Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Stella Farrington The oil industry faces more reserves downgrade shocks unless disclosure regulations are radically overhauled, said Matthew Simmons, chief executive and chairman of investment bank Simmons & Co.
WHEN Hu Jintao, the president of China, went half way round the world in February to see President Omar Bongo of Gabon, he was not merely paying a courtesy visit to the African ruler of a population one-thousandth the size of China’s. Hu was after oil.
PetroChina, China’s largest oil producer, has made the nation’s biggest oil discovery in a decade, bolstering its reserves by at least a third at a time when oil prices are at a record and the country’s demand is soaring, the company said Thursday.
The most negative theorists believe that a worldwide crisis of war and famine will be triggered not when we run out of oil, but when demand outstrips supply in a few years.
WITH heavy investment fund buying driving oil prices up 27 per cent this year to a 21-year high, opinion is divided on whether large funds are buying on the basis of solid market fundamentals or creating a bubble, the Financial Times said.
Natural gas volumes needed to help the oil industry unlock Canada’s vast oil sands are expected to nearly triple in the next decade, just as production is waning and prices are surging, the country’s energy regulator said Thursday.
NOT SO long ago, a certain well-known international figure penned a heart-felt speech he called his “Letter to the American People”. In it, he said: “You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of your international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world.” The author was Osama bin Laden.
Saudi oil officials are considering when to start expanding their country’s long-term production capacity to stay ahead of the surging global demand for crude, executives at the state-run Saudi oil company said Thursday.
It is probably too early to definitively say whether the Hubbert model can be used for coal production in the U.S., but the examples of British coal, U.S. arsenic, and U.S. manganese seem to indicate that a Hubbert curve may be able to predict future production trends for U.S. coal.
Northern Alberta’s oilsands are expected to more than double production to 2.2 million barrels per day by 2015 and boost Canada’s standing as a major oil producer, but it will likely do little to meet the world’s growing energy demands.
Promotional text about a new book on Peak Oil by From The Wilderness Energy Editor, Dale Allen Pfeiffer.
The U.S. Agriculture Department’s chief economist, Keith Collins, said rising energy and fertilizer costs could add $1 billion to U.S. crop production costs.
