Prices & supplies – Feb 11

February 11, 2009

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Merrill Lynch says global oil production will decline further in coming years

Shashank Shekhar, Business24/7 (United Arab Emirates)
Global oil production decline rate is set to accelerate in the coming years, according to a new research report.

“The global decline rate has averaged at least 4.5 per cent year-on-year in recent years. These rates, however, could accelerate further over the next few years,” Merrill Lynch said in its recent update.

The New York-based financial advisory company produced several reasons in support of its argument.

It blamed the emphasis on developing small oil fields in past years and lack of regular investments for the expected decline.

Merrill said the non-Opec oil production may have already peaked, implying, non-Opec producers that meet 60 per cent of the world’s oil demand will have a stagnated production. It apprehended that a resulting deceleration in production may aggravate further due to the credit crunch.
(11 February 2009)


Henry Groppe inteview
(video)
Business News Network
BNN chats with Henry Groppe, partner, Groppe, Long and Littell; and Dean Orrico, managing director and CIO, Middlefield Group.
(6 February 2009)
Investment-oriented interview. Starts out by defining contango and the outlook for near-term oil prices. He thinks oil prices will double this year. At about 13:20, Mr. Groppe discusses Hubbert’s Peak. -BA


The Price of Oil this summer

Heading Out, Bit Tooth Energy
Devin, over at Bleakonomy had posted a comment this morning on the future of gas prices which got me to thinking a little about where they might go this year. Trying to get some sense for where we stand on this needs some information, which I can get from, for example, the Department of Transportation as well as the EIA. Let me see if I can go through the logic of my answer with a series of questions and replies.

Firstly we recognize that in order to stabilize prices OPEC has cut production, so that there is not as much oil available. For the sake of this example I am going to make some very crude approximations

… So if I were to make a prediction for oil prices this summer I would suspect that they would be around $65 a barrel. Of course the economies of the world are still somewhat in the tank, but if they do not get much worse (and thus drop demand further), then (having left a loophole a battleship could sail through) this would be my prediction.
(10 February 2009)


Tags: Consumption & Demand, Fossil Fuels, Industry, Oil