Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Oil majors are whistling past the graveyard
Chris Nelder, Smart Planet
The world’s “supermajor” independent oil companies — BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, and Total — project a rosy future, assuring us that oil will be abundant for decades to come. But in fact they’re spending record amounts to keep oil flowing, while their production is actually falling.
The BP Energy Outlook 2030, released in January 2013, confidently asserts that oil production will keep pace with demand. Through 2030, it projects, “More than half of the growth will come from non-OPEC sources, with rising production from U.S. tight oil, Canadian oil sands, Brazilian deepwater and biofuels more than offsetting mature declines elsewhere.” Indeed, BP says, the “once-accepted wisdom has been turned on its head. Fears over oil running out –- to which BP has never subscribed –- appear increasingly groundless.”
Peak oil was never about “running out.” That’s a strawman argument. The word “peak” in peak oil simply refers to the maximum production rate of oil, as I have explained ad nauseam. While oil producers constantly trumpet new discoveries and rising reserves, they tend to avoid talking about production rates.
But reserves are meaningless if they don’t amount to an increasing rate of production. If you had a billion dollars to your name, but could only withdraw $1,000 a year, would you be worried about running out of money or paying your bills?…
(20 March 2013)
Peak Oil Is Dead
Rob Wile, Business Insider
Yesterday, Citi commodities analysts Seth Kleinman and Ed Morse declared that "the end was nigh" for oil demand.
They’re not alone…
(27 March 2013)
Link to Research Note ‘Global Oil Demand Growth – The End Is Nigh’
The Reward for Being Right About Peak Oil: Scorn Heaped With Derision
Stephen Hren, Huffington Post
Right before the end of the millennium, the clues started piling up. The world had been scoured many times over in the quest for the ultimate bounty, gushers of light sweet crude.
So former oil geologists like Colin Campbell and Ken Deffeyes started ringing the alarm bell. "Hey!" they shouted at the top of their lungs, "we can’t maintain this flow of oil forever! Even if we use all the non-conventional sources like tar sands, Arctic oil, etc the amount is going to get less and less over the course of this century. And those other kinds of oil are a lot dirtier and carbon-intensive than the oil we’ve been using!"
What did they predict? And how close were they to being right? Let’s take a quick look, lest we get overwhelmed with the cornucopian hyperbole that bombards us every day…
(26 March 2013)
Russia Lets China Into Arctic Rush as Energy Giants Embrace
Rakteem Katakey & Will Kennedy, Bloomberg
Russia’s decision to give China a share of prized Arctic exploration licenses as part of a “breakthrough” deal signals how the world’s largest oil and gas producer and the biggest energy consumer are redrawing the global energy map.
Under agreements signed during President Xi Jinping’s first state trip abroad, China may double oil imports from state-run OAO Rosneft (ROSN) to more than 620,000 barrels a day, challenging Germany as the biggest buyer of Russian crude. The two also plan to sign an agreement this year to build a pipeline to ship Russian gas to China.
(25 March 2013)
Offshore oil rig at sunset – arbyreed/flickr
