Chevron CEO: Oil, Gas, Coal Have ‘Predominant Role’ Long Term

Watson suggested that oil prices are likely to rise, not necessarily due to growing demand, but simply by the need to maintain current supply. Oil fields, by nature, decline over time, and replenishing the supply to address that decline is becoming increasingly expensive, he said. While Chevron is actively engaged in seeking out opportunities to […]

The Gas Cartel Idea: On the Road to Another OPEC?

As oil sees its image tarnished from the disastrous oil spills that took place off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of Dalian, China, and as the most promising oil fields remain off limit to the Western oil majors, gas is gaining in popularity. Gas is present in large quantities […]

Israeli group signs deal to sell Dead Sea oil

Israel’s Zerah Oil and Gas Exploration said on Wednesday it would sell oil it had discovered near the Dead Sea to Oil Refineries for a six-month trial period. Delivery will begin immediately, it said in a statement to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Zerah estimated that initially it would supply Israel’s largest refinery in Haifa […]

Kurt Cob: Is Venezuela the Next Flashpoint for Oil?

In the days of ample oil supplies a poorly managed nationalized oil industry or a hostile political regime just meant that exploration companies had reason to search for oil elsewhere. Now with 88 percent of the world’s oil reserves under the control of national oil companies and few good prospects for large finds available beyond […]

Russian Oil Production Reaches Post-Soviet High

Russia, the world’s largest energy supplier, pumped a post-Soviet record amount of crude last month as state-run producer OAO Rosneft increased output at a new field in Siberia. Output advanced 1 percent from the same month last year to 10.16 million barrels a day, according to Bloomberg calculations based on Energy Ministry data released today. […]

Chevron gets permission to drill in North Sea

The British government has granted the first consent for new deepwater drilling in U.K. waters since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The Department for Energy and Climate Change said Friday it has given U.S. company Chevron Corp. permission to begin drilling an exploratory well in waters west of the Shetland isles. The British government […]

Saudi Aramco looks deeper into Ghawar

New technology to tap into porous rock formations in the Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia could expand production at the giant field, the operator said. The Ghawar field, believed to be the largest oil field in the world, pumps around 6 percent of the world’s crude oil output. The field is producing around 5 […]

World’s ‘Peak Coal’ Moment Has Arrived

Is the world about to begin running out of coal? Two researchers say so. In a peer-reviewed article published in the journal Energy, they write that the world will hit “peak coal” production next year or shortly thereafter, and then mining would begin a long, steep decline. Bottom line, say the paper’s co-authors, Tadeusz Patzek, […]

Kuwait output capacity of 3.65 million b/d by 2020

Kuwait Oil Co. has set a production capacity target of 3.65 million b/d of oil, which it hopes to achieve by 2020 and maintain through 2030. The state-owned oil and gas producer earlier had said it wanted to raise capacity to 3.5 million b/d by 2015 (OGJ, Feb. 15, 2010, p. 26). In its annual […]

Saudi wasting up to 30% of groundwater

Saudi Arabia, the biggest Arab economy, is wasting as much as 30 percent of its finite groundwater resources by using outdated extraction methods, according to a water expert. “Saudi Arabia could reduce the amount of water wasted to 5 percent if it changed technology,” Mansur Abahusayn, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Irvine, […]

Great transition beyond carbon

If there is one thing that defines the 21st century, it is the end of oil. But not just oil. Over the coming decades, we face the prospect of terminal depletion of the world’s major mineral energy reserves, with major ramifications for the future of industrial civilization. A survey of about a hundred of the […]

What the world needs now: coal, sweet coal

Familiar images of Third World poverty flash across the screen to the sound of dramatic orchestral music: African children studying by kerosene lantern, South Asian women washing in a stream. The captions convey the challenge: Two billion people in the world have only partial access to electricity, which is vital to a decent living standard; […]

Trends in World Oil Supply/Consumption and Net Exports/Imports

In this post I briefly present the results from my analysis of absolute and relative trends in world oil (all liquids) supply, consumption, net exports and net imports between 1980 and 2009. In this analysis the world has been split into 5 economic groups, OECD (30 developed countries), OPEC (current 12 countries), FSU (Former Soviet […]

Japan to drill for controversial ‘fire ice’

In a bid to shore up its precarious energy security Japan is to start commercial test drilling for controversial frozen methane gas along its coast next year. The gas is methane hydrate, a sherbet-like substance consisting of methane trapped in water ice – sometimes called “fire ice” or MH – that is locked deep underwater […]

Back to School Month: Peak Oil 101

Every so often someone comes up to me with fiery eyes and raring for a battle and says “I don’t believe in Peak Oil” or “I don’t believe in Climate Change.” When this happens, I think they expect me to argue with them, and I do. But isn’t the argument they expect – my standard […]

Canada Helps Create an Oil Sands World

Efforts to develop oil sands in Alberta are serving as a model for many other nations eager to exploit similar reserves within their borders. Huge unconventional fuel reserves — extra heavy crude, oil sands and oil shale — lie untapped across the globe. These resources emit much more carbon than regular oil, causing green groups […]

How to Run an Oil Industry into the Ground

Hugo Chavez is putting on a clinic in Venezuela. The theme is “How to Destroy a Domestic Oil Industry.” I have warned for years that this would be the end result of Chavez’s actions. As I wrote in 2007: So, can Chavez under-invest in the industry while diverting money to his pet causes? He can […]

T. Boone Pickens to natural gas drillers: stand down until prices rebound

Texas oilpatch veteran T. Boone Pickens has some advice for natural gas drillers: put the rigs away and wait for dismal prices to pass. “I’d kill the drilling, let the supply go down and then get a better price for the gas,” he told a Calgary business audience Wednesday. In his speech, Pickens also voiced […]

Do the Networks Give us Warnings when They are About to Fail?

All resources can be found in any required quantity if there is enough energy input available. For example: – Most elements are present in seawater. Want gold? You can extract it by the ton from sea water. – Oil can be synthesised from any organic compound. So why shouldn’t production rates increase pretty much indefinitely? […]

Lindsey Graham drinks the tar sands Kool-Aid

Just do the math. There is more oil received from the oil sands region than Saudi Arabia and Iran combined. So from an energy source it is hugely important. You talk about dirty oil. Oil sands oil is dirty. They are reducing their carbon footprint. They are making it cleaner. It is less carbon intensive […]

Syria, Iraq to build pipeline

Syria and Iraq have signed an initial agreement to build two crude oil pipelines to the Mediterranean Sea, an Iraqi official said. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the larger pipeline with a 1.5 million barrel daily capacity would carry heaver crudes and the smaller pipeline with a 1.25 million daily capacity would carry lighter […]

Iran now self-sufficient, stops importing petrol

Oil Minister Masoud Mirkazemi said yesterday that Iran had now stopped importing petrol, a commodity targeted by world powers in new sanctions against Tehran’s controversial nuclear drive. “No purchase has been made of petrol since last month,” Mirkazemi was quoted by Mehr news agency as saying. It reported him as saying Iran’s daily petrol production […]

Col. Fletcher Prouty Explains how oil came to be classified a fossil fuel

The classification of oil as a fossil fuel was the result of 1892 convention in Geneva when David Rockerfeller used the classification to create the perception of scarcity.

Technology critical to future energy supply

Industry must continue to find and produce oil and natural gas from increasingly complex geological settings in remote regions and deeper waters, said Schlumberger Ltd. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Andrew Gould. Speaking on Sept. 15 at Barclays Capital Energy-Power Conference in New York, Gould said an estimated $350 billion/year is needed in upstream investments […]

Peak Coal Could Strike by 2011 – Reuters

A recent study predicts existing coalmines around the world will reach peak production as early as next year, with peak production levels cut in half by the turn of the century. This runs counter to current estimates of global coal reserves, which researchers from the University of Texas in Austin and the University of California […]

Have we passed the point of Peak Oil?

In commemoration of OPEC’s 50th anniversary and the fact that, in recent days, I’ve read articles in the mainstream media like this one printed in Macleans that do their best to debunk the idea that the issue of peak oil is still an issue that faces us, I thought I’d take a look at the world’s […]

Major Oil Discovery Offshore Ghana

Tullow announced that the Owo-1 exploration sidetrack in the Deepwater Tano license offshore Ghana has significantly extended the column of high quality light oil discovered by the Owo-1 well. Results of drilling, wireline logs and samples of reservoir fluids confirm that Owo is a major new oil field. The Owo-1 well encountered 53 meters of […]

Rigzone: OPEC to Enter 50th Year with Diminished Role

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries is set to mark its 50th anniversary on Tuesday not with a grand ceremony, but with a simple press conference at its Vienna headquarters. This might seem surprising for the world’s only oil cartel, but the modest commemoration is fitting in view of the group’s diminished importance and […]

Drop the oilsands guilt trip: Canada’s not evil for its energy production, it’s resourceful – just like the U.S.

Every nation on Earth develops, uses, and if it’s lucky, exports the energy resources most readily available to it. Geography is not morality. Canada is developing the oilsands for the same reason the U.S. — the “Saudi Arabia of coal” according to Barack Obama — relies on the dirtiest of the fossil fuels to generate […]

Stuart Staniford: Trend Break in Oil Supply

The enthusiastic professionals in Paris report that: Global oil supply fell 250 kb/d to 86.8 mb/d in August, as non-OPEC output dipped to 52.4 mb/d on seasonal maintenance in Canada, the UK and Russia. I’ve added that to the graph above (along with the OPEC data point I discussed yesterday). As often, the agencies don’t […]

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