Heading out

Where we really stand with respect to oil and natural gas supplies

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A few days ago, I gave a presentation in Poland that talks about how much difficulty the world is having maintaining its oil production. The presentation was not set up to be a response to Jad Mouawad’s recent New York Times article, Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of New Discoveries, but in many ways it is one. Our recent discoveries really have not been enough to make up for our many production problems elsewhere. We are having problems not only with oil, but with natural gas. The solution the financially distressed world is increasingly considering is…well, read the story to see.

Interview with Sadad al Husseini—“The Facts Are There”

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Question: Assume for the moment that declines in demand have flattened and that we resume modest growth in demand in a year or so. Are there adequate new oil projects in the pipeline to meet rising demand for a few more years?

Sadad: I’ve been tracking the number of projects, globally, for a long time both in the Middle East and elsewhere—Russia, Brazil, west coast of Africa, and others. A lot of this information is in the public domain, so there is no mystery there. The International Energy Agency recently reported on the same numbers. The bottom line is that there are not enough projects…

The Season of the Witch

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In my father’s house are many mansions. Surely one of them has a room with no elephants in it….

Not to crunch too many metaphors right here at the top, but a consensus seems to be firming up in the animate jello of the Internet that we have entered the Season of the Witch. An odor of ripeness fills the virtual air — something between dead carp and apples baking. Whatever else appears to be going on in the upper stories and verdigris-tinged turrets of capital finance…the most perplexing part is that there hardly seems any safe place to preserve one’s savings.

Our oily food

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In one of his first speeches as USA’s president, Barack Obama declared that, “No single issue is as fundamental to our future as energy”. This is the same viewpoint that I have had since the mid-1990s. Energy is the foundation for our daily bread, our warm home and our work. If our energy security crumbles then our society will also crack.

Is the Global Oil Tank Half-Full, Is It Half-Empty…or Are We Running on Fumes?

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In his article in the New York Times September 24, “Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of New Discoveries”, staff reporter Jad Mouawad cites oil discoveries totaling ten billion barrels for the first half of 2009. The Tiber field in the Gulf of Mexico alone accounts for four to six billion barrels of crude that may eventually find its way into the world oil system. Indeed, this year has seen discovery results that could end up being the best since 2000. But, the article notes, the new oil was expensive to find, it will be expensive to extract, and both exploration and production are only possible because of high levels of investment and sophisticated, expensive new technologies.