PetroChina to join Exxon at giant Iraqi oilfield

China’s biggest energy firm PetroChina (0857.HK) will join Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) in developing Iraq’s giant West Qurna oilfield and is in talks with Russia’s Lukoil (LKOH.MM) to buy into a second project at the field, industry sources said. China is already the top foreign player in Iraq’s oilfields. A deal at West Qurna, which is […]

No More Spills? New Technology Could Transform the Pipeline Sector

The 2010 Kalamazoo spill and the 2013 Exxon leak in Arkansas are the most glaring incidents, but these are just the big leaks that are found right away and reported. Most leaks are found eventually—but there is money to be saved and damage to be avoided by catching them at the smallest rupture. Right now, […]

We Don’t Think in Straight Lines Anymore

When Straight Lines Were Everything In the early years of this site and my forays into peak oil analysis, it amazed me that the primary OECD energy forecasting agencies worked out their oil supply forecasts by simply extrapolating demand forward, working out what the Non-OPEC world could produce (with an optimistic set of assumptions) and […]

Iraq oil exports stagnate, deep cuts ahead due to port work

* Exports to drop by 500,000 bpd in Sept due to port work * Iraq’s SOMO suggests cuts in Basra Light loadings of 25 pct * Start-up of Shell-operated Majnoon oilfield delayed to Oct * Baghdad expects 400,000 bpd production rise by end-2013 By Ahmed Rasheed BAGHDAD, Aug 7 (Reuters) – Iraq’s oil exports are […]

Oil’s Eastern Hemisphere is Shifting, Too

OPEC’s exports earned record revenue last year, but the pressure on the cartel is increasing as Eastern Hemisphere production expands, along with higher unconventional oil production in North America. Increasing supply doesn’t guarantee lower oil prices in the future, but it will help accommodate growing demand from the developing world, reducing the risk of price spikes such […]

Oil Kingdom

Shale is the new peak oil, and that’s why Saudi Arabia still rules global energy markets. Reading the newspapers these days, you’d think that the much-hyped impending American energy boom is about to make Saudi Arabia and the rest of OPEC irrelevant. Recent projections by the International Energy Agency (IEA), for example, have the United […]

EIA Reduces 2013 US Natgas Production, Demand Estimates

The U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday trimmed its estimate for domestic natural gas production in 2013, but expects output this year to be up about 1 percent from 2012’s record-high levels. In its August Short-Term Energy Outlook, the EIA said it expected marketed natural gas production in 2013 to rise 0.71 billion cubic feet […]

The Gassiest Country

Introduction This is the 4th installment in a series that examines data from the recently released 2013 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. The previous posts were: Renewable Energy Status Update 2013 Hydropower and Geothermal Status Update 2013 The State of Oil According to BP Today’s post delves into the natural gas production picture. The US […]

Robert Rapier: From Peak Oil to Peak Fracking?

It is hard to overstate the shift that has taken place in the energy markets since 2005. That was the year the late Matt Simmons published Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy and set off a fierce debate about whether Saudi Arabia — and the world as a […]

Update on Coal Ash Pollution: In Words and on Film

The story of coal ash keeps going nowhere. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about coal ash. A Whole Lot of Ash Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel we’ve got. BTU to BTU, we get more pollution from coal than from petroleum and way more than from natural gas. Most of the pollution goes up in […]

Maugeri Misses Bakken ”Red Queen”

In this post I will, amongst other things, present the results from my review of the Bakken portion of Leonardo Maugeri’s discussion paper “The Shale Oil Boom: A U.S. Phenomenon” Leonardo Maugeri is an ex-ENI executive now with the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center which receives funds from BP. His discussion paper presents his findings […]

Tech Talk – The latest Canadian Oil Spill

This post is seeded by a note from Luis de Sousa (h/t Luis) who noted a story in Mother Jones. That story, in turn, fed from one in the Toronto Star and is about surface contamination of oil, coming from the underlying tar sands and emerging as a watery bitumen mixture over at least four […]

Yemen’s main pipeline attacked, crude flow stops again

Tribesmen blew up Yemen’s main oil export pipeline late on Saturday, halting the flow of crude, the state news agency reported on Sunday. The pipeline started pumping crude oil again last week after repairs that took several days, following a similar attack by tribesmen. Earlier this year, the pipeline was pumping around 125,000 barrels per […]

Russia’s Oil Output Rises to Near Most Since Soviet Era

Russia, the world’s biggest oil producer, increased crude and condensate production by 1 percent in July from a year earlier to 10.43 million barrels a day, near a post-Soviet record. Daily output fell 0.7 percent from June, when it set the record, according to preliminary data sent by e-mail today from the Energy Ministry’s CDU-TEK […]

Peak shale oil? What peak?

  A graphic contributed by Jean Laherrere indicating that shale oil production in North Dakota may soon peak and start declining. This figure, made by Jean Laherrere, deals with oil production from the “Bakken Shale,” a geological formation existing in large part in North Dakota. Shales may contain oil deposits, in most cases in the […]

Will the Bakken “Red Queen” Have to Run Faster?

This post is an update and continued expansion to my previous posts about tight/shale oil in Bakken/Three Forks in North Dakota (ND): Is Shale Oil Production from Bakken Headed for a Run with “The Red Queen”? Is the Typical NDIC Bakken Tight Oil Well a Sales Pitch? This post documents: At present oil prices Bakken […]

Saudi Prince: Fracking Is Threat To Kingdom

As the fracking revolution eases demand for the kingdom’s oil and gas, a billionaire prince warns his nation to find new income. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the billionaire Saudi Arabian investor, has warned that his country’s oil-dependent economy is increasingly vulnerable to competition from the US shale revolution, setting him at odds with his country’s […]

Tech Talk – Of Egyptian Bread and Oil

The turmoil in the Middle East shows little sign of ending in the near future, and the potential lack of enough cheap fuel for the population is a warning that the levels of unrest may continue and even get worse. There is, however, some hope for enough local supply in the near term to help […]

Bomb attack halts oil flow through Kirkuk pipeline

A bomb attack halted crude flow through the pipeline running from Iraq’s Kirkuk oilfields to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in Turkey, officials at Iraq’s North Oil Company (NOC) said on Sunday. The attack took place at midnight on Saturday near the city of Mosul and the officials at state-run NOC said repair work would […]

Energy Risk: No More Blowouts, Dry Holes, or Abandoned Oil Wells

According to the Alberta Ministry of Environment and Sustainable Resource Development, almost 400,000 oil and gas wells were drilled in the province during the period 1963 to 2012; for an average of about 8,000 per year. Of those, 154,111 have been abandoned or about 38.5 percent. The term ‘abandoned well’ means a well that is […]

‘Crude for blood’ – return of sectarian war hits Iraq’s oil exports

Iraq’s Sunni insurgents are targeting its main northern oil pipeline, undoing plans for a massive increase in exports as violence reaches levels unseen since the darkest days of civil war. Iraq’s ambitious plans to ramp up its oil output have been held back by poor maintenance and technical problems. Violence is making the situation worse, […]

Forget rigs, it’s wells that count now

A combination of oil and gas innovations and well-site cost cuts is rendering the long-vaunted U.S. rig count a less important oilfield indicator than the number of holes in the ground. So in keeping with the times, oilfield services company Baker Hughes Inc (BHI.N) is complementing the rig count it has tallied for more than […]

Poland’s Shale Gas Bubble ‘Bursting’

Since Jun. 3, inhabitants of the village Zurawlow in Grabowiec district in southeastern Poland have been occupying a field in their locality where the U.S. company Chevron plans to drill for shale gas. The farmers’ resistance is just the latest blow to shale gas proponents in the country. Chevron, one of the world’s top five […]

Why Big Oil is Shifting Away from the Gulf of Mexico

A BP official who led the company before the 2010 incident in the Gulf of Mexico marked his return to the region in a $3.75 billion deal with Houston-based Apache. Apache seemingly said goodbye to the Gulf of Mexico in the deal, opting instead to focus its efforts onshore. Former BP Chief Executive John Browne […]

Technology vanquishes the peak-oilers

The decision to shutter “The Oil Drum”, the leading website devoted to peak oil, has come to symbolize the end of an era – and sparked a furious debate about whether the theory was all along based on a fundamental mistake. The site’s authors and editors blamed the decision to archive it on the “scarcity […]

6 tech advancements changing the fossil fuels game

Oil and gas is getting bigger, deeper, faster and more efficient, with new technology chipping away at “peak oil” concerns. While hydraulic fracturing has been the most visible revolutionary advancement, other high-tech developments are keeping the ball rolling—from the next generation of ultra-deepwater drillships, subsea oil and gas infrastructure and multi-well-pad drilling to M2M networking, […]

North Dakota oil output tops 800,000 bpd

Oil production in North Dakota topped 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) for the first time ever in May, preliminary data from the state regulator showed on Monday, as the number of rigs pumping crude in the state hit an all-time peak. The state’s Mineral Resources Department said output in May was up 2 per cent […]

The receding threat from ‘peak oil’

Concerns about oil supplies running dry are receding, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Massive new discoveries in the US have led to a “dramatic” change in global prospects. The IEA’s head of oil markets, Antoine Halff, says forecasts have had to be repeatedly revised upwards in the past two years. Declining US production […]

In OPEC, every oil output number tells a story

OPEC has, for years, insisted that it is an economic organization and not a political one. But few observers would disagree with the suggestion that pretty much everything in OPEC is political. We have seen how politics has complicated the appointments of secretaries general, most recently in the case of Abdalla el-Badri who, despite having […]

IEA hedges bets on new 20-year supply peak in non-OPEC oil

The International Energy Agency has painted a picture of softer market fundamentals in 2014, but gone to lengths to point out a number of intangibles which could ultimately derail its latest predictions. Fleshing out for the first time its oil market forecasts for 2014, the IEA believes the US’ shale oil boom will continue to […]

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