US Oil & Gas Industry Shoots Itself in the Foot

As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” I think that a large portion of the US oil & gas industry has basically shot itself in the foot, by agreeing with, or failing to confront, assertions such as the following by CERA, ExxonMobil and OPEC: CERA: “Rather than a ‘peak,’ we […]

Libya’s oil giant turns off the pump until the fighting stops

Libya — The spokesman for Libya’s biggest petroleum company says it will not produce oil until the war ends, and that probably applies to the entire country. Information director Abdeljalil Mohamed Mayuf of Arab Gulf Oil Company said the company stopped production for fear of further attacks by ruler Moammar Gadhafi’s forces. The decision came […]

Saudi Aramco Plans to Double Power Supply, Conserve Energy to Save Crude

Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest state-owned oil company, plans to double its power-generating capacity to 4,000 megawatts by 2015 to supply all the electricity it expects to need to produce crude and natural gas. The company is expanding power plants at existing oil and gas sites and aims to build generators for refineries and other […]

Tech Talk – The Railroad Commission of Texas

When I have written about oil and natural gas production from individual wells, in previous posts, I have referred to the website of the Texas Railroad Commission as the source of my information. You might wonder why they are in charge. Well it all began back in the days after Texas first became a State, […]

Israel gas deal sparks attacks in Egypt

Flames shot into the sky in the northern Sinai desert, close to Egypt’s border with Israel. It was the second attack this year on the al-Sabil gas terminal – and the third attempt to sabotage a network of pipelines that supplies Israel with natural gas. It’s not clear who carried out the attack on April […]

Peak Coal This Year?

In August last year, the journal Energy published A global coal production forecast with multi-Hubbert cycle analysis by Tadeusz W. Patzek and Gregory D. Croft. I’ll let National Geographic introduce the findings. A new study seeks to shake up the assumption that use of coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, is bound to continue its […]

Word from the IEA: Oil demand falling, but world needs more supply

The International Energy Agency’s latest monthly oil market report contained what may on the surface appear to be contradictory messages of falling oil demand but a need for additional supply.  The cut in the IEA’s headline forecasts was relatively modest, with the agency saying it now expects demand to grow by 1.29 million b/d in […]

Global Oil Supply Flat in April

The OPEC and the IEA are both out with their April numbers for total liquid fuel production.  OPEC shows it slightly up, but the IEA shows it slightly down, so I guess it’s flat to within the margin of error.  The above shows the graph of the last couple of years (not zero-scaled to better […]

Heinberg: Will Natural Gas Fuel America in the 21st Century?

Post Carbon Institute undertook this report in order to examine three widespread assumptions about the role that natural gas can and should play in our energy future: Assumption #1: That, thanks to new techniques for hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling of shale, we have sufficient natural gas resources to supply the needs of our country […]

What does ‘peak oil’ mean?

Professor Heinberg explains what peak oil means.  The theory of peak oil started with M. King Hubbert, who said that global oil production would decline. Predictions for when global oil reserves will run out vary but there is general consensus on oil depletion.

Shale Gas Wars: A Tale of Two Studies

“A lie gets halfway around the world before truth has a chance to get is pants on”. It seems Winston Churchill’s dictum could be applied to some “comprehensive” studies into the global shale gas phenomenon too. Since April, the findings of a shale gas study by Robert Howarth’s team at Cornell University, widely debunked for […]

Bahrain oil company fires hundreds over protests

Bahrain’s oil company has fired almost 300 employees in recent weeks for taking part in anti-government protests and general strikes, according to the Gulf kingdom’s energy minister. Abdulhussain bin Ali Mirza, who also serves as the chief executive of the state-owned Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO), said that 293 employees have been dismissed since the king […]

Flaring: The Ultimate Gas Guzzler

If you wanted to help curb global warming by slashing emissions of 400 million tons of CO2 annually, you could: take 77 million automobiles off the road, or eliminate the wasteful practice of venting and “flaring” (burning) of billions of cubic meters of unused natural gas from production wells. Much as I’d like to choose […]

Fracking Linked to Tainted U.S. Drinking Water

A controversial natural gas production technique, which is key to a century of U.S. domestic supply, is causing contamination of drinking water, a report released by the National Academy of Sciences said on Monday. Scientists from Duke University collected 68 drinking water samples which showed potentially harmful levels of methane in drinking water near drilling […]

Cuba is going to drill for oil; what’s the US reaction?

Could the prospect of a foul oil spill between the US and Cuba bring the two together? The US Treasury Department in late April granted a special license to the International Association of Drilling Contractors that would permit Cubans to attend a conference hosted by a US-based organization in Trinidad–a request that was months in […]

JPMorgan : Oil Producers Not Matching Demand

JPMorgan Chase & Co. raised its oil- price forecasts because OPEC and other producers aren’t matching rising demand and consumers will take time to react to higher prices. The bank boosted its 2011 Brent crude forecast to $120 a barrel from $110, and changed its estimate for West Texas Intermediate crude to $109.50 from $99. […]

Every Barrel Counts: EROEI of Texas pumpjacks

For a long time I’ve been wondering about the amount of effort it takes to obtain energy, whether it’s pumping oil, digging coal or manufacturing solar panels. In this first post, I’ll explore a simple concept: the Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) of that icon of oil production, the pumpjack. To be more specific, […]

ASPO Australia’s David Bell: world must adjust to higher oil prices

David Bell, convenor at the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, talks with Bloomberg’s Bernard Lo from Sydney about the outlook for crude oil supply and demand, and the impact of rising prices on business.

Glut of natural gas beginning to shrink

A global natural gas glut is disappearing sooner than expected, thanks to rebounding economies and troubles in Japan and the Middle East, panelists said at the Offshore Technology Conference on Wednesday. The global recession, combined with a surge in natural gas production from prolific shale formations in the United States, sent supplies of the blue-burning […]

Alaska Oil April Output Declines in North Slope Field Fall-Off

Alaskan crude-oil production slipped 2.1 percent in April from last year in a natural decline of the state’s North Slope fields that may eventually affect operations of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System. Production in April averaged 640,477 barrels a day, a decline from 654,366 a year earlier, according to the Alaska Tax Division. Output fell […]

Saudi unlikely to lift oil output quickly

Saudi Arabia is unlikely to boost oil production quickly to ease the rise of crude prices, because it needs high prices for its own increased spending, analysts at an international banking think tank said Tuesday. After producing 8.6 million barrels a day in 2010, the world’s leading oil supplier will only kick up production to […]

Gail Tverberg: The Context of Hubbert’s Peak in World Oil Forecast

Recently when I was reading some of the papers M. King Hubbert wrote, one thing struck me was the context in which he made his forecast regarding how world oil supply would peak and decline. He made this forecast in the context of having plenty of other fuel supply from other sources already developed, to […]

Saudi Arabia to Pump 9 Million Barrels of Oil in 2011

Saudi Arabia’s oil production may reach 9 million barrels per day on average in 2011 as global demand increases, said an official at National Commercial Bank, Saudi Arabia’s largest bank by assets. Average prices for Saudi’s crude are expected to reach $95 per barrel, Said A. al-Shaikh, the Jeddah-based lender’s senior vice president and its […]

Plan to turn Alaska’s natural gas into gasoline for less than $3/Gallon

With an increasing air of pessimism around the prospects for a pipeline to export natural gas from the North Slope, there is talk of alternatives for monetizing the vast quantities of gas stranded in Arctic Alaska. One alternative was discussed by Deo van Wijk, chairman of Swiss company Janus Methanol AG, before the state House […]

Oil and Gas Reserves, Ultimate Recovery, and Resource

We are not running out of oil and we are not running out of gas. Surely the time for alternatives will eventually come but for now their present value is essentially zero and with massive government subsidies it becomes negative, a huge burden on society and economy. More than 160 billion barrels of oil are […]

Peak oil: it’s closer than you think

Peak oil is forcing its way to the top of the agenda with stark warnings from the International Energy Agency and others repeated on ABC radio and television this week, after an investigation by the Catalyst program. Following up a similar program she made in 2005, journalist Jonica Newby gained a rare interview with the […]

ABC Catalyst Peak Oil Report

Catalyst travels from Paris, to London, to the outer space like world that is deep sea drilling, to find out where we stand with our oil supply Transcript available at: http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3201781.htm

EIA updates energy outlook reference case

Strong growth in shale gas production, increasing use of natural gas and renewable energy sources in electric power generation, and declining reliance on imported liquid fuels are some of the findings in the latest energy outlook from the US Energy Information Administration. EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2011 (AEO2011) focuses on US energy market developments over […]

More on the Saudi oil output slash

Soon after we posted the piece on April 18, regarding the report from the Saudi Oil Minister, Ali al-Naimi, we discovered an article we’d clipped from the Oil & Gas Journal, sourced from the Oil & Gas Journal Online, dated March 28 (two days before the President’s energy speech).  So, this March 28 article actually […]

BP to Resume Gulf of Mexico Oil Drilling

BP expects to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in the second half, more than a year after the Macondo well blowout that caused the worst U.S. spill, Chief Financial Officer Byron Grote said. BP has applied for permits with the U.S. authorities, Grote told analysts today on a conference call. Production from the […]

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