North Sea: Oil reserves ‘may stay untapped’
An independent oil company says that more than ten billion barrels of North Sea oil could remain untapped.
An independent oil company says that more than ten billion barrels of North Sea oil could remain untapped.
IN July 2002, the Pentagon’s Defence Policy Board was given a briefing by Laurent Murawiec of the Rand Institute. The advisory group of intellectuals and government officials heard Saudi Arabia described as the enemy of the United States. The Saudis were the “kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent”.
Indonesia is a net oil importer, and as such, should leave OPEC, says its former energy minister. Meanwhile, the high oil prices are have a damaging effect on the nation’s economy.
The U.S. energy secretary, Spencer Abraham, praised on Friday Russia’s plans to increase oil exports to America and highlighted natural gas as the next long-term U.S.- Russia joint energy project.
Scrambling to control high oil prices, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will meet this weekend in Beirut before its official conference there next week and may pursue a plan to raise quotas sharply or do away with them entirely, an OPEC spokesman said yesterday.
The late M. King Hubbert was a visionary in the world of oil and, accordingly, he was either revered or reviled. Then he was forgotten. Now, in a time of oil shortage, some economists are taking a furtive look as his work.
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.
Kazakhstan would like to construct a pipeline through Iran to the Persian Gulf as the main outlet for its natural resources, the country’s president said.
Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Cos. reduced its 2003 earnings by $203 million Friday, in an annual report delayed by two months due to the scandal arising from the company’s downgrading of its oil and gas reserves.
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.
With demand high, supplies squeezed, prices climbing and refineries already running flat out, what if something really went wrong? Something like a terror attack on crucial oil installations in Saudi Arabia or in the United States, or something less sinister but just as disruptive, like a fire or accident at a major refinery or port or a flare-up of civil or labor turmoil in Nigeria or Venezuela?
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.