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Nov 20,"We’ve Probably Passed Peak Oil"
Report: Rapid Transport Decarbonization Means We’ve Probably Passed Peak Oil https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/rapid-transport-decarbonization-means-weve-probably-passed-peak-oil
The global peak in oil consumption may already be past us, according to a new report from Carbon Tracker — and the rapid transition to low-carbon transport in China and India is the reason why.
The report released Friday underscores the role that transportation in emerging economies will play in future oil demand and how quickly falling battery costs and increasingly aggressive decarbonization policies are accelerating the shift from fossil-fueled to electric vehicles.
Data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) shows that 80 percent of the projected growth in demand for oil from now to 2030 is from transport in emerging economies. China and India are responsible for half of that projected growth.
But the IEA's current forecasts haven't yet accounted for the dramatic policy shifts coming from Beijing. In September, China's President Xi Jinping told the U.N. General Assembly that the country was aiming to hit peak carbon in 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060. The details will be laid out in the country's 14th five-year plan.
Kingsmill Bond, lead author of the Carbon Tracker report, told GTM that the shift implied in China's announcement adds important new data to future oil demand projections.
“We've demonstrated that the key driver of expected oil demand growth in the next decade (if you take the business-as-usual step scenario) is...emerging market transportation,” he said. But if future transport electrifies, "it basically means that the demand [from transport] is essentially flat, and that...removes almost all of the demand growth for oil."
"It's a really significant issue,” he added. While aviation and shipping also account for a portion of future oil growth, 92 percent of transportation in emerging economies is road transport.
“Energy security is firmly on Beijing’s radar amid rising tensions with the West,” Hugo Brennan, principal Asia analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, told GTM in an email.
“China is the world’s largest importer of crude oil, and Beijing is acutely aware that this represents a strategic vulnerability. Beijing is keen to reduce its heavy dependence on foreign oil, particularly seaborne supply from politically unstable regions that must transit strategic chokepoints,” he added.
Bond points to the fact that electrification is well underway in China, with 60 percent of two-wheelers and 60 percent of buses electrified. The country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in October that to hit the 2060 goal, all car sales in China will need to be EV or hybrid by 2035.
Many oil majors are already preparing for this scenario by boosting their capabilities in EV infrastructure and hydrogen. Last week, Shell signed off on its first commercial hydrogen project in China. BP is the EV charging partner of DiDi, which is China’s equivalent of Uber. DiDi and BYD are building a new EV designed specifically for ride-sharing.
What is playing out in India is the seemingly inevitable economics of falling battery costs. The cost of an electric-powered and a petrol-powered three-wheeled rickshaw are now equal, so the lower running costs of an e-rickshaw are winning out, he said.
In 2018-2019, 3.38 million passenger cars were sold in India compared to 21.18 million two-wheelers, according to auto-industry figures. Bond expects that as battery prices continue to fall, two-wheel transport will follow rickshaws and become dominated by battery-powered drivetrains.
Ultimately, building out transportation infrastructure from a lower base provides emerging economies a chance to leapfrog to the low-carbon era.
“The average person in the United States uses 1.9 tons of oil a year for transportation. The average person in India uses 0.1 tons," he said. "So if you're the Indian government today, you've got to either build out a network of refineries and metro stations and pipelines or you've got to build out a grid network, one or the other."
Given that one system offers energy independence and the many benefits of improved air quality and lower carbon, Bond is confident about which way things will go: “It's much more likely that you're going to build an electric-based transport system than an oil-based one because it's the future, basically.”
The future is looking much better with a less oil dependent energy mix and less focus on producing and consuming stuff we don't need.We are going to get healthy,waste less and pollute less.Humans are going to shift from killing and controlling to thriving through a transformation from wrong headed believes about our nature.We have achieved amazing things and we are going to shock ourselves with the amazing world we are going to get busy creating this decade.We have barely tapped into our potential as a species.Gloom and doom is toast.End times thinking is stinking up the planet from religions,politicians and scientists.That trend is about to end.It's time to dare to dream big dreams and get busy making them so.We lost our way after the assassination's of the Kennedys and MLK and the evil sacrifice of our soldiers to a wrong headed war in Vietnam.We stopped growing into a better species that was ready to end racism and other inequities.We silenced our emotional/spiritual voices and doubled down on producing and consuming stuff.This imbalanced living is killing us.We have reached the tipping point thanks to COVID-19.The door is open for a very exciting time of healing and reimagining. Take Care!
The World you know is Ending
Forget Peak Oil Demand, Supply Crisis Could be Hitting First https://news.yahoo.com/forget-peak-oil-demand-supply-111341407.html
Demand is going to recover, levels will be reaching at least 5-10 million bpd above 2019 levels by 2030, possibly hitting 115-120 million bpd by 2040. Between 2020-2030 latter extra volumes needed is twice the Saudi Al Ghawar field production.
Where most analysis in the media really goes wrong is that it only looks at demand increase. The main issue at present to deal with is to assess the normal decline of producing fields globally. If taking a very conservative approach of 7% decline per year, we are looking at extra production to be found of 6-7 million bpd to counter yearly decline overall. Putting this in place for the period 2020-2025 we are talking about new production to come onstream of 25-30 million bpd at least.
Without investing in existing and future production, oil storage volumes worldwide will crash, showing empty barrels or tanks very soon. By repeating peak oil demand scenarios and reports, the media and financial analysts are creating a lack of urgency that will bite the hands it feeds. Maybe the IEA assessments will need to some new rational analysis than we have seen before.
You're a breath of fresh air, my friend.
I've been in training for a societal change since the late 1950s with my playpen next to my maternal Grandma's large garden built for survival during the 1930s.
I graduated from playpen to a rope tied around my waist to crawl up and down rows of vegetables. I was taught that "gardening is food insurance," and that "the earth was nature's refrigerator" during the summer [moist soil keeps vegetable fresh] and buying them in a store is the beginning of their death in a refrigerator.
I gave up driving a car in 1970, so I rely on walking and trolley. A bike might be a possibility once the highways see much reduced driving.
My bucket list is almost non existent; a trip to the woods along a river satisfies my needs and gives me great pleasure.
The pandemic has been driving most people nuts, but I've been too busy growing food for the winter.
In essence, my gardening lifestyle had kept me younger than most my age. Five years ago I began singing karaoke on the Internet; I seem to be good because I get invited to sing a lot.
I think there is a lot out there for many people, but people my age are looking for the end. During the pandemic, I lost 29 pounds through work and reduced eating. I'm nearly the weight when I was running track at age 19. I encourage others to set goals of reduced standard of living and how to enjoy themselves.
I posted some late season pictures of my garden. Perhaps a small greenhouse will be added next year.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=158826558
I hope that the planet will heal as you indicated.
sumi
I'm thinking EV's and nuclear power will do the trick as well as changing consumption habits as we attempt to transition from our dissatisfying lives.Less and less people will want to even own a car so demand for EVs won't be as high as we might project.A balanced and healthy life is what we want but we have been consumption driven and focused on material stuff.This is changing and change will happen quicker from here.We might address food issues and manage too avoid a massive die-off.Humans are amazing problem solvers and can adapt quickly when necessary.I think we are in for some wonderful surprises in the post COVID-19 recovery.The social soil is ready for big change.It's time to dream impossible dreams IMO.I'm very hopeful and excited.This is a big change for me.Mankind has entered a new era of understanding that is hard to see if we are looking through disappointed eyes and watching mass media.There is good stuff happening just below the surface.These developments can erupt into the mainstream in a blink of an eye.I'm preparing for positive change to overtake us.The next decade could be very surprising to the preppers and gloomers.The scientists that have drank the end times Kool-Aid are going have egg on their faces as well.I smell wonderful smells of new dishes being served up.I see a new and improved culture.I see beauty growing out of the ugly.We are so ready for real and healthy change.Solutions are available now.We will be healed.The planet will heal.Stay tuned.The show is going to be uplifting.The ugly will fade away next year.Take Good Care!
Thermodynamic Oil Collapse & Future
October 7, 2020
SRSrocco Report
Interview on the Thermodynamic Oil Collapse with Dr. Louis Arnoux
Contact Dr. Arnoux: https://www.fourthtransitionwealth.com/
My pleasure always. My big weakness is a lack of canning skills. I should have learned years ago when my Mom was alive, as she was an expert.
Yes, "doing" is a lot different than "talking." When I hear people saying "I will live off the land if there is a collapse." I tell them that they should have started a decade earlier. It's like compound interest growing over a long period of time.
Certainly this pandemic year proves my point. I could not get many gardening supplies for months! In fact, I'm still waiting for Mason jars.
There is so much of garden learning, and mistakes can be crippling. I speak for me, as I destroyed my first tomato garden. Forgot all the things my Grandma taught me! After that first failure year, I became known as the tomato king! So I kept growing tomatoes yearly along with peppers and cucumbers. What happens? In 2009, New England had a severe tomato blight. In 2010 and up to now, my producing garden is ten times larger with mixed gardening. I spread the risk over many crops of vegetables, herbs, and aronia berries.
That old Dutch adage of "We grow too soon old and too late smart" is applicable to me and many others. We can often be our biggest enemy. We need to look at mirrors to solve our problems, at least as a beginning.
Take care, my friend.
sumi
I love your personal stories.You have great insight and I treasure your "doing" as I need to do more and talk less.You are a priceless role model and mentor.Thank you so much for sharing YOU!
Hello HH, Sorry for the late response, as I've been trying to prepare for the winter via my city garden. I think and know that home gardens will be part of future home food needs. Last year I had a friend who I assisted in building a garden enclosure to protect against the animal onslaught of my important food. This year was experiment; I did a lot right and a few things wrong, but overall it was a massive success. Below is the 200 square food garden enclosure. I financed the supplies for two enclosures, one for me to assist my contractor to build and one for him, so he had his son assist him.
Sadly, the world's population continued growth is about to hit the wall because of sickness due to a pandemic and Mother Nature's store of declining resources, space, and water. I have always maintained that "progress is regress in disguise." The more we advanced, the more that we wanted; it was a non-ending progression of converting desires into needs.
You, HH, and I are like voices in a desert, with our thoughts and life approaches. What is important to me? Given the choice of a brand new car versus a delivery of aged horse manure for twenty years, I would take the latter. The manure would grow a continuous supply of food while the car would eventually end up in a junk yard. Under this simple scenario, who ends up better for society? The gardener, who grows food plus supplies free tomato and pepper seedlings to ten un-retired friends, versus the person driving around and around and around?
I oversimplify things with my above example because there are billions of people living in cities, which will not be sustainable over time. Time will tell how many will die when the trucks stop delivering food to stock the big-box grocery stores. I look back to my formative years of the 1950s when people took trains into the cities for work and cities were surrounded by farms to supply food. What would have been an ideal setup was destroyed by "progress."
Whatever improved government is developed, I would hope that term limits are tightly applied. I recall when I worked in a bank and had an employee with a career of 40 years processing financial instruments. I had to evaluate her work plus her coverage of emergency help elsewhere. I had to give her a negative evaluation with the provision that she had to be cross-trained in other areas to improve her skills. Here retort was "I have 40 years experience in my job!" My retort was "you have 1 year's experience 40 times!" I cross-trained her, as she had great potential, gave her solid work evaluations that provided her a solid pension. Again, I use a simple example to highlight too much of doing the same thing repeatedly.
In a world of Peak Oil, we will be tortured into a new existence. Reality will hit and decisions will have to be made. New forms of government and of business will have to be adopted in a more narrow availability of natural resources. The warnings over population and over use of resources of the 1970s were ignored and now will have to be confronted. Where that leaves you, me and others will be dramatically in a new life form. If we return to the 1950s, the impact will be less for me versus the many enjoying the modern life. I stopped driving in 1969; I know the other side and it can be challenging.
I had a great garlic harvest, but it was last, so the planting of pole beans to affix nitrogen into the the soil for the next planting of garlic was also delayed. But the beans now have blossoms, but the nights are getting colder, so my bean harvest is not assured. There are always challenges in the soil.
One-third of my garlic harvest!
Tetsukabuto Hybrid Winter squash and pole beans
Future scenarios are so interesting!I'm inclined to believe a massive and fast die-off will be followed by a modern world fueled by next generation nuclear,oil,coal,natural gas and renewables.This will be a new world with new and improved versions of governments and economic systems.We have been too influenced by our own life experiences and current belief systems that it's difficult to embrace "alien" ideas outside of our comfort zones.There are wonderful solutions already in place for some of our big problems including education and criminal justice.A much smaller population will be able keep our modern technologies fueled with a different energy mix that will continue to seek to ween us off of non-renewables and our food needs will bet easier to manage.There will be less stress on the planet so there will be natural healing of the air,water and land.The survivors of a sudden and massive die-off will be less wasteful and work to restore the damage we have done to the planet and each other.There is reason to hope for a better world.We are amazing creatures with powerful imaginations,adaptation abilities and a fantastic capacity to pull together and accomplish extraordinary things.We will apply old ways to our newer ways.Old social ways,old farming ways and old religious ways will influence and inform us as we rebuild and transform.I see it happening now even in the U.S.The are hopeful signs on every continent.A die-off is not a pleasant thing to anticipate and I hope it doesn't occur.But if it does there is so much we have that will influence the rebuild that is much better than what is happening on the nightly news.Big positive and healthy change is in the air.Take care!
Will life after peak oil be like the middle ages?
Posted on September 2, 2020 by energyskeptic
Preface. Winston recreates what life was like from the 5th to the 15th centuries — from the fall of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Renaissance.
Energyskeptic.com shows why hydrogen, wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, fusion, and other alternatives to fossil fuels can’t replace them. So it is worth knowing how people lived before fossils if we’re doomed to go back to Wood World after peak oil, where biomass was the main source of heat and infrastructure.
If only peak oil, rather than climate change, had been understood as the main problem facing us, we could have prepared for the future much better. We could have had civil engineers figuring out how to insulate homes better, build roads to last as long as the Roman ones still around today, and other infrastructure for future generations. Organic farming would start in earnest, horses be bred to replace tractors, materials scientists would find ways to preserve knowledge that lasted longer than paper. Stone fences built since barbed wire will rust away. Social structures like guilds, who enforced high standards lest all of them not be trusted put in place. Tens of thousands of small granaries to keep pests from devouring crops post-harvest.
I’m sure as you read this you can think of ways to prepare now for the future, and most of all, a social system that doesn’t make most of us poor peasants.
http://energyskeptic.com/2020/will-life-after-peak-oil-be-like-the-middle-ages/?fbclid=IwAR2sEe52k3fuL2yttBJ3yicYZQ9mjaEcLzoD4PppB24XzVIwz-Soa-aJ6Q0
How (Not) to Run a Modern Society on Solar and Wind Power Alone
https://tinyurl.com/y6ebpfy8
"Oil May Finally Be Peaking" BY EDOARDO CAMPANELLA | JULY 13, 2020
After Decades of Wrong Predictions, Oil May Finally Be Peaking
Thanks to the pandemic, demand is flattening faster than expected. In turn, the energy economy could transform sooner rather than later.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/13/peak-oil-pandemic-predictions/
"Now, the coronavirus pandemic, which appears to be accelerating trends—greener economies and decreased mobility—that until February seemed to be at least one decade away, might finally break the mold. This time, though, peak oil could come on the demand side of the market rather than on the supply one. Such change would mark a shift from perceived oil scarcity to oil abundance that could radically transform the structure of the oil market—even more than the shale revolution itself.
"Given the variety of long-term demand scenarios, energy companies have typically brushed off peak-demand arguments. However, COVID-19 might change that if it permanently transforms individuals’ behavior and societal priorities.
"Mobility is the No. 1 factor that could change the calculations. Although tourist activity is likely to rebound and return to pre-crisis levels in a couple of years, especially if a coronavirus vaccine is found, remote work arrangements might drastically reduce commuting mileage for millions of workers. According to some estimates, in the eurozone, over a quarter of jobs can, at least in theory, be performed from home. Similar estimates apply to the United States, too. In Europe, the average one-way work commute is just over 9 miles, whereas in the United States it is above 11 miles. Imagine the gasoline saved if millions of people stop commuting.
"Moreover, COVID-19 might lead to a significant decline in business trips in favor of videoconferencing that would not only reduce operational costs but could also lead to productivity gains thanks to more time spent at the desk than in an airport. Some industrial activities might even be reshored to reduce vulnerability to shocks that affect business partners located elsewhere around the globe, particularly for the production of goods in sensitive sectors such as health or national security. The shortage of face masks, which had primarily been produced in China, during the early days of the pandemic forced governments not only to find new suppliers but also to suddenly encourage the conversion of some domestic firms into mask producers. And new digital technologies that tend to reduce reliance on low-skilled workers will lower the incentives for companies to slice and dice their production around the world. The Fourth Industrial Revolution could significantly compress the length of global value chains.
"Finally, the positive impact of the lockdowns on air quality might incentivize greener behavior in the future. In April, when around 4 billion people were stuck at home, air pollution suddenly dropped across the world, suggesting to policymakers a clear direction for seriously reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Voters might strongly push in this direction. Clearly, the solution is not shutting down entire economies. But governments might introduce tax incentives to induce companies to rely more on flexible arrangements for those jobs that can be efficiently performed remotely. Moreover, the cycling routes that were built across the major cities to reduce the use of public transportation may well remain permanently.
"All these behavior changes would have a big impact on oil demand.
"The World Isn’t Ready for Peak Oil"
7:00 AM ET Amos Hochstein
Former U.S. Special Envoy for International Energy Affairs
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/were-not-ready-transition-away-oil/613621/
"The coronavirus oil shock is not a one-off crisis; it is a dress rehearsal for a future fast unfolding."
"The world is, after all, in the midst of an inevitable transition away from fossil fuels, and there can be little doubt that an effective climate-change strategy will reduce substantially the demand for oil. The details of the efforts to combat climate-change will determine how—and how soon—the world reaches peak oil. But reach it, it will, or perhaps it already has."
Areas Of The World More Vulnerable To Collapse
Posted by SRSrocco in Economy, Energy, News on June 15, 2018
https://srsroccoreport.com/areas-of-the-world-more-vulnerable-to-collapse/?fbclid=IwAR1eDv6DVMpgB1x1ROjWHxGLQiQrAi0vXhyyE6cWnWN5oPZu8LWX1-mL4ug
RED WARNING LIGHT: The World Is Rapidly Burning Through Its Conventional Oil Reserves
Posted by SRSrocco in Energy, News on February 14, 2020
https://srsroccoreport.com/red-warning-light-the-world-is-rapidly-burning-through-its-conventional-oil-reserves/?fbclid=IwAR3_eR_cQ-Nvqoq0XKLEdi8N9fRUALNBIeiqq1UvwvKIUQeJYaE_swOKP9o
Understanding the Crude Oil Market
Pricing Differentials Between Brent Crude and WTI
By Andrew Hecht
Updated January 31, 2020
https://www.thebalance.com/crude-oil-brent-versus-wti-808872
Peak Oil Review – 28 October 2019
Posted On : 28 Oct 2019 Published By : Clara Winter
Editors: Tom Whipple, Steve Andrews
https://peak-oil.org/peak-oil-review-28-october-2019/
Quote of the Week
“By any measure, the amount of private money currently allocated in the US to plug and reclaim oil and gas wells is a small fraction of the real costs. That means oil and gas wells — and the US had 1 million active wells and even more abandoned — will either be left to fail and potentially contaminate the surrounding water, air, and soil, or the public will have to pick up the tab. This represents just one of the many ways the public subsidizes the oil and gas industry.”
Justin Mikulka, DeSmog blog site
Graphic of the Week
1. Energy prices and production
Prices were up about $2 last week on an unexpected drawdown in US crude stocks and rumors that OPEC+ is considering another production cut. Forecasters see a supply glut continuing in 2020 due to slowing economies and growth in US shale oil production. Beyond that, prices could increase considerably as supply growth slows to a trickle. Goldman Sachs says that slowing US shale production growth combined with a shortage of investment in long-term projects will lead to a new boom.
Goldman lowered its forecast for US oil production growth to 0.7 million b/d in 2020, down sharply from its 1 million b/d forecast previously. Goldman attributed the downward revision not just to a slowdown in drilling, but also to “updated longer-term decline rates to be consistent with play-to-date results” –a complicated way of saying shale wells are not performing as well as previously anticipated.
Reuters says OPEC+ may announce larger cuts in response to weak demand at its December meeting. A cut is not certain, however, as Moscow and Riyadh want to see 100 percent compliance with the existing production cuts before cutting more. Iraq and Nigeria, for instance, have produced more than their quotas. Moreover, Russia poured cold water on the idea last week, with its energy minister saying that nobody from OPEC+ had proposed production cuts. There are some reasons, however, why OPEC+ might implement deeper cuts. Seasonal demand is lower in the winter, so larger cuts would be in keeping with seasonal swings.
The news from the shale oil industry continues to be gloomy. Financing is running dry for large portions of the US shale oil industry, forcing drillers into bankruptcy and threatening the industry’s growth. The financial reckoning has been a long time coming. In the aftermath of the 2014-15 oil price crash, US oil and gas producers managed to raise $56.6 billion from equity and debt capital markets in 2016. This year they have raised just $19.4 billion, even though US oil production has grown by more than a third in the past three years.
The first- and third-largest oilfield service companies in the world saw their earnings hit in the third quarter due to the slowdown in US shale drilling. Schlumberger took a $12.7 billion impairment charge related to its North American business, a rather dramatic write-down. That led to an $11.4 billion loss for the quarter, the largest in the company’s history. Halliburton also saw its earnings hit by the slowdown in shale drilling and the oilfield services giant shifted its focus to international markets as the signs of a shale rebound do not appear to be imminent.
The US oil and gas rig count fell sharply last week with a drop of 25 rigs. This marks nine decreases out of the previous ten weeks. The total number of active oil rigs in the United States decreased by 17, according to the report, reaching 696. That marks the first time since April 2017 that the oil rig count has fallen below 700.
In a recent report, IHS Markit concludes that the trend toward unconventional projects has caused the number of conventional discoveries to plunge to a 70-year low.
Although unconventional projects give oil and gas firms more flexibility in responding to market changes, the wide disparity in depletion rates between unconventional and conventional wells could become particularly evident in years to come, given the shortfall in conventional reserves additions.
US shale production growth is slowing down, and America’s shale output will likely peak in the next few years, Russia’s Energy Minister Alexander Novak said on Tuesday. “We see that there is slowing activity in US shale, although that production continues to grow, growth is weaker than in previous years,” Novak told reporters in Sochi. The number of drilling rigs in the United States dropped by 160 in a year, Novak noted.
2. Geopolitical instability
Chaos increased across the Middle East last week as Turkish and Russian forces moved to secure their new Kurd-free security zone; protests against the government resumed in Iraq; and nationwide protests that have going on for nearly two weeks in Lebanon. With the US, Russia, the Assad government, Kurds, ISIS, and Syrian rebel groups all trying to control some portion of what was once Kurdish territory, chaos is bound to result from years of confrontation.
There are not many working oil wells left in Syria even though the US just sent tanks into Syria to keep ISIS from taking control of any working oil wells from the Kurds. Before Syria’s 2011 revolution and the ensuing civil war, the country had a lucrative oil industry, pumping about 400,000 barrels a day. The war devastated Syria’s economy, cutting production by as much as 90% and forcing the Assad regime to rely heavily on imports of oil from Iran.
The situation in Syria is too volatile to predict what might happen there. A lot of ominous threats are being made by the various parties involved, including one from the Turks to dump 3.6 million Syrian refugees into the EU unless it starts paying more for their upkeep.
The demonstrations in Iraq resumed last week. Hundreds of Iraqi protesters remained in Baghdad’s central Tahrir Square on Sunday, defying a bloody crackdown that killed scores over the weekend. At least 67 Iraqis were killed, and hundreds wounded on Friday and Saturday, as demonstrators clashed with security forces and militia groups in a second wave of protests against Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi’s government this month, bringing the total death toll in October to 224.
The unrest has broken nearly two years of relative stability in Iraq, which from 2003 to 2017 endured a foreign occupation, civil war, and an Islamic State insurgency. It poses the biggest challenge to Abdul Mahdi since he took office just a year ago. Despite promising reforms and ordering a broad cabinet reshuffle, he has so far struggled to address the protesters’ discontent. Political alliances backing his fragile coalition government are beginning to fracture, making his continued leadership increasingly precarious.
The protesters’ anger has been directed increasingly at political parties with ties to Iran and their militias. The militias are now part of the Iraqi security forces, but their origins, and sometimes their training, involve Iran. The offices of some of those political parties and militias were vandalized or burned in the Shiite-dominated south of Iraq, prompting the government on Saturday to impose tough new restrictions on movements there. Protesters are demanding more jobs, better public services, and an end to corruption.
In Tahrir Square, many protesters described the security forces firing at them as Iranian or from the Iranian political parties. “Iran Get Out, Get Out,” demonstrators chanted. Protesters set fire to offices belonging to a Shi’ite political party and a Shi’ite militia group in Iraq’s southern Muthanna province on Friday, police sources said. The offices of the Hikma movement and Asaib Ahl al-Haq were set ablaze by protesters in central Samawa city.
So far, the demonstrations do not seem to have much impact on Iraq’s oil exports. However, the evolving situations in Iraq, Syria, and a revived ISIS caliphate could change that.
Lebanon has been swept with protests against a political class accused of corruption, mismanagement of state finances, and pushing the country toward an economic collapse unseen since the 1975-90 civil war. Banks, schools, and many businesses have shut their doors. The protests have continued to grip Lebanon despite the government announcing an emergency reform package this week that failed to defuse anger. It has also yet to reassure foreign donors to unlock the billions in badly needed aid they have pledged.
Protesters trickled back on to the streets across Lebanon on Saturday, despite army efforts to unblock roads, with no end in sight to a crisis that has crippled the country for ten days. A military statement said army and security commanders met to plan ways to re-open main arteries to get traffic flowing again while “safeguarding the safety of protesters.” People have closed routes with barriers and sit-ins as part of a wave of unprecedented protests demanding the government resign.
Lebanon has one of the world’s highest levels of government debt as a share of economic output. The size and geographic reach of the protests have been extraordinary in a country where political movements have long been divided along sectarian lines and struggled to draw nationwide appeal.
3. Climate change
Climate change is reshaping the evolution and intensity of El Niño events in a way that favors the occurrence of more “super” El Niños. According to a new study, there has been a westward shift by up to thousands of miles in where in the Pacific Ocean El Niño is originating. The new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, uses statistical methods as well as eight different computer models to uncover previously unseen trends in El Niño occurrences to date. The study finds the key may lie in the increasingly mild ocean waters of the western tropical Pacific Ocean — an area known as the West Pacific Warm Pool. The westward move is significant since it means El Niño is now forming and peaking in a region of the Pacific Ocean that is naturally warmer. This shift can increase the chances of a moderate to strong event.
All 11 El Niños that have taken place since 1978 formed in the Central or Western Pacific Ocean, according to the study, including three super El Niños that helped push global temperatures to record levels and wreaked havoc with weather patterns worldwide. Super El Niños, like the ones that occurred in 1982, 1998, and 2015-2016, can vault global temperatures to new heights, killing coral reefs worldwide and flooding parts of Africa and Asia while starving other parts of the globe of moisture. In short, they can lead to lasting extreme weather events affecting hundreds of millions and costing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.
One difference between the western Pacific El Niños and eastern Pacific events is that the western-based events can begin to affect global weather patterns during the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, rather than reserving the most significant impacts for the winter months. These earlier events can lead to long-lasting drought and heatwaves in the Western US, for example.
For some time now, it has been clear that the effects of climate change are appearing faster than scientists anticipated. Now it turns out that there is another form of underestimation as bad or worse than the scientific one: the underestimating by economists of the costs. This failure by economists means that world leaders understand neither the magnitude of the risks to lives and livelihoods nor the urgency of action. How and why this has occurred is explained in a recent report by scientists and economists at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
One reason is apparent: Since climate scientists have been underestimating the rate of climate change and the severity of its effects, then economists will necessarily underestimate their costs. A set of assumptions and practices in economics has led economists both to underestimate the economic impact of many climate risks and to miss some of them entirely. That is a problem because, as the report notes, these “missing risks” could have “drastic and potentially catastrophic impacts on citizens, communities and companies.”
4. The global economy and trade wars
The collateral damage of the United States’ trade wars is being felt from the fjords of Iceland to the auto factories of Japan. Central bank governors and finance ministers traded grim tales of suffering economies at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank fall meetings in Washington last week. As the IMF’s gathering of 189 member-nations drew to a close, the unintended negative impacts of the trade wars were becoming evident, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said. “Everybody loses.”
The United States, the world’s largest importer, started a bitter tariff war with China, the world’s largest exporter, 15 months ago. President Trump is also renegotiating and sometimes upending, trade relationships with many of Washington’s top trading partners. The fallout will slow global growth in 2019 to 3.0%, the slowest pace in a decade, the IMF estimated this week. This pain is not being shared equally. The US remains the least exposed of the world’s 20 largest economies to a decline in exports, in part because of its massive domestic consumer spending base.
The damage is being particularly felt in European countries which “rely on exports and are open to trade,” the European Union’s Economic and Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said.
More than 40 percent of Germany’s GDP was derived from exports in 2018, the most of any major global economy. Uncertainty in the business community is widespread, German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz told reporters.
On Friday, Japan’s Cabinet Office, which helps coordinate government policy, downgraded its assessment of factory output in October. The softness in production was mostly due to car exports to the United States turning weaker, after growing steadily until the spring, a government official said at a briefing. “The pick-up in global growth is being delayed,” Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said. “Japan’s economy is seeing exports weaken significantly. and that’s affecting factory output.”
The United States hasn’t been immune from the impact of the trade wars. American farmers have been particularly hurt by Chinese tariffs on US agricultural products, prompting the Trump administration to give billions in aid to the farm belt.
US companies are preparing for tensions with China to extend far beyond the status of the continuing trade discussions, an executive for the U.S.-China Business Council said Monday. “When we talk to companies, there’s a realization that no matter what happens with this trade deal, we’re going down a trajectory of a much more confrontational relationship with China that’s very unlikely to shift in the opposite direction in the future”. Businesses are making arrangements to diversify their supply-chain investments away from the China market and enacting other structural changes.
China has set its sights high – very high – in terms of economic development, aiming to become the leading superpower worldwide by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China. China is already the second-largest economy in the world and growing all the time. But for China, this comes with challenges. “China faces a protracted and increasingly difficult struggle to secure energy and water supplies to feed its appetite for rapid growth. From having to sustain a population over four times that of America’s 330 million, China is already at a severe disadvantage against the US for the title of preeminent superpower.
It has only a portion of the US’s oil, gas, and water resources, and that gap in self-sufficiency is likely to widen further. In June the IEA reported that the country’s natural gas consumption is projected to grow at nearly double the rate of Beijing’s previous projections. While China is doing its best to boost its energy production, it may be too little too late. The country’s demand for fuel is insatiable and simply cannot be met without the massive imports that China has already become entirely dependent on and will continue to rely on as the economy grows.
China continued to import crude oil from the US, Iran. and Venezuela in September, but Asia’s biggest energy consumer kept shipments from the three producers minimal due to the tariff and sanctions barriers blocking easier access to those supplies, latest data from the General Administration of Customs showed last week.
US and Chinese officials are “close to finalizing” some parts of a trade agreement after high-level telephone discussions last week. The US Trade Representative’s office provided no details on the areas of progress. Washington and Beijing are working to agree on the text for a “Phase 1” trade agreement announced by US President Donald Trump on Oct. 11. Trump has said he hopes to sign the deal with China’s President Xi Jinping next month at a summit in Chile. Outside observers continue to note that the “Phase 1” agreement only contains minor issues that were agreed to months ago.
5. Renewables and new technologies
Renewable energy capacity is set to grow by 50 percent by 2024, according to a new report from the IEA. In 2019, renewable energy is set to grow by 12 percent, the fastest rate in four years, as solar and wind power are quickly becoming cheaper than coal in most of the world.
A decade ago, onshore wind led the way initially, aided by lower costs. But the cost of solar has plunged in recent years, and more policy support has helped it continue to gain ground. The IEA estimates that costs for solar PV will decline by another 15 to 25 percent for both utility-scale solar and distributed projects over the next few years. “Recent competitive auction results indicate that the levelized cost of generation for utility-scale solar PV plants will become comparable with or lower than that of new fossil fuel plants sooner than expected in a growing number of countries,” the agency said.
However, the IEA also says that offshore wind power can meet all of the world’s electricity demand and is set to be a “game-changer” for energy systems. The landmark EIA report is the first time that the agency has conducted such an in depth examination of offshore wind.
The agency is known for its conservative reputation, repeatedly over-predicting oil demand and under-predicting the pace of growth for renewable energy. Notably, even the IEA says that solar and wind outcompete fossil fuels on price alone. A September report from the Rocky Mountain Institute finds that renewable energy already beats out new natural gas-fired power plants on costs. But by the mid-2030s, it will be cheaper to build new solar and wind than it will be to run existing gas plants, let alone build new ones.
6.The Briefs (date of the article in the Peak Oil News is in parentheses)
Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter, is issuing $2.5 billion worth of Islamic bonds, or Sukuk, on Tuesday, returning to the bond market to take advantage of the low borrowing costs in hopes of replenishing its government coffers as persistently low oil prices depress revenues. (10/23)
Iraq has throttled back its crude production since setting an all-time record in August, averaging 4.85 million b/d in September. The month-on-month reduction of about 120,000 b/d comes after their Oil Minister promised OPEC members that Iraq would move back toward compliance with a quota designed to buoy global crude prices. (10/24)
India, one of the drivers of oil demand growth in Asia and the world, has just seen its oil imports drop to three-year lows, and fuel processing rates plunge to a 15-year low, as slowing economic growth is taking its toll on demand. (10/26)
In China, state-owned Sinopec expects natural gas demand to increase by 82 percent to 510 Bcm in 2030, from 280 Bcm in 2018, driven by continued industrial upgrading and urbanization. Gas demand growth will come mainly from city gas, industrial usage, and gas-powered utilities. Demand is expected to exceed 300 Bcm in 2019, up by almost 10% year on year. (10/24)
China’s refining overcapacity is increasingly exported. Traders expect China’s growing product exports to underpin gasoline and gasoil trade flows in Asia, much like the emergence of refining hubs in Singapore and India did in the past. China’s current crude distillation unit capacity has equaled that of the US, the world’s largest, at 18.2 million b/d. (10/24)
In Nigeria, Russia is looking to strengthen ties with Africa’s largest oil producer with a focus on reforming that nation’s downstream and gas sector, the Russian energy ministry said late Wednesday. (10/25)
In Libya, the unstable security situation and the continued bickering between rival governments have kept international oil companies from resuming exploration activities in the civil war-torn North African oil producer. The latest sign that the deteriorating situation is dampening the investment climate in the oil and gas sector comes from two oil majors, BP and Eni, which have shelved plans to install rigs and start exploration in Libya. (10/25)
Venezuela and Chevron: The US government has given Chevron and four oil service providers permission to keep working in Venezuela for another three months, extending their exemption from oil sanctions that have hit the rest of the industry in the South American country to a full year. When Washington imposed an embargo on Venezuelan oil in January, it gave US companies operating there a six-month exemption. It extended that waiver for three months in July and has now done the same again. (10/22)
Venezuelan standoff: The US Treasury is blocking for 90 days creditors from seizing shares in Venezuela’s US subsidiary Citgo, temporarily shielding the prized Venezuelan asset in a win for Venezuela’s opposition and its leader Juan Guaidó. Venezuela’s state oil firm PDVSA must make a payment of US$913 million on a 2020 bond on Monday, October 28. Still, the bond is widely expected to go into default because the Venezuelan oil firm doesn’t have the money to make the payment. PDVSA, however, has used shares in its most prized foreign asset, Citgo, as collateral for the bond. The bonds are backed by 50.1 percent in the U.S.-based refiner, so should the bond default, bondholders may rush to claim shares of Citgo. (10/26)
Ecuador has restarted crude oil exports after massive protests caused the country’s oil industry to more or less grind to a halt. The protests were ignited by a set of austerity measures the Ecuadorean government wanted to implement as part of efforts to reduce its fiscal deficit. They were a condition for the Andean country to get a $2.4-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. However, the measures included the removal of fuel subsidies that led to a 120-percent spike in prices at the pump. This sparked the anger of indigenous groups and farmers who led the protests that began on October 3. (10/22)
The US oil rig count declined by 17 last week to 696 while the gas rig count dropped by 4 to 133, according to Baker Hughes. The total rig count now stands at 830, or down 238 from this time last year. Oil rigs have seen a loss of 179 rigs year on year, with gas rigs down 60 since this time last year. (10/26)
Growing US crude oil production and exports have resulted in America selling oil to more destinations around the world (31) than the number of countries from which it imports crude oil (27), the Energy Information Administration said on Tuesday. A decade ago, the United States was importing crude oil from as many as 37 foreign sources per month, and its exports were restricted almost exclusively to Canada. After the lifting of those restrictions at the end of 2015, US crude oil exports have been on the rise and reaching more destinations. (10/23)
$18 billion missteps: The US has forfeited some $18 billion tied to oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico since 2000 because of a decades-old law that gave energy companies a break on paying royalties when drilling in deep waters, federal investigators concluded Thursday. The foregone revenue will keep climbing, as energy companies continue to harvest oil and gas royalty-free from dozens of affected tracts in the Gulf, long after lawmakers realized sloppy legislative writing prevented the government from making the price breaks temporary. (10/25)
Abandoned well costs: Increasingly, US shale firms appear unable to pay back investors for the money borrowed to fuel the last decade of the fracking boom. In a similar vein, those companies also seem poised to stiff the public on cleanup costs for abandoned oil and gas wells once the producers have moved on. (10/24)
Coal’s water usage: There is a massive new benefit to ditching coal plants: Doing so will free up billions of gallons of water. If all coal-fired power plants in the US were converted to natural gas, the annual water savings could reach 12,250 billion gallons or 2.6 times as much as the entire US industrial water use. Arguably, ditching coal could make up for all the water that fracking is sucking down in the shale patch, so it could take the pressure off that controversial method of extracting oil. (10/24)
EV subsidy proposal: Senator Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, late on Thursday proposed a $454 billion plan over 10 years to help shift the US away from gasoline-powered vehicles by offering cash vouchers to help Americans buy cleaner vehicles. Schumer said his plan, which would provide rebates of $3,000 or more to individual buyers, would help transition 25 percent of the US fleet, or 63 million vehicles, away from traditional internal combustion engine vehicles within 10 years. The plan would be key to reducing the impact of climate change, Schumer said, noting that the transportation sector accounts for nearly one-third of US carbon output. (10/25)
Stranded EVs? California might be blazing a trail with getting a large number of electric vehicles on the road, but the only trail California is currently blazing is the wildfire/PG&E fiasco that could once again plunge millions of Californians into the dark in the next wave of blackouts, expected today, the likes of which could sour investor confidence in purchasing a vehicle that relies on sketchy power sources. (10/24)
An electric SUV:Ford Motor Company will reveal on November 18 an all-electric SUV inspired by its iconic Mustang as legacy carmakers try to grab shares of the growing electric vehicle market. Ford released the first design sketch of the all-electric SUV on Thursday and said that the global reveal will be live streamed from Los Angeles on November 18. The new vehicle, which Ford described as “game-changing”, has a targeted driving range of up to 600 kilometers, or more than 370 miles. (10/26)
Tesla has begun selling Model 3 cars made in China, complete with its Autopilot system. The price tag for the vehicle will be a little over $50,300. This makes the China-made Model 3 the cheapest Tesla car on sale in China after the company discontinued online sales of a cheaper version that did not have the Autopilot. At the presentation of its third-quarter financial results, Tesla said its gigafactory in China had started operations ahead of schedule and was already making whole cars. (10/26)
Ballooning deficit: The US government’s budget deficit ballooned to nearly $1 trillion in 2019, the Treasury Department announced Friday, as the United States’ fiscal imbalance widened for a fourth consecutive year despite a sustained run of economic growth. The deficit grew $205 billion, or 26 percent, in the past year. The country’s worsening fiscal picture runs in sharp contrast to President Trump’s campaign promise to eliminate the federal debt within eight years. (10/26)
Builders’ backdoor deal: A secret agreement has allowed the nation’s homebuilders to make it much easier to block changes to building codes that would require new houses to better address climate change, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. The written arrangement, in place for years and not previously disclosed, guarantees industry representatives four of the 11 voting seats on two powerful committees that approve building codes that are widely adopted nationwide. (10/26)
Swiss voters have shifted the country’s political direction decisively leftward in elections that delivered a triumph for two environmentally focused parties and reversed decades of gains for the country’s hard right. The green bloc will hold at least 44 of 246 seats, making it the second-largest in the parliament. (10/23)
A hole in the ozone layer located near the Earth’s South Pole is the smallest it has been since first being discovered in the 1980s, NASA said. While the depletion of the ozone has decreased over the years, the hole’s smaller size this year is related to abnormal weather and wind patterns. (10/24)
An extremely unusual “medicane” is set to lash parts of Egypt and Israel, bringing the potential for tropical-storm-force winds, heavy rainfall and perhaps even coastal flooding in spots. The hybrid low-pressure system, evocative of tropical cyclones yet bearing some mid-latitude characteristics, is “incredibly rare” that far east in the Mediterranean. (10/26)
Nuclear fusion researchers have always faced criticism due to the unfulfilled promise of a nuclear fusion reactor. However, in recent years, the fusion community has seen a few positive results. The ITER fusion reactor, which is near completion at Cadarache, France will finally turn on in 2025 following years of delays and cost hikes, though an actual power plant is unlikely to be built before 2040 at the earliest. With the fusion reactor race gaining momentum, the UK Government has announced £220m for the design of the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) fusion power station. The spherical tokamak design, pioneered by the UK and the US, would allow for much more compact and cheaper power plants. However, more research is required to be performed on the upgraded Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak in the UK and the National Spherical Torus Experiment in the US. The fusion power plant is expected to be completed by 2024. (10/26)
Peak Oil Review 21 October 2019
By Tom Whipple, Steve Andrews, originally published by Peak-Oil.org
October 21, 2019
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-10-21/peak-oil-review-21-october-2019/
Peak Oil Review: 15 October 2019
By Tom Whipple, Steve Andrews, originally published by Peak-Oil.org
October 15, 2019
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-11-25/peak-oil-review-25-november-2019/
The Shale Oil Bubble Accounted For 99% Of U.S. Oil Production Growth Since 2007
Posted by SRSrocco in Energy, EROI, News on February 11, 2020
https://srsroccoreport.com/the-shale-oil-bubble-accounted-for-99-of-u-s-oil-production-growth-since-2007/?fbclid=IwAR0tGdvzHZzX83boCURezdprVpkY-vaDTXpAZ3YC4tr8Rc2oVSH5-ud8kmo
The Basics of Crude Oil Classification
By Wendy Lyons Sunshine
Updated November 06, 2019
https://www.thebalance.com/the-basics-of-crude-oil-classification-1182570
Dennis Meadows: The Limits To Growth
Revisiting one of the most seminal studies of our era
by Adam Taggart
Tuesday, December 17, 2019, 5:23 PM
https://www.peakprosperity.com/dennis-meadows-the-limits-to-growth/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
Energy Supply System Requirements
From Rice Farmer in October
In a few posts I’ve briefly touched upon the three basic requirements (as I see them) for any energy supply system which sustains a society, state, empire, or civilization, but I have always felt the need to describe it in a bit more detail and in a more formal manner. Such is the purpose of this post. The three requirements are:
1. The system must be self-sustaining. That is, it must pay its own day-to-day running costs.
2. The system must be self-replicating. That is, it must provide the energy for building (and rebuilding/replacing) its own physical infrastructure. These costs are capital expenditures, as opposed to running costs.
3. After satisfying requirements #1 and #2, the system must still have surplus energy with which to power the socioeconomic system.
Corollary to #3: The amount of surplus energy supplied to society determines what kind of society/civilization is possible. For example, civilizations based on wood and charcoal will be totally different from, and primitive in comparison with, those based on denser forms of energy such as fossil fuels.
This helps explain why industrial civilization is tanking. Not all fossil fuels are created equal, and we are steadily moving from higher-quality, easy-to-extract fossil fuels to lower-quality, hard-to-extract fossil fuels. This transition gradually decreases surplus energy (#3) because there is progressively less surplus energy left after covering the costs in #1 and #2. The situation gets increasingly desperate, as illustrated by, for example, shale oil, which is not even economically viable. Another example would be biofuels, which — because of their low EROI values — cannot satisfy even requirement #1. In other words, if biofuels produced in the first cycle were used to power the machinery, trucks, and biofuel production facilities in the second cycle, the biofuels would run out during the production process, leaving no energy for requirements #2 and #3.
This also casts a dark cloud over renewables like wind and solar. Intermittency, variability, and the need for storage, overbuilding, and vast tracts of land, as well as other problems, lead me to believe that they cannot satisfy the three requirements, or at least that they cannot supply enough surplus energy to maintain civilization at this level. And if civilization cannot be maintained at this level, that is bad news for renewables because their infrastructure is built by the industrial system.
Another factor is the key difference between fossil fuels and renewables. FFs are actually biofuels created by natural forces. Nature produced the organic materials which served as the feedstock for FFs, gathered them up in colossal quantities, put them in gigantic pressure cookers, and let them stew for millennia. When humans appeared on the Earth, they were already finished. All we have to do is extract them from their underground containers and perform the final processing. Because our energy input is relatively small, the FF energy supply system has yielded a fabulously huge amount of surplus energy. And that is the prodigious power that built our globe-straddling industrial civilization.
On the other hand, to make biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel we must do all that work ourselves. Nature’s only input is sunlight (in the case of FFs, geological forces did the rest), so we have to produce and harvest the feedstock ourselves. As such, our energy inputs are so large that there is much less surplus energy, and in some cases none at all! As I have conceived it, therefore, biofuels are a complete waste of the FF energy used to satisfy requirements #2 and #3. In terms of this energy system, the sensible thing to do is directly use the FFs, and forget about biofuels. The real test of any energy source or combination of sources is not its EROI, but whether it can satisfy the three requirements given above. In other words, it either pulls its own weight (requirements #1 and #2) and supplies surplus energy to society (requirement #3), or it’s simply not an energy source. Many people will say that technological improvements will be made, and they are likely correct. But no matter what improvements are made, they will not cause nature to magically do most of the work for us, as it did with FFs; we still need to supply the inputs ourselves, which means that renewables can never match FFs with regard to requirement #3, i.e., in supplying society with such a large amount of surplus energy.
Many people insist that we can completely stop using fossil fuels, and power civilization as we know it on renewables alone. Think about that for a minute. Renewable-energy hardware is currently made with FFs, but we are supposedly going to operate, build, and replace all those solar and wind farms, hydroelectric dams, and other energy-producing facilities and equipment with their energy alone, and still have plenty of energy left over to live the high life. I propose that if and when we actually try to do this, we shall find that even if all three requirements are met (which I strongly doubt), the amount of surplus energy will not be big enough to maintain what we have already built. In light of the corollary to #3, that is a very serious problem. It means a long downhill slide to a much simpler lifestyle. As Richard Heinberg would say, the party’s over.
Finally, there are several peripheral items I would like to briefly touch upon.
1. I have frequently mentioned “net energy decline.” Net energy is simply a system’s “energy take-home pay” after paying the system’s energy costs. Those costs are requirements #1 and #2. And the “take-home” portion is the surplus energy left to run the economy.
2. Governments and military forces all know that FFs, not renewables, will power the victors. Thus the focus on controlling major oil fields.
3. We often hear that new technologies are going to bless us with new sources of energy, i.e., technology begets energy. I propose that it is actually the other way around. In other words, energy begets technology. Although I concede that technology does aid in obtaining more energy or new sources of energy, it’s important to realize that scientific discovery and technological advances are very highly dependent on the amount of energy we can lavish on research and development. I leave it to readers to imagine how different the world would be if humanity had never gotten beyond the photosynthetic ceiling, and we were still limited to biomass for energy.
4. Hydrogen is not an energy source!
David Hughes’ Shale Reality Check 2019
Asher Miller
November 12, 2019
https://www.postcarbon.org/david-hughes-shale-reality-check-2019/?fbclid=IwAR3wVFWztuSI68dOaBj9l1kTudeeSPP9FlgnBTdP90FcQDxv64D6adIhUM0
Art Berman: Houston, We Have A Problem
Nov 30, 2019
World crude production outside US and Iraq is flat since 2005
By matt
– June 10, 2019
Posted in: Crude oil analysis, Global
In the year 2005, the global crude production curve shows a definitive kink, going horizontal for several years. This caused the 2008 oil price shock and the following financial crisis which permanently damaged the world economy. It was the first phase of peaking oil production, a foretaste of what is to come.
Fig 1: World crude and condensate production
Fig 2: Declining group
Production has fallen now to 15.7 mb/d (last 6 months of 2018) compared to 24.9 mb/d in 2005. Some of the decline is a result of ethnic and/or geopolitical confrontations which are often related to oil. Sudan is a typical example:
MORE CHARTS FOLLOW
http://crudeoilpeak.info/world-crude-production-outside-us-and-iraq-is-flat-since-2005?fbclid=IwAR2FCrw4V8SpGv2muF5L4xrvSOShnn3IILoUzmdJasHYCSQj6hR-UFnJDEQ
Arithmetic, Population and Energy - a talk by Al Bartlett
Most of the leaders of this world and most of the media around the globe barely talk about it, but the subject remains one of the most important issue coming for the next 100 years... and beyond ;
Growth and Sustainability.
Peak Oil Review – 7 October 2019
Published By : Clara Winter
Editors: Tom Whipple, Steve Andrews
Quote of the Week
“On my first day as president, I will sign an executive order that puts a total moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases for drilling offshore and on public lands. And I will ban fracking – everywhere.”
US Senator Elizabeth Warren (10/1)
Graphic of the Week
1. Energy prices and production
Oil prices have hovered in the mid to low $50s since late July. They spiked briefly into the low $60s after the Saudi oil facilities were attacked but quickly settled back on news that the Saudis would be able to repair the damage quickly. Conventional wisdom says that the Russian-Saudi production freeze is keeping prices from going lower. At the same time falling demand is holding a lid on prices despite slowing production and lower exports in several countries. Geopolitical risk has receded as the top concern of oil traders. To quote one trader, “everything is about weak demand now.”
OPEC’s oil production fell to a near-decade low for September, according to the latest Reuters survey, dropping below 29 million b/d, with Saudi Arabia accounting for most of the output drop. That’s a decline of 750,000 barrels per day on average, mostly from the decrease in oil production from Saudi Aramco after its facilities were attacked. The attacks took offline 5.7 million b/d on September 14th, equivalent to 5 percent of the total global oil supply. While some estimates said it could take Saudi Arabia months to restore production to pre-attack levels, according to Saudi officials within nine days, 75 percent of the damaged production capacity had been restored. Two days later, on September 25th, Saudis said they had has restored all of its production to pre-attack levels.
The important development in recent months, however, is the slowing growth of US shale oil production. Only the Permian Basin, which produces about 46 percent of US shale oil, continues to grow significantly, and even this basin seems likely to go into decline shortly. Given that conventional oil, for a number of geologic and geopolitical reasons, has not grown enough to offset increased demand for the last ten years (and little new conventional oil is being found), it seems likely that oil shortages will develop unless demand falls more than anticipated. Despite the drilling of 5,000 new wells a year in the Permian Basin, production from newly drilled wells is barely enough to keep up with the rapid drop in production from legacy wells.
The last three years was the worst period in seven decades for new conventional oil discoveries. A new report from IHS Markit finds that conventional discoveries plunged to a seven-decade low, and “a significant rebound is not expected.” Conventional exploration – as opposed to unconventional development, including shale – had already been trending down following the 2008 global financial crisis, but the collapse of oil prices in 2014 slowed conventional exploration further.
Despite global warming, sagging shale oil production, a massive drop in the discovery of new oil, and production outages from geopolitical disputes on the rise, the US’s Energy Information Administration just published an optimistic forecast for the next 30 years in its International Energy Outlook 2019. The government is predicting in its reference (or middle case) that total liquid oil production will increase from 100 million b/d in 2018 to 127 million b/d in 2050. Transportation energy consumption is forecast to increase by nearly 40 percent between 2018 and 2050. This growth is to be driven largely by non-OECD countries, where transportation energy consumption grows by nearly 80 percent between 2018 and 2050. Energy consumption for both personal travel and freight movement grows in these countries much more rapidly than in many OECD countries.
What is even more bizarre is that in the High Oil Price case, world liquid fuels consumption in 2050 is 4 million b/d higher than in the reference case. Non-OECD nations are to have faster economic growth, which contributes to higher energy demand. In the High Oil Price case, proportionally higher amounts of crude oil are supplied by countries that are not part of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). In the Low Oil Price case, world liquids consumption in 2050 is 1 million b/d higher than in the Reference case. Slower non-OECD economic growth assumptions lead to lower energy demand, but the lower prices mean that consumers use more liquid fuels. Low-cost producers located in OPEC countries supply more crude oil and condensate to the global marketplace.
These EIA’s projections run counter to what nearly all observers outside of the oil industry are saying about the future of oil production.
2. Geopolitical instability
The list of oil-producing countries that are pumping oil at less than capacity due to domestic unrest, embargoes, and other conflicts continues to grow. Some such as Iran and Venezuela are down by millions of barrels a day from their potential, and others such as Libya, Yemen, and Syria are down by hundreds of thousands of b/d or less. In September, OPEC’s production fell to a near-decade low partly due to geopolitical conflict, including losses caused by the attack on Saudi production facilities.
Last week rioting broke out in Iraq, leaving 100 dead and over 6000 wounded. Thousands have been involved in the nationwide protests, which are among the largest seen in decades and which were sparked by frustration over alleged government corruption, lack of basic services and growing unemployment. The demonstrations quickly spread from Baghdad to other cities at an intensity and speed which took security forces and the government by surprise.
Populist Shia politician and former militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr called for the government to step down and for new elections. His parliamentary bloc, which won the largest number of seats in last year’s elections, said it would boycott parliament when it meets to discuss the protesters’ demands.
Iraq oil production is now approaching 5 million b/d, making the country one of the biggest oil exporters in the world. It is too early to tell if the current unrest will slow production.
The good news last week is that the Saudis are considering a partial cease-fire with the Houthis in Yemen. Saudi Arabia’s move follows the Houthis’ surprise declaration of a unilateral cease-fire in Yemen last week. Similar cease-fires have broken down before, but the Houthis’ unexpected unilateral request for a cease-fire raised hopes in Riyadh and Washington that the Yemeni fighters might be willing to distance themselves from Tehran.
Despite the stream of threats between Riyadh and Tehran, there are rumors that talks between the two are underway to reduce tensions.
3. Climate change
According to a new report from the United Nations, climate change is already having staggering effects on oceans and ice-filled regions that encompass 80 percent of the Earth, and future damage from rising seas and melting glaciers is now all but certain. More than 100 scientists from around the world contributed to the latest report by the IPCC which comes on the heels of several other warnings the group has issued recently. Last fall, the IPCC said the world must make rapid, far-reaching changes to energy, transportation and other systems to hold warming below an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
If emissions continue to increase, global sea levels could rise by more than three feet by the end of this century — about 12 percent higher than the group estimated as recently as 2013.
A heat dome over the eastern half of the US in early October is bringing high temperatures characteristic of July.
Siberia has been rapidly thawing as the region has warmed up faster than almost anywhere else on earth. Siberia’s temperatures have already spiked far beyond 1.5 degrees C. The permafrost which villages and cities are built — is in the midst of a great thaw, blanketing the region with swamps, lakes and odd bubbles of earth that render the land virtually useless. For the 5.4 million people who live in Russia’s permafrost zone, the new climate has disrupted their homes and their livelihoods. Rivers are rising and running faster, and entire neighborhoods are falling into them. Arable land for farming has plummeted by more than half, to just 120,000 acres in 2017.
4. The global economy and trade wars
For the past month, the press has been filled with stories warning about the deteriorating global economy. Headlines from the major newspapers tell the story:
“Global Trade Is Deteriorating Fast, Sapping the World’s Economy”
NY Times 2 Oct.
“Gloomy Economic Outlook Takes Toll on Oil Prices”
Wall Street Journal 2 Oct.
“Slowing Trade Hits Global Manufacturing”
Wall Street Journal 2 Oct.
“European factory activity shrinks at most rapid pace since 2012”
London Financial Times 1 Oct.
For now, declining demand is the top concern of the oil markets. Despite falling oil production, many traders believe that demand for oil will drop faster than supply.
5. Renewables and new technologies
Clean energies hadn’t been able to compete in a market flooded with cheap fossil fuels. Governments around the world have long subsidized low- and no-carbon renewable energies like solar and wind because they hold great promise. Today, renewable energy is so cheap that the handouts they once needed are disappearing. Electricity generation has been the world’s biggest source of greenhouse-gas emissions. In the U.S., for the first time since the 1970s, this is no longer the case. Since 2016, American power plants have given off less carbon dioxide than the nation’s transportation sector, where oil continues to dominate. The turnabout owes a lot to cheap and cleaner-burning natural gas, but wind and solar farms are playing an increasingly important role.
In the U.S., natural gas remains king of the power mix, accounting for about 40 percent of the nation’s electricity. But renewable energy’s share is quickly climbing, reaching 25 percent earlier this year.
6. The Briefs (date of the article in the Peak Oil News is in parentheses)
Oil and gas still loom large: While global leaders meet in New York to discuss solutions to climate change, the US’s EIA has offered a sober assessment of the world’s ability to wean itself off fossil fuels. Although renewables will be the fastest-growing energy source through 2050, oil consumption will still be key to meeting energy demand for decades, according to a report released Tuesday by the EIA. Fossil fuel use will keep climbing for the next 30 years. (9/25)
Oil and gas still the big dogs: OPEC’s research shows that the oil and gas industry will continue to dominate energy supply through their forecast period of 2040. That’s what OPEC Secretary General Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo revealed in a speech on September 26. Barkindo went on to say that OPEC expects to see “robust growth” in long-term global oil demand, which is expected to rise to almost 112 million barrels per day by 2040. (9/30)
Netherlands gas stop: The Netherlands recently announced that production at Groningen – Europe’s largest gas field – will be halted in 2022, eight years earlier than initially planned. Rystad Energy expects that there could be some residual production from Groningen up to 2030 as it is technically challenging to completely shut down production in such a short timeframe. The drastic drop in output from Groningen will redefine the European energy landscape. The field, which had a rebound in production at the start of this century, reaching 57 billion cubic meters (Bcm) in 2013, was for decades the central cog in northwest Europe’s gas system. (10/3)
Russia’s largest oil company Rosneft has set the euro as the default currency for all new exports of crude oil and refined products, as the state-controlled giant looks to switch as many sales as possible from US dollars to euros in order to avoid further US sanctions against it. Rosneft is the biggest oil exporter from Russia, selling around 2.4 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil, according to Reuters estimates. (10/4)
The United Arab Emirates is finalizing talks on a $5-billion investment in a crude oil refinery project in Pakistan, with the construction of the facility likely to begin before this year’s end. (10/5)
Saudi Arabia’s wellhead crude production stands at 9.9 million b/d, with production capacity of 11.3 million b/d, the kingdom’s energy minister said Thursday. Following the attacks on Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq crude processing facility and Khurais oil field on September 14 that took 5.7 million b/d of production capacity offline, the country maintained its supplies to customers by drawing from its crude inventories. They expect to be back to having full production capacity by the end of November. (10/3)
Oil shipping $$ blip: Key oil freight rates from the Middle East to Asia rocketed as much as 28% on Friday in a global oil shipping market spooked by US sanctions on units of Chinese giant COSCO for alleged involvement in ferrying crude out of Iran. In what the State Department called “one of the largest sanctions actions the US has taken” since curbs were re-imposed on Iran in November last year, two units of COSCO were named alongside other companies in claims of involvement in sanctions-busting shipments of Iranian oil. (9/28)
PetroChina has announced new additions of almost 741 billion cubic meters to its shale gas reserves in the Sichuan province as well as certified reserves of 358 million tons at the Qingcheng oil field. The company said that it had made a breakthrough in shale oil and gas exploration, which led to the upgrade in reserves. Shale gas—and oil too—has been touted as a potential solution to China’s energy problem, which comes down to demand outstripping supply. However, emulating the US shale boom has proven tricky. (10/1)
Libya’s National Oil Corporation has warned that the country’s crude oil production could drop sharply over the next nine months if the government in Tripoli does not release funds already approved for disbursement to NOC. (10/4)
Nigeria is ready to make the sacrifice and cut its oil production deeper if OPEC and allies decide in December that it is necessary to deepen the cuts, Nigerian Minister of State for Petroleum Resources told Bloomberg on Friday. Nigerian overproduction has offset some of the cuts of its fellow OPEC members at a time when the oil market continues to be oversupplied with rising US production and faltering oil demand growth. (10/5)
Venezuela saw its oil and oil products exports edge up to 845,000 bpd in September from 770,000 in August, but these higher exports couldn’t drain Venezuela’s overflowing oil stockpiles which further increased last month. Higher exports last month weren’t due to customers suddenly wanting to buy Venezuelan oil. The increased September exports of crude oil and refined products were chiefly due to more exports to Cuba and to the release of oil cargoes that had been sitting offshore Venezuela since the US imposed sanctions on Nicolas Maduro’s regime in early 2019. (10/3)
In Venezuela, PDVSA and China’s state-run CNPC have stopped all oil blending at their joint venture operation. All of the blend, known as the Merey blend, was shipped to China. Over half of the finished product went toward paying back loans that China extended to Venezuela and PDVSA. The oil blending operations were halted this week due to an untenable buildup in oil stocks in Venezuela as the US continues to clamp down on the Maduro regime in the Latin country, in what will surely create a ripple effect on other operations in Venezuela as well. (10/4)
Brazil’s massive transfer-of-rights oil auction to be held on November 7 has cleared one hurdle as the Brazilian Congress approved on Thursday one section of a larger bill that determines the specifics of the $25 billion auction. Brazil’s auction is expected to rake in $25.5 billion for the government. The auction will seek to sell oil blocks in the presalt zone off the coast of Brazil that had originally been given to state-run Petrobras to extract 5 billion barrels of oil. (9/30)
In Ecuador—a member of OPEC that has just announced its intention to quit the cartel—protested erupted after President Lenin Moreno said that fuel subsidies that had been in place for 40 years would end. According to Moreno, in office since 2017, the fuel subsidy is “perverse” and has distorted Ecuador’s economy over the past few decades. The country can no longer afford the US$1.3 billion subsidy, the president says as he pushed through with a US$2 billion package of fiscal reforms. (10/5)
Offshore Mexico, where US oil firm Talos Energy found nearly a billion barrels off the southern Gulf coast two years ago, saw the first discovery by a foreign firm since the oil industry was nationalized eight decades earlier. Now Mexico’s state-run oil firm Pemex wants to take over the lucrative project. The Pemex push to run drilling in the oilfield comes amid the ongoing drive by President Andres Lopez Obrador to return more control of Mexico’s energy sector to its state oil firm. (9/30)
In Mexico, oil theft is not uncommon, with most of it linked to local cartels using the services of crooked Pemex employees. Yet most of this theft takes place on land: over just two months in 2018, criminals drilled almost 2,300 illegal taps into Pemex pipelines in Mexico. Although oil and diesel stealing has been going on for decades, there has been an increase in criminal activity reported in the last four years. (10/2)
In Cuba, Russia plans to have its companies help the country to develop its oil and natural gas resources as part of a close energy cooperation, a senior Russian official said on Thursday, just as Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev began a two-day visit to Cuba amid growing U.S.-Cuba tension. Russia and Cuba are also discussing the use of nuclear technologies in medicine and agriculture, the Russian official said, adding that Russia is ready to assist Cuba should the Latin American country decide to develop nuclear power generation industry. (10/4)
US politics and oil, on steroids: The world energy market has shown over the past few weeks and months that it can easily cope with the collapse of Venezuelan oil exports, the cut-off of most supplies from Iran and even an attack on Saudi Arabia’s key oil export facilities. It is not, however, prepared for the dramatic change that could occur if the Democratic party wins next November’s US presidential election. (10/1)
Average US exports of crude oil rose by 966,000 bpd in the first half of 2019, compared to the first half of 2018. In June this year, the US set a monthly average record of 3.2 million bpd of crude oil exports, EIA data showed. Canada stayed the top foreign destination of US crude oil, with US exports rising by 3 percent year on year in H1 2019. US exports to Asia and Oceania jumped by 58 percent, with exports to South Korea, India, and Taiwan more than doubling. (10/4)
Biofuel flipflop: The Trump Administration is set to announce later on Friday a plan to boost ethanol and biodiesel demand and placate the farming lobby angered by the Administration’s waivers for dozens of oil refineries exempted from blending corn-based ethanol in fuels, The US biofuels policy has been pitting the oil refining industry against the Midwest farm lobby. While US President Donald Trump is a vocal supporter of the USoil industry, he also supports the Renewable Fuel Standard, especially corn-based ethanol, which protects farming jobs in the politically. (10/5)
EVs and declining labor needs: GM’s need to free up cash to invest in electrics has led it to make deep cuts in its core business, including its decision to close four US factories —a main point of friction in the longest walkout at GM since 1970. For the UAW, there’s no avoiding the harsh reality of a wider transition taking hold across the auto industry: Building electric vehicles requires far fewer workers, making it near-impossible to avoid job losses and wage cuts. In addition, fewer components are needed, and many of them are imported. (9/28)
Renewable energy winning cost war: Low- and no-carbon renewable energies like solar and wind power have long been subsidized by governments around the world because while they hold great promise for a clear, more sustainable energy future, they just couldn’t compete with natural gas, coal, and oil when it comes to the bottom line. But this week Bloomberg reported on the once unthinkable phenomena of solar and wind subsidies disappearing across the world because the industry has outgrown the need for them thanks to declining costs. (9/30)
A sign of coal’s slow sunset: Stockpiles of coal are surging at some of Europe’s largest ports as utilities from Germany to Spain are increasingly favoring cleaner gas in power generation. Reserves at ports in Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Vlissingen last week rose to their highest levels since July. The uptake after the summer has slowed because of mild weather so far this autumn. Crashing natural gas prices have also made it more attractive for utilities to burn the fuel, just as solar and wind continues to eat into the overall share of fossil fuels. (9/28)
UK coal era ending: In Wales, the year-end shutdown of the Abertawe coal-fired power plant is a harbinger of what is to come as the UK–once the world’s largest coal consumer–prepares to end its addiction to the planet’s most polluting fossil fuel. It is one of only five operational UK coal-powered stations after Cottam in Nottinghamshire was closed on Monday after 50 years. Coal share of power supplied to the grid dropped from a peak of 88% in 1971 to single digits today. By next summer only three coal units will remain. (10/1)
Some EU coal hanging on: The end of the age of fossil fuels is not yet in sight in Europe. There are still a number of countries that generate a very large proportion of their electricity from coal. Despite the push by some to exit coal, not all countries have announced a date for phasing out its use. This applies in particular to those countries that have a high proportion of coal-fired electricity. Despite recent efforts to transition to renewable energy, Germany still lies in the upper quarter of the country comparison, behind countries such as Poland, Czechia, Greece and Bulgaria. Germany aims to phase out coal by 2038. (9/30)
Fossil fuel plants and water needs: Climate activists have raised concerns about the number of power plants planned for development in Asia, but the threat of climate change appears to be just one reason to think twice about building new power plants in the region. According to a new study, water shortages in Asia could make it increasingly difficult to cool new power plants. (9/25)
The heat is still on: A heat dome over the eastern half of the nation is bringing high temperatures characteristic of July, not October. The mercury is soaring well into the 90s from the nation’s capital to Florida to Texas, and just about everywhere in between. The District of Columbia broke its all-time monthly high temperature record with a temperature of 98 degrees, easily beating the old record of 96 degrees set on Oct. 5, 1941. (10/3)
Biggest berg in years: The Amery Ice Shelf in Antarctica has just produced its biggest iceberg in more than 50 years. The calved block covers 1,636 sq km in area – a little smaller than Scotland’s Isle of Skye – and is called D28. The scale of the berg means it will have to be monitored and tracked because it could in future pose a hazard to shipping. (10/2)
Tourists to Saudi Arabia? Saudi Arabia said on Saturday it would issue fines for 19 offences related to public decency, such as immodest dress and public displays of affection, as the Muslim kingdom opens up to foreign tourists. The Interior Ministry decision accompanies the launch of a visa regime allowing holidaymakers from 49 states to visit one of the world’s most closed-off countries. Until now, most visitors have been Muslim pilgrims and businesspeople. (9/28)
The Attacks on Abqaiq and Peak Oil in Ghawar
By Matt Mushalik, originally published by Crude Oil Peak
October 16, 2019
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-10-16/the-attacks-on-abqaiq-and-peak-oil-in-ghawar/?fbclid=IwAR06hLs7IBhA6NzW8aD-buOL8E9lC44uK8i_5xA1eWwJinRxDuErl49dkIw
When Will the Lights Go Out?
Posted on October 23, 2011 by energyskeptic
http://energyskeptic.com/2011/when-will-the-lights-go-out/?fbclid=IwAR1_YUn4kczS3Voh96xDaovw00S98LW5-3BucrDBU6jXDA9RIzFqEHrDIUM
$10 Oil - How Far Could Oil Prices Fall If We See A 2009 Style Crash?
By Julianne Geiger - Oct 07, 2019, 6:00 PM CDT
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/10-Oil-How-Far-Could-Oil-Prices-Fall-If-We-See-A-2009-Style-Crash.html?fbclid=IwAR1rdH9ZMw8pjsPvzjkL_rjRmBZgADglBuAa64lDJflSmcbkZ2rNYXff65Y
Jim Rickards on Aftermath; Also, Russia, China Move to Control Middle Eastern Oil
Sep 20, 2019 – In today's Financial Sense Newshour podcast, Jim Rickards discusses his latest book, Aftermath, with Jim Puplava after we take a deep dive into Middle Eastern oil markets and why the Fed had to intervene by injecting billions of dollars into the financial system this week. Also, Dave Nicoski from Vermilion Technical Research gives a technical update on the stock market.
https://www.financialsense.com/podcast/19318/jim-rickards-aftermath-also-russia-china-move-control-middle-eastern-oil
Getting Real About Green Energy
An honest analysis of what it CAN'T promise
by Chris Martenson
Friday, October 4, 2019, 2:58 PM
https://www.peakprosperity.com/getting-real-about-green-energy/
Yes, I have been researching the Grand Solar Minimum extensively and agree with your comment:
"I stand by my guess that the current cooling cycle will cause food prices to increase 4 fold in 2 or 3 years which will trigger protests,panic and riots around the globe and that will put a controlled die-off plan into action."
I first extensively research the cooling cycle to become aware of its ramifications.
This spring into summer, the Boston area had much rain [diminished sun] and much cooler weather. The garlic was three weeks late for harvest. My normal practice is to plant pole beans in the harvested garlic beds for a second crop plus it adds nitrogen to the soil. Since I was running out of summer time, I had to plant bush beans rather than pole beans because the bush beans mature in 45 days versus 90 days for pole beans. However, pole beans growing on a trellis in more space and capturing more sun will yield ten times the bean bean crop that grow along the ground. To me, this is a similar situation indicating the effect of diminished sunlight.
In summary for planting and harvesting a garden, I have doubts about harvesting as much as in the past with a cooling period.
sumi
Waiting for the Next Panic
October 2, 2019
John Michael Greer
https://www.ecosophia.net/waiting-for-the-next-panic/?fbclid=IwAR13J6sJHVbaT1kW822L1A--X4fpf6Dp_RzyHsCoIT2U-vmU8xRzWq80FBY
Billions will be intentionally killed by those who see the problem and the possible scenarios and decide to take control of the unavoidable die-off before chaos overwhelms and anarchy takes over.Systemic collapse is unacceptable and there will be a planned die-off.
I stand by my guess that the current cooling cycle will cause food prices to increase 4 fold in 2 or 3 years which will trigger protests,panic and riots around the globe and that will put a controlled die-off plan into action.
5 years from now big changes will have occurred and the population reduced by 500 million or more from the first planned reduction with more and greater reductions to follow.
The transition to a sustainable economy will continue even if it seems impossible to achieve.Less and less people will try to do less with less.Nuclear power will make a come back.Electric vehicles will replace internal combustion vehicles.More people will grow food at home.
The population will go below a billion....
It will be a slow grind to extinction.......
Oil Discoveries Hit 70-Year Low
By Nick Cunningham - Oct 02, 2019, 4:00 PM CDT
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Oil-Discoveries-Hit-70-Year-Low.html?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=fb_repost&fbclid=IwAR2o9D9e6pPzzZSHlnQK3zBe0vwy07_w6ymAfHe_xyYfyLBBUNVAwvk-AKQ
The last three years has been the worst stretch of time in seventy years for new conventional oil discoveries.
A new report from IHS Markit finds that conventional oil discoveries plunged to a seven-decade low and “a significant rebound is not expected.” Conventional exploration – as opposed to unconventional development, including shale – had already been trending down following the 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath, which overlapped with the rise of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing in several U.S. shale basins.
But the collapse of oil prices in 2014 really knocked conventional exploration – and thus, discoveries – on its back.
After OPEC refrained from cutting production in the face of a swelling supply surplus in late 2014, prices fell sharply…and continued to fall for much of the next year and a half. WTI bottomed out in early 2016 below $30 per barrel, before a pullback in drilling and production cuts by OPEC+ led to a more durable price rebound beginning in 2017.
But the multi-year downturn hit conventional exploration in multiple ways. Not only were companies slashing spending and cancelling riskier ventures, but the oil majors and investors began to view short-cycle shale drilling as inherently less risky. That was because drilling was quick – companies were able to turn projects around in a matter of weeks or months, not the years that large-scale conventional projects took, particularly those offshore in deepwater. Capital flowed en masse from conventional to unconventional development.
Predictably, that led to a steep rise in U.S. shale output, while simultaneously leading to a sharp contraction in conventional discoveries. “One of the main drivers here is the shift of investment by US independents from international exploration to shale opportunities in the United States—shorter cycle-time projects—with greater flexibility to respond to changing market conditions,” Keith King, senior advisor at IHS Markit and author of the report, said in a statement. “These operators can quickly turn an unconventional project off and stop or postpone drilling next month if oil prices fall.”
Related: Trump’s Latest Trade War Move Sends Oil Tanking
Chevron and ExxonMobil are now some of the largest producers in the Permian after arriving late to the scene.
However, at the same time, this is not a story only of a shift of preferences from drillers and low oil prices. IHS also said that the average size of conventional oil discoveries has declined as the industry has shifted away from riskier “frontier” and “emerging” areas, to more mature regions. The number of wells drilled in unproven areas in deepwater dropped from 161 in 2014 to just 68 in 2018.
The oil majors left deep- and ultra-deepwater and began to increasingly focus on shallower water and onshore areas. The riskier fields in deepwater are the ones that have yet to be picked over, and thus contain much larger reserves, but mature shallow water carries less uncertainty and lead times are shorter. The shift in focus has meant that when a driller made a discovery, it was smaller on average in the last few years.
IHS says that basins early in their life cycle tend to have reserves that are ten times as large as mature basins. An average discovery in early-life basins held roughly 210 million barrels compared to just 25 million barrels from the average discovery in a more mature area.
There are some exceptions to the general trend, with some large companies still pushing the bounds offshore, but industry-wide spending and exploration is down.
However, the problems in U.S. shale might mean that the pendulum swings back in favor of offshore drilling. With wrecked balance sheets, high debt levels, shareholder scrutiny on spending and a growing number of operational problems, the shale complex is falling out of favor with investors. “Lackluster financial returns from unconventional production onshore in North America may drive more operators back to conventional exploration in the longer-term,” Keith King of IHS said in a statement.
By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com
Russia’s Largest Oil Company Ditches Dollar In New Oil Deals
By Tsvetana Paraskova - Oct 03, 2019, 11:00 AM CDT
Russia’s largest oil company Rosneft has set the euro as the default currency for all new exports of crude oil and refined products, as the state-controlled giant looks to switch as many sales as possible from U.S. dollars to euros in order to avoid further U.S. sanctions against it.
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Russias-Largest-Oil-Company-Ditches-Dollar-In-New-Oil-Deals.html?fbclid=IwAR0Tsolfj2t5MUjHaWktx-ROXgj1a3lJBhu_w68VZ2_Op-cct5d8jgfv2Dw
The carbon trap
by Paul Chefurka
Posted on October 1, 2019 by energyskeptic
Preface. We are caught in the carbon trap — we utterly depend on fossils that don’t have an electric replacement. Someday people will figure this out the hard way, but Chefurka compassionately points out that there is no one to blame for our situation, and it’s not something we can do anything about.
http://energyskeptic.com/2019/the-carbon-trap-by-paul-chefurka/?fbclid=IwAR0YrO4jNvUyoh-X8T0GdpV765errQuulw2wfGWTVM_ES0xrPQANrw0DP-I
Why The Attacks In Saudi Arabia Are A Really Big Deal
Robert Rapier, Senior Contributor
Sep 16, 2019, 11:36am
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2019/09/16/why-the-attacks-in-saudi-arabia-are-a-really-big-deal/?fbclid=IwAR3T3GsfDkCmENvGvh3-zXf_xsm8U_vb3vd4qWR-sw9pBET119TTI4_yftM#2e863879de1a
U.S. Blames Iran for Attack on Saudi Oil Facilities
Saudi Arabia shuts down about half its oil output after drone strikes
Smoke billowing after a fire at a Saudi Aramco factory in Abqaiq, Saudi Arabia, on Saturday. Photo: Videos obtained by Reuters/Reuters
By Summer Said, Jared Malsin and Jessica Donati
Updated Sept. 14, 2019 8:26 pm ET
https://www.wsj.com/articles/drone-strikes-spark-fires-at-saudi-oil-facilities-11568443375
Time Is Almost Up For U.S. Shale
By Nick Cunningham - Aug 08, 2019, 6:00 PM CDT
"A top U.S. shale executive said that it may only be the Midland basin in the Permian that can grow production beyond 2025.
Aside from Midland, every other shale basin may be on borrowed time, with the best acreage already picked over and oil prices languishing below $60 per barrel."
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Time-Is-Almost-Up-For-US-Shale.html?utm_source=fb&utm_medium=fb_repost&fbclid=IwAR3tA92Iz7oInR6aXKPWUq1HDR5Tgqmu53be2nOVRXcEOYV1AJD4qynVCmI#
New Michael Moore-backed doc tackles alternative energy
By LINDSEY BAHR, 08 08 2019
https://www.apnews.com/933b49681b0d47d3a005d356f35251ab?fbclid=IwAR3684doZhkOAEEkRci9UyZgP2eg_14cnwyMiR-X21B9A11yARTLWDmZGVw
Going 100% renewable power means a lot of dirty mining
Posted on August 4, 2019 by energyskeptic
Preface. Everyone talks about oil spills, but what about the dirty mining that will have a huge polluting footprint on the earth, and potentially destroy the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery among other side-effects? Renewables aren’t cleaner and greener than fossils, and require a hell of a lot of fossils to mine the ore, deliver it to a crusher, blast furnace, and fabrication, all accomplished with fossils.
http://energyskeptic.com/2019/going-100-renewable-power-means-a-lot-of-dirty-mining/
Life in a ‘degrowth’ economy, and why you might actually enjoy it
Time to get off the economic growth train?
We used to live on a planet that was relatively empty of humans; today it is full to overflowing, with more people consuming more resources. We would need one and a half Earths to sustain the existing economy into the future. Every year this ecological overshoot continues, the foundations of our existence, and that of other species, are undermined.
Like a snake eating its own tail, our growth-orientated civilisation suffers from the delusion that there are no environmental limits to growth. But rethinking growth in an age of limits cannot be avoided. The only question is whether it will be by design or disaster.
https://theconversation.com/life-in-a-degrowth-economy-and-why-you-might-actually-enjoy-it-32224?fbclid=IwAR0RjInYsTiL0nLAcLsLVHbUcbPATEAi1Oqyrxa2WUmlZHYHOQk32z2t-Fc
Peak Oil Review: 29 July 2019
By Tom Whipple, originally published by Peak-Oil.org
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-07-29/peak-oil-review-29-july-2019/
Quote of the Week
““For all its revolutionary impact on the oil industry, shale remains poorly understood. Publicly available data based on old-fashioned company reporting have their limits. Hard measurements unlocked by new data technologies show that, contrary to public belief, there is no great buildup of DUCs [drilled but uncompleted wells] just waiting to be brought online. The whole idea that the market can rely on this sort of de facto spare production capacity is an illusion. The industry is actually running on a much tighter leash than that.” Antoine Halff, Kayrros chief analyst and cofounder.
Graphic of the Week
Battery storage deployment during the last two years:
1. Oil and the Global Economy
The US oil and gas rig count fell by eight this week, according to Baker Hughes, adding to months of losses, as US oil production falls to its lowest level since October 2018. The total number of active oil rigs in the United States fell by three, according to the report, reaching 776. The number of active gas rigs decreased by 5 to reach 169.
The combined oil and gas rig count is now 946 for the week, with oil seeing an 85-rig decrease year on year and gas rigs down 17 since this time last year. The combined oil and gas rig count is down 102, year on year. Year-to-date, the oil rig count has fallen from 858 active rigs since the beginning of the year to 776, while gas rigs have fallen from 187 to 169 during that same time.
US production fell sharply for the week ending July 19 to 11.3 million b/d, more than 1 million barrels down from the all-time high in the United States, and the lowest production level since October of last year. Canada’s overall rig count saw an increase this week of 9 after increasing by one last week. Canada’s oil rigs are down by 69 year on year, with gas rigs down 27 year on year.
The American Petroleum Institute (API) reported a huge crude oil inventory draw of 10.961 million barrels for the week ending July 18. This is in line with U.S. commercial crude oil inventories (excluding those in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) that decreased by 10.8 million barrels from the previous week. After the extra-large draw—the largest draw this year–the net build is now just 1.20 million barrels for the 30-week reporting period so far this year, using API data.
US Shale Oil Production:
Three months ago, when Helmerich had 220 of its rigs hired out, Chief Executive Officer John Lindsay told investors the second quarter would be the nadir for his fleet. But after the number of Helmerich rigs at work shrank to 214 a few weeks ago, Lindsay says his earlier projection was “premature.” “The full effect of the industry’s emphasis on disciplined capital spending continues to reverberate through the oil field services sector,” he said in a Wednesday statement. “We are reluctant to predict another bottom and see further softening during our fourth fiscal quarter as our guidance would indicate.”
The hired hands of the shale patch who drill and frack wells are suffering from a slowdown in North American spending brought on by investor demands for higher returns. The US oil rig count has fallen 11% this year, according to Baker Hughes. Fracking giant Halliburton Co. is eliminating jobs and warehousing equipment no one wants to rent. Superior Energy Services Inc. said earlier this week that it’s looking for ways to cut costs and may sell assets to raise cash. On Thursday, 28 of the 29 oil and gas industry stocks in the S&P 500 Index were falling. The frack market “is a mess,” Brad Handler, an analyst at Jefferies LLC, wrote in a note to clients. “With every passing data point/call, there is little to suggest this market gets any better, and so we hack away at numbers again.”
Helmerich’s smaller rival Patterson-UTI Energy Inc. also cut its forecast. The Houston-based contractor said it expects to run 142 rigs on average during the third quarter, down 10% from the previous three-month period. “E&P companies are being extra vigilant this year in monitoring their spend due to commodity price volatility and the increased focus on spending within their budgets,” Andy Hendricks, chief executive officer at Patterson, said in the statement. Helmerich & Payne fell as much as 7.6% while Patterson dropped as much as 11% for its biggest tumble since February 2018.
Operators in the Permian have been failing to report the completion of some oil wells, according to one data analytics company. Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) activity was underreported by 21 percent in the U.S.’ most prolific basin in 2018, according to Kayrros, a data analytics company serving the energy markets. In findings released Tuesday, Kayrros claims that more than 1,100 wells were completed in the Permian Basin but not reported through state commissions or FracFocus – a public repository for information on chemicals used during fracking. Kayrros said it uses optical and synthetic aperture radar imagery tracking along with proprietary algorithms to identify rigs and frack crews. Using those methods, they counted a total of 6,394 completed wells in the Permian in 2018 – a 21 percent increase from the FracFocus estimate of 5,272 wells as of June 20, 2019.
With financial stress setting in for US shale companies, some are trying to drill their way out of the problem, while others are hoping to boost profitability by cutting costs and implementing spending restraint. Both approaches are riddled with risk. “Turbulence and desperation are roiling the struggling fracking industry,” Kathy Hipple and Tom Sanzillo wrote in a note for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). They point to the example of EQT, the largest natural gas producer in the United States. A corporate struggle over control of the company reached a conclusion recently, with Toby and Derek Rice seizing power. The Rice brothers sold their company, Rice Energy, to EQT in 2017, but they launched a bid to take over EQT last year, arguing that the company’s leadership had failed investors.
US shale producers are poised to further trim spending this year, executives at companies that provide drilling and hydraulic fracturing services warned this week, as several took steps to idle more oilfield equipment. Oilfield suppliers are idling more of the equipment used to fracture wells, and drilling contractors say they expect to run fewer rigs in the second half of the year than in the first. The slowing pace comes as Wall Street pressures oil producers to focus on returns rather than expanding drilling operations.
2. The Middle East & North Africa
Iran: Tehran is ready for “just” negotiations but not if they mean surrender, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday, without saying what talks he had in mind. Rouhani seemed to be referring to possible negotiations with the United States. US President Donald Trump withdrew from a landmark 2015 nuclear deal with Iran last year but has said he is willing to hold talks with the Islamic Republic. “As long as I have the responsibility for the executive duties of the country, we are completely ready for just, legal and honest negotiations to solve the problems,” Rouhani said, according to his official website.
The remaining signatories to the Iran nuclear deal met in Vienna on Sunday to try again to find a way of saving the accord amid mounting tensions between Tehran and Washington. Envoys from Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia and Iran took part in the extraordinary meeting which comes a month after a similar gathering failed to achieve a breakthrough. As US oil sanctions tightened in May, Iran said it would disregard certain limits the deal set on its nuclear program and threatened to take further measures if remaining parties to the deal, especially European nations, did not help it circumvent the US sanctions. Pressure has continued to mount in the region with a string of incidents involving mysterious attacks on oil tankers and downing of drones.
The Trump administration’s plan to rally global naval powers to protect shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf is not progressing very well. After the President pulled back from a military strike on Iran last month, Plan B for the US was to convince interested parties to band together and escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. Nobody wanted anything to do with a new war in the Middle East, but with roughly 20 million b/d passing through the Strait every day – or a fifth of global supply – building a coalition of naval ships from multiple countries would seemingly be a much easier lift. Newly confirmed US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said his top priority would be “Operation Sentinel,” as it is called, which would include getting other navies to help the US provide security in the Persian Gulf for oil tankers.
3. China
Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin and Trade Representative Lighthizer will resume trade talks in Shanghai on July 30, with a focus on agriculture, the trade deficit and other issues. Analysts remain skeptical that the two sides can reach a broad deal to end the trade conflict that has slowed US exports of LNG, crude, soybeans and other agricultural products.
ClearView Energy Partners managing director Kevin Book said prospects still look dim for a deal that would address US demands for “substantial and durable Chinese reforms, expanded market access and intellectual property controls.” Book said comments by President Donald Trump since he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in June suggest “some willingness” to proceed with 25% tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese goods.
US crude exports to China dried up in August through November 2018 and again in January even though crude oil has not been officially targeted by retaliatory tariffs. The US exported an average of 62,000 b/d of crude to China in April, according to the most recent US Energy Information Administration data, well below the monthly peak of 510,000 b/d in June 2018.
The US has sanctioned a Chinese state oil trader for violating restrictions on Iranian crude, an attempt to tighten restrictions on the Islamic Republic and cut off one of its biggest buyers.
Zhuhai Zhenrong Co., the secretive company with links to the Chinese military, has a history of taking Iranian crude and fuel, at times as part of barter deals for goods or services, and then selling it on to refiners in China. The US move comes at a delicate time for relations with Beijing as the two nations attempt to kick-start negotiations aimed at resolving their broader trade conflict.
4. Russia
The blame game over a contamination scandal in Russia’s oil industry has breached President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. Igor Sechin, head of Rosneft, the world’s biggest publicly-traded oil company, and Nikolai Tokarev, the boss of Transneft, the world’s largest pipeline network, are embroiled in an unusually public and rancorous dispute over their companies’ responses to the contamination of Russia’s Druzhba (“Friendship”) pipeline, an episode that disrupted exports and tarnished Moscow’s image as a reliable energy supplier.
Publicly, Putin has remained on the sidelines while the two men wage a war of words by news release leveling allegations of treachery and incompetence. A third government source said he thought Putin was letting the dispute play out because it helped distract from a central and unanswered question: who was to blame for the dirty oil scandal.
Since the contamination was uncovered in April, Rosneft has publicly accused Transneft of fumbling its response and of failing to devise a plan to prevent it happening again, while Transneft has accused Rosneft of getting its facts wrong and of making unsubstantiated compensation claims.
Transneft needs a truce with its largest customer if it is to draw a line under the scandal and agree to compensation deals with it and other oil producers. The row hit a low point earlier this month when Transneft curbed oil intake from Rosneft, cutting Russian production close to a three-year low. The curbs have since been lifted and output levels have been restored, Energy Minister Alexander Novak said last week.
Last week, Reuters cited an official at PKN Orlen, Poland’s biggest refinery, as saying that Russian crude oil has been deteriorating in quality–despite the ongoing cleanup following that April contamination scandal that disrupted supplies and launched a tense backlash among buyers.
At the same time, one of the key suspects in the ongoing Russian investigation into the contamination, Roman Ruzhechko, is seeking political asylum in Lithuania–where PKN Orlen also has a refinery, Reuters reports separately.
Just over a week ago, Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest producer, managed to fully restore supply volumes after contamination on the Druzhba oil pipeline disrupted Russian crude supplies in late April.
The oil was contaminated with organic chlorine, a substance used in oil production to boost output but dangerous in high amounts for refining equipment. The amounts of the chemical were found to be at levels much higher than the maximum allowable amount.
Having launched an investigation into the incident, Russia concluded that the contamination was deliberate, and Ruzhechko is one of the main suspects. In fact, Russia believes this was a criminal conspiracy coordinated in part by the small oil transport company of which Ruzhechko is an executive.
5. The Briefs (date of the article in the Peak Oil News is in parentheses see more here: http://www.news.peak-oil.org)
In China, a wave of new production and slowing domestic demand have forced China to export petrol cargoes to Nigeria and Mexico as the Asian country ramps up petrol exports in July and August to near-record levels. The surge in Chinese exports will fill a supply gap caused by refinery outages in the United States and the Middle East. It is also likely to accelerate a plunge in Asian petrol margins. (7/27)
Nigeria is currently losing $25 billion annually to illegal oil bunkering and insecurity on the nation’s waterways. This was disclosed by the immediate past minister of transportation over the weekend. (7/22).
Venezuela and Chevron: Chevron Corp, the last US oil company operating in Venezuela, said on Thursday it hopes to be able to remain in the Latin American nation as the Trump administration mulls whether to renew its license, expiring on Saturday, to do business there. The administration said a decision will be made soon on the renewal of Chevron’s six-month US Treasury Department license to operate in Venezuela, with billions of dollars in the company’s investments at stake. (7/26)
Curacao’s prime minister and Venezuela’s oil minister discussed the possibility of Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA remaining as the operator of the Caribbean nation’s 335,000 b/d Isla refinery, Curacao’s government said on Monday. PDVSA’s contract will expire at year-end, and the government-owned refinery has been searching for a business partner to replace it. A lack of crude shipments has left the facility largely idle. (7/23)
In Canada, an increasingly tighter supply of heavy crude elsewhere will in all likelihood help Canada’s oil industry weather the unfavorable effects of the so-called IMO 2020 rules, which stipulate a much lower allowable level of sulfur in bunkering fuel. The combined effect of US sanctions against Venezuela and Iran have significantly changed the demand and supply picture for heavy oil, and this is benefiting Canadian producers. (7/24)
The US oil rig count fell by 3 to 776 while the gas rig count declined by 5 to 169, according to GE’s Baker Hughes. The combined oil and gas rig count is now 946 for the week, with oil seeing an 85-rig decrease year on year and gas rigs down 17 since this time last year. Year-to-date, the oil rig count has fallen from 858 active rigs since the beginning of the year to 776, while gas rigs have fallen from 187 to 169 during that same time. (7/27)
Fraudulent fracking data? Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) activity was underreported by 21 percent in the U.S.’ most prolific basin in 2018, according to Kayrros, a data analytics company serving the energy markets. Kayrros claims that more than 1,100 wells were completed in the Permian Basin but not reported through state commissions or FracFocus – a public repository for information on chemicals used during fracking. This implies two things: 1) The belief that shale operators have a large backlog of DUCs that can quickly be brought to production in the event of an oil crisis without further drilling is misleading; and 2) the average well is less productive and of higher cost than is reflected in public data. (7/24)
Shut down Line 5? Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has called for the controversial Line 5 oil pipeline to be shut down. Sanders became the second 2020 Democratic primary candidate to seek the closure of the oil pipeline that crosses a channel linking two of the Great Lakes in Michigan. His call for shut down of this 66-year-old pipeline comes right on the 9-year anniversary of Enbridge’s disastrous oil spill in Michigan when 1 million gallons of oil were spilled into the Kalamazoo River. (7/27)
Renewable natural gas—methane collected from waste and manure—is a popular source of energy in Europe, but in the United States, it has yet to establish itself as a viable alternative to fossil fuel gas. Thanks to tax incentives and improving technologies, however, companies are making increasingly wider inroads into this segment of the renewable energy industry. Earlier this month, New York became the latest city to join a growing network of 530 fueling stations featuring renewable natural gas (RNG) that are run by a T. Boone Pickens company, Clean Energy Fuels. (7/27)
Fusion a step forward: A multination project to build a fusion reactor cleared a milestone yesterday and is now 6 ½ years away from “First Plasma,” officials announced. Yesterday, dignitaries attended a components handover ceremony at the construction site of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in southern France. (7/26)
French nuclear generation fell to 38 GW Wednesday as 4 GW of heat-related restrictions took effect at the Golfech and Saint Alban nuclear plants in southern France, data by grid operator RTE showed. The current heatwave forced nuclear operator EDF to take its 2.6 GW Golfech plant on the Garonne river offline Tuesday afternoon. (7/24)
A historic heat wave inflicted life-threatening temperatures on Europe and shattered all-time highs in multiple countries Thursday. Paris registered a jaw-dropping 108.7 degrees, according to Météo-France, the national weather service, breaking the record of 104.7 degrees set in 1947. Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands all saw new national records Thursday, beating highs set just the day before. (7/26)
Russian coal doldrums: Low European-delivered thermal coal prices and high utility inventories caused May exports of Russian thermal coal to dip for the first time in ten months, according to trading sources. Russian thermal coal exports in May fell 4.3% on the year while the per-ton price dropped 41.7% year-over-year (7/23).
India may be planning its own EV battery gigafactory, LiveMint reports, citing an unnamed government official. According to the report, the facility would cost US$4 billion to build. This is not the first-time media have reported on plans by New Delhi to start building its own battery manufacturing capacity. (7/27)
In China, BMW Brilliance Automotive has become the first automobile manufacturer to enable full 5G wireless coverage at all its plants. The new wireless standard allows large quantities of data to be transferred within a very short space of time, since data will now be processed in small, high-performance computer centers directly on-site and no longer has to travel long distances. (7/22)
Peak Oil Review: 22 July 2019
By Tom Whipple, originally published by Peak-Oil.org
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-07-22/peak-oil-review-22-july-2019/
Quote of the Week
“The Governor has long-held concerns about fracking and its impacts on Californians and our environment and knows that ultimately California and our global partners will need to transition away from oil and gas extraction.”-Governor Gavin Newsom’s chief of staff Ann O’Leary, after the Governor, fired the state’s lead oil regulator upon learning that fracking permits had doubled this year over last.
Graphic of the Week
Battery storage deployment during the last two years:
1. Oil and the Global Economy
After six days of steady price drops that took prices down about $5 a barrel, oil rebounded about 1 percent on Friday. The rebound came on news that Iran had seized a British registered tanker while sailing in Omani waters through the Straits of Hormuz. Oil closed out the week at $55.63 in New York and $62.47 in London.
So far, there is no indication that Britain is planning a military response to the seizure of the ship which is owned by a Swedish firm. The escalation of the Straits standoff adds another dimension to the oil price story.
For now, there seem to be three major factors at work that will determine the immediate future of oil prices. Any interruption in tanker traffic through the Straits of Hormoz would obviously send oil prices higher – perhaps even to unprecedented levels if the outage is widespread and prolonged. There are few good alternatives to shipping oil, and in 2018, its daily oil flow averaged 21 million b/d, or the equivalent of about 21 percent of global petroleum liquids consumption. The Saudis and the UAE have pipelines which bypass the Straits, but their capacity is only about 6 million b/d. Marine insurance rates on ships passing through the Straits are reported to be up nearly 10-fold.
The next major factor that will determine oil prices is slowing demand and a glut in the global crude markets. The IEA is reducing its 2019 oil demand growth forecast to 1.1 million b/d from 1.2 million due to a slowing global economy and the US-China trade dispute. With the growth of China’s economy recently registering a 27-year low, settlement of the disagreement may be the only hope for increasing demand.
Finally, we have the growth rate of the US shale oil industry, which has been lagging this year. A few months back we were looking a 1 million b/d + annual increase in production. It is too early to say that the US shale oil production is going into decline. However, it is clear that estimates of rapid growth continuing for decades were too optimistic and could well pause soon. The factors that are leading to a decline in shale oil production will not always obtain. Fighting in the Middle East could well drive oil prices so high that production may become profitable again. Overproduction gluts are always cleared, and business activity always rebounds. US shale oil production declined in 2016-2017 but rebounded to new highs.
The OPEC Production Cut: The cartel is currently restricting production for at least a year to keep oil prices from tumbling in an oversupplied market showing signs of faltering demand growth. However, the national oil companies (NOCs) of the cartel’s most significant producers are thinking long term and want a share of the profitable oil trading business. The state-held oil firms of OPEC’s largest producers—Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates —plan to significantly boost their respective oil trading businesses in search of additional income from the enormous commercial and marketable oil resources they own.
The NOCs are already competing with the largest independent oil traders such as Vitol, Trafigura, Glencore, Mercuria, and Gunvor; however, the NOCs have one massive advantage over independent oil traders, and that is the fact that NOCs own their oil. The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), which pumps most of the crude oil from the UAE, plans to launch its own oil benchmark for the region, possibly as soon as November. The new benchmark would be part of a more extensive plan to overhaul its oil trading division and gain more pricing influence for its oil sales. Earlier this year, ADNOC signed strategic partnership agreements with Italy’s Eni and Austria’s OMV, under which the European oil majors bought minority stakes in ADNOC Refining, and the three companies agreed to create a trading joint venture.
US Shale Oil Production: The rapid growth that doubled crude output from the Permian Basin in three years is waning. Oil flows from the formation are set to increase by less than 1% in August from July, data from the Energy Information Administration show. So far this year, the monthly rate has only exceeded 2% once, compared with six times in 2018. Producers are dialing back growth plans due to a myriad of problems, including pipeline jams, slower flows from wells drilled too close together, and higher costs for acreage. The dilemmas are killing returns and keeping investors at bay.
Permian explorers such as Parsley Energy Inc. are cutting their 2019 growth rates by as much as 40 percentage points below last year’s. The number of rigs in the basin has dropped 10% from a peak in November to 437 last week, the fewest since March 2018, according to data from Baker Hughes.
S&P Global Ratings say the number of financially distressed oil and gas companies is increasing as investors lose interest, access to more credit is throttled, and companies struggle to live within cash flows. Consolidation through mergers that lower costs may not prove to be a solution as oil and gas prices stay low, the credit rating agency said. Bankruptcy may be the only option, even for companies that declared bankruptcy during the 2015-2017 oil price trough.
The July issue of the EIA’s Drilling Productivity Report attempts to forecast how much each shale oil basin will change its production in the month ahead. This month the Administration says that US shale oil production will increase by 49,000 b/d from the six largest shale oil basins. For August 2018, the increase was estimated to be 143,000 b/d. These days the estimates are frequently optimistic and are revised downwards when actual production numbers become available six weeks later.
If US shale oil production goes into decline in the next few years, either due to geological conditions or unprofitability, there will be a major change in the nature of the oil business. For now, the major forecasters, including the IEA, are saying it won’t and that there will be plenty of oil into the 2030s or 40s.
2. The Middle East & North Africa
Iran: The standoff within the Gulf took a turn for the worse last Friday when Iranian special forces rappelled from a helicopter onto a Swedish-owned, but UK-registered tanker transiting Omani waters in the Strait of Hurmuz and forced it to sail to an Iranian port. The move was in retaliation for Britain’s seizure of an Iranian tanker trying to slip crude into Syria but was in Gibraltar’s territorial waters at the time it was seized. The EU sanctions on Syria ban any foreign shipments of oil to Damascus.
Before the recent seizure, British Foreign Secretary Hunt offered to return the detained Iranian tanker provided that Iran guaranteed its oil wouldn’t go to Syria. Gibraltar on Saturday freed the four Indian seamen who crewed Iran’s ship. Hunt said last week that he spoke with Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif on “finding a resolution to the current situation and avoiding further escalation.”
The UK has warned Iran that it risks taking a “dangerous path” after the Islamic republic seized the British-flagged tanker and said Britain’s response would be “considered and robust”. Jeremy Hunt, the UK’s foreign minister, made it clear that the UK was seeking to solve the crisis through diplomacy. “We are not looking at military options, we are looking at a diplomatic way to resolve the situation, but we are very clear that it must be resolved,” Hunt told Sky News after meetings of the government’s top crisis management body Cobra on Friday.
Facing vigorously enforced US sanctions directed principally at oil, Iran is focusing on the less targeted strategic areas in its hydrocarbons business, notably continuing to develop its gas sector and building out its petrochemicals and related capacity. One such area is the generation of sufficient gasoline at least to meet its own needs, as its reliance on other countries during the previous sanctions’ era was seen as a national humiliation. Despite the worsening sanctions environment, Iran is now not only self-sufficient for gasoline but is rolling out plans to allow it to export the product.
The increased use of drones by Iran and its allies for surveillance and attacks across the Middle East is raising alarms in Washington. The US believes that Iran-linked militia in Iraq has recently increased their surveillance of American troops and bases in the country by using off-the-shelf, commercially available drones, US officials say. The disclosure comes at a time of heightened tensions with Iran and underscores the many ways in which Tehran and the forces it backs are increasingly relying on unmanned aerial vehicles in places like Yemen, Syria, the Strait of Hormuz and Iraq. Beyond surveillance, Iranian drones can drop munitions and even carry out a “kamikaze flight.”
Iraq: Exports from Iraq’s southern ports reached 3.42 million by the middle of July, two oil officials told Reuters last week. These exports fell to 3.39 million b/d in June from 3.441 million b/d in the previous month. Officials said repairs on a section of a marine pipeline in the Gulf which transports crude oil to the Basra ports slowed shipments for three days in mid-June. Iraq has been under pressure both to lower and to raise production. OPEC members have insisted that all countries should comply with their quotas, while the US has been lobbying for higher output.
Baghdad wants to increase its oil production to 6.2 million b/d by end-2020 and 9 million bpd by end-2023, up from the current 4.6 million b/d and on a par with Saudi Arabia’s output. Government officials have made it clear to foreign and domestic oil field developers alike that increases must be made, or contracts will be reviewed. Three key fields are currently in the spotlight – Rumaila, West Qurna 1, and Gharraf – with more to follow shortly.
Infrastructure constraints, however, may continue to thwart the realization of these ambitions on schedule. Rumaila produced 1.467 million b/d last year, its highest annual rate of production for 30 years. This figure is above the 1.173 million b/d initial target output figure agreed with BP in the original 2008 contract but still well below the plateau target at that time of 2.850 million b/d. The re-negotiated objective for Rumaila is 2.1 million b/d.
An American consortium led by Honeywell is poised to win a major gas deal in Iraq, bolstered by US government lobbying for projects that would reduce Iraqi dependence on Iranian energy. Honeywell, which is partnering with the US firm Bechtel, signed a memorandum of understanding in Baghdad last week to build the Ratawi gas hub.
Libya: Oil revenues dropped in the first half of 2019, according to its central bank. In the first six months of the year, the revenues were down 11.2 percent from the same period in 2018, falling to $10.2 billion in H1. Like most OPEC members, oil is the backbone of the Libyan economy, representing 92.8% of its total income.
Despite the sagging revenue, oil production in the first two quarters of 2019 was higher than in 2018, according to OPEC secondary sources found in its Monthly Oil Market Report. However, oil prices were less favorable at the beginning of 2019 than they were at the beginning of 2018, with the OPEC basket price the first week of January in 2019 running about $10 under the level it was trading at that same time during the year prior.
3. China
China’s growth fell to its slowest pace in nearly three decades, officials announced last week, as a resurgence of trade tensions with the United States and lingering financial problems take an increasing toll on one of the world’s most important economic engines. Officials said the economy grew 6.2 percent between April and June compared with a year earlier. While such economic growth would be the envy of most of the world’s countries, it represented the slowest pace in Chinese economic growth since the beginning of modern quarterly record-keeping in 1992. Numerous outside analysts have noted that official statistics probably paint too flattering a picture of the Chinese economy. Per-capita income may be a quarter lower than reported, based on a study of nighttime light co-authored by Yingyao Hu of Johns Hopkins University. Alternative data such as tax collections suggest growth was 1.8 points lower than reported from 2010 to 2016, Chang-Tai Hsieh of the University of Chicago and three co-authors conclude.
China rebuffed a suggestion from President Trump that Beijing needs a trade deal with the United States because its economy is slowing, saying this was “totally misleading” and that both countries wanted an agreement. Trump, in a Monday tweet, seized on slowing economic growth in China as evidence that US tariffs were having “a major effect” and warned that Washington could pile on more pressure.
Trump warned that the US-China trade war could ratchet up further if the United States wants. In a cabinet meeting last Tuesday, Trump said, “we have a long way to go as far as tariffs, where China is concerned if we want.” “We have another $325 billion that we can put a tariff on if we want,” he continued. In the meeting, the president confirmed that the US is currently talking to China about a deal but added that he wished China “didn’t break the deal that we had.”
Chinese crude oil throughput hit a new record in June as two new large refineries started up, driving processing rates higher, according to official data from China. Last month, Chinese refineries increased crude throughput by 7.7 percent year on year, to around 13.07 million b/d. Throughput, however, is not expected to break the new record from June at least in the next few months, as there would be extended shutdowns amid high diesel and gasoline inventories and weak domestic fuel demand.
Thanks to demand from the start-up of the two large refineries, Chinese crude oil imports in June also increased, by 1.7 percent from May, and by 15.2 percent from June last year. China’s crude oil imports in June averaged 9.63 million b/d, up from the average of 9.47 million bpd in imports in May, and a 15.2-percent increase from 8.36 million b/d in June last year.
To meet the growing demand for electricity, China’s biggest power generator, China Energy Group, is planning to build 11 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power during this and next year, according to a senior official with the firm on Thursday. More than 6 GW of new ultra-low emission coal-fired capacity will be added this year while another 5 GW is planned for 2020, the head of the state-run firm’s coal-fired power department, told Reuters. “China still has quite a big demand for electricity. The government now supports regions with poor wind and solar resources to use coal-fired power … it’s a more practical measure, as gas is still too expensive,” said Xiao. China Energy, which operated coal-fired plants with a total capacity of 175 GW, is planning to gradually replace small, polluting coal-fired power units with efficient ones.
As could be expected, China’s greenhouse gas emissions jumped by 53.5 percent in the decade between 2005 and 2014, according to Chinese government figures.
4. Russia
A small oil transport firm accused of pumping toxic chemicals into Russia’s crude pipeline network received daily documents from state pipeline monopoly, Transneft, giving its oil deliveries a clean bill of health. The documents seen by Reuters certified the oil deliveries from March 30 to April 19, the period when the worst contamination of Russian oil in decades was taking place.
Russian prosecutors have detained two executives with the small oil transport firm, which is called Nefteperevalka. At an April 30 meeting with Putin, Transneft boss Tokarev said the contamination was the fault of an unnamed local oil company that supplied poor-quality oil as part of a criminal scheme. The firm to blame for the contamination “takes care of the quality of this oil, the certification of that quality, and then transmitting it into the trunk pipeline network,” Tokarev was quoted as telling Putin in a transcript released by the Kremlin.
The alarm was first raised about the contamination on April 19 after the tainted oil reached Russia’s western neighbor Belarus. The oil would have taken around eight days to travel the roughly 1,000 km from the Samara region, based on the average speed at which oil flows through the pipeline. Although the fighting over who pays for the debacle continues, the final bill could easily run into the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.
Gazprom’s natural gas exports outside the former Soviet Union declined by 5.6 percent to 102.8 billion cubic meters between Jan. 1 and July 15 compared to a year earlier. Gazprom’s natural gas output over the same period rose by 2.3 percent to 276.3 billion cm from a year earlier, the company said.
8. The Briefs (selections from the press – date of article in Peak Oil News is in parentheses – see more here: http://www.news.peak-oil.org)
Oil majors are investing in various alternative energy solutions in response to increased investor pressure to start thinking about reducing emissions instead of just growing profits. Some supermajors are investing in EV charging networks, others in research and development of advanced lower-emissions technologies, and a few others are looking into hydrogen and its various possible uses as a clean fuel–not only for cars but also for heavy industries and home heating. (7/17)
The world’s oil tankers risk losing almost a third of their value should a shift away from fossil fuels gain momentum in the coming decades, a new report has warned. The $160bn tanker market is “most exposed” to a low carbon energy system given that it is dependent on fossil fuels with few alternative cargos available. (7/17)
Compliance with the International Maritime Organization’s global sulfur limit for marine fuels will likely settle around 90% or 95% in the initial years after 2020, well above some industry estimates that pointed to compliance of 70%-80% a year ago, a bunker industry veteran and senior partner at 2020 Marine Energy, Adrian Tolson, said at an industry event Monday. (7/17)
The United Arab Emirates’ state-run ADNOC, long seen as one of the most conservative oil firms in the Middle East, plans an overhaul for its trading operations as it seeks to emulate the success of rival oil majors and bolster its regional influence. The company has splurged on hiring former employees of private-sector peers and wants to launch a regional oil benchmark, possibly this year, similar to international markers Brent and WTI, four sources familiar with the plans said. (7/17)
India’s government doesn’t plan to completely ban diesel and gasoline vehicles because continuously rising fuel demand has to be met by a combination of fossil fuels, biofuels, and electric vehicles, Indian Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said on Tuesday. India plans to significantly boost the use of electric vehicles in the coming years. (7/17)
China’s LNG push: Thanks to its massive coal-to-natural gas switch, China became the world’s second-biggest LNG importer in 2017, surpassing South Korea and second only to Japan. Demand for natural gas in China will continue to grow in the coming years. According to the IEA, China is set to surpass Japan as well, with Beijing’s imports expected to surge to more than 100 bcm in 2024. (7/17)
In China, a massive explosion has been reported at the Yima gas plant in Henan province, damaging buildings in a 3-kilometer radius. As of Sunday, Chinese news outlets report 15 dead and 15 seriously injured.
Argentina’s surging shale oil production is feeding more supplies to the country’s refineries, helping to increase run rates, the Neuquen government said Wednesday. Refineries operated at an average of 78.3% of capacity in May, the highest rate in seven months, the state statistics agency Indec reported Monday. The increase is a direct result of the takeoff of Vaca Muerta, a giant shale play. Vaca Muerta is leading a recovery in the country’s oil production, which rose 4.2% to 505,651 b/d in May from 485,165 b/d a year earlier. (7/17)
In Brazil, two Iran-flagged vessels have been sitting idle in ports for weeks because they need fuel to return to Iran, but Brazil’s Petrobras refuses to sell them fuel because of the U.S. sanctions on Iran that could also affect the Brazilian state energy firm listed in New York. The ships carried urea (for fertilizer) to Brazil and planned to return carrying corn. (7/20)
In Delta, British Columbia, the recently expanded Tilbury LNG terminal has won its first export contract. FortisBC stated that it will produce LNG for Top Speed Energy Corp. to export to China under a two-year term supply agreement. Under the agreement, 53,000 tons of LNG a year – approximately 60 standard-sized ISO shipping containers per week – will be shipped from Tilbury to China by the summer of 2021. (7/17)
In Kitimat, BC, Chevron Corp. is seeking approval to modify its plans for a liquefied natural gas export facility on to an all-electric design that it says will result in the lowest greenhouse gas emissions per ton of LNG of any large project in the world. Chevron and its partner Woodside Petroleum Ltd. earlier this year had announced they’d applied to expand the capacity of their LNG project on Canada’s Pacific coast by as much as 80% to 18 million metric tons a year. That triggered a new federal screening of the project. (7/16)
The U.S. oil rig count declined by five to 779, according to GE’s Baker Hughes. That’s down 79 rigs, over 9%, from last year at this time. (7/20)
Huge GOM lease sale: The U.S. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced Thursday that BOEM proposes to offer 77.8 million acres for a region-wide lease sale. The sale is scheduled for August 21, 2019 and would include all available unleased areas in federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico. (7/20)
The Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery in Pennsylvania, the oldest and largest one (335,000 b/day) on the U.S. East Coast, is expected to shut its remaining units on Monday as the plant uses up the last of its crude supplies. (7/17)
“Homeless crude”: A June 21 fire and explosion set to permanently close the biggest oil refinery on the U.S. East Coast has shaken markets as far away as the North Sea and West Africa, leaving millions of barrels of unsold oil in need of a new home. The Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) refinery was a consistent buyer of light sweet crude oil, and the backlog of cargoes bound for PES are either in limbo or in the process of being diverted to neighboring refineries and abroad. Prices for physical crude oil are being squeezed, with as many as 20 million barrels bound for PES in the process of being rerouted. (7/20)
LNG growth: The U.S. will surpass current market leaders Australia and Qatar to become the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas (LNG) exporter in 2024, a high-ranking official at the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Tuesday. The U.S. exports of LNG are expected to exceed 100 billion cubic meters (bcm) in 2024. (7/17)
Permian Basin gas prices averaged their highest since mid-March during the past week propelled by rising summer demand in local and regional markets. Over the past seven days, cash prices at Waha have averaged 97 cents/MMBtu, up from negative territory during the first week of July. On Friday, prices were down nearly 40 cents from the prior-day settlement, trading around 37 cents/MMBtu. (7/20)
EV school buses: The California Energy Commission approved nearly $70 million in funding to replace more than 200 old diesel school buses with all-electric buses that will reduce school children’s exposure to harmful emissions and help the state reach its climate and air quality goals. (7/16)
RE nosedive: A marked decline in spending on renewable energy projects during the first half of the year has suggested that wind and solar have yet to become fully competitive with fossil fuel power generation despite the wealth of reports saying they already are cheaper in some parts of the world. Bloomberg NEF reports that spending on renewable projects between January and June totaled US$117.6 billion, which was 14 percent less than a year earlier and the lowest amount for a comparable period since 2013. (7/17)
China’s battery boom: China is set to become the single biggest energy storage market in the Asia Pacific region by 2024, according to consultancy group Wood Mackenzie. The company’s July 9th report states in no uncertain terms that the country is poised to take over the energy storage market, as its “cumulative energy storage capacity is projected to skyrocket from 489 megawatts (MW) or 843 megawatt-hours (MWh) in 2017 to 12.5 gigawatts (GW) or 32.1GWh in 2024. (7/15)
In Germany, power production from North Sea wind farms from January to June totaled 9.51 terawatt hours (TWh), 16% more than in the same 2018 period. Offshore wind from North Sea turbines had retained a 15% share of Germany’s total wind power production of nearly 64 TWh in the last six months. (7/15)
In India, nearly 75 percent of power is still generated from coal. While coal-fired power generation is still growing, ambitious clean energy policies and falling solar costs could soon stop this trend. Since demand for energy in India is set to double over next decade caused by the rapid growth of its economy and population, its complete rejection of coal dependence in the near future seems far too big of a challenge. (7/17)
America’s biggest solar power developers are stockpiling panels to lock in a 30% federal tax credit set to start phasing out next year, a strategy that could backfire if projects do not materialize or panel prices slide substantially. Duke Energy, 8minute Solar Energy and Shell-backed Silicon Ranch are among those working to claim the full subsidy, which is available to firms that either start construction or spend 5% of a project’s capital cost by the end of 2019. (7/20)
French extreme weather: France’s restrictions on crop irrigation are staggered by region, ranging from a one-day ban each week to a total prohibition of water usage in agriculture. France’s dryness stems in part from an abnormally hot summer in Europe, part of a broader trend of rising global temperatures. Temperatures spiked to never-before-seen levels across the south of France earlier this summer, exceeding 114 degrees Fahrenheit in late June. In Paris, there has been no precipitation since June 21. (7/17)
US CO2 down? The decrease in coal-derived energy in favor of natural gas-derived energy has the EIA forecasting that the CO2 emissions in the U.S. will fall in 2019, according to a new report. In the year prior, energy-related CO2 emissions in the United States had increased by 2.7%. (7/16)
In California, fracking for oil and gas is about to get a lot more difficult. Last week, California Governor Gavin Newsom sacked the state’s top oil regulator after the Desert Sun reported that fracking permits in California doubled in the first six months of this year without the Governor’s knowledge. (7/16)
African corruption: The bulk of an estimated $90 billion that left Africa annually through illicit financial flow to overseas might have come from Nigeria. The Chairman of the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission made the disclosure on Thursday at the 2019 Africa Union Anti-Corruption Day in Lagos. (7/15)
Peak Oil Review 15 July 2019
By Tom Whipple, originally published by Peak-Oil.org
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2019-07-15/peak-oil-review-15-july-2019/
Quote of the Week
[Europeans on Iran and the US sanctions] “They have sovereignty and self-respect at issue here. They’re trying to say we’re going to do Iran trade; we’re going save the nuclear deal and provide a mechanism; and we don’t appreciate being unilaterally dictated to.”-Sanjay Mullick, a sanctions lawyer at Kirkland & Ellis LLP.
Graphic of the Week
Global Crude plus Condensate Production
Graphic from ShaleProfile
1. Oil and the Global Economy
The storm in the Gulf of Mexico and geopolitical tensions in the Middle East pushed New York oil futures above $60 a barrel last week, with NY closing at $60.31 and Brent at $66.86. Nearly 70 percent or 1.3 million b/d of the Gulf’s oil production was shut in as oil producers evacuated 283 platforms in the northern Gulf. Natural gas production from the Gulf was cut by 56 percent. The slow-moving storm is producing unprecedented flooding, and it may be the middle of the week before the extent of the damage to onshore oil and petrochemical facilities is known.
The IEA issued its monthly report last week forecasting that surging US oil production will outpace sluggish global demand and lead to a significant increase in the world crude inventory during the next nine months. OPEC also predicted that the world oil glut is forming despite the cartel’s efforts to restrain production. “Market tightness is not an issue for the time being, and any rebalancing seems to have moved further into the future,” the IEA said. The demand for OPEC crude oil in early 2020 could fall to only 28 million b/d, with non-OPEC expansion in 2020 rising by 2.1 million b/d — a full 2 million b/d of which is expected to come from the United States. At current OPEC output levels of 30 million b/d, the IEA predicted that global oil stocks could rise by 136 million barrels by the end of the first quarter of 2020.
The Agency expects that the demand for oil will not decline in the next two years as an improvement in the China-US trade situation and continued growth in the US economy offsets deteriorating trade and manufacturing elsewhere. In recent years, the IEA has been highly optimistic about the prospects for the US shale oil industry. This optimism is not without cause as the industry has achieved remarkable gains in production during the last three years. Whether the Agency’s optimism is justified at a time when there are increasing signs of slowing production growth is a crucial question.
The US’s Energy Information Administration is not as optimistic as the IEA, saying on Tuesday that it expects global oil consumption to average 101 million b/d in 2019, up 1.1 million b/d from 2018, an indicator that demand is growing at a slower rate than previously expected. That 1.1 million b/d in growth is 200,000 b/d lower than what EIA forecast in June and marked the sixth straight month that the EIA lowered its forecast for global oil consumption in 2019.
The OPEC Production Cut: OPEC’s oil production dropped by another 68,000 b/d to 29.83 million in June, as output from Iran and Libya—exempt from the production cut pact—and other members offset substantial increases in Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. The most significant drop in production was Iran’s, whose crude oil production fell by 142,000 b/d to 2.225 million, due to the US sanctions. Iran’s oil output is now more than a million b/d down from its 2018 average of 3.553 million to OPEC’s secondary sources. Tehran has stopped supplying production figures directly to OPEC.
The OPEC+ agreement to extend oil production cuts until the end of the first quarter of 2020 will lower oil inventories, help stabilize the market and address price volatility, Iraqi Oil Minister Thamer Ghadhban said on Wednesday. Asked about OPEC’s position on prices, Ghadhban noted that the general view is that $70 per barrel or higher was acceptable, adding that the producer group is seeking prices that are fair to consumers and producers alike.
US Shale Oil Production: Total US crude output increased by 246,000 b/d in April, the latest month for which trustworthy data is available, and the EIA expects output to grow by another 70,000 b/d in July, with the Permian alone adding 55,000 b/d. However, the rate of growth is slowing. In April, production was up 1.6 million b/d compared to the same month in 2018. This is a massive increase, but it is down sharply from the nearly 2.1 million b/d year-on-year increase seen in August 2018, which looks set to be the peak in terms of the pace of growth.
Graphic from Oilprice.com
Currently, none of the organizations and analysts watching the shale oil industry is talking about a decline in US shale oil production, but the rate of growth clearly is slowing as the rig count drops, and Wall Street turns its back on an unprofitable industry. While many are saying that future growth of the global oil industry is tied to the growth of production from the Permian Basin, no one has been willing to connect the dots and say that a decline of Permian output would lead to a shrinking global economy and all that would imply.
Despite a steady stream of stories in the financial press discussing the woes of individual shale oil production companies that are certain to fail due to massive debt and unprofitability, there is a blind eye to what this means. Some assume that the increasing presence of the large oil companies in the shale oil business will turn the industry around and lead to decades of profitable oil production. The profitability of large oil companies producing shale oil remains to be seen.
2. The Middle East & North Africa
Iran: The US sanctions are crippling the Iranian economy and its main export, oil. The fourth quarter of Iran’s calendar year—December 2018 through March 2019—saw the inflation rate surging to 26.9 percent and an unemployment rate at 12.1 percent. After March, Iran’s inflation climbed further and stood at 37.6 percent in June, according to the National Council of Resistance of Iran. The decision to challenge the United States by boosting its uranium enrichment beyond limits in its 2015 nuclear deal has deepened fears among Iranians that their country will remain in crisis mode for the foreseeable future. On Wednesday, the US accused Iran of “nuclear extortion” and threatened further sanctions against Tehran, although it is difficult to see what is left to sanction.
Britain’s seizure of an Iranian tanker passing through Gibraltar waters on the way to Syria has added a new dimension to the confrontation. Last week Iranian gunboats attempted to retaliate by trying to stop a British tanker passing through the Straits of Hormuz. The small Iranian boats were driven off by a British warship. The situation in the region is deteriorating as the confrontation grows. Tankers are shunning the port of Fujairah in the UAE, the main refueling hub of the Middle East, following the two attacks involving oil tankers in the area in the past six weeks. Insurance rates for tankers going through the Strait of Hormuz have skyrocketed tenfold in the two months since the first attacks.
Washington is still attempting to step up the pressure on Tehran. The US views Chinese imports as weakening the ‘maximum pressure’ on Iran. As China is believed to be importing some 150,000-200,000 b/d of Iranian crude, the US will sanction China if it continues to import Iranian oil in violation of American sanctions. A State Department spokeswoman said last week, “We’re going to zero [exports of Iranian crude] and … countries that don’t abide by US sanctions will face repercussions.”
Iraq: Baghdad, naturally, is concerned that any disruption in oil exports flowing through the Strait of Hormuz will be a disaster for its economy as oil provides the country with 89 percent of its revenue. With few options available, Iraq’s cabinet approved a plan to build a pipeline to send the output of oil fields in Rumaila to Aqaba in Jordan. The 1 million b/d pipeline has been under consideration for years but finding financing has been a problem. Rumaila is located in southern Iraq, which means the pipeline would need to pass through several Iraqi provinces to reach Jordan and security is still a concern for investors. Years ago, Iraq had a pipeline running north to Turkey’s port of Ceyhan, but insurgents blew it up so frequently Baghdad abandoned it.
Saudi Arabia: Oil production will remain below 10 million b/d through August and exports will stay under 7 million b/d to avoid excess stock buildup. The Saudis, which are pumping below its 10.31 million b/d quota under the OPEC+ agreement, expect the positive outcome in the US-China trade talks at G20 will help to boost demand in the second half of this year.
Saudi Aramco awarded 34 contracts with a total value of $18 billion for engineering, procurement, and construction projects at its Marjan and Berri oilfields. The company plans to boost production capacity at the two fields by 550,000 b/d and 2.5 billion standard cubic feet a day of gas. The company’s maximum sustained oil output capacity is currently 12 million b/d.
Two weeks ago, the Saudis announced that they will issue their first Euro-denominated bonds, following the recent bond issue from Saudi Aramco. At around the same time, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said that the long-delayed initial public offering of 5 percent of Saudi Aramco may occur as early as next year. The prestige of the Crown Prince is wrapped up in the Aramco IPO even though many advisors believe that the government would be better off issuing more Aramco bonds rather than selling equity in the company.
3. China
The United States and China are relaunching trade talks this week after a two-month hiatus. However, a year after the trade war began there is little sign their differences have narrowed. After meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Japan in late June, US President Donald Trump agreed to suspend a new round of tariffs on $300 billion worth of imported Chinese consumer goods while the two sides resumed negotiations. Trump said that China would restart large purchases of US agricultural commodities, and Washington would ease some export restrictions on Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei Technologies. The course of these talks likely remains one of the most critical factors in the demand for oil and oil prices during the next few years.
China’s refiners likely will cut their output in the third quarter after supply from new refineries increased an already-sizeable glut. Private refiner Hengli Petrochemical ramped up its 400,000-b/d plant in northeast China to full capacity in May, while Zhejiang Petrochemical began trial runs at a similar-sized refinery on the east coast. In the wake of a wave of fresh supply and amid slowing local demand for fuels, refiners are cutting their crude processing. A decline in the pace of refining probably would result in lower Chinese crude imports.
China set a crude oil import record in April and continues to import growing volumes of crude oil this year. Beijing’s imports are an estimated two-thirds of global oil demand growth so far in 2019. However, actual Chinese oil consumption patterns lately suggest that the U.S.-China trade war has hit China’s industrial production and that nearly half of the rise in crude imports have gone into storage so far this year. China’s crude oil imports suggest that first-half imports jumped by 8.8 percent from the same period last year, or by around 800,000 b/d, according to estimates from Reuters. Imports and domestic production, minus refinery runs, suggests that between January and May, China put 1.21 million b/d into either commercial or strategic storage, compared to 850,000 b/d put into storage in the same period last year,
Sales of passenger cars in China fell 14 percent in the first half of the year compared with 2018, putting automakers on track for a historic second year of sales declines. China’s car market shrank for the first time in almost three decades in 2018 due to receding consumer confidence and cuts to government subsidies.
4. Russia
Russian oil production fell close to a three-year low in early July, as a row between Russian oil pipeline monopoly Transneft and the country’s biggest producer Rosneft undermined output. Transneft curbed oil intake from Yuganskneftegaz, Rosneft’s principal upstream unit, the oil producer said, hurting production that has already been depressed by the oil contamination crisis. Rosneft confirmed intake limits first reported by Reuters. Transneft also confirmed to local media it had capped the amount of oil received from Yuganskneftegaz. Transneft said it put the restrictions in place after Rosneft sent oil to the pipeline network without clearly stating the destination for 3.5 million tons of crude.
Transneft and Rosneft have been at loggerheads over efforts to resolve the problem of contaminated oil found in April in the Druzhba export pipeline to Europe. Supplies have only partially resumed since then, after weeks of disruption. Transneft criticized Rosneft on Monday over its handling of the tainted oil issue, saying the oil producer had dragged its feet over setting up quality controls for its oil and had made unsubstantiated claims from the pipeline firm. Transneft transports 83% of Russian oil via its network, while Rosneft accounts for over 40 percent of Russian output.
Russia’s second-largest oil producer, Lukoil, has restored its oil supplies to customers after the contamination of the Druzhba oil pipeline disrupted Russian crude supply to the west for weeks in the spring. Lukoil shipped its oil through other export channels, including by sea, “which made it possible to avoid negative consequences of breaking export contracts.”
5. Nigeria
In recent months, Nigeria increased its oil production to 2.3 million b/d again as opposed to 1.6 million b/d it was producing three years ago when insurgents were damaging pipelines and production facilities across the Niger Delta. However, Shell Nigeria says security remains a challenge due to the theft of crude oil and vandalism of oil and gas facilities. Illegal activities result in the loss of some 11,000 barrels of crude oil each day. Third party interference caused close to 90 percent of the larger spills. According to a study by the Nigeria Natural Resource Charter, Nigeria loses between $7 billion and $12 billion to crude oil theft annually. This amounts to much more than ten times what Nigeria spends on health.
The price of gasoline, N145 per liter in Nigeria, is the lowest in the West Africa sub-region, where the average cost is N350 per liter. This “cheap gas” policy is leading to more smuggling and insufficient revenue for the National Petroleum Corp.
6. Venezuela
More trouble hit Venezuela as an electricity blackout on July 7 halted operations at the 635,000-b/d Amuay and the 305,000 b/d Cardon refineries. The two refineries account for over 70 percent of Venezuela’s refining capacity. The facilities were expected to come back online as soon as July 10, but lingering damage to power plants and refineries could hamper a full restoration of power.
Venezuela’s oil production has been in decline for years, but plunged by 142,000 b/d in February, and 289,000 b/d in March, as sanctions scared away buyers. Venezuelan production averaged 1.354 million barrels per day in 2018, but that figure fell to just 732,000 b/d in March of this year. Output has held up surprisingly well since then, stabilizing at lower post-sanctions levels. According to S&P Global Platts, Venezuela’s production stood at about 760,000 b/d in June.
In January, the US government tightened sanctions on Venezuela but issued a series of waivers to oil companies operating in joint ventures with PDVSA in Venezuela. The logic, in addition to shielding American companies from sanctions, was to keep the oil sector alive long enough that it could provide an economic foundation for the new government under Juan Guaidó. But the regime change effort has stalled.
The waivers expire later this month, and the US government is considering letting them expire as a way to further tighten the fiscal noose around the Venezuelan government. That could affect operations for Chevron, Halliburton, Schlumberger, Baker Hughes, and Weatherford International. If the Trump administration follows through, the companies would have 60 to 90 days to wind down their operations.
7. The Briefs(selections from the press – date of article in Peak Oil News is in parentheses – see more here: http:www.news.peak-oil.org)
UK not vulnerable: Iran’s alleged attempt to disrupt the passage of a UK crude tanker through the Persian Gulf has added to fears in oil markets, boosted prices and raised insurance costs for shippers. But for the UK itself oil is not the issue or a particular vulnerability. The country imports hardly any crude from the Middle East to the point where it spent more on olive oil imports last year than it did on petroleum from the Gulf. (7/12)
European oil problem: Water levels along the Rhine river, a key waterway for transporting commodities and other products from coastal areas to inland locations in France, Germany and Switzerland, fell to their lowest since May 21. Levels at Kaub, Germany have been steadily declining since late June. Oil barge brokers said the low water levels meant barges were leaving the Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp refining and storage hub to inland locations not fully laden. Water levels along the river hit a record low in October, which led to oil product shortages in Germany and Switzerland. (7/13)
Pirates hurt Nigeria: Despite Nigeria’s effort to curb the menace of pirate attacks on vessels particularly in the Gulf of Guinea, Nigeria has continued to lead other countries of the world that are bedeviled by the negative impact of pirates. In the report covering January – June 2019, Nigeria led the table of pirate attacks with 21 recorded incidents between January and June, as against 31 for the period of 2018, thereby beating Indonesia which recorded 11, Venezuela 6 attacks and Peru with 4 attacks in six months. (7/10)
Eastern Canada is vulnerable to any shutoff of two major pipelines from the US north. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has vowed to shut down Line 5; her Attorney General has launched a lawsuit to that end. Operated by Enbridge, Line 5 has a capacity of 540,000 b/d of crude oil and natural gas liquids. It’s a vital source of supply for the Sarnia refinery complex that satiates Central Canada’s energy needs. (7/12)
The US oil rig count fell by four to 784 while active gas rigs also declined by two to 172, according to GE’s Baker Hughes. The combined oil and gas rig count is now 958 for the week, with oil seeing a 79-rig decrease year on year and gas rigs down 17 since this time last year. The combined oil and gas rig count is down 96 year on year. More than half the total US oil rigs are in the Permian basin in West Texas and eastern New Mexico, where active units decreased by six this week to 437, the lowest since March 2018. (7/13)
Permian pause: Despite the bustling shale drilling activity in the Permian, it led all major basins in losses this week, dropping six rigs. This brings the Permian’s active number of rigs to 437. However, the Permian still accounts for almost half of the U.S.’ total number of active rigs. (7/13)
Diesel demand hiccup: A disappointing planting season due to massive flooding in the US Midwest this spring is expected to have spillover effects on diesel demand during harvest season, analysts and traders said. Heavy storms that lingered over the Midwest left millions of acres unseeded and put crops that were planted late at a greater risk for damage from severe weather during the growing season, which is expected to reduce overall harvested acres in the fall. (7/11)
Alaska’s governor won a showdown on Wednesday with lawmakers trying to reverse his bid to slash spending on higher education by 40%, but opponents vowed to keep fighting the unprecedented cut, which university officials have warned would wreak havoc. Republican Mike Dunleavy, in his first year as governor, wants deep cuts in education and other programs to help pay for his chief campaign promise – a sharp increase in the annual oil revenue dividend Alaska pays to each resident. (7/11)
Natural gas bottlenecks: America is awash in natural gas. Yet in parts of the country there isn’t any extra to burn. Earlier this year, two utilities that service the New York City area stopped accepting new natural-gas customers in two boroughs and several suburbs. Citing jammed supply lines running into the city on the coldest winter days, they said they couldn’t guarantee they’d be able to deliver gas to additional furnaces. (7/8)
Demand for US thermal coal will “erode significantly” between 2020 and 2030 as total use for US power generation could fall to as little as 11% based on scheduled and likely retirements, Moody’s Investors Service wrote in a report. Mines in the Powder River Basin are expected to be the hardest hit as thermal coal generation declines. (7/11)
Solar vs. air pollution: Cleaning up China’s hazy skies would increase electricity generation from the country’s vast array of solar panels by 13 per cent and provide billions of dollars of extra revenue. China has more installed solar power capacity than any other country, at 170 gigawatts at the end of 2018. But it also has one of the world’s worst air pollution problems. Now we know there could be a big economic benefit to the action too, as clearer skies boost the power-generating potential of solar panels. (7/10)
EU renewables winning share: Ever since 2013, the installation of new renewable energy capacity has outstripped all other major energy generating sources combined, coal, oil, gas and nuclear. There are impressive figures for all renewables but the growth and fall in costs of solar power has stunned even seasoned industry observers. (7/12)
Nuclear booster: The US plans to extend the lifespans of existing nuclear reactors and support new technologies as it seeks to revive an industry seen as crucial to its energy security. A US Deputy Secretary said that both technologies were crucial for reducing carbon emissions and boosting energy security. The US nuclear industry has been in the doldrums for years because of competition from cheap natural gas and falling wind and solar power costs. (7/12)
Japan’s nuclear issue: The most severe challenge facing policy-makers and the nuclear industry in Japan is the loss of public confidence in this type of energy. For instance, the 2015 Japan Atomic Energy Relations Organization survey found that 47.9 percent of respondents want nuclear power abolished gradually. 14.8 percent think it should be halted immediately. Only 10.1 percent said that the use of atomic energy should be maintained, and 1.7 percent said it should increase. (7/12)
India’s nuclear issue: India continues to hold technical and commercial discussions with Westinghouse for arriving at a project proposal for nuclear reactors in the state of Andhra Pradesh. India and Westinghouse have been negotiating the US supply of nuclear reactors for more than a decade, and earlier this year, India and the US committed to building six nuclear power plants in India as part of strengthening their civil nuclear cooperation and security. (7/11)
Rare earths scramble: The Pentagon is assessing the United States’ rare earths capability in a race to secure stable supplies of the specialized material amid the trade conflict with China — which controls the rare earths industry. The push comes weeks after China threatened to curb exports to the US of rare earths, a group of 17 minerals used in building fighter jets, tanks and a range of consumer electronics. (7/13)
Sales of passenger cars in China fell 14 percent in the first half of the year compared with 2018, putting automakers in the world’s largest market on track for a historic second year of sales declines. China’s car market shrank for the first time in almost three decades in 2018 due to receding consumer confidence and cuts to government subsidies. (7/10)
EU driverless cars: A handful of European startups are developing driverless cars to navigate the clogged, chaotic, rain-swept roads of European cities. Startups such as Oxbotica, FiveAI and Wayve that are testing cars in Britain say the old continent is a unique proposition with quirks and challenges that tech giant Alphabet’s Waymo, Uber, Aurora and others have yet to crack. (7/11)
UK vehicle test: Three months since the introduction of the Ultra-Low Emissions Zone in London, results of a year-long trial in the capital suggest that plug-in hybrid electric commercial vehicles could present the most practical, readily available option for businesses trying to meet clean-air targets in cities. (7/9)
Vehicle fatality increase: The arrival of ride hailing is associated with an increase of approximately 3 percent in the number of motor vehicle fatalities and fatal accidents, according to research from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Rice University. The researchers used the staggered roll-out dates from Uber and Lyft to review the eight quarters before and after ride hailing adoption in large US cities from 2001 to 2016—analyzing traffic volume, transportation choices and accidents to arrive at their conclusion. (7/9)
EV charging stations: As of May 2019, there were more than 68,800 Level 2 and DC fast charging units throughout the US. Of that total, 16 percent, or approximately 10,860 units, were DC fast chargers that make long-distance travel more practical for electric vehicles. A DC fast charger adds 60 to 80 miles of range per 20 minutes of charging, while a Level 2 charger adds 10 to 20 miles of range per hour of charging. California has the most EV charging units of any state at 22,620, which represents about a third of the nationwide total. (7/9)
VW pushes EV partnerships: Volkswagen will create joint ventures and help finance battery production to persuade skeptical cell suppliers to back its aggressive push for mass producing electric vehicles. VW has said it will buy 50 billion euros ($56.57 billion) worth of battery cells and has identified Sweden’s Northvolt, South Korea’s SKI, LG Chem and Samsung SDI as well as China’s CATL as strategic partners. (7/8)
Electric scooter wars: Almost half of the electric-scooter companies in Paris have suspended or scaled back operations in the past week, after the French capital’s mayor swore to crack down on the “anarchy” caused by the sudden proliferation of thousands of new two wheeled vehicles on its streets. At the same time, many of the same start-ups are rushing to launch in cities across Germany, after Europe’s largest economy legalized the vehicles last month. (7/8)
Climate censorship: A State Department intelligence analyst has resigned in protest after the White House blocked portions of his written testimony to a congressional panel to exclude data and evidence on climate change and its threat to national security. The analyst, Rod Schoonover, prepared a written report citing peer-reviewed scientific journal articles and intelligence reports, which conclude that climate change could have wide-ranging national security impacts. (7/11)
The title of this board, Peak Oil - Epochal Event of Our Lives, purposely includes the word epochal, meaning without parallel.
Why will Peak Oil be without parallel?
Look at past events in the Middle East, which interrupted the supply of oil throughout the world and especially in the United States. These disruptions were geopolitical events and were ultimately resolved with diplomacy.
Peak Oil, on the other hand, will be a geological event, something that mankind has never faced before and certainly cannot control. It will inevitably occur when world oil production has reached its maximum capacity, as oil is a finite resource.
Illustrated below is Hubbert's Curve, which shows the growth, peak, and decline of worldwide, regional, and individual wells. This sequence continues to occur as world population dramatically increases and as Asia, in particular, accelerates its industrialization and its citizenry expands car ownership.
HUBBERT CURVE
Regional Vs Individual Wells
Peak Oil will adversely affect many aspects of our lives. For example, over the last 100 years, gas powered engines have contributed to the discovery and expansion of the automobile and airplane industries. Recently the population of the United States reached 300 million and vehicles now total 225 million. Future population growth, with a corresponding increase in vehicles, will further deplete oil supplies.
Agriculture has changed from numerous labor and animal-intensive family farms to a machine-intensive industry primarily controlled by corporations. Further, much of the increased productivity of farm soil emanates from petroleum-based fertilizers.
Transportation and agriculture are just two segments of society that must adjust to prospective oil declines. The critical question is how will our entire society adjust to a worldwide oil scarcity.
M. King Hubbert, a Shell geologist, predicted in 1956 that oil production in the United States would peak between 1965 to 1970. In hindsight, it did peak in 1970.
Mr. Hubbert's warning was given, yet it has been largely ignored. Oil discoveries and plentiful oil reserves in Alaska and the North Sea made many people complacent. In addition, new technologies were developed, so that oil was sucked up from the earth as if by giant straws. Although oil was abundant in the 1980's and 1990's, reserves in this century are in demonstrable decline.
China, in particular, recognizes the potential shortage of oil. It canvasses the world making oil deals to secure its energy future. It is also currently building 30 nuclear reactors and 7 hydroelectric dams to supplement its energy needs.
Sadly, the United States lingers behind. Its attitude seems to be that oil will always be abundant, probably because it has been in the past. Even with the dramatic crude oil price increases of the past three years, there still is a reluctance to confront this potential problem.
PURPOSE OF THIS BOARD
One purpose of this board is to provide I-Hub members with a repository of Peak Oil articles. Hopefully these will stimulate interest in the topic and I invite readers to post their thoughts.
Another important purpose of this board is to help people in preparing for or coping with the Peak Oil event. To this end, various links by category have been supplied below.
Good luck!
sumisu
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TABLE OF CONTENTS :
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GETTING READY FOR PEAK OIL & SUSTAINABLE LIVING
A companion #board-9881 titled "SUSTAINABLE LIVING FOR CHALLENGING TIMES" was spun off from this board to provide an archive of postings and sources of information which will aid individuals and communities to adopt and survive in a world of declining energy resources.
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PEAK OIL READING LIST FROM JIM PUPLAVA
http://www.financialsense.com/resources/peakoil.html
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PEAK OIL SITES, BLOGS, & ORGANIZATIONS
Peak Oil Clock http://sydneypeakoil.com/peak_oil_clock/
ASPO - USA http://www.aspo-usa.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=35
ASPO - INTERNATIONALhttp://www.peakoil.net
Beyond Oil, The View from Hubbert's Peak by Kenneth S. Deffeyes http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/index.html
Dry Dipstick http://www.drydipstick.com
Energy Balance http://tinyurl.com/42awvh
Energy Bulletin http://www.energybulletin.net/
Energy Bulletin: Peak Oil Primer and Links http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php
Energy Outlook http://energyoutlook.blogspot.com/
Global Public Media - Public Service Broadcasting For A Post Carbon World http://globalpublicmedia.com/
Life After the Oil Crash http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
National Petroleum Council http://www.npc.org
NEI Nuclear Notes http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/
Peak Oil Design http://peakoildesign.com/
Peak Oil News & Message Boards http://www.peakoil.com/
PLENTY http://www.plentymag.com/
Post Carbon Institute http://www.postcarbon.org/
Simmons & Company International http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=msspeeches
The Coming Global Oil Crisis http://www.oilcrisis.com
The Oil Drum http://www.theoildrum.com/
The View From The Peak http://www.theviewfromthepeak.net
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NARRATIVE LINKS
Peak Oil FAQ #msg-33046927
Peak Oil Report by Peak Oil Associates International #msg-32147901
Evolutionary psychology and peak oil #msg-30634038
Roscoe Bartlett Discusses His Special Order Speeches #msg-29893771
OIL SHOCK AND ENERGY TRANSITION by Andrew McKillop, May 7, 2008 #msg-29196735
Energy Bull Market Fundamentals Remain Strong, Chris Puplava, 2008 http://tinyurl.com/5nze3h
The Truth About Oil by Vasko Kohlmayer, 05 08 08 http://tinyurl.com/3guotj
The Gospel According to Matthew, by Mimi Swartz, 02/01/08 #msg-26286577
Another Nail in the Coffin of the Case Against Peak Oil, Matt Simmons, Nov 2007
http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/Another%20Nail%20in%20the%20Coffin.pdf
Megaprojects update: Just how close to Peak Oil are we? 10/18/07 Chris Skrebowski: Trustee of the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre http://tinyurl.com/33rl3q
Crisis, what energy crisis? Euan Mearns, The Oil Drum: Europe. 07/03/07 Over 50 links to Oil Drum articles from the past year are provided which combined provide a comprehensive overview of the issues surrounding peak oil and energy decline. http://www.energybulletin.net/31608.html
On the Precipice: Energy Security & Economic Stability on the Edge - by Daniel Davis 07/17/07 http://www.aspo-usa.com/assets/documents/Danny_Davis_On_the_Precipice.pdf
Evolutionary psychology and peak oil: A Malthusian inspired "heads up" for humanity. by Dr. Michael E. Mills http://www.drmillslmu.com/peakoil.htm
Peak oil: Facts converge with theory http://tinyurl.com/2gtud4
11 incontrovertible truths of oil production & peak oil arguments by PeakEngineer, 05/23/07 #msg-19902674
Peak Oil, Carrying Capacity and Overshoot: Population, the Elephant in the Room, © Copyright 2007, Paul Chefurka http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Population.html
CRUDE OIL Uncertainty about Future Oil Supply Makes It Important to Develop a Strategy for Addressing a Peak and Decline in Oil Production, GAO Report, 03/29/07 http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07283.pdf
DIE OFF - a population crash resource page http://www.dieoff.com/index.html
Portland, Oregon City Council unanimously creates a peak oil task force - 05/10/06 http://www.portlandpeakoil.org/
Testimony before the Australian Senate by Dr. Samsam Bakhtiari, a senior expert employed by the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), 07/11/06 http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/S9515.pdf
The Hirsch Report - February 2005 #msg-10310387
The Financial Sense Energy Resource Page http://www.financialsense.com/energy/main.htm
Financial Sense Big Picture Archive http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/2006.html
OIL: A TRAVELOGUE OF ADDICTION by Chicago Tribune, 07/29/06 (Suggested viewing: Open link and click on Watch documentary, left-hand column). http://tinyurl.com/h78ve
Exploring emotional reactions to peak oil by Kathy McMahon http://www.energybulletin.net/19718.html
Denial Of Energy Crisis Is A Conditioned Response, By Dave Wheelock #msg-25561271
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Hubbert peak theory From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
A Tribute To M. King Hubbert http://www.hubbertpeak.com/Hubbert/
Outlook for Fuel Reserves http://www.mkinghubbert.com/files/hubbert_1974.pdf
Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels by M. King Hubbert, 1956 Published on 8 Mar 2006 by Energy Bulletin. Archived on 8 Mar 2006. http://www.energybulletin.net/13630.html
Shell Execs Briefed on Peak Oil in 1956
EXPONENTIAL GROWTH AS A TRANSIENT PHENOMENON IN HUMAN HISTORY
http://www.hubbertpeak.com/Hubbert/wwf1976/
Are we at the peak of oil production? #msg-39230370#msg-29389791
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ROBERT L. HIRSCH
The Hirsch Report - February 2005 #msg-10310387
Robert L. Hirsch from Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._Hirsch
Robert Hirsch - Peak Oil Video - #msg-33832912
FSN: Energy Roundtable: Jim Puplava, Matthew Simmons, Robert L. Hirsch, & Jeffrey G. Rubin Discussion - 02/02/08 http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/roundtable/2008/0202.html
Dr. Robert Hirsch: "We Are Staring Directly Into An Energy Storm in The Next 2-3 Years"
#msg-69993495
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Simmons & Company web site
http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/research.aspx?Type=msspeeches
Book Review: Twilight in the Desert - The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy by Matthew R. Simmons
Read more: http://blogcritics.org/books/article/book-review-twilight-in-the-desert/#ixzz0nXMuOsbg
Peak Oil Solution: The Simmons Plan
http://blogs.forbes.com/energysource/2010/02/10/peak-oil-solution-the-simmons-plan/
Presentation at 2006 Boston World Oil Conference, 10/26/2006
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-429585738009344102#
President Carter's Address to the Nation On Energy Policy (April 18, 1977) Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y6pPF_lzsU
Transcript: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_energy.html
Energy Policy and Conservation Executive Order 12003, July 20th, 1977
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=7842
Carter's Brave Vision on Energy by David Morris, Monday, October 10, 2005 by the Minneapolis Star Tribune
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1010-27.htm
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Congressman Bartlett is leading efforts to change U.S. energy policy to address the challenges of peak oil. U.S. oil production peaked in 1970 and is in permanent decline. World oil production will also peak - perhaps disastrously soon. http://bartlett.house.gov
Congressman Roscoe Bartlett video on Peak Oil in 7 parts. . .
The House of Representatives formed a Peak Oil caucus in 2005 with 8 members: #msg-30864250
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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC ON PEAK OIL
"Tapped Out" by Paul Roberts, August 2008 http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/06/world-oil/roberts-text
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AUDIOS & VIDEOSPeak Oil - Chris Martenson http://www.chrismartenson.com/peak_oil
Twilight In the Desert http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfEO3PCEeis
Peak Oil - Robert Hirsch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSbfvZiJ9g0
Peak Oil - Crude Impact #msg-30619202
CNN Special Investigation - OUT OF GAS #msg-30188572
91 86 90 - Peak Oil Number-Crunching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC-koGwRu_A
Oil and the 'New International Energy Order' - Michael Klare, 04 14 08 http://tinyurl.com/59947u
"A conversation with John Hofmeister" - Charlie Rose, 03 25 08 http://tinyurl.com/23o8py
Video: A High-Risk Barrel, September 28, 2007 http://novakeo.com/?p=1054&jal_no_js=true&poll_id=10
Matt Savinar - Coast to Coast, 10/07 http://klrietmann.bingodisk.com/bingo/public/Savinarc2c111.mp3
A Crude Awakening http://tinyurl.com/yp88uu
Matthew Simmons on Peak Oil, ASPO Conference at Boston University 10 27 06 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-429585738009344102&q=peak+oil'
Dr. Kenneth Deffeyes on Peak Oil, 2005 Energy Conference - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2992397199507996758&hl=en
Peak Oil, Richard Heinberg, 09/11/06 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2141508903056009420
Peak Oil: Fireside Chat with Julian Darley - http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=julian%20darley%2C%20boston%20world%20oil%20conference&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv#q=julian+darley&hl=en&emb=0
Peak Oil & The Party's Over http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Xl3J4Kpy88&feature=PlayList&p=F39AC0DCDA7ADEC2&index=0&playnext=1
Peak Oil: Gas Prices, Supply Depletion & Energy Crisis: From NewCulture.org, 07 27 06 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMQd5nGEkr4&mode=related&search
The Long Emergency: Surviving Catastophies of the 21st Century, 10 30 05 http://tinyurl.com/2g6p35
Real Oil Crisis - 11 24 05 (Video Presentation) http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1515141.htm
The Geopolitical Consequences of Peak Oil: Michael Klare, 10 27 06 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3121561902567229690&hl=en
The End of Suburbia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3uvzcY2Xug&feature=related
World Made By Hand (Video Promo) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbEe8v4YpgA
T. Boone Pickens on CNBC [discusses alternative energies] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylI4iQ-5iXg
Dr. Al Husseini, retired head of exploration and production for Saudi Aramco, interview with CNBC on 03/27/08: http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=697807590&play=1
RICHARD HEINBERG on OUR POST-CARBON FUTURE http://tinyurl.com/636juw
Megan Quinn Bachman - Peak Oil, Community & The Future in four parts:
Calm Before the Storm, Richard Heinberg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajqgOCxGEAo
Running on Empty: Life Without Cheap Oil http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jqg3P3wOV60
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A 10% Reduction in America's Oil Use in Ten to Twelve Years An Overlooked, Practical, and Affordable Approach Using Mature Existing Technology by Alan S. Drake, May 2006 • Rev. October 2006 http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2006-05a.htm
Electrification of transportation as a response to peaking of world oil production by Alan S. Drake 12/19/05 in Light Rail Now http://www.energybulletin.net/14492.html
Public Transport Industry Issues http://www.lightrailnow.org/industry_issues.htm#electrification
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COMMUNITY SOLUTIONS & NEW URBANISM
The Community Solution http://www.communitysolution.org/
WORLD CHANGING http://www.worldchanging.com/about/
How to Wean a Town Off Fossil Fuels http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/005135.html
A Community Solution to Peak Oil: An interview with Megan Quinn http://www.energybulletin.net/5721
Sustain Lane | The Healthy, Sustainable Living Community Resource http://www.sustainlane.com/
Culture Change http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php
Communities, Refuges, and Refuge-Communities by Zachary Nowak http://www.energybulletin.net/21172.html
Karavans - Moving Toward a New World of Self-Sufficiency, Sustainability, and Genuine Community http://www.karavans.com/peakoil.html
New Urbanism http://www.newurbanism.org/
The New Urbanisn http://www.newurbannews.com/AboutNewUrbanism.html
Online NewsHour - New Urbanism http://www.pbs.org/newshour/newurbanism/
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OTHER NATIONS - STATUS FOR PEAK OIL
Closing the 'Collapse Gap': The USSR was better prepared for peak oil than the US - by Dmitry Orlov, 12/04/06
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259
The power of community: How Cuba survived peak oil - by Megan Quinn, 02/25/06 http://www.energybulletin.net/13171.html
"Flush With Energy" By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN August 10, 2008 #msg-31394853
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FSN: Lutz Kleveman, 01/24/04 - "The New Great Game: Blood and Oil in Central Asia"
http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2004/Kleveman.html
FSN: Michael T. Klare, 01/15/05 - "Blood and Oil" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2005/Klare.html
FSN: Michael T. Klare, 6/21/08. "Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy" http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2008/Klare.html
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CANTARELL OIL FIELD & DEPLETION
Cantarell Field by Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantarell_Field
Cantarell, The Second Largest Oil Field Is Dying, by G.R. Morton, 08 14 04
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/1651
Cantarell Decline Perspective, Jim KIngsdale's "Energy Investment STRATEGIES" 07 08 08
http://www.energyinvestmentstrategies.com/2008/07/08/cantarell-decline-perspective/
A Storm Called Cantarell by Sean Brodrick, "Money and Markets' 09 03 08
#msg-31902352
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Export Land Medel by Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_Land_Model
What the Export Land Model Means for Energy Prices By: Doug Casey, Casey Research LLC, 06 04 08 http://www.321energy.com/editorials/casey/casey060508.html
An Update on Mexico Export Land Model by GraphOilogy 01 22 08
http://graphoilogy.blogspot.com/2008/01/update-on-mexico-export-land-model.html
Oil Outlook: "Export Land Model" by Jeff Rubin on CNBC, October 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ed9jsKAOHU
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CHARTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF INTEREST
A significant example of collapsing oil production is Cantarell, recently the largest oil field in the Western Hemisphere. From over 2 million barrels per day in 2004-2005, Cantarell is now producing at around 700,000 barrels per day. [credit chart to energycrisis.com]
The amount of oil you can produce can only ever equal the amount of recoverable oil you discover. The area under both curves must eventually be equal. [ http://futureproofkilkenny.org/?page_id=110 ]
[source: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/gdu/gasdiesel.asp
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