Chevron Now Cementing Deepwater Well in Brazil; Confirms that No Oil has Flowed from Wellhead

Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) today confirms that cementing operations are taking place as part of its well plugging activities on an appraisal well located in the vicinity of the Frade field offshore Brazil. Chevron also confirms that there has never been any oil flow from the wellhead and current monitoring indicates oil from nearby seep […]

Saudi Oil Production Declining

Saudi oil production has been declining modestly for the last 2-3 months (depending on your preferred data source) while the oil rig count in country has continued to increase.  See above graph (the black line is the average of five sources of production information on the left scale, while the red curve in the lower […]

Saudi Arabia to become world’s largest crude oil producer

Saudi Arabia will overtake Russia as the world’s largest crude oil producer by 2015, as output from new Russian fields fails to offset increasing decline of oil at mature deposits, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said recently. But while Russia’s output will plateau at 10.5 million barrels per day, Saudi Arabia’s will rise to match […]

Egyptian gas pipeline to Israel attacked again

An Egyptian pipeline supplying gas to Israel and Jordan has been hit with two explosions, making it the seventh assault on the energy route since February. A first blast occurred around 1:00 a.m. Thursday (2300 GMT Wednesday) 40 kilometers west of the town of al-Arish in the north of the Sinai peninsula, AFP quoted an […]

Exxon oil deal with Kurds shakes Iraq

Exxon Mobil’s oil and gas exploration agreement with Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurds, who’re at odds with Baghdad over the country’s energy wealth, marks a significant, and tantalizing, departure by U.S. oilmen amid the current military withdrawal. The breakaway move into Kurdistan, the first by any of the oil majors operating in Iraq under 20-year production contract […]

Libya Speeds Oil Output but Sees Hurdles Ahead

TRIPOLI—Libya’s oil production is coming back online faster than expected but hurdles remain for the country’s economic recovery from the shocks of the war and an ongoing state of political limbo, interim Oil Minister Ali Tarhouni said. Mr. Tarhouni said he is optimistic about the rebounding Libyan energy sector as the country begins to move […]

Deepwater GOM: Reserves versus Production – Part 2: Atlantis, Mad Dog & Eugene Island

In the deepwater GOM, BP (in red) has the highest number of discoveries, as shown in this graph from PFC (R.West 2011), particularly with Atlantis and Mad Dog. Shell (in blue) is the second discoverer by number. The cumulative oil and gas discovery displays a typical S curve, but where is the asymptote? Figure 29: […]

U.S. Government Confirms Link Between Earthquakes and Hydraulic Fracturing

On 5 November an earthquake measuring 5.6 rattled Oklahoma and was felt as far away as Illinois. Until two years ago Oklahoma typically had about 50 earthquakes a year, but in 2010, 1,047 quakes shook the state. Why? In Lincoln County, where most of this past weekend’s seismic incidents were centered, there are 181 injection […]

South Sudan’s oil production slumps since independence

Oil production in South Sudan has fallen by a quarter since independence four months ago, Unity State’s environment minister has told the BBC. Since the split from the north there has been a shortage of skilled workers, the minister, William Garjang, said. The rainy season was also making it difficult to repair faulty machinery and […]

Oil prices are in ‘danger zone’, warns the IEA

Oil could hit $150 a barrel soon if investment in the Middle East and North Africa fails to rise with demand, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says. Prices have remained high throughout 2011, partly due to Libyan unrest. “We are in the danger zone for the global economy at current levels,” said IEA economist Fatih […]

China faces hurdles to developing shale gas

Energy-hungry China is tapping its vast shale gas reserves to reduce its reliance on dirty coal and imports, but experts warn its lack of technical expertise and scarce water supplies pose challenges. China, which has substantial reserves of the hard-to-reach gas — trapped in formations of shale, or sedimentary rock — has started drilling to […]

Yergin: How Shale Gas Is Like Walmart

The breakthrough energy innovation of the 21st century is not thin-film solar, sophisticated wind turbines, advanced biofuels or small-scale nukes. It’s shale gas. So says Daniel Yergin, the energy guru and author of The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World (Penguin, $35), who was interviewed today (Nov. by Walter Isaacson at […]

The return of Libyan oil

Platts’ monthly survey of OPEC output in October revealed the first significant jump in Libyan output since the fall of the Qaddafy regime. It also showed a surprising decline out of Saudi Arabia. The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) crude oil output rose by 50,000 barrels per day (b/d) in October to 30.05 […]

Will the “economic price” limit oil production?

In a widely-circulated article in September 2011, Chris Skrebowski, who runs a peak oil consulting firm and was editor of the Petroleum Review for eleven years until 2008, argued that there are two forms of oil peak. One is, or will be, caused directly by depletion – the oil is no longer in the ground […]

Saudis make 2011 the year of natural gas

For Saudi Aramco 2011 may be remembered as one of its most unusual years: the one in which the biggest milestone achieved by the world’s largest oil company was a natural gas field startup. If anything comes to symbolize the dawn of a “golden age of gas,” it may be the July production start from […]

The shale gas revolution

The United States is a country that has received many blessings, and once upon a time you could assume that Americans would come together to take advantage of them. But you can no longer make that assumption. The country is more divided and more clogged by special interests. Now we groan to absorb even the […]

World peak oil production still years away

Brian Towler University of Wyoming Laramie, Wyo. Peak world oil production rate depends on economics and is unlikely to occur before 2018, and rising oil prices and technological developments may further delay this peak. When production rate eventually does peak, however, the decline side of the curve will not mirror the growth side as predicted […]

Time to Worry: World Oil Production Finishes Six Years of No Growth

As oil prices rose ever higher in the last decade, the optimists kept predicting rising production capacity and plummeting prices. Looks like they got it wrong. We are entering what may be the longest stretch of no growth in world oil production since the early 1980s. But the reasons for that lack of growth differ […]

Tech Talk – Drilling off the Atlantic Coast

When the Presidential Administration changes, particularly when that change involves different political parties, the results on energy policy, and ultimately energy availability and price can be, but are not always, significant. In recent posts I have cited Governor Perry’s Energy Plan were he to come to power, and have noted that, for some issues, the change in […]

North American Oil Development Is Reducing Demand for Foreign Oil

The September 15 report from the National Petroleum Council expressed surprise at how much has changed just since their “Hard Truths” report of 2007 that domestic energy development was falling behind escalating demand. The “Hard Truths” report stated that although “the world is not running out of energy resources … there are accumulating risks to continuing […]

UAE – World likely to face severe oil crunch by 2015

There could be a severe global oil crunch by 2015 due to drastic changes in the oil market fundamentals, a World Bank consultant told the 17th Annual Energy Conference of the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR). Addressing the ECSSR conference in the UAE capital, Dr Mamdouh Salameh, Consultant on Oil and Energy […]

Saudi Peak Oil Could Affect World in 2012

While most experts say it is hard to know what is really going on with Saudi oil supplies, ”What we do know is that, for whatever reason, Saudi Arabia produced 600,000 fewer barrels each day in 2010 than it did in 2005, and with growing Saudi consumption of their own oil, the drop in exports from Saudi […]

New technologies revive fading oil fields

n a downtown Los Angeles skyscraper, Hal Washburn is drilling for oil. Using a black high-definition computer screen, the petroleum engineer traces the ghostly white outlines of century-year-old vertical oil wells punctuated by the bright green and red of more recent efforts. The newer wells flare with what look like thousands of tiny hairs; the […]

Saudi oil production cut looms

Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s largest oil producers, may soon cut oil production. The move, which some analysts believe may have already begun, comes in response to additional supplies coming online from elsewhere. The country, which had ramped up production earlier this year in response to the Libyan crisis, has been eyeing the resumption […]

Cheniere to Export LNG: The Beginning of a New Energy Era

It takes a visionary (Sharif Souki), a surfeit of US natural gas and a 4-to-1 price disparity between what the US and what other people pay and you have the makings of perhaps, if not the biggest certainly part of the biggest, energy stories for some time.   The just announced 20 year contract between […]

The Triumph of King Coal

This year’s UN climate negotiations are in Durban, South Africa. Many delegates will already be looking forward to the chance of going on safari after their labors, visiting Kruger National Park or one of the country’s other magnificent game reserves. But I have another suggestion. Visit the enemy. Just two hours’ drive up the Indian […]

Beijing in fresh South China Sea warning

China could again be giving ExxonMobil the jitters after the former reiterated its stance against companies drilling in the disputed South China Sea. The warning from China’s foreign ministry on Monday comes shortly after ExxonMobil revealed it had struck hydrocarbons in a disputed region off Vietnam. “China has indisputable sovereignty over the Spratly Islands and adjacent waters,” […]

ESAI: Russia aligned to globally ‘enhance market power’

Changes in Russia’s taxation policies will have a positive effect on the country’s upstream development, enabling a high level of exports for years to come, according to a report by ESAI Energy LLC. “Key tax policy decisions will favor upstream development over the refining sector, eliminating competing objectives that have heretofore threatened to undermine Russia’s […]

Not so much: Shale gas shows its limitations

              If you live in the United States and bother to turn on your television, it’s almost impossible to avoid ads telling you that natural gas from shale is both abundant and environmentally safe to develop. In these ads, so many happy people seem to enjoy burning natural gas […]

Re-Visiting The Export Land Model (Pt 2)

This is a follow-up to my (only slightly) tongue-in-cheek post from last week regarding the Export Land Model [ELM) designed by petroleum geologist Jeffrey Brown and Dr. Samuel Foucher, a subject I first broached here. Yet over and over again — on the radio, on TV, in print, in the blogosphere, and all over Washington […]

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