Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Non-OPEC oil output seen peaking by 2015: WoodMac
Reuters via Khaleej Times
SINGAPORE – Oil production outside the OPEC cartel will keep rising until about 2015, while global output will continue to expand through 2025 at least, a top analyst at consultancy Wood Mackenzie said on Tuesday.
Countering doomsday “peak oil” theorists who believe global oil production may be reaching its limits, Wood Mackenzie said research based on its database of field-by-field global data showed supplies should keep expanding for at least 20 years.
It expects global oil production outside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to rise to about 52 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2015 from 47 million bpd now, based mostly on existing fields and imminent developments, Kate Broughton, head of oils research at Wood Mackenzie, told Reuters.
That is an annual average growth rate of around 1.25 percent, while OPEC capacity will rise even more quickly.
The study may put to rest immediate concerns over the oil industry’s ability to cope with rapid demand growth in big consumers such as the United States and China, and highlights OPEC’s weakening market power in coming years.
…Broughton estimated that Saudi Arabia would have the capacity to pump some 16 million bpd by 2025, up from 11.3 million bpd now, despite concerns raised several years ago that its huge but older reservoirs may struggle to pump more.
…Wood Mackenzie also estimated that fuel produced from biofuels, gas-to-liquids, coal-to-liquids and shale oil would account for about 7 percent of capacity by 2025.
(24 April 2007)
Wood Mackenzie is apparently predicting peak oil at 2025, 18 years in the future. Global output will expand until then, says the analyst. Logically, if output is no longer expanding, it will either be flat or contracting — the sign of the peak.
Sadly, the data on which the prediction is made are presumably proprietary, meaning that there is no way for the public to assess its accuracy. Also, the report on which this prediction is based is not public (at least I couldn’t find it on the Wood Mackenzie’s website). In contrast, the peak oil community has made its analyses freely available and (for the most part) uses data that is public.
The reporter rather optimistically believes that one prediction based on secret data will
“put to rest” concerns about peak oil. Significantly, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) in its recent report examined about two dozen predictions about peak oil, and urged federal agencies to “reduce uncertainty about the likely timing of a peak.”
The article is also posted at Gulf Times.
UPDATE: Dave Cohen has a deeper look at Wood Mackenzie’s forecasts at ASPO-USA: Decline Rates and Non-OPEC Supply.
-BA
Five Geopolitical Feedback-Loops in Peak Oil
Jeff Vail, Energy Intelligence
It is quite common to hear “experts” explain that the current tight oil markets are due to “above-ground factors,” and not a result of a global peaking in oil production.
In reality, geological peaking is driving the geopolitical events that constitute the most significant “above-ground factors” such as the chaos in Iraq and Nigeria, the nationalization in Venezuela and Bolivia, etc. Geological peaking spawns positive feedback loops within the geopolitical system. Critically, these loops are not separable from the geological events-they are part of the broader “system” of Peak Oil.
Existing peaking models are based on the logistics curves demonstrated by past peaking in individual fields or oil producing regions. Global peaking is an entirely different phenomenon-the geology behind the logistics curves is the same, but global peaking will create far greater geopolitical side-effects, even in regions with stable or rising oil production.
As a result, these geopolitical side-effects of peaking global production will accelerate the rate of production decline, as well as increase the impact of that production decline by simultaneously increasing marginal demand pressures. The result: the right side of the global oil production curve will not look like the left…whatever logistics curve is fit to the left side of the curve (where historical production increased), actual declines in the future will be sharper than that curve would predict.
Here are five geopolitical processes, each a positive-feedback loop, and each an accelerant of declining oil production:
(23 April 2007)
Gazprom’s uncertainty of supply due to underinvestment
Andrea R. Mihailescu, UPI
Russian gas giant Gazprom could find itself unable to meet demand down the line due to persistent underinvestment in exploration and extraction, said European Commission Director Christian Cleutinx, the European Union’s point man for energy contacts with Russia.
“We believe Gazprom might not be able to deliver,” Cleutinx told Russian news agency Interfax in Vienna Tuesday, noting that Russian Economy and Trade Minister German Gref had been quite open that Gazprom’s future investment policy was far from clear.
The EU receives about a quarter of its oil and gas supplies from Russia’s Gazprom, which enjoys an export monopoly. The company is busy acquiring downstream assets abroad but is shunning investment in new fields to replace ones that are near or past peaking.
(24 April 2007)
Contributor LW writes:
I was struck by this reference to peaking: “[Gazprom’] is busy acquiring downstream assets abroad but is shunning investment in new fields to replace ones that are near or past peaking.” . Gazprom provides 25 percent of the EU’s gas and has an exclusive export monopoly.
