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Nigeria Seeks Control of Energy Industry
AFX via Rigzone
For decades, Nigerian governments were content to let international oil companies do the pumping, merely taking taxes, royalties and a cut of profits.
Now with global oil prices surging near US$100 a barrel, Africa’s leading oil exporter wants to review agreements allowing oil companies to recoup their costs before sharing profits from deep water exploration, and consolidate all its joint venture oil assets into one potentially powerful company with a global reach.
(20 November 2007)
The 10 Oil Producers Most Likely to Shock the World (10/tie: Angola/Equatorial Guinea)
Energy Tech Stocks
ETS Editor’s Note: These rankings are solely the opinion of EnergyTechStocks.com. They are based in large part on an extensive briefing by Charles Esser, Brussels-based energy analyst for the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental organization dedicated to preventing and resolving deadly conflict.
Though both are relatively stable at the present time, one has an active insurgency, the other a government so corrupt that civil conflict is always a possibility. Each produces hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day, the loss of which likely would spook oil markets and cause at least a temporary spike in prices, even if the price at the time was already $100 a barrel.
Thus both Angola and Equatorial Guinea make the first EnergyTechStocks.com list of the 10 – well, actually it’s 12 because, as we’ll see, there is also a tie for ninth – countries most likely to roil the world should their internal problems burst into a conflict that disrupts their output of oil.
(21 November 2007)
Bad News from Canada May Raise Short & Long Term Commodity Prices of Oil and Natural Gas
Energy Tech Stocks
A new report from Canada’s National Energy Board says the U.S. should expect exports of Canadian natural gas to the U.S. to fall approximately 30% between now and 2015. The report from Canada’s energy regulator further warns that, due to rising costs, the U.S. should expect to import less oil from the Alberta oil sands region than previously forecast.
This double dose of bad news could have a major impact on both the short- and long-term prices of both commodities. The U.S. is counting heavily on increased imports of Canadian oil, specifically to offset an expected decline in Mexican oil, and generally to counter the greater competition for oil among net importing countries as global demand continues its precipitous rise. After Saudi Arabia, Alberta’s tar-sands region is believed to contain the largest oil reserves in the world.
(21 November 2007)
New Oil Crisis: An Engineer Shortage
David Von Drehle, TIME Magazine
You’ve heard the reasons for high oil prices: instability in the Middle East, booming demand in China and India, the sagging dollar. Now add another one to the list: Engineers.
The world doesn’t have enough of them. From Alberta to Azerbaijan, the fervent hunt for new reserves of oil and natural gas is running up against a shortage of experienced oil patch professionals. “We anticipate a 10 to 15% shortfall” in the number of veteran engineers and project managers needed to lead the search for new energy supplies, says Candida Scott, director of cost research at Cambridge Energy Research Associates.
This comes as no surprise to people inside the industry. Membership in the Society of Petroleum Engineers has been graying for most of the past decade.
(20 November 2007)
