ODAC Newsletter – Dec 4

Crude oil dropped below $76 a barrel, poised for a weekly decline, after falling as a report showed service industries in the U.S. unexpectedly contracted in November, a sign fuel demand may be slow to recover.

Oil fell as much as 1.4 percent yesterday as the Institute for Supply Management’s index of non-manufacturing businesses that make up almost 90 percent of the economy narrowed to 48.7 from 50.6 in October. A Labor Department report today will probably show that the U.S. economy lost jobs in November, according to a Bloomberg News survey…

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. expects crude oil to average $110 a barrel in New York in 2011 as demand from developing markets exhausts spare capacity, the bank said in its Commodities Outlook today.

West Texas Intermediate oil will average $90 a barrel next year with prices rising toward the end of 2010, the New York- based bank said. Crude oil traded near $76 on the New York Mercantile Exchange today…

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries increased crude-oil production in November to the highest level in 11 months as members took advantage of rising prices, a Bloomberg News survey showed.

Output averaged 28.9 million barrels a day last month, up 110,000 barrels from October, according to the survey of oil companies, producers and analysts…

A version of this article was published in New Scientist on 3 December 2009.

The oil crisis is not dead, only sleeping, according to an emerging consensus. The price may have collapsed from last year’s all-time high of $147 per barrel to around $75 today, as the recession grinds away at demand for crude, but nobody expects that to last when the economy recovers. Analysts Goldman Sachs predict oil will cost $95 by the end of next year, while Deutsche Bank reckons $175 by 2016. The International Energy Agency (IEA), the OECD’s energy watchdog, forecasts a potential “supply crunch” around the middle of the decade.

Yet there is no shortage of oil – at least not underground. Many commentators attribute the $147 spike to the approach of peak oil – the moment when global oil production goes into decline because of geological limits – which should happen, so the theory goes, when we have consumed about half the oil that will ever be produced. And it’s true that by 2008 the world had consumed just under 1.2 trillion barrels of oil, against estimated original reserves of about 2.4 trillion barrels. But that’s just the conventional oil, which is only a fraction of the total.

Conventional reserves are dwarfed by a whole range of non-conventional oil resources, such as the Canadian tar sands, oil shale, and synthetic liquid fuels made from gas or coal, which according to the IEA expand the total oil resource to 9 trillion barrels (see graph). And so far the non-conventionals are almost entirely untouched. So how could there possibly be an oil supply crunch, let alone peak oil, any time soon?…

Crude is still being discovered; existing fields are not being exploited to the full. So it’s hard to predict the exact point at which the world’s dwindling reserves will precipitate a crisis. But it’s coming.

Massive new oil finds off the southern states of America and Brazil plus exciting discoveries in currently non-producing countries such as Ghana and Uganda sit uneasily with claims the world is running out of crude…

Gas will be at the heart of Royal Dutch Shell’s production strategy ahead of oil as the world attempts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, according to the energy group’s new chief executive, Peter Voser.

Delivering an update on Shell’s two flagship gas projects in Qatar, which are costing the group $21bn (£12.6bn), Mr Voser admitted that one – a liquiefied natural gas (LNG) plant – would overrun by about 10 months…

Two cheers for Royal Dutch Shell, which has solved the emissions problem with a novel fuel that is superclean. Next year, in a giant refining complex in the Gulf, the oil company will begin producing a colourless, odourless diesel with almost zero atmospheric pollutants.

It solves every emissions problem except the one that begins with the letter “C”. Shell’s fuel, a liquid synthesised from natural gas, will make the air cleaner, but it will not save the world from climate change. On a well-to-wheels basis, GTL from Pearl, Shell’s fuel factory in Qatar, emits as much carbon dioxide as conventional diesel, the company admits. Some critics claim that GTL emits even more carbon than the stuff sold at garages today…

Britain is to start piping gas directly from Russia for the first time in 2012, according to the chief executive of Nord Stream, the Kremlin-backed gas pipeline venture.

In an interview with The Times in Switzerland, Matthias Warnig said that more than 4 billion cubic metres of gas a year had already been booked for the UK market through the pipeline, which is due to enter service by the end of 2012…

IRAN announced a huge escalation in its nuclear enrichment programme last night in defiance of major world powers.

Days after it was condemned by all five permanent members of the United Nations security council over its secret uranium plant, it announced it planned to build 10 more…

The United Nations body in charge of managing carbon trading has suspended approvals for dozens of Chinese wind farms amid questions over the country’s use of industrial policy to obtain money under the scheme…

Small-scale renewable energy could provide 6% of Britain’s electricity needs – equivalent to more than two Sizewell B nuclear stations or the Drax coal-fired plant – by 2020 if the government improves the terms of a new deal for producers due to be launched next April, Friends of the Earth says today.

The environmental campaign group used figures obtained from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and prepared by consultants Poyry and Element Energy to show that introducing a more ambitious scheme than that currently proposed would add only an average £2.37 a year to household electricity bills over the next four years – just £1.20 a year more than the government is already proposing to add to fund the scheme…

Advanced biofuels will not be in widespread use until about 2020, the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell has said, puncturing hopes that they could be on the verge of a commercial breakthrough…

The government unveiled its vision of hi-tech homes last night with “smart” meters acting as a cornerstone of a more efficient, greener electricity grid system.

British Gas and other power suppliers have been given responsibility for installing meters in each of Britain’s 26m homes by 2020, enabling them to read consumption levels remotely and end the use of estimated bills. The gadgets would also allow homeowners to monitor their own gas and electricity usage – and production if they have solar panels or wind turbines…

British consumers could end up spending billions of pounds on redundant smart metering technology if the introduction of the energy saving devices to all 26 million homes in the country is rushed through too quickly, the chief executive of National Grid said…

Renewable energy manufacturers have warned of their “frustration” after the government’s flagship grant scheme for solar power ran out of money less than halfway through the financial year.

The UK PV Association, which represents companies making and installing solar panels, warned that they were “in limbo” after the Low Carbon Building Programme Phase 2 was closed to solar applications this week…

Alistair Buchanan, chief executive of the energy regulator, told MPs at a select committee meeting that the power companies may be restricted in their investment in large energy projects because “their balance sheets are full”.

“The major energy companies have serious capital constraints,” he said. “The four of the six that are European, including EDF and E.ON, have announced substantial capital constraints and are looking at assets with regards to sales…

Five of the “big six” energy suppliers still overcharge customers on pre-pay meters despite new Ofgem rules, according to the National Housing Federation (NHF).

The energy watchdog imposed a limit of £88 on how much more pre-pay customers could be charged than those paying by direct debit following a major investigation in September into whether pre-pay customers were being penalised…

Governments around the world could make rapid, substantial and relatively cheap cuts to carbon emissions by pursuing energy efficiency in place of more ambitious, but expensive, technological solutions, says a new study…

New technology including smart meters, “intelligent” electricity grids and teleconferencing systems could cut global carbon dioxide emissions by up to 20 per cent, according to the chairman of BP.

Carl-Henric Svanberg, the newly appointed chairman of Britain’s biggest company, said such technology would play a significant role in tackling climate change by cutting energy wastage and demand for domestic and international travel…

Pledges made so far by governments to cut greenhouse gases are not enough for an effective pact to fight climate change, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso said on Sunday (29 November).

Speaking to reporters in Nanjing, eastern China, just over a week before the start of UN climate talks in Copenhagen on 7 December, Barroso said that taken as a whole, the proposed curbs were encouraging…

An expert group set up by the European Commission has begun screening a list of forty-nine “potentially critical” raw materials whose availability to industry could come under threat as global competition for natural resources intensifies, EurActiv has learned.

The economy expanded 7.9pc in the three months to the end of September compared with a year earlier, fresh figures showed today. The rate of growth was up from 6.1pc in the second quarter and comfortably exceeded the 6.3pc expectation of economists.

The news helped drive Indian shares higher and buoyed demand for the rupee. India joins other economies across Asia – Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore – in growing faster than many expected. The stronger number is also likely to give Duvvuri Subbarao, the Governor of India’s central bank, the room to remove some of the stimulus measures put in place…

Two reports on the sector showed recovery continued in November. China’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) was unchanged at 55.2, where anything above 50 indicates expansion. It marked the ninth consecutive month of growth in manufacturing activity in China.

Separately, HSBC’s manufacturing PMI painted a stronger picture, rising to a record high of 55.7 in November from 55.4 in October. HSBC said that Chinese manufacturers reported stronger external demand, “largely reflecting an improvement in global economic conditions”. The positive news pushed the yuan slightly higher against the dollar to 6.8270. Both surveys showed that cost pressures in the sector grew last month…

It came in a short statement about the restructuring of Dubai World, one of the emirate’s biggest and best-known companies, with the big news buried near the end…