OPEC Cuts Oil Output to 14-Month Low Amid Economic Uncertainty

OPEC reduced its production to the lowest level in 14 months as budget wrangles in the U.S., uncertain impact of stimulus measures in Japan and Europe’s struggle to boost growth cloud outlook for fuel demand. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries cut output by 465,000 barrels a day in December to 30.4 million, the lowest […]

Oil Watch: Reconciliation of JODI and EIA C+C production data

Oil production and consumption data reported by JODI (Joint Organisations Data Initiative) is reported to JODI by national governments giving us reason to believe that this may be the most reliable data set upon which to base interpretations about national and global oil supply and demand. However, the JODI data set is incomplete. 15 countries […]

America, the Saudi Arabia of tomorrow

We pay a lot of attention to revolutions when they emerge suddenly and violently, but when a transformation arrives gradually and peacefully it’s easy to miss. Let’s stop for a moment and take a look at a slow-motion development changing the world as we know it: The United States is giving up its addiction to […]

Oil’s Divisive Influence in Iraq

An employee works at Tawke oil fields in the Kurdish region in northern Iraq on May 31, 2009. (AP file photo/Hadi Mizban) It has long been speculated that oil can be a driver for civil conflict, and one needs to look no further for evidence than the sectarian power politics that is threatening the possible […]

Tech Talk – Some Thoughts on Energy in 2013

It is the beginning of a New Year, and belatedly, I hope that all readers find this new period to be one of prosperity, health and happiness. It would be encouraging if the portents for our energy future would point in that direction, but unfortunately I can’t see nearly as much optimism in that regard […]

The battle over exporting natural gas

We’ve been telling you on Marketplace about America’s abundance of natural gas as a result of the controversial drilling technology, fracking. One emerging debate is: Since we have so much, should we export it? Drillers want to, but big industrial buyers aren’t so keen, and want to keep as much as home as possible. They […]

Iraq threatens to seize oil shipped without its consent, sue dealers after Kurds begin exports

Iraq has threatened to seize oil exports made without its consent and sue companies dealing in what it sees as contraband crude just days after the country’s self-rule Kurdish region began unilaterally exporting oil. The spokesman for Iraq’s Kurdish regional government, Safeen Dizayee, confirmed Friday that the largely autonomous territory began shipping oil unilaterally to […]

Look How Much Natural Gas Gets Flared At Oil Fields In North Dakota

Boosted by the fracking boom that has opened up fossil fuel reserves trapped under the Bakken Shale, North Dakota is now the second-largest oil producing state in America. But the state has a dirty little secret: drilling companies are wasting a lot of natural gas to get to that oil. How much natural gas is […]

Shale Gas: How often do fracked wells leak?

When industry says hardly ever, that’s a myth. It’s a documented, chronic problem. One of the boldest claims made by the shale gas industry goes like this: oil and gas companies have drilled and fractured a million oil and gas wells with nary a problem. In other words fracture fluid or methane leaks are “a […]

UAE Plans to Lift Oil Production Capacity in 2013

The United Arab Emirates plans to raise its oil production capacity to 3 million barrels a day, from the current 2.8 million, during the current year, the country’s oil minister Mohammad Al-Hamli said Wednesday. The Gulf state’s crude output stood at 2.6 million barrels a day in December and it is currently producing at around […]

Is ‘peak oil theory’ delayed by fracking?

About a decade ago, the theory of ‘peak oil’ stated that at some point in the near future, global oil production would peak, sending prices sky-high. But since then, the discovery of vast shale oil and gas reserves – many of them in the US – has led some to question whether that point has […]

Will fracking lead to cheap oil for all? Not necessarily

FT Alphaville‘s Kate Mackenzie has an excerpt of a very interesting research note from energy consultant Phil Verleger. The bulk of the note is a look back at the apparent vindication of MIT economist Morris Adelman, who rejected the ideas of “peak oil” at the time when they were most fashionable. Adelman, Verleger writes, accurately […]

Iran oil exports plunge 40% in 9 months

Oil minister reverses previous denials of any decline Iran’s oil exports have been slashed 40 per cent in the past nine months because of tough Western sanctions, Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi was quoted as saying on Monday, in a reversal of his previous denials of any decline at all. “There has been a 40 per […]

Fracking Activities Enter Urban Areas

Fracking in many ways has been the saviour of the US. It has created a boom in natural gas production, and also allowed oil production to increase massively. As a result it is a fairly popular amongst the US population, especially those in areas which are benefitting the most such as Texas and North Dakota. […]

Iran launches 1st natural gas storage facility in ME

Iran has officially inaugurated the first underground natural gas storage facility of the Middle East in the Qom Province, south of the capital city, Tehran. The underground reservoir was launched Saturday at Sarajeh, near the city of Qom, in a ceremony attended by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. According to the director of the facility, the […]

2013: Oil and the Middle East

The Arab Spring was a series of seismic, historic events. But 2012 shows the term itself is no longer a useful description. Spring implies a summer and a winter to follow – neither season is an apt adjective. And can we really club the Arab world together under one banner? Each country has undergone its […]

Chevron’s CEO: Affordable Energy Is Crucial

Chevron CEO John Watson notices something important as he visits his company’s operations around the globe: Governments everywhere find high energy prices much scarier than the threat of global warming. And that means the world will need a lot more oil and gas in the years to come. To meet that demand, Chevron is in […]

OPEC Top Three Oil Producers

The above graph shows the oil production of Saudia Arabia (top panel) and Iran and Iraq (lower panel).    You can see the sanctions-induced deterioration in Iran’s production, as well as the beginning of the rise in Iraqi production which I expect to go on in fits and starts for many years, assuming the country […]

Russia’s 2012 Oil Output Rises to Post-Soviet Record on Prices

Russia’s crude oil and condensate output in 2012 climbed 1.1 percent from a year ago to a post- Soviet record as companies maximized supply to take advantage of an increase in prices. Russia, the world’s biggest energy producer, pumped 10.38 million barrels a day last year, up from 10.27 million in the previous year, according […]

When fracking came to suburban Texas

The corner of Goldenrod and Western streets, with its grid of modest homes, could be almost any suburb that went up in a hurry – except of course for the giant screeching oil rig tearing up the earth and making the pavement shudder underfoot. Fracking, the technology that opened up America’s vast deposits of unconventional […]

The Pipe Runneth Over: Self reliant US may secure India’s energy future

The Mitt Romney-Barack Obama presidential debates in October had one man in New Delhi hooked. D.K. Sarraf, Managing Director, ONGC Videsh Ltd, the state-run overseas explorer, would plonk himself before a television early in the day and hang on to every word. Sarraf is no avid America watcher – his interest in the three debates […]

EIA: possible exploitation of polar oil and gas resources

The Arctic holds an estimated 13% (90 billion barrels) of the world’s undiscovered conventional oil resources and 30% of its undiscovered conventional natural gas resources, according to an assessment conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). Consideration of these resources as commercially viable is relatively recent despite the size of the Arctic’s resources due to […]

US on new track to catch Saudis in oil production

Despite rising gas prices, oil production is surging in this country. That has some predicting the U.S. could eventually overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest petroleum producer by 2020. In the middle of a Colorado cornfield, sandwiched between cattle and farm houses, is the front line of an American oil boom.   “We plan […]

Iraq Kurds Halt Crude Exports

Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government stopped oil exports two days ago, according to an official of the central government. “Kurdish authorities halted completely crude shipments from fields in the Kurdish region in northern Iraq through the Turkish terminal of Ceyhan” on the Mediterranean, Abdel Ilah Qassem, adviser to Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Affairs Hussain […]

Africa Cashes in on Mineral Wealth

Many of the fastest-growing countries in the world are in Africa, the poorest continent on the planet, but the potential for recently-discovered resources to generate broad-based inclusive development opportunities is massive and remains under-exploited. “I don’t believe that African nations are even close to understanding the enormous wealth that is their natural resource endowment,” David […]

Oil-shale gas should be captured, not flared

The Bakken oil shale drilling provides immense opportunities as well as challenges for North Dakota. It’s a huge domestic energy resource and creates new jobs, wealth, tax revenues and growth. At the same time, there are enormous community costs and social disruptions, not to mention air and water pollution potentially harming human health, ecological safety, […]

Tech Talk – Iranian Potential and the Caspian disputes

As we come to the end of the year, Leanan continues to point to the many stories that now fill the media reporting on the perception that the time to worry about peak oil is over. However, as Darwinian perceptively points out the global supply of oil (crude and condensate) is not going up with […]

Iraq Daily Oil Output Exceeds 3.2 Million Barrels

Iraqi crude production will exceed 3.2 million barrels a day in December, Iraqi Oil Minister Abdul Kareem al-Luaibi said today in Cairo. That compares with output of 3.17 million barrels a day in November, according to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’ last monthly report. Iraq has risen this year to the rank of OPEC’s […]

Future production from U.S. shale or tight oil

I attended the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco two weeks ago at which I heard a very interesting presentation by David Hughes of the Post Carbon Institute. He is more pessimistic about future production potential from U.S. shale gas and tight oil formations than some other analysts. Here I report some of the data on tight oil […]

Iraq’s Oil Boom Being Felt Far and Wide

Iraq’s post-war production boom is having ramifications both within and beyond its borders. BP is seeking to redefine the terms of its contract for the giant Rumaila oilfield, the Financial Times reports, proposing to scale back its output target as it struggles with poor infrastructure and export bottlenecks. Rumaila accounts for about one-third of Iraq’s current […]

« Previous Page — Next Page »

LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• Why the IEA is Wrong About Peak Oil Demand
• Did we inadvertently speed global warming?  
• Venezuela’s Oil Monopoly Eases
• Why Germany is Choosing Natural Gas Over Nuclear Power
• U.S. coal-fired electricity generation decreased in 2022 and 2023

• America Cracks Down on Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Facilities
• Meet America’s Newest Oil Trader Extraordinaire: Joe Biden
• Is It Time To Refill America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
• Oil prices set to end year 10% lower as demand concerns snap winning streak
• What’s Driving America’s New Oil and Gas Boom?
• China’s peak oil demand bombshell eviscerates Danielle Smith’s energy strategy