The motives and impacts of the Saudi oil increase

In his best seller “Plan of Attack,” released earlier this year, Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward wrote that President Bush was worried about the high price of oil and its impact on the presidential election.

“The ripple effect in the U.S. economy could be gigantic,” Woodward wrote. “Saudi oil policy could be the saving grace.

CNN

Underwater ’slump’ threatens Arctic oil, gas drilling

“Melting permafrost in the high Arctic could be causing a massive underwater landslide that may interfere with efforts to explore for oil and gas, scientists say…”

CBC News:

Oil demand will soon outstrip supply: industry planner

Dr Ali Samsam Bakhtiari is a senior planning expert with the National Iranian Oil Company and he’s in Australia to warn that the world’s demand for oil is now close to outstripping supply.

ABC.net

Crude oil price may reach record high

Crude oil may reach a record high this week amid concerns the Russian Government’s dispute with OAO Yukos, the nation’s biggest exporter of the fuel, will disrupt shipments, a Bloomberg survey of traders and analysts shows.

CD

Analyst: High oil prices spur need for energy diversity

“Oil demand from the developing economies has more than doubled over the past decade, and supply restrictions are now evident,” Westwood said. “Analysis for The World Oil Supply Report [published by Douglas-Westwood] shows that it is increasingly likely that oil supplies will peak, possibly within a decade, and governments must acknowledge this scenario as the economic consequences are considerable.”

O&G Journal

Exploratory oil drilling completed in Gulf off Cuba

HAVANA, July 25 (Reuters) – Drilling of an exploratory well in Cuba’s virgin Gulf of Mexico waters that could make the Communist nation an oil exporter and undermine the U.S. embargo has been completed, a senior official said.

“The drilling has ended and the Spanish company is assessing the results. We don’t know if there is good quality oil yet. We expect to be informed in two weeks,” the Cuban official, who spoke on the condition he was not identified, said on Saturday evening.

Reuters

Oil, Venezuela’s Lifeblood, Is Now Its Social Currency, Too

The government recently announced that $2 billion in Pdvsa revenue would bypass the central bank and form a special development fund to pay for public projects like a hydroelectric plant and a new state airline. Another $1.7 billion – taken from Pdvsa’s $5 billion capitalization budget – is going to social programs, Rafael Ram

Riyadh hints at oil production increase

“We have enough resources to raise our production (currently nine million barrels per day) in the medium term to 12 or 16 million,” he told the German weekly Der Spiegel .

“Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia, what’s that? Its the illusion of a force which does not exist. Its imaginary”, he stated.

CNA

The Guardian on human population

“And what that allows us to do is grow food, because our crop production is oil-powered; we rely hugely on fossil fuel to grow food, over huge areas of the world. The reason you and I can sit here having a lively intelligent conversation without having to worry where our lunch is going to come […]

Japan’s June Oil Imports Fall 12% as Reactors Restart

July 22 (Bloomberg) — Japan’s crude-oil imports fell 12 percent in June as Tokyo Electric Power Co., Asia’s biggest power producer, restarted nuclear reactors, cutting demand for fuel used to fire thermal generators.

Bloomberg

OPEC Plans 10 Percent Boost In Oil

(CBS/AP) OPEC aims to boost its oil production capacity by at least 10 percent by the end of next year, in an effort to keep crude prices from rising further, the group’s president said Thursday.

CBS

China’s Oil Imports from Sudan Draw Controversy

“They [the Chinese] continue to drill for and export the oil,” said Senator Brownback. “That continues to take place, and they are funding the military build-up by the [Sudanese] government, because the helicopters and the gun ships, and it appears also, the arming of the Janjaweed. They’re armed, the Janjaweed are.

Voice of America

Lawmaker Urges Oil-Reserve Accounting Overhaul

“The time is past for lengthy study,” said U.S. Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, in a letter to regulators, in reference to sharp, unexpected cuts by Anglo-Dutch energy group Royal Dutch/Shell Group in its reserve accounts. The U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on Wednesday on energy reserve accounting issues. Dingell asked regulators in May for an update on reserve accounting. He said he was underwhelmed by a seeming lack of urgency in their responses.

Reuters

The New Energy ‘Crisis’ and Iraq

It is a myth that there is a fixed quantity of petroleum in the earth (at best a half truth) and that current “reserve” and “forecast” figures give a meaningful measure of how much gas is left in the planet’s tank. A subsidiary myth is that Middle East, a large chunk of those reserve figures, is thus an irreplaceable and thus “strategic” resource.

antiwar

Big Oil Protects its Interests

WASHINGTON, July 15, 2004

Pipeline attacks in Iraq halt oil exports to Turkey

Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said the sabotage has cost the government $1 billion in oil sales over the past 10 days.

Seattle Times

Canada to Boost Daily Oil Output 38% by 2015, Producers Say

Production of oil trapped in sand in Northeastern Alberta will climb to 2.6 million barrels a day, compared with about 1 million last year, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers said in its annual supply forecast. Output from conventional oil wells will decline to about 25 percent of the country’s production from more than 50 percent.

Bloomberg

Democrats Push a Bill That Might Kill OPEC

If the case were decided in favor of the United States, OPEC would be required to cease its operations or the U.S. would be able to impose trade remedies

Moscow Times

IEA Foresees Oil Demand Growth Cooling

The sizzling growth in world oil demand will cool somewhat to 2.2 percent in 2005, as China and other oil-hungry developing countries approach their limits for refining and transporting crude, the International Energy Agency predicted Tuesday.

Demand next year will average 83.2 million barrels a day, and crude supplies from Russia, Angola and Brazil will meet the bulk of the increased needs, the agency said in its monthly oil market report.

The New York Times

Simmons: The Implications of Saudi Arabian Oil Declining

Matt Simmons argues that “there is no other oil producer on Earth that can even begin to replace a significant shortfall in Saudi Arabia’s oil. So if Saudi Arabia is at peak production then so is the World.”

RealVideo

A New World of Oil

For a country with an allegedly huge marginal surplus of oil production, turning to such extraction techniques is likely to prove an unwise move. With bottle-brush drilling, a shaft is drilled horizontally over long distances with a number of brush-like openings. Water is then forced under pressure into the reservoir, forcing the oil upwards toward the well heads. Extraction is thereby increased. However, when the water table hits the horizontal shaft, often without warning, the whole field may go virtually dead and production will immediately drop off to virtually nothing.

ZNET

Water, Water Everywhere (but not a drop to drink)

This week saw a most unusual spectacle, resulting in a spate of news articles that may be difficult for the uninitiated to understand. Matt Simmons, an investment banker based in Houston and a longtime oil and gas price bull, presented an extremely alarmist view of Saudi Arabia

Water, Water Everywhere (but not a drop to drink)

This week saw a most unusual spectacle, resulting in a spate of news articles that may be difficult for the uninitiated to understand. Matt Simmons, an investment banker based in Houston and a longtime oil and gas price bull, presented an extremely alarmist view of Saudi Arabia

Water, Water Everywhere (but not a drop to drink)

This week saw a most unusual spectacle, resulting in a spate of news articles that may be difficult for the uninitiated to understand. Matt Simmons, an investment banker based in Houston and a longtime oil and gas price bull, presented an extremely alarmist view of Saudi Arabia

The Greatest Story Never Told?

So who are these nays-ayers who claim the sky is falling? Conspiracy fanatics? Apocolyse Bible prophesy readers? To the contrary, they are some of the most respected, highest paid geologist and experts in the world (as only the authors of a document that cost $32,000 could be). And this is what’s so scary.

AA

The Greatest Story Never Told?

So who are these nays-ayers who claim the sky is falling? Conspiracy fanatics? Apocolyse Bible prophesy readers? To the contrary, they are some of the most respected, highest paid geologist and experts in the world (as only the authors of a document that cost $32,000 could be). And this is what’s so scary.

AA

The Greatest Story Never Told?

So who are these nays-ayers who claim the sky is falling? Conspiracy fanatics? Apocolyse Bible prophesy readers? To the contrary, they are some of the most respected, highest paid geologist and experts in the world (as only the authors of a document that cost $32,000 could be). And this is what’s so scary.

AA

How large is Prudhoe Bay?

Williams had witnessed a huge oil discovery at Gull Island (5 miles north of Prudhoe Bay in the Beaufort Sea) that could have produced so much oil, that the official said that another pipeline could be built “and in another year’s time we can flood America with oil- Alaskan oil … and we won’t have […]

How large is Prudhoe Bay?

Williams had witnessed a huge oil discovery at Gull Island (5 miles north of Prudhoe Bay in the Beaufort Sea) that could have produced so much oil, that the official said that another pipeline could be built “and in another year’s time we can flood America with oil- Alaskan oil … and we won’t have […]

How large is Prudhoe Bay?

Williams had witnessed a huge oil discovery at Gull Island (5 miles north of Prudhoe Bay in the Beaufort Sea) that could have produced so much oil, that the official said that another pipeline could be built “and in another year’s time we can flood America with oil- Alaskan oil … and we won’t have […]

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