Stunning String of Lethal Oil and Gas Accidents is no Accident

With headlines focused on the largest disaster, the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, you may have missed a story or two about other recent oil and gas disasters. Make that three, at least: 1) June 7: Gas drilling fire burns 7 workers in W. Virginia A fireball and explosion burned seven members of a crew drilling […]

Iran Building First Gas Pipeline to Europe

Iran started to build a long-planned pipeline to export natural gas to Europe with an investment of at least 1.3 billion euros ($1.55 billion), state television reported today. Iran plans to complete its section of the pipeline by 2013, the TV network said, without citing a source. The system will pass through Turkey and have […]

Iraq to increase oil output

Iraq Minister of Oil Hussain Shahristani said in Kuala Lumpur that Iraq intends to increase its oil outcome in the upcoming years in order to answer the ongoing increase in Asian demand. Shahristani said on the sidelines of an oil international conference that Iraq production is nowadays about 2.5 million barrels per day and the […]

EIA: Hard Core Peak Oil Forecast

The more salient development is the reduction in the forecast to 2020. Forecasts beyond ten years are highly uncertain and more subject to massaging and interpretation. Shorter term forecasts are more definite, and the forecasters are more accountable. As a consequence, the outlook for the short to medium term warrants greater attention. In the case […]

Houston refineries vulnerable to moderate hurricane

A moderately powerful hurricane could cripple Houston’s refineries and petrochemical industry, said a report from experts at several Texas universities. The report was issued May 26 by the Rice University-based Severe Storm Prediction, Education, and Evacuation from Disasters Center (SSPEED). Separately, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast an “active to extremely active” 2010 hurricane […]

Saudi Aramco wrestles its domestic energy-consumption problem ‎

Oil prices are where Saudi Arabia wants them. But rising demand in the kingdom could bring longer-term problems. In a world of economic volatility, the country’s finances remain solid. And as the de facto leader of Opec, its steady hand on the pump has brought stability to the oil price, at around the $75 a […]

IEA sees 2010 boost in energy spend

Money spent on exploration and development projects would however still be about 10% below its investment peak seen in 2008, Reuters cited Trevor Morgan as saying at an industry event. “We don’t actually see much of an increase in capacity on a net basis in the next 5 years,” said Morgan. “Hence our concern is […]

Coal Hard Facts

More than six thousand workers are killed every year in China’s coal mines. The World Health Organization estimates that in East Asia, a region made up predominantly of China and South Korea, 355,000 people a year die from the effects of urban outdoor air pollution. All over China, limestone buildings are dissolving in the acidic […]

Barreling Toward Peak Oil

People throw around the term “peak oil,” but that doesn’t mean the system will run out of oil. It means the amount of oil you’re gaining by finding new oil fields—and bringing them onstream—is equal to the losses you’re taking as other fields run down. The U.S. was the first country to peak in 1970, […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: After the Spill

Deepwater wells which may be providing the bulk of whatever oil production is left in the next decade are another matter. This week the President is scheduled to announce a new series of regulations for offshore drilling – how these regulations are accepted by the industry and how they are enforced will tell us much […]

Shale Gas Costing 2/3 Less Than OPEC Oil

Shale gas proponents, led by 91-year-old oil patch billionaire George Mitchell, who invented the process to extract it, say the U.S. should plumb all forms of natural gas. That would help unhook the nation from coal and foreign petroleum. Gas is about two-thirds cheaper than oil and greener too. It produces 117 pounds (53 kilograms) […]

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Poised to Win Large Energy Contracts

But the Guards, who have established significant control over Iran’s economy under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, insisted in April that they were capable of replacing Western companies in major gas projects. Khatam-ol Anbiya is also in talks with Iran’s National Gas Company to build a gas pipeline stretching 600 kilometers (375 miles) in northeastern Iran under […]

Kuwait Says OPEC ‘Not Yet’ Concerned By Oil Below $70

OPEC agreed in March to uphold output quotas for a fifth time. The group’s members slashed their production quotas at a meeting in December 2008, after global energy demand fell amid the worst recession since World War II. Crude oil prices slumped from a record $147 a barrel in July of that year to $32 […]

Iraq supergiants to hit 2.1m bpd by year-end

Iraq expects crude output from its southern oilfields, Rumaila, Majnoon and West Qurna Phase one, to reach about 2.1 million barrels per day by the end of this year, the head of South Oil Company (SOC) said. State-run SOC gave the estimates after international firms presented development plans and started issuing tenders for work in […]

US military warns oil output may dip causing massive shortages by 2015

(Sunday 11 April) “By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day,” says the report, which has a foreword by a senior commander, General James N Mattis. It adds: “While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, […]

PetroChina lines up $60b to boost overseas oil output

Chinese oil companies led by CNPC and Sinopec have quickened their overseas expansion pace in recent years, a move analysts said was necessary to cope with the rising domestic energy demand. CNPC agreed on Wednesday to acquire a 35 percent stake in Royal Dutch Shell’s oil and gas unit in Syria. The company also plans […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: The Deepwater Horizon

Shell, which is about to start drilling in Alaska’s Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, has filed new safety plans for their proposed projects. The administration is obviously going to take a very hard look at drilling in areas that are hundreds or even thousands of miles from help if something should grow wrong. It is one […]

Arctic Drilling

On my trip to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska I got to see the very beginning of the Trans-Alaska pipeline. It’s an impressive project that carries crude oil from the North Slope of Alaska all the way through the state to Valdez, Alaska. For 31 years oil has been coursing through that massive pipe and then shipped […]

Colin Campbell – The History of Fossil Fuel Usage

Colin Campbell discussing the history of fossil fuel usage and a basic explanation of peak oil.

China invests in Canadian oil sands firm

China Investment Corporation has agreed to invest C$1.25 billion (S$1.7 billion) oil sands giant Penn West. A wholly-owned China Investment Corporation (CIC) subsidiary will ‘develop Penn West’s bitumen assets located in the Peace River area of northern Alberta’, Penn West said in a statement. ‘CIC has also agreed to purchase trust units of Penn West […]

Iran May Be Storing 38 Million Barrels of Oil at Sea

Between 30 and 38 million barrels of Iranian crude may be in floating storage, a reference to oil kept in tankers and not sold, by early May, the International Energy Agency said. Cuts in orders from refiners in India, China, Japan and South Korea and maintenance at some facilities have hurt Iran’s sales. “Weaker demand […]

A Bad Bet on Carbon

Let’s take the first problem. Capturing carbon dioxide from the flue gas of a coal-fired electric generation plant is an energy-intensive process. Analysts estimate that capturing the carbon dioxide cuts the output of a typical plant by as much as 28 percent. Given that the global energy sector is already straining to meet booming demand […]

Turkey, Russia sign agreement on oil pipeline

Turkey and Russia signed agreements on Wednesday for the construction of Turkey’s first nuclear power plant and the development of a pipeline project to carry Russian oil from the Black Sea, through Turkey to the Mediterranean. Turkey, a U.S. ally, served as NATO’s foremost base during the Cold War, but its relations with Moscow have […]

Shell’s CEO sees inevitable energy price rise

In late 2008, the International Energy Agency, which represents energy consuming countries, said the world would need four new Saudi Arabias if it were to cope with rising consumption and Voser took up the theme. “To cover demand, by 2020 the world must develop oil sources that are equal to four times the capcity of […]

Radical Gas Price Thought: Much Higher

Mr. Groppi points out that the average depletion rate in conventional gas wells is about 25% each year, while for gas shale wells it is 45% or more.  (Mr. Groppi may be generous in his estimate of gas shale well depletion rates as many wells are showing 80+% first year declines.)  In his view, the […]

Saudi Aramco to Supply Full June Oil Volumes to Asia

Saudi Arabian Oil Co., the world’s largest state-owned oil company, will supply full volumes of crude oil to Asia for loading in June. Saudi Aramco, as the company is known, will provide 100 percent of cargoes sold under long-term contracts next month, according to a survey of refinery officials in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea […]

Canada’s oil sands blessing

All this energetic criticism is becoming increasingly moot now that the oil sands and heavy oil of Alberta and Saskatchewan are proving themselves to be one of the world’s most stable and productive petroleum sources. It’s a resource that has turned Canada overnight into the world’s major new petro power. For most people, the Athabasca […]

No Easy Villains May Mean No Easy Oil

As people who like simple narratives, the public and policy makers will be tempted to try to find one locus for blame — whether it’s BP or BOP’s (blow out protectors) — but that may prevent us from figuring out the deeper system of problems that lead to this accident. And we may determine that […]

DOE Still Disavows Peak Oil

The EIA does not expect oil production to peak in 2011. When asked if the EIA expects to see oil production ever peak and diminish, Mayne replied that the agency does not anticipate a peak oil scenario resulting from supply shortages: “We do not see a peak, if a peak means a sharp retraction in […]

OPEC Compliance Could Be Better

United Arab Emirates oil minister Mohammad Al Hamli Monday said Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ compliance to production quotas could be better, contradicting other ministers who said adherence was good. “It could be better,” Al Hamli said at an energy conference in Doha when asked about the group’s compliance levels. Qatar’s oil minister Abdullah bin […]

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