Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
When the question of oil and gas depletion is raised the flat earth fraternity often can’t help themselves laughing whilst pointing out “but we’ve never produced more than we are today, the world is awash in oil and gas”. A sobering lesson is to be learnt by looking at the current depletion rates in New Zealand’s Maui natural gas field.
Indonesia said it may need to buy 54 spot cargoes of LNG between 2005-2007 to meet its overseas sales commitments. Indonesia is the world’s top exporter of LNG, but has been struggling to meet its contractual commitments for the super-cooled, compressed gas as output has declined and supplies have been diverted to the domestic market, mainly to fertiliser plants.
Mexico’s Pemex has detected vast new oil deposits in the Gulf of Mexico that could double the country’s total reserves and boost its oil output to rival Saudi Arabia’s, the state oil monopoly said on Monday.
The release of Julian Darley’s new book is very timely considering that the prestigious Oil and Gas Journal has just this week come out with a forecast of global gas production peak for 2019.
“The era of cheap energy is over,” Mark Clare, managing director of British Gas, said.
At a time when the nation is chafing at its persistent dependence on foreign oil, it is becoming clear that the United States may be headed for the same situation with natural gas.
The head of exploration and production at Mexican state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, said Thursday that the decline of the country’s biggest oil field has been delayed until 2006.
US gas production during the second quarter showed a 3.8% decline compared with second quarter of last year.
Although the former Soviet Union has pumped crude for years, only recently has Russia emerged as the world’s second-biggest oil exporter and — if the Bush administration has its way — a potentially important new supplier of both oil and gas to the United States. Russia’s crude oil production rivals that of Saudi Arabia, and analysts say its reserves could provide the output answer for the United States, China, South Korea and Japan, which have grown increasingly wary of their dependence on producers in the Middle East.
With the cost of a key fuel rising, the state’s chemical plants are closing and thousands of workers are being laid off.
The Argentine government on Friday said that in the first six months of the year a plan to reduce household energy consumption yielded savings of 8 percent on domestic gas and 3 percent on electricity, which were used to supply growing industrial demand.
In best-case scenarios, like Exxon Mobil, production is relatively flat. Many more energy companies are pumping less oil than they were a year ago.
