Even more oil and gas discovered off Israeli coast

Large-scale natural gas and oil discoveries both in Israel and off its Mediterranean coast seem to be occurring with surprising frequency in recent years. On Sunday, an Israeli company announced the discovery of yet another commercially-viable gas and oil field just off the coast of the northern port city of Haifa. Israel Opportunity Energy Resources […]

Huge oil shale potential in western Siberia

Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM -0.36% is starting work with Russia’s OAO Rosneft in assessing what could be massive reserves of shale oil in Western Siberia, the U.S. giant’s Chief Executive Rex Tillerson said Tuesday. “There is huge shale potential in shale rocks in West Siberia…we just don’t know what the quality is,” Mr. Tillerson said […]

Peak Oil: The Race for What’s Left – Full Talk

Professor Michael T. Klare presents the full talk on his latest book – The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources – to the Carnegie Council on March 20, 2012. The talk is followed by an audience Q&A. @ 60 minutes. Description from the Carnegie Council website: “The world is […]

Cuban Oil Well Proves Dry

Spanish oil firm Repsol said Tuesday it will stop looking for oil in Cuba after hitting a dry well drilled at a cost of more than $100 million, a blow to the island nation desperate to find its own energy sources amid deep economic hardship. Speaking to investors and reporters about the firm’s plans over […]

The trouble with Persian Gulf islands

States on the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf have long regarded their offshore islands as special places. There are several reasons for this, all linked to the islands’ shared geology and the resulting regional distribution of sweet water and oil resources. Until the last century, the reservoirs of fossil water, not too far below […]

UK ‘could become one of world’s biggest shale gas producers’

Britain may have enough offshore shale gas to catapult it into the top ranks of global producers, energy experts now believe, and while production costs are still very high, technology should eventually make reserves commercially viable. UK offshore reserves of shale gas could exceed one thousand trillion cubic feet (tcf), compared to current rates of […]

Eni Makes ‘Significant’ Discovery in Egypt

Eni announced Thursday that it has made a significant oil discovery at the Emry Deep exploration prospect, located in the Meleiha Concession, in the Western Desert of Egypt, 180 miles (290 kilometers) south west of Alexandria. The Emry Deep 1X well led to the discovery of oil and was drilled to a total depth of […]

Iran Finds First Caspian Sea Oilfield in 104 Years

Iran has discovered its first oilfield in the Caspian Sea for more than a century, the state-run Fars news agency reported today. The deposit was found at a depth of 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) during drilling on a natural-gas field and may contain 10 billion barrels of crude, according to the National Iranian Oil Co., […]

Updating world deepwater oil & gas discovery

his a guest post by Jean Laherrère, a long time guest contributor to TheOilDrum. Defining deepwater oil as the offshore resource found in water depths over 500 m, the data available as of October of 2010 was pointing to an ultimate around 150 Gb. This is the result of an extrapolation made last year: Figure […]

200 Year Supply Of Oil In Green River Formation

The Green River Formation, the world’s largest oil shale deposit, is located in a largely vacant region of mostly federal land on the western edge of the Rocky Mountains that includes portions of Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado (see map above). Here’s an excerpt from testimony about the Green River Formation that was provided on Thursday […]

Iran discovers 26 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in Persian Gulf

The latest exploration operations at the Kish gas field, which is located in the Persian Gulf, show that it contains at least 66 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which is a rise of 26 trillion cubic feet over previous estimates, according to an official of the National Iranian Oil Company. And explorations are underway […]

Iran Finds ‘Vast’ Crude Oil Reserves in Caspian Sea

Iran discovered “vast” crude oil reserves in the Caspian Sea, the state-run Mehr news agency reported, without citing anyone. The National Iranian Oil Co. found the reserves after completing part of its exploration studies of the Sardar Jangal natural-gas field in the Caspian, the agency said. The Oil Ministry will announce details of the new […]

World Oil: Aleklett’s new analysis of peak oil is refreshingly comprehensive

“Peak oil” is a concept that, in barely a decade, has gone from total obscurity to being a hot-button issue, rivaling global warming and sustainability. It is almost universally misunderstood and often misinterpreted. On one hand, many peak oil advocates are ideological extremists—Armageddonist back-to-nature types who seem to feel that living without oil is preferable […]

IMF working paper – “The Future of Oil: Geology versus Technology”

We discuss and reconcile two diametrically opposed views concerning the future of world oil production and prices. The geological view expects that physical constraints will dominate the future evolution of oil output and prices. It is supported by the fact that world oil production has plateaued since 2005 despite historically high prices, and that spare […]

When Oil and Water Mix

In this column, the fifth and final installment on water, I want to draw your attention to some noteworthy parallels between petroleum and fresh water. By the time that the Industrial Age began in 1850 the earth had accumulated tremendous reserves of solar energy (oil) and water below ground (sub-surface aquifers). As a quick review, […]

Iran Finds ‘One of the Biggest’ Gas Fields in Mideast

Iran discovered “one of the biggest natural gas fields in the Middle East,” with reserves comparable to those of the South Pars field, Mehr reported, citing an industry official. The gas was found in southwestern Khuzestan province at a deposit already known to contain crude oil, said National Iranian Oil Co. Director for Exploration Mahmoud […]

How did dinosaurs get miles under the earth?

The Bakken formation in North Dakota, Montana and Canada now is estimated to hold up to 4.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil, only it’s available primarily when the price of oil is above a bargain rate – as the oil is located miles deep and drilling costs are substantial. So a new book about oil, […]

Iran Oil Reserves Increase by 2.8 Billion Barrels

A senior official of the Iranian Oil Ministry says the country’s oil reserves have increased by 2.87 billion barrels during the previous Persian calendar year (ended March 19, 2012). The National Iranian Oil Company’s Director for Exploration Seyyed Mahmoud Mohaddes said on Saturday that more than 847 billion cubic meters of new gas reserves have […]

Shale Finds that form a bedrock of hope

Gateway to the windswept wilds of Patagonia, Neuquén knows the power of oil money. Hydrocarbon riches have helped make the city the biggest in an Argentine region that has been producing oil and gas for roughly a century, with a bustling downtown packed with tower blocks and new four-by-four vehicles. Now Neuquén is on the […]

USGS: World Outside U.S. Holds 565 Billion Barrels of Oil

The world excluding the U.S. holds 565 billion barrels of undiscovered, conventional oil and 5,606 trillion cubic feet of natural-gas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. These numbers represent technically recoverable resources, or quantities of oil and gas that can be produced using currently available technology and industry practices, regardless of accessibility or economic considerations, […]

Wintershall Discovers Oil off Norway

German oil and gas firm Wintershall announced Monday that it has made an oil discovery at its Skarfjell prospect in the Norwegian North Sea. The wildcat well 35/9-7, on production license 418 where Wintershall is operator, found Upper Jurassic reservoir sands of “very good quality” and that contain light oil with “a significant oil column”, […]

Another View of Peak Oil

A rising number of people are familiar with the concept of Peak Oil, which posits that invidual wells and hence global oil production overall exhibit very predictable patterns of output, such that when the peak of that production from either a single well or all the wells will be reached is pretty easy to calculate. […]

The petroleum age is just beginning

Peak Oil is the theory that the production history of petroleum follows a symmetrical bell-shaped curve. Once the curve peaks, decline is inevitable. The theory is commonly invoked to justify the development of alternative energy sources that are allegedly renewable and sustainable. It’s time to consign Peak Oil theory to the dust bin of history. […]

Global Oil Risks in the Early 21st Century

Abstract: The Deepwater Horizon incident demonstrated that most of the oil left is deep offshore or in other locations difficult to reach. Moreover, to obtain the oil remaining in currently producing reservoirs requires additional equipment and technology that comes at a higher price in both capital and energy. In this regard, the physical limitations on […]

Kenya discovers oil

Kenya announced on Monday its first oil discovery, saying it was found in the northern part of the country where British Tullow Oil Plc has been conducting exploratory drilling. The announcement sent the company’s shares higher. Kenya and its neighbours in east Africa have become an international hot spot for oil and gas exploration after […]

TRENDLines: Peak Oil Depletion Scenarios

Compilation, representation and consensus avg of the world’s 16 most accurate recognized Peak Oil Depletion Scenarios, based on data by BP (UK), CERA (USA), EIA (USA), Deutsche Bank (USA Division – Sankey, Clark & Micheloto), ExxonMobil (USA), Sadad Ibrahim al Husseini (Saudi Arabia), Freddy Hutter (the Yukon/Canada), IEA (OECD-Paris), Richard Miller (BP-UK), OPEC (Vienna), PFC […]

Texas Tops Finds From Brazil to Bakken as Best Prospect

Energy companies in search of oil riches rivaling the biggest finds from Brazil to Angola are flocking to Texas shale, where new wells have triggered a 230- fold increase in crude output in three years. More than 115 years after a gusher 55 miles (88 kilometers) south of Dallas ushered in Texas’ first oil boom, […]

Statoil big Arctic oil find could be bigger-report

A major oil find in the Arctic made by Statoil could contain an extra 350 million barrels of oil reserves, Norwegian daily Dagens Naeringsliv reported on Friday. The Skrugard oil find – so far estimated to contain between 200 and 300 million barrels, with a potential to hold up to 500 million barrels – boosted […]

U.S. Has 60 Times More Oil Than Obama Claims

When he was running for the Oval Office four years ago amid $4-a-gallon gasoline prices, then-Sen. Barack Obama dismissed the idea of expanded oil production as a way to relieve the pain at the pump. “Even if you opened up every square inch of our land and our coasts to drilling,” he said. “America still […]

Oil is still there but harder to extract

Drivers cringe as they watch the numbers roll higher on the gas pump meter. They feel even worse as they see news stories projecting gas at $4 or even $5 as the weather warms. No problem, says candidate Newt Gingrich with a promise to return the price to $2.50 if elected president. This is the […]

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