$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'H')arhar, I can't resist dazzling you with a 'conspiracy' perspective on this. The free cash was 'government incentives' from the US government for companies helping to develop oil in Iraq.
Anyone from my group would tell you the 'Iraqis' offering the bum deals to oil companies where in fact puppets wholly owned by anglo-american powers that be. The prices for drilling\exploitation permits offered by the 'Iraqis' to the oil companies were probably decided for them by anglo-american advisorys.
A lot of the money given to the Iraqis in these contracts would be given straight back to the anglo-american banks to pay off loans and war reparations etc, although some highly compliant Iraqis would be allowed to have some of the wealth. This way the money is created on Wall street, passes through the hands of the workers, but most of it ends up back where it started.
Great story huh? What do you think of that?
PeakOil is You
Why we shouldn't worry about end times
Re: Why we shouldn't worry about end times
by rockdoc123 » Thu 30 Aug 2012, 00:08:07
This is absolute horseshit., I was there for the oil for food deals, I was there for the first bid round and I was there for the first Kurdistan round. The bid rounds were open processes. You talk about the deals as if they were phenomenal for the oil companies, far from it. Most of the successful bids in the 4 rounds were for less than $4 /bbl service fee. Even with 100% cost recovery you can’t make much money on that. The signature bonus was set so it wasn’t a bid amount and it was no different than what I’ve seen in most countries where the risk for finding oil is low. If there was some sort of American cabal orchestrating the Iraq bid round don’t you think American companies would have fared better than they did? Most of the blocks have gone to companies from other nations. This is conspiracy crap at it’s best.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')ne 'conspiracy' that is popular even with common zero-tolerance types like yourself, and that agrees with me is was that the 2003 invasion of Iraq wasn't about disarming Saddam of his supposed WMD, but to retake control of Iraqi oil wells. Saddam had 'defected' from the anglo-americans when he began refusing to go along with their plans, and instead began making deals with other nations such as China for Iraq's oil.
I'd be interested how you go about explaining that as 'not a conspiracy'. Which story manages to fit into your 'zero conspiracy' view of the world?
If this were true would not all of the blocks or at least most of the good ones have gone to US companies? They didn’t. Currently the list of non-US companies outside of Iraqi new-co’s is Kogas, TPAO, Kuwait Energy Co, CNPC, Petronas, Total, Shell, Sonangol, Gazprom, Japex, Lukoil, Statoil, and BP. The only US companies with any interests are Oxy who are partners in Az Zubair field with ENI, Korea Gas and 2 different Iraqi companies and Exxon who are partners in West Quran field with Shell, Lukoi and Statoil. The US basically has no presence. The US doesn't have some sort of sweetheart arrangement where they can buy Iraqi oil at less than world price, in fact they have to compete with everyone else. So exactly why would they conspire to get all of these resources and create a war for this reason and end up not getting anything out of it? The obvious answer is your conspiracy theory is complete and utter nonsense.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'd') say OF2's post Siberia's cornucopia rock is a good example of how large oil fields can still be discovered today. So maybe all the workers you mentioned hadn't looked hard enough until June 2012.
An uninformed comment. The Bazhenov Fm hydrocarbon potential has been known for more than a decade. Very little drilling has gone on to this point and the results to date have been disappointing from what I have seen. I liken this to the same thing we saw with the rush to Poland shale gas 2 years ago with trillions of cubic feet predicted. In reality what has happened is that a few wells drilled have shown the shales aren’t necessarily conducive to fraccing, they don’t have the right mineraology and they aren’t over-pressured. Yes they have the organic content and you can estimate huge resources based on that but you can’t get that gas/oil out of the rock and never will. The same will almost certainly be found in Russia based on the early drilling results, there will be some production but not anywhere near the numbers touted in the press. Again, one has to separate resource from reserves. As I said a number of times regarding OF2’s posts, it’s good to collect the press releases but you also have to separate hype from reality.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'L')ast time I saw them they gave me the impression that finding new oil fields is still a pretty 'lucky' game and that you don't have to go to remote unexplored places to find new fields
If you are looking for a few hundred thousand barrels this is true, you can still find it some places. But our standard rule of thumb is that peak production of a field is generally at 10% reserve depletion/annum, making a hundred thousand barrel field 10,000 bbl/annum production at peak. In places like Colombia where exploration hadn’t been done for a few years due to the FARC issue you can still find fields of the 3 million barrel size if you have the acreage in the Llanos basin. But that is still only 300,000 barrels of oil per year or less than 10,000 barrels per day. You need an enormous amount of those fields to make up for current world wide production and when you look at a minimal 6% decline/annum on these reserves you need to be replacing them each and every year. The problem is worldwide consumption is very high. As a consequence you need large discoveries to make a difference and it is not easy or just a lucky thing to find such fields. If your friends are telling you it is simple then I suggest they haven’t spent much time in the industry or are in jobs that are not directly involved in F&D. Ask them to show you a discovery creaming curve of one of these areas where they think it is easy to find big reserves, I guaranty it will tell you a different story.
As to luck being involved, yes it is. A friend of mine once said you need to be playing in the road if you want to get hit by the lucky truck ….a suggestion that if you don’t drill wells you can’t actually be the recipient of luck but the corollary to that is that you can play as much in the road you like and never get hit by the lucky truck if it has essentially broken down due to old age….getting hit by the lucky tricycle doesn’t seem to have the same impact I’m afraid.
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rockdoc123 - Expert
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, knew you'd love it. It's satisfying to provoke a senior professional into writing obscenities.
