/12), “The U.S. is not going to intervene the Syrian situation in a military way or to invade the territory of this country, President Barack Obama believes that such actions would be wrong, he said, commenting on Republican senator John McCain’s statement […]

Why the U.S. is NOT the new Saudi Arabia

Last week’s energy news included a piece from the Associated Press with a headline reading: “U.S. poised to become world’s top oil producer; may soon overtake Saudi Arabia.” If the reporter had actually examined figures available from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) website carefully instead of simply parroting oil industry sycophants, he would have […]

Major natural gas find by Saudis. A shift ahead?

Saudi Arabia has announced that they made a major new find in natural gas in the Red Sea. The Saudis are already ranked 5th in the world for their reserves of natural gas, but they are only ranked 9th in terms of production of the commodity. They account for about 3 percent of world natural gas production. […]

Chevron Announces Further Natural Gas Discovery Offshore Australia

Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) today announced further drilling success by its Australian subsidiary in the Greater Gorgon Area, located in the Carnarvon Basin, a premier hydrocarbon basin. The Satyr-4 exploration discovery well confirmed approximately 220 feet (67 meters) of net gas pay. The well is located in the WA-374-P1 permit area approximately 75 miles (120 […]

Malawi oil: A blessing or a curse?

The prospect of oil under Lake Nyasa (known as Lake Malawi in Malawi) holds great promise for one of the poorest countries in the world. With an economy dependent on agriculture and one of the world’s lowest GDP per capita, oil wealth could revolutionise the fortunes of Malawi’s economy. At the same time, however, the […]

Challenges of estimating global oil supplies

There’s been a great deal of debate over the last few years about how long it will be until global oil supplies run out. Are we approaching, or have we already passed, ‘peak oil’ – the point beyond which economically viable oil supplies begin to decline? Whether we like it or not, our modern world […]

Explorers Spend Up in The West

Shell, ConocoPhillips and other global energy majors show no sign of pulling back from hugely expensive exploration programs off the coast of Australia, demonstrating an optimism about future major development despite increasingly strident concerns about costs. In a highly unusual concentration of gas exploration drilling, three of the most expensive exploration wells ever drilled in […]

Jean Laherrère: Jean Maugeri part II

This is part II of a guest post by Jean Laherrère, long term contributor to The Oil Drum. Jean worked 37 years for TOTAL on exploration and production of oil and gas, and since his retirement has worked tirelessly to analyse the world’s oil & gas data and developments. In part I of this article […]

Saudis have gas discovery in northern Red Sea

  Saudi Aramco is reported to have drilled a natural gas discovery in the northern Red Sea. The company plans to drill more wells to delineate the discovery, which lies 15 miles offshore Duba and across the Red Sea from Hurghada, Egypt.  Oil Gas Journal

Huge Oil Shale Discovery in Oklahoma

Continental Resources Inc. unveiled its newest oil field with a reservoir rock of an oil-rich portion of the Woodford Shale that lies beneath oil fields tapped long ago by some of the state’s biggest oil names, including Phillips Petroleum, Noble, Hefner and Skelly Oil. The Woodford Shale Located in Oklahoma The new field is in […]

Oil Find Offers Hope for Ireland

For the first time in its long flirtation with prospectors, Ireland looks to be on the verge of securing some revenue from oil. Providence Resources Plc, an Irish and UK listed company, has confirmed that its Barryroe site 30 miles off the Cork coast, should yield 280m barrels of oil. Depending on the market value […]

Peak Oil’s 10 Year Peak – The Plateau of Global Oil Production Explained

David Demshur Chairman President CEO Core LaboratoriesFrom his talk at Enercom August 2012 (17th annnual) Denver, Colorado USA “…Many of you know that we are peak oil guys and we believe that we are at the plateau in what the globe is going to be able to produce annually. We will be able to stay […]

Mexico Finds Second Oil Deposit in Deep Waters of Gulf

Mexico’s state-owned oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, has found a second significant crude-oil deposit in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, President Felipe Calderon said Friday. With the new “Supremo” deposit, Pemex expects to book new oil reserves of up to 125 million barrels, using the broadest measurement of proven, probable and […]

Sweden Make Gas Discovery in Barents Sea

Sweden’s Lundin Petroleum reported Friday that an exploration well targeting the Salina structure in the Barents Sea has made a gas condensate discovery of up to 41 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe). Well 7220/10-1, located on the west flank of the Loppa High in the Barents Sea in license PL533, proved two gas columns […]

Jean Laherrère: Comments on Maugeri’s Oil Revolution

This is part I of a guest post by Jean Laherrère, long term contributor to The Oil Drum. Jean worked 37 years for TOTAL on exploration and production of oil and gas, and has since his retirement worked tirelessly to keep analysing the world’s oil & gas data and developments. Leonardo Maugeri is an economist […]

Chevron Announces Natural Gas Discovery Offshore Australia

Chevron Corporation (NYS: CVX) announced further drilling success by its Australian subsidiary in the Greater Gorgon Area, located in the Carnarvon Basin, a premier hydrocarbon basin. The Satyr-2 exploration discovery well confirmed approximately 128 feet (39 meters) of net gas pay. The well is located in the WA-374-P permit area approximately 75 miles (120 kilometers) northwest […]

Eni Makes Gas Discovery in Pakistan

Eni has made a significant gas discovery onshore Pakistan, in the Badhra Area B exploration concession, located in the Khirtar Fold Belt region, 217 miles (350 kilometers) north of Karachi. The Badhra B North-1 exploratory well, which led to the discovery, was drilled at a total depth of 8,038 feet (2,450 meters) and encountered over […]

Warren Buffet talking about oil depletion on CNBC

Warren Buffet talking about oil depletion Febuary 2008

Research Shows Peak Lithium Concerns Overhyped and Unfounded

When M. King Hubbert first presented his peak oil theory to the American Petroleum Institute in 1956, he faced a lot of criticism. However, his prediction that US petroleum production would peak in the late 1960s to early 1970s proved true in 1970, and foreshadowed the 1973 energy crisis. In 1974, riding the success of […]

Ugo Bardi: The next ten billion years

It is not surprising that we found the future fascinating; after all, we are all going there. But the future is never what it used to be and it is said that predictions are always difficult, especially those dealing with the future. Nevertheless, it is possible to study the future, which is something different from […]

Has OPEC misled us about the size of its oil reserves? Does it matter?

Has OPEC misled us about the size of its oil reserves? The short answer is probably. The long answer is that currently, there is no way to know for sure. The next question we should ask is: Does it matter? The answer is most definitely yes. OPEC, short for the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, […]

USGS releases damning EUR’s for shale

Energy in Depth (EID), a public relations entity formed and funded by the oil and gas industry, made the following statement: “…all one has to do is look at the evidence…where the ultimate recoveries (EUR’s) of wells are increasing each year through better technology and production management[emphasis mine], to see the truth she is intent […]

Depletion of Producing wells, Increased Losses, Production Decline for Cadogan

Ukraine-focused Cadogan Petroleum reported Friday a fall in production and increased losses for the six months to June 30. Average production for the first half of 2012 more than halved to 210,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) from 424,000 boepd in 1H 2011. The firm’s loss for the period increased to $7.1 million […]

The race for Arctic oil riches

  Danes press ahead with claim on ocean tract as Canada tries to shed light on sea vessels that disappeared in the fabled Northwest Passage Scientists gathering data to underpin a claim by Denmark to a vast Arctic Ocean tract including the North Pole have harvested crucial new information about the seabed. The country is […]

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