Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Western oil companies are running out of likely places to look, and significant finds are growing rarer. With the most accessible areas either already picked clean or kept off limits for political reasons, exploration teams are having to push into harsher, more remote and less promising territory, where the costs and risks are high.
Some say the estimates of the new reserves may be too optimistic. But even if the oil is there, Mexico may have hard time getting at it.
A bevy of scholars and policy analysts have seized this important moment of high prices and oil-related war to write about petroleum. Three new titles focus on the evocative political implications of our national chemical dependence.
Oil prices eased yesterday as top world exporter Saudi Arabia slashed prices for its crude sales to the United States and Europe, however their excess production is heavier grade oil and not to refiners’ liking.
Annell Bay, Royal Dutch-Shell’s exploration director for the Americas, won’t speculate about the issue of global oil peak, but expresses his desire to see ‘anywhere currently off-limits’ opened up for exploration.
Even though oil prices have risen 30 percent in the last year, the United States’ gusto for gasoline has not been shaken.
The world’s oil giants may shy away from open book-keeping, but when national governments take the lead they have little choice but to fall into line.
Shares in some exploration firms — often a boom-or-bust bet for investors — have tripled and quadrupled in value in the past year, outperforming the sector and giant integrated peers such as Shell and Total.
The first round of the public announcement of the blocks offered for investment in oil exploration fields across Libya was held yesterday in Tripoli.
“The odd thing about oil prices in the last 20 years was how unbelievably low they were, as opposed to how odd it is that oil prices are at the level they are today.”
Dr Muhanna gives five reasons for higher oil prices excluding oil depletion.
Consumers may be up in arms, but a host of law firms are reaping the benefits of the UK’s dwindling gas supplies as preparations hot up for the country’s first liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminals.
