Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Predicting another oil shock, analysts John Westwood Ltd., Canterbury, England, said depleting oil reserves, coupled with growing energy demand, will result in sustained oil price increases, greater capital investment in natural gas production, drastic conservation regulations, and fevered development of renewable energy substitutes funded by “windfall” profits.
“China’s growing weight in world consumption virtually assures a heavy long-term impact on energy prices, trade, and investment. In a decade, China has gone from self-sufficiency to being the most dynamic factor in the world oil market and one of the main elements in today’s $40-plus per barrel price,” said the report by Daniel Yergin and Scott Roberts.
Australian Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson who less than a week ago dismissed concerns about peak oil, today acknowledged it.
The world can descend into hell to fight over oil, or we can start now in reducing our reliance on it. We can live in peace with less oil, or we can die in war to try to maintain our lifestyle for a little.
Energy industry analyst and forecaster Henry Groppe says the days of crude oil prices at $25 to $30 a barrel are coming to an end.
Even though it costs less to find a barrel of oil on the Norwegian shelf than many other places in the world, we do not manage to replace production through new discoveries. Now Norway must also tax its reserves due to a low level of exploration activity.
There is a growing consensus that the crucial turning point in oil output will probably occur in the second half of this decade, in or around 2007. It will be an energy crisis that will dwarf anything we have ever experienced.
Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas newsletter.
Oil production in the UK has typically has a seasonal pattern, which makes it a bit of a surprise that this Feb was the worst month on the DTI’s site for oil production.
World oil demand will rise the most since 1988 as economic growth accelerates and consumption surges in China, said the International Energy Agency, an adviser to 26 industrialized countries on oil policy.
In the April 2004 issue of the magazine the Middle East I found a statement that Vice- President Dick Cheney had made in a speech at the London Institute of Petroleum Autumn lunch in 1999 when he was Chairman of Halliburton. A key passage from his speech was: “That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day.”
NEW YORK/LONDON – Oil prices bounced back to 13-year peaks above $40 on Tuesday on doubts that top world exporter Saudi Arabia’s call for a rise in OPEC quotas would add much actual supply to a tight international market.
