Peak Oil News

Canada's oil production dropped in 2005 for the first in six years as conventional supplies wane, but that should change as oilsands operations continue their rapid ramp-up. According to a Statistics Canada report released Monday, companies pumped out 858 million barrels of crude last year, down 2.3 per cent from the year before. One of the key reasons for this drop was a major fire at Suncor Energy (TSX:SU), which cut production at Canada's second largest oilsands operation in half for three-quarters of the year. "In general, this occurred mostly because of lower output from the conventional sector as well as unplanned interruptions in the non-conventional sector," the statistics agency said. » Source: CBC News With Suncor's operations repaired and producing more than pre-fire levels, Canada's oilsands production hit a record 1.2 million daily barrels earlier this year, ...

The discovery of potential deep-water oil and gas reserves off Cuba's northern coast has caught the eye of the world's energy-hungry nations. The US could see rigs drilling for Cuban oil only 50 miles off Florida. India's state-run oil firm ONGC, already signed up to exploration in the area, has just upped its stake - the latest to place its bets on a Cuban oil rush. The 44-year-old US trade embargo, meanwhile, continues to bar American companies from doing business with the Caribbean island. » Source: BBC News But, some observers are asking, can the US really afford to risk losing out on valuable energy resources only 50 miles (80km) off Key West? The prospect of nations such as China, Venezuela or India lining up to exploit Cuban oil has already led some politicians to call for the embargo to be relaxed. They want US ...

The curtain will fall on North Sea oil production by 2012 if not enough is done to maintain development and exploration, according to a forthcoming report from the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee (OILC). The report, due out by the end of September, will reignite the debate on depletion rates in the North Sea. The OILC report will claim that while in the short- term there has been a slow-down in the rate of decline, from 17% in April to 8% in August, the long-term outlook is that the rate of decline will be established at 17% by 2007/2008 without significant increases in investment. » Source: Sunday Herald The report draws its figures from real-time metre readings from production rigs and updated data from reserves analysts – which claim that significant features of the geology of the region will result in less oil being ...

One of the hazards involved in energy analysis is placing too much emphasis on raw data, like the kind one finds in the U.S. Energy Information Agency’s weekly and monthly reports. While rawness may be a desirable attribute in certain meats and vegetables, it is less desirable in statistical information that is susceptible to errors requiring a correction at some later point. It is even more exasperating when the changes are significant enough to warrant junking a hypothesis that explained the earlier results well but doesn’t fit at all with the newly redrawn picture. The latest example of this recurring pattern occurred this week when EIA released a compilation of supply and consumption data from January through June this year. In that statistical summary, EIA reported that demand for gasoline inched up by 0.6 percent from the year-earlier period. But in the weekly reports, EIA’s estimates of increased demand had been ...

Peak Oil is the theory, on the verge of becoming conventional wisdom, that the world's petroleum supply is topping out and will not be able to meet global demand soaring along with the economies of China and India. But a successful test in a mammoth field deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico, announced on Sept. 5 by Chevron (CVX), Devon Energy (DVN), and Norway's Statoil (STO), should help put that scary scenario on hold for decades. One huge oil reserve, even if it could rival the 1968 discovery of Prudhoe Bay and increase U.S. reserves by up to 50%, will not turn around the world's tight energy markets, of course. It won't even bring the U.S. close to energy independence when oil and gas get into full-fledged production four or five years from now. » Source: BusinessWeek But the capability to find and ...

China, the world's second-largest oil consumer, hopes dialogue and conciliatory policies will blunt tensions caused by its growing energy needs, a Foreign Ministry official said on Wednesday. Liu Jianchao, the Chinese Foreign Ministry's chief spokesman, said China's growing appetite for natural resources would not put it in conflict with other countries, and that it was actively pursuing alternatives to imported oil. "At the moment we are trying to rely on ourselves for energy supply and at the same time trying to find clean, alternative energy resources," Liu said at the Reuters China Century Summit. » Source: Reuters China gets more than 40 percent of its oil from abroad and most of that oil arrives by sea. But Liu said that while China was concerned about the guaranteed supply of crude, its needs would not put it in conflict with other countries. "We are ready to work with the United States, with the European ...

Japan needs friends who are rich in natural resources, and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made no bones about what he wanted from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan when he became the first Japanese premier to visit the two countries last month. The country is hardly alone, however, in looking to parts of the former Soviet Union to meet its energy needs from new sources, and indeed, rivalry among East Asian nations may well intensify as they compete to woo the region. Only days after Koizumi left the region last week, China National Petroleum Corp., China`s largest oil producer, said that together with Korea National Oil Corp., Malaysia`s Petronas, Lukoil of Russia, and local group Uzbekneftegaz, it had obtained a 20-percent stake in a joint oil and gas exploration project in Uzbekistan`s Aral Sea extending about 10,000 square kilometers that potentially has 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. » Source: M&C News Each ...

There has been a lot of talk recently about the "spike" in oil prices. Spike is, of course, a reassuring word: it implies there's a downward slope on the other side. Just the other day, editorial writers and business-page commentators were reassuring us that oil at $75 (about R540) a barrel was "unsustainable", and that prices would fall as supply and demand even out. But opinion is moving towards the Goldman Sachs 2005 forecast of a "super-spike", in which prices could go as high as $105 (R750). » Source: motoring.co.za At present, we are told, demand is increasing while supply is insufficient as a result of oil companies' under-investment during the 1990s, when oil prices were low. But now (says the business correspondent of The Guardian), "the majors are looking for - and finding - oil like never before". And ...

Underneath the high, scrub-covered rangeland of northwest Colorado is the world's biggest oil field. Getting the oil out of the ground, however, is one of the world's biggest headaches. The area's deposits of oil shale are believed to be larger than all the oil reserves of the Middle East. But past attempts to get at this oil locked in tarry rock have cost billions of dollars and raised the prospect of strip-mining large areas of the Rocky Mountain West. Now, as the federal government makes another push to develop oil shale, Shell and other companies say they have developed techniques that may extract this treasure with much less environmental impact. » Source: San Francisco Chronicle Shell's project is stunningly complex. Instead of strip-mining the rock and then processing it, Shell plans to ...

In the 19th century, Russian and British diplomats, officers, and spies sketched maps of central Asia, carving political boundaries into the steppes and mountains as they played "The Great Game" to win control of the region. Today, there is a new map of central Asia, pored over by governments and oil company executives. It is known as "hub and spoke." The hub is the Caspian Sea, and the spokes are the multiple pipe-lines emanating from it, representing potential export routes for the vast oil and gas resources that lie beneath. Today's superpower struggle is over not the land itself but the hydrocarbons under it-believed to be among the world's largest untapped fossil fuel resources. And there are some new players. While Russia still seeks to maintain control over its former satellites, China, with its seemingly endless thirst for energy, ...