Stories tagged with "oil supply"

Mainstream Dutch analysts foresee oil supply constrained world

Posted by Rembrandt on July 30, 2008 - 7:17pm in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: bp, ciep, demand, non-opec, oil prices, oil supply, opec, shell, total [list all tags]

An important Dutch energy institute, the Clingendael International Energy Program (CIEP), recently published a report that confirms most of the conclusions about the oil market reached over the years at the oildrum. That the floor price of oil is now 110 dollars per barrel, that supply will not rise beyond 100-105 million b/d in the coming decades, that there will be an oil supply constraint for most of the next decade, that there are insufficient quantities of alternative fuels available and that thus demand destruction is inevitable. CIEP is especially important because it is endorsed by amongst others BP, Shell Netherlands, Total E&P Netherlands, three Dutch Ministries, Wintershall, Vopak Oil Europe Middle East and several Dutch energy companies. The report in english can be downloaded here (PDF 2.8 megabytes, 108 pages).

'This outlook of new scarcity is now exacerbated by the fact that not only available supply will determine what amount of demand can be satisfied; it will also bring about a new allocation of the available oil due to a lack of adequate supply growth compared with demand. In practice this means that demand rationing will be required in the OECD countries and particularly in the US, in order to accommodate growth in the newly developing countries, notably China and India. Different fuel prices for end-consumers in the different countries will be the dominant factor behind this ‘oil redistribution’. (emphasis mine)

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The Big Crew Change: Turnover in the Oil Workforce

Posted by Rembrandt on March 17, 2007 - 11:30am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: big crew change, oil supply, personnel, schlumberger [list all tags]

The mainstay of the oil- and gas industry workforce will retire in the coming ten years. While there is a fair amount of thinking about how to fix this huge problem in the oil- and gas industry, this factor is being ignored in the energy scenarios of the International Energy Agency and Energy Information Administration. This posts looks at the numbers and potential effect on oil production of the retirement in the oil-industry.

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Some Predictions from the Time when Today Was the Future of Oil

Posted by Heading Out on December 12, 2006 - 6:53pm
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: cera, daniel yergin, demand, fuel use, nrc, oil supply, opec [list all tags]

After my post about the “The Prize” video there was a short discussion in comments about earlier predictions made by Dr Yergin, and the book “Energy Future - Report of the Energy Project at the Harvard Business School, ” which he co-authored with Robert Stobaugh. Now back when those studies came out I was also trying to read the tea leaves to see what sort of a future our own students would have. At the time coal seemed to get more attention and favor than it now holds, so there is a little more emphasis there. Let me begin with “Energy Future” which begins with an interesting paragraph (given it was written in 1979).
In 1968, the State Department sent the word to foreign governments-American oil production would soon reach the limits of its capacity. Friendly governments needed to know that the cushion of the U.S.’s extra capacity, which could be called into production during an emergency, was about to disappear. The end of an era was at hand.
There were two dramatic oil prices increases in the 1970’s, the first which multiplied the price of oil eight-fold by the end of 1974 over that when the State Department sent out the memo, and the second, which came with the fall of the Shah of Iran some five years later, when the price of oil went up another two-and-a-half times. As a result not only Dr Yergin's collaborative effort editing a second book “Global Insecurity – A Strategy for Energy and Economic Renewal”, (from which the last sentence came) but a significant number of other august bodies also began to produce their own projections. For your amusement I thought you might like to see some of them.
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Chinese demand growth continues (for oil and everything else too...)

Posted by Heading Out on December 7, 2006 - 11:08am
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: china, iran, kazakhstan, natural gas, oil supply, russia, solid fuel [list all tags]

As we look at the world market for fuels, one of the major growth areas in demand continues to be China. And, given their considerable potential impact on which product goes where and from what resource, in the future, it is interesting to put a few news items together and see where the wind is blowing.

One could start by noting that China's economy has been growing at 10.7% this year about 2.7% above the initial target of 8%, a number that has also been set as the official rate for next year, at this point. And while there are some publicity stunts, such as trying to stop private cars driving for a day, that will both highlight the current reported consumption of 8.7 mbd by those cars, it will also highlight the benefits of public transportation, one can assume that the current trend of higher than official growth rates may well continue. However even though the power generation system is currently hurting due to a drought that has lowered water levels, newly built coal and natural gas plants should cover the shortage.

China's seasonal hydropower output has been falling since August as dry weather shrinks reservoirs, but two years of rapidly rising coal- and gas-fired power generation should prevent another surge in oil demand.

Power generation from hydropower plants -- which can produce up to a quarter of China's electricity -- fell 10.3 percent on year in October, raising the burden on other plants to meet China's 10-plus percent growth in electricity demand.

Output was down by 8 percent and 4 percent, respectively, in the preceding two months, as water reserves shrank and the southwest was crippled by a drought that state media said was the worst in over a century.

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Income Trusts and the Canadian Energy Sector

Posted by Stoneleigh on November 21, 2006 - 11:26am in The Oil Drum: Canada
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: cost of capital, flow-though entities, income trusts, oil production, oil sands, oil supply, private equity buyouts, revenues, royalty trusts, tax policy [list all tags]

Finance Minster Jim Flaherty recently gave the income trust sector an unwelcome surprise. Prime Minister Harper had previously promised to "stop the Liberal attack on retirement savings and preserve income trusts by not imposing any new taxes on them", but the government underestimated the momentum towards trust conversion and was facing a very significant loss of tax revenue.

Not satisfied with merely preventing new trust conversions, Flaherty decided to impose retroactive tax measures on existing trusts. Many of these existing trusts happen to underpin conventional oil and gas production in Alberta - in fact the trust structure was initially developed to facilitate production from mature assets in the oilpatch. The proposed tax changes could therefore have a significant effect on energy production and the Alberta economy specifically. Departing Alberta Premier Ralph Klein welcomed the tax measure.

Alberta was hurt by the trust tax loophole. We were losing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

However, he and the rest of Alberta may well be far less pleased once the implications of this experiment in retroactive tax policy come home to roost.

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The IHS Energy View of Peak Oil

Posted by Dave Cohen on December 19, 2005 - 11:48pm
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: cera, ihs energy, ken chew, oil supply, peak oil [list all tags]

Recently, Robert Esser of CERA testified before congress World Oil Production capacity to increase up to 25% by 2015; No peak seen for decades, US Congressional Committee told.
"A detailed new audit of our own analysis and the enormous scale of reserve upgrades in existing fields, confirmed by the most extensive and complete databases on field production - the proprietary databases of IHS, of which CERA is now part - contradicts those who believe that peak oil is imminent," Esser testified.
CERA was acquired by IHS Energy in September, 2004, so of course this amounts to CERA auditing itself. It seemed that the IHS Energy website might be a good source on the IHS/CERA point of view and this turns out to be a bit of a gold mine. Indeed, there are a number of presentations there that give us some insight into their thinking. There is a lot of material there to sort through. In order to narrow this story somewhat, a presentation entitled Global Oil Supply Issues: Recent Trends and Future Possibilities (pdf) seemed a good place to start--not least because it contains some slides on IHS Energy's position on peak oil. The presentation is by Ken Chew, IHS Energy VP for Industry Performance and Strategy. Let's see what Chew had to say about the peak oil issue.
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