Olieprijs op 55 dollar; OPEC verlaagt productie

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The oil and gas rig count, which is the number of rigs currently online, is widely regarded as an important indicator in

assessing the health of the oil industry. It can give investors and companies an idea of current demand, as well as provide

clues for the immediate future.
Baker Hughes: Weekly Rig Count

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Op dinsdag 26 augustus 2008 18:04 schreef kortsluiting87 het volgende:
TS is blackgold van een ander, niet nader te noemen, forum?

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TEHRAN - Iran’s oil minister said on Monday he expects OPEC to work on preventing the falling trend in crude prices and also to study oversupply in the market when it meets in September, oil ministry news website SHANA said.


Iran is traditionally a price hawk and has been at the forefront of rejecting calls for more output from consumers such as the United States, even when prices surged to a record $147 a barrel, a level from which they have now tumbled.

Iran has previously said the market was oversupplied by about 1 million barrels per day (bpd).

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SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Crude-oil futures climbed Tuesday on concerns that Hurricane Gustav will threaten oil production in the Gulf of Mexico, but prices closed off the day's high and fell in electronic trading after the U.S. Energy Department reported weaker year-over-year domestic demand for oil.

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Aug. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Evacuations of offshore oil and gas rigs and platforms in the Gulf of Mexico will begin tomorrow in preparation for Hurricane Gustav, which may become the strongest storm to hit the region in almost three years.

Transocean Inc., the world's largest offshore oil driller, has begun suspending operations in the Gulf. Royal Dutch Shell Plc is ``making logistical arrangements to evacuate staff who are not essential to production or drilling operations,'' spokesman Destin Singleton said in an e-mailed statement today.

``Shell generally leads off'' the evacuations, said Jim Shugart, executive vice president of ERA Helicopters LLC, which ferries workers to and from offshore facilities. ``They have by far the majority of workers out there and they figure it takes them four to four and a half days to evacuate everybody.''

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MEXICO CITY, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Crude output from Mexico's struggling Cantarell oil field fell for the 10th month in a row in July to 974,000 barrels per day, energy ministry data showed on Tuesday.

The fading jewel of Mexico's oil industry, Cantarell is now producing half what it was yielding at its 2004 peak, pulling down overall output in the world's No. 6 oil-producing nation and threatening Mexico's status as a top U.S. supplier.

The steady decline of around 15 percent annually in the field's output has pressured the divided Congress to tweak laws in the closed energy sector. The government, with backing from centrists, hopes to push a bill through Congress to allow more private participation in the state-run oil business.
[..]
Output at Cantarell, a shallow field in the southern Gulf of Mexico, fell in July from 1.018 million bpd in June.

Cantarell, for years the source of 60 percent of Mexico's crude, accounted for 35 percent of Mexico's overall July oil output, down from 36 percent in June.

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The airlines are grounding planes and laying off thousands of workers to save money in the face of higher fuel bills.

The Air Transport Association, a trade group for the big carriers, expects U.S. airlines to spend $61.2 billion this year on fuel, up from $41.2 billion last year.

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During a speech in Lansing, Mich., Obama said he’d like to release up to 10 percent of the 700 million barrels of oil kept in salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana. Obama also called for a revival of the windfall profits tax on oil companies.
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Among the short-term parts of his plan, Obama said: “We should sell 70 million barrels of oil from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve for less expensive crude, which in the past has lowered gas prices within two weeks
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The tax would target “big oil to give families a thousand-dollar rebate,” an announcer in the ad says. Obama has pushed for such a tax to fund $1,000 emergency rebate checks for consumers besieged by high energy costs.

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Fears are mounting that Russia may restrict oil deliveries to Western Europe over coming days, in response to the threat of EU sanctions and Nato naval actions in the Black Sea.

Any such move would be a dramatic escalation of the Georgia crisis and play havoc with the oil markets.

Reports have begun to circulate in Moscow that Russian oil companies are under orders from the Kremlin to prepare for a supply cut to Germany and Poland through the Druzhba (Friendship) pipeline. It is believed that executives from lead-producer LUKoil have been put on weekend alert.

"They have been told to be ready to cut off supplies as soon as Monday," claimed a high-level business source, speaking to The Daily Telegraph. Any move would be timed to coincide with an emergency EU summit in Brussels, where possible sanctions against Russia are on the agenda.

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Tropical Storm Gustav hasn't deviated from its "very ominous" track toward the U.S. coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and is likely to strengthen into a major hurricane before making landfall, a private forecaster said Thursday.

"This storm remains likely to explode into a major hurricane as it moves across the northwestern Caribbean and into the Gulf over the weekend," said Jim Rouiller, a senior energy meteorologist with weather forecasting firm Planalytics.
[..]

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The US oil and gas industry began to shut down production in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday after forecasters predicted that tropical storm Gustav would be a hurricane when it hit the region.

Royal Dutch Shell and ConocoPhillips led the majors in evacuating personnel and ceasing production.

The Gulf produces 20 per cent of US oil and gas supplies. Prices in New York topped $120 a barrel but fell after the International Energy Agency said strategic stocks would be released if disruptions were serious.

Jeffrey Rubin, chief economist at CIBC World Markets, said production had not returned to the 2005 levels before Katrina and Rita struck. The Gulf produces 1.3m barrels per day of oil, down from 1.6m then.
[..]

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BISMARCK, N.D. - Industry officials say they are mystified by fuel shortages at terminals in the Upper Midwest in recent days, but they expect enough supplies for the Labor Day holiday weekend.

Terminals have run out of fuel in West Fargo and Grand Forks in North Dakota; Alexandria, Minn.; and Sioux Falls, S.D.

Officials are trying to figure out why.
[..]

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DUBAI (Reuters) - China crossed the line first in the race for big oil contracts in post-Saddam Iraq and has gained a head start over Western oil majors in the competition for future energy deals.

China's biggest oil company, state-run CNPC, agreed a $3 billion service contract with Iraq on Wednesday.
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Starved of investment since the Gulf War of 1990-1991 and the subsequent U.S.-led invasion of 2003 that removed former President Saddam Hussein, Iraq holds some of the world's last large, cheap, untapped oil reservoirs.
[..]

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Op vrijdag 29 augustus 2008 10:42 schreef Q. het volgende:
Europa / de NAVO is gewoon heel dom bezig met die bedreigingen richting Rusland, we zijn enorm afhankelijk van ze (geworden)...

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``The emerging markets in general have a lot more risk than people are factoring in over the next 12 months. But I think Russia particularly could really shock some people on the downside'' because ``there's no transparency, no business ethics,'' and ``it is very resource-dependent.''
Bron: Michael Aronstein, chief investment strategist at Oscar Gruss & Son Inc.

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Op vrijdag 29 augustus 2008 11:13 schreef RM-rf het volgende:
met daadwerkelijk aanbod heeft de olieprijs als deze boven de 100 dollar komt, weinig meer te doen

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Op zaterdag 30 augustus 2008 22:49 schreef SeLang het volgende:

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Had ik dus toch wat oliecontractjes moeten kopen
Er was een tijd dat ik gewoon 4000 barrels kocht om te gokken op dit soort dingen.
Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, maar het blijft dus gewoon gokken.

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British oil group BP and US rivals ConocoPhillips and Shell on Thursday evacuated workers from their energy installations in the Gulf of Mexico, as Tropical Storm Gustav loomed.
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According to oil industry analyst Andy Lipow, based in Houston, Texas, Gustav could interrupt 75 percent of the Gulf's crude oil production, or more than one million barrels per day.

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Graphic below is damage models based on official NHC hurricane forecast track, key is below. Numbers are below the fold.

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Op maandag 1 september 2008 13:06 schreef SeLang het volgende:
Olieprijs daalt.
Nu $114.76

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Op maandag 1 september 2008 13:19 schreef SeLang het volgende:
Nu zelfs $113.73
Maar de handel is nu erg dun dus dat zegt niet zoveel.

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Oil prices touched a fresh record high of $68 a barrel last week, as Hurricane Katrina approached the region.

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Prices had reached as high as $70.85, an intraday high on Nymex, although still below the inflation-adjusted high of about $90 a barrel that was set in 1980.

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Shell, the Gulf's largest producer, said two of its drilling rigs were adrift. It had evacuated almost 1,000 employees and shut down production of 420,000 barrels a day.

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Western powers are selective in their censure of African regimes guilty of misrule, while ignoring those countries with oil, or who are allies in the US "war on terror". For example, Robert Mugabe has been rightly pilloried by the west for running Zimbabwe into the ground. Yet Mugabe's great ally, Angola's Eduardo dos Santos, whose ruling MPLA is going into a parliamentary election today, has an equally appalling record of autocratic rule. But Angola's fabulous oil wealth has silenced western criticisms of the regime's terrible human rights abuses.
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It is now clear that oil wealth protects African dictators from international pressure to democratise.
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Unless the west tackles these obvious blindspots, their criticisms of African misrule, although desperately needed, will ring hollow.

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A subject of lively debate among economists and business analysts today is the effect of rising oil prices on globalization. Rising oil prices translate into higher fuel costs, and that in turn drives up shipping costs. Ninety per cent of global demand for crude is based on the need for transportation fuels. In a world of triple-digit oil prices, could it cost less to manufacture products more expensively at home rather than ship cheaper products half way around the world? Could rising oil prices slow, stall, or even reverse the trend of globalization?
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Rising oil prices provide a powerful case for proximity. Mexico should become more attractive for outsourcing manufacturing of goods where transportation to market is a substantial part of the cost, such as heavy industrial equipment, furniture and clothing. By the same reasoning, the U.S. should become even more attractive to Canada as an export market.
[..]

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WASHINGTON - With public opinion shifting toward offshore drilling, Democrats are looking to defuse the volatile election issue by allowing oil companies for the first time to explore off the Atlantic and Gulf coasts from Virginia to Florida — but only if they foot the bill for new alternative energy programs.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who not long ago staunchly opposed lifting any of the offshore drilling bans, said Tuesday she now supports an energy package that would including drilling in federal waters off the southeastern coast. She is planning a vote that could come as early as Friday.

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Less than two weeks after evacuating thousands of offshore workers from production platforms and other facilities, Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell and others were again removing workers from their posts Tuesday as Hurricane Ike approached.

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BAGHDAD (AFP) - Royal Dutch Shell will form a gas venture with energy-rich Iraq worth up to four billion dollars, the oil ministry said Tuesday of the first Western oil major to do a deal with the central government since the 2003 invasion.

The venture to capture unwanted gas burned off during oil production, for domestic consumption and export, is expected to be signed in Baghdad next month, ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told AFP.

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Oil prices fell Tuesday, as investors believed OPEC will keep production at current levels, and as Hurricane Ike lost strength over Cuba.

U.S. crude for October delivery settled down $3.08 to $103.26 a barrel, the lowest close since April 1, when oil ended the day at $100.98 a barrel.
[..]
Slumping global energy demand has caused the price of crude to fall sharply from the record-high $147.27 a barrel, set on July 11.
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As of Tuesday, 79.4% of crude oil production and 64.2% of natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico remained shut from Gustav, according to the Department of Energy.

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Sometimes you just have to stand in awe and wonder before the all-knowing wisdom of The Market. Common sense would say: Hurricane Gustav (even considering the fact that it never achieved its advertised category 4 status before landfall) is likely to result in 40% of US Gulf of Mexico oil production being taken off-line for 30 days, with longer outages for some rigs, terminals, and refineries; therefore, given the fact that fuel supplies in the US are already tight, this is a good time to load up on oil futures.

But Noooooo. That’s not how the market works. Because the expectation of storm damage was higher, Monday’s trading was actually dominated by a sell-off.

This tells us just how important the market and price signals are in helping us prepare for the inevitable decline in world oil production. To wit: not very
[..]
Moral of the story: In the task of waking humanity up to the plight of resource depletion, the market is not very helpful, even if it occasionally does give useful warning signs. It’s a bit like the broken clock that tells perfect time twice a day.

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August global oil supply fell by 1.0 mb/d to 86.8 mb/d on North Sea maintenance, the BTC pipeline outage and lower OPEC supply. Non-OPEC output is revised by -180 kb/d for 2008 and by -85 kb/d for 2009, with hurricane outages impeding 2H08 supply. Non-OPEC growth including OPEC NGL is now 580 kb/d in 2008 and 1.56 mb/d in 2009.

OPEC crude supply in August fell by 195 kb/d to 32.5 mb/d on field and pipeline outages in Iraq, Angola, Libya and Nigeria, while effective spare capacity rose from 1.5 mb/d to 1.9 mb/d. The ‘call’ on OPEC is revised up to 32.2 mb/d for 3Q08 and 31.7 mb/d for 4Q08. This report went to press ahead of the OPEC 9 September meeting in Vienna.

Hurricane activity in the US Gulf of Mexico results in a 1.4 mb/d downward revision to US refinery crude throughput in September, to an average of 13.9 mb/d. Global September crude runs could decline by 1.3 mb/d from August. OECD crude runs are forecast to average 37.4 mb/d in September, their lowest level since October 2002.

OECD stocks rose by 47 mb in July to 2,646 mb. A large, unseasonal crude build from a revised June base and weaker demand leave end-July OECD cover at 54.5 days. Higher OECD end-June stocks now imply a 380 kb/d OECD stockbuild in 2Q08 versus last month’s estimate of flat second-quarter stocks, and a seasonal 2Q average build of 0.9 mb/d.

Forecast global oil demand has been lowered for both 2008 and 2009, following weaker deliveries in the OECD. World demand averages 86.8 mb/d in 2008 (+0.8% or +0.7 mb/d versus 2007 and 100 kb/d lower than previously estimated) and 87.6 mb/d in 2009 (+1.0% or +0.9 mb/d year-on-year and 140 kb/d lower than in our last report).

Benchmark crude futures continued their downward slide in August, approaching $100/bbl in early September, as fundamentals eased. Weaker OECD demand and higher stocks dominated sentiment, while markets have so far shrugged off Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, though the latter could yet defer post-Gustav supply recovery.

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Dankzij de hoge olieprijs en met nieuwe technieken, wordt ons Drentse Schoonebeek weer een rendabele oliewinplaats. Het veld sloot in 1996, maar wordt opnieuw in gebruik genomen. De verwachting is dat er de komende 25 jaar nog tot zo'n 120 miljoen vaten aan de bodem ontfutseld kunnen worden.
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Er zitten een miljard vaten in de grond waarvan er tot 1996 250 miljoen naar boven zijn gehaald. Met nieuwe efficiënte en schone technieken kan de nogal taaie en stroperige donkere smurrie er weer uitgepompt worden.
Bron

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Waar zit de olie in Nederland? De meeste olie zit in Zuidoost-Drenthe. Dit veld staat te boek als het Schoonebeek-olieveld. Plaatsen als Schoonebeek en Coevorden zijn bekend geworden door de oliewinning en in vroegere tijden stonden daar honderden jaknikkers. In 2007 heeft de NAM besloten opnieuw olie te gaan winnen in het Schoonebeek-veld. Naar verwachting zal in 2010 de nieuwe oliewinning een feit zijn.
Daarnaast wordt op dit moment nog olie gewonnen in de omgeving van Rotterdam en op de Noordzee.
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Offshore olie wordt elke 14 dagen naar de raffinaderij in Pernis gebracht. Olie uit de omgeving Rotterdam gaat via een pijpleiding naar Pernis. Olie uit Schoonebeek gaat via een pijpleiding naar de raffinaderij in Lingen (Duitsland).
Bron: NAM

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De grootste opslagtanks staan op de punt van de Maasvlakte en zijn van de Maasvlakte Olie Terminal (MOT). De MOT is een samenwerking tussen BP Raffinaderij, Esso Nederland, Koeweit Petroleum, Vopak Maasvlakte Terminal, Shell Nederland en Total Opslag. Alle opslagtanks van de MOT hebben een gezamenlijke capaciteit van 4.000.000 m³.
Bron: Wikipedia

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Waarvoor wordt olie gebruikt? Meer dan 86% van de totale aardolieconsumptie in Nederland wordt besteed aan brandstof voor industrie, transport en verwarming van gebouwen.
Bron: NAM

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Italy's national airline, Alitalia, may have to cancel some flights because of a lack of funds to buy fuel, a top official has warned.
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Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi blamed "political" motives for the failure.

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CARACAS, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sought to lower the tone of a diplomatic spat with the United States, saying he doesn't plan to take more steps against his country's biggest oil customer.
[..]

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By Ron Ewart
[..]
How is it that only politicians can take the laws of physics, economics and the principles of freedom and liberty and screw them up so badly?
[..]
The simple solution ......... We have more than enough oil on our own shores within our economic and environmentally sensitive grasp to meet our daily needs and be free of foreign blackmail. Drill for it now and put it in our cars as rapidly as we can. Build more refineries to process that oil. Cut gasoline grades down to about five, no more. Build nuclear and natural gas fired power plants. Convert coal to oil. Stop subsidies for ethanol and other uneconomic idiotic solutions and let them die a rapid death before these boon doggles drive our taxes up dramatically and drive our food prices out of reach of the average family, where we end up going hungry so a radical environmentalist or a government employee can feel good about him or herself for “saving the planet”. And stop this crazy idea of conserving energy. We don’t need to conserve, we have all the energy we need, if we will just go get it. We need to expand our opportunities and horizons, not limit them. Limits are for losers and whiners. Of course we need to continue working on economic energy solutions to replace crude oil. And in spite of what the so-called experts tell you, we are no where near “peak” oil. But new, economic technology will come along if we just let the power of our industry and capitalism operate efficiently and without impediments and constant second-guessing from an out-of-control, heavy-handed, stupid government that screws up everything it touches.

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RIO DE JANEIRO, Sept. 12 (Xinhua) -- Mines and Energy Minister Edison Lobao announced Friday Brazil plans to build 50 to 60 nuclear power plants in half a century, with each having capacity of 1,000 megawatts.

"The general idea is to build one plant per year," he said during a visit to the construction site of Brazil's third nuclear power plant, Angra 3.

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MOSCOW (AP) — Home to abundant oil reserves, Russia rarely worried about where the next barrel would come from — until now.

With analysts expecting production to fall this year for the first time in a decade, Russian companies are pushing to find new oil in remote regions such as the Arctic Shelf and East Siberia — but their efforts are hampered by crippling taxes that give the government much of the recent gains from high oil prices.
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The prospering energy industry in Russia has been crucial to the career of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who as president oversaw an eight-year, oil-fueled economic boom which improved the lives of many ordinary Russians and helped restore national self-confidence.

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A former government petroleum expert offered a concise explanation: The oil companies don’t really want it.

Energy companies “are not excessively interested in bringing in a new field so long as, by gradually increasing the price, they can stimulate production in the older regions,” Dr. David T. Day said.

And even though gasoline prices have gotten prohibitively high “for all but the rich” — according to the newspaper that carried Day’s remarks — the oil companies are only interested in maintaining their own profit margins, which they are doing just fine the way things are, Day said. He added, “It’s not surprising, then, that the oil companies hesitate to bring in a new and practicably inexhaustible supply of crude petroleum from oil shales.”

Oh, by the way, I should mention here that Dr. Day made these remarks nearly 90 years ago.
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As I have written in countless editorials, the primary obstacle blocking commercial oil shale development is technological, not political maneuvering or corporate conspiring. The oil companies have not yet demonstrated they can successfully recover fuel from oil shale on a large scale in a way that is economically feasible. That was true in 1920 and it’s true today.

I don’t know whether those technological impediments will ever be overcome. Certainly, a few companies are working hard, attempting to do just that. Shell, in particular, has demonstrated it can successfully recover the oil from shale — at what the company says is a net energy gain — on a small scale. But transferring its very complicated technology into the scale necessary for commercial production remains uncertain.

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VIENNA, Sept 11 (Reuters) - Nuclear power production could as much as double by 2030 as countries seek relief from rising fossil fuel costs and a remedy against global warming, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Thursday.

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Op maandag 15 september 2008 12:24 schreef RemcoDelft het volgende:

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Wij krijgen geen benzine van die kant, dat ze daar tekorten hebben zegt al dat wij er geen last van hoeven te hebben.

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Op maandag 15 september 2008 12:49 schreef Scorpie het volgende:

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3 jaar geleden tankte je aan de pomp voor 1.19 een liter benzine, met een olieprijs van 75 dollar.
Nu betaal je 1.62 aan de pomp, met een olieprijs van 98 dollar....

De olieprijs is met een kwart gestegen, de benzineprijs met 40%.

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2005-Sep 09/02 60.75 09/09 59.18 09/16 56.93 09/23 58.20
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/wtotworldw.htm

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John Hofmeister, the former president of Shell Oil Co. and one of the most influential voices in the oil industry, called for short-term gasoline rationing by introducing odd-even purchases based on an automobile's license plate and by limiting the amount of gasoline drivers can purchase.

The United States will be in "a world of hurt" for the next four to six weeks as the oil industry recovers from the damage from Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, said Mr. Hofmeister, who recently founded a new company, Citizens for Affordable Energy. The areas where rationing will be needed include the Southeast and extend northward toward Denver, the upper Midwest and Washington, D.C., Mr. Hofmeister said in a newsmaker interview Monday morning with editors and reporters of The Washington Times.
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"America is suffering a lot more than is being reported," said Mr. Hofmeister, who is also chairman of the National Urban League. The economic slowdown may not be affecting the well-to-do, but it is "really nailing middle- and low-income people."

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According to today's DOE report, 3.6 million barrels of refinery capacity is shut in, and 2.5 million barrels is operating with reduced runs. In my refinery article, I used an estimate of one-third of production from reduced runs being off line. With this approach, 4.4 million barrels of refinery production is off-line, which is about 22% of oil products use. The corresponding calculation from yesterday's report would indicate that 4.5 million barrels were offline then, so we are making slight progress. It would be difficult to get along without 22% of oil products for long, however.
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The report indicates that 1.3 million barrels of crude oil production is off-line. The US produced a total of about 5.1 million barrels of crude oil a day, including all of the United States. The amount currently off-line amounts to about 25% of US production.

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ARGONNE, Illinois (Reuters) - A future of all-electric cars coasting along streets and highways may be illusory, given that their range may be cut in half by aggressive drivers speeding along with the air conditioning blasting, U.S. scientists said on Monday.

That may not be a bad thing, as it will persuade consumers to choose the best blend of electric- and gas-powered hybrid vehicle to suit the type of driving they do.

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LONDON (Reuters) - The renewable energy sector will see a 21 billion euro ($29.43 billion) shortfall in debt finance by 2020, following the credit crisis and a brake on lending, a senior banker said on Monday.

Investors at a renewable energy finance conference in London tried to digest the implications of a banking hiatus following Lehman Brothers' filing for bankruptcy and Bank of America's acquisition of Merrill Lynch.
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"The credit crunch will have a major impact on the renewable energy sector," Cuppen said. "I think we haven't had the worst yet."
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However, energy infrastructure projects are hurting because the banks, faced with the threat of more loan defaults, are limiting lending.

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Charles Hall, the father of the energy return on investment (EROI) concept, once told me that our current society would probably not be able to function if the EROI for the entire society slipped below five.

What does that mean?

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On average, industry analysts surveyed by Platts expect the Wednesday report to show that crude supplies fell by 3.7 million barrels for the week ended Sept. 12, distillates fell by 1.7 million and motor gasoline inventories fell by 3.6 million barrels.
"A combination of lower imports as the Louisiana Offshore Oil Platform and the Houston Ship Channel closed ahead of the arrival of Hurricane Ike, as well as oil production in the Gulf of Mexico that remained shut-in after Hurricane Gustav, will result in another week of sharp stock declines," said Linda Rafield, Platts senior oil analyst, in a note to clients.

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The reason that GA, SC, NC, TN are seeing more shortages than other parts of the country is that they are total dependant on the pipelines to supply them. They have no other source of supply than the Gulf refineries. This makes those area particularly susceptible to Gulf outages.

According to the EIA the US has about 20 days of finished product inventory. About one-half of that inventory is stuck in a pipe somewhere between the source (refinery, import point) and the storage tanks at the end of the pipelines. The US has at most about 10 days of useable stock at any point in time.

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The Government’s assessment is that the world’s oil resources are sufficient to prevent global total oil production peaking in the foreseeable future. This is consistent with the assessment made by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its recent 2007 World Energy Outlook (WEO), which concludes that proven reserves are already larger than the cumulative production needed to meet rising demand until at least 2030.

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Remember when $200-per-barrel oil looked inevitable? Or, at the very least, a $100-per-barrel plateau looked certain? Plenty of oil analysts thought that was just over the horizon (yes, I was also guilty of this). But now crude futures are hovering down around $90, despite the succession of brutal hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico—mainly due to fears that the crisis on Wall Street will knock more wind out of the U.S. economy and further dampen demand. So does that mean all the frantic concern about "peak oil" and all the apocalyptic blather about the end of mass air travel and so on and so forth was all totally baseless and wrong?

Well, I'm not sure about that. Production figures and forecasts still suggest that oil production really may peak in the next few years. But it's worth trying to clarify what peak oil would actually entail. Here's Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute: "Sometime around 2010 (give or take two or three years), growing decline rates in oil production from existing oilfields will overwhelm new production streams coming online. The price of oil will rise dramatically. However, when it does it will cripple the trucking industry, the airline industry, tourism, agriculture—essentially, the whole economy. A serious recession will ensue, which will reduce demand for oil (among other things). Oil’s price will temporarily drop in response. Then, as declines in oil production worsen, the price will resume its upward march—but again in a sawtooth or whipsaw fashion."

In other words, if global production is in fact peaking, we may be in not so much for an inexorable march upward in the price of oil and a permanent $150-per-barrel plateau, but rather lots and lots of volatility—which would prove just as damaging in the long run. (What good is cheap oil if we have to suffer through a recession to get it?) Now, if Heinberg's right, then it's a good time to start reducing our vulnerability to oil shocks, which in the long term means getting off the black gooey stuff for good. In the short term, that means—among other things—upping the energy intensity of the economy (especially in the transport sector), which would minimize the damage inflicted by rapid price fluctuations. The fact that prices have rocketed back down rather quickly is no reason to get complacent. On the other hand, if we're in a world of wildly volatile—rather than permanently high—oil prices, that also makes it much harder for alternative energy sources to get a foothold in the market without smarter policies from on high.

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Op woensdag 17 september 2008 19:51 schreef RemcoDelft het volgende:

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Speculaties? Voorraad nu verkopen en aanvullen als de olie nog goedkoper is?

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Op vrijdag 19 september 2008 20:41 schreef ItaloDancer het volgende:

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Dat klopt niet hoor

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``Probably the max is an 8.5 million draw in gasoline because demand is down, and it could be as low as 6.5 million'' barrels, John Duff, survey manager for the Energy Department's weekly petroleum status report, said in an interview. The report will show ``the real impact of the hurricane on the refining sector,'' he said. Supplies will fall ``substantially.''

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So far, since refineries first shut down before Hurricane Gustav, over 36 million barrels of products have not been produced, including nearly 17 million barrels of gasoline and nearly 12 million barrels of distillate fuel. This does not include reduced production from refineries that have reduced runs at various times during Hurricanes Gustav or Ike. As of September 19, 7 refineries were running at a reduced rate. As of September 19, the Colonial and Plantation product pipelines continue to operate at reduced rates. Both of these are major product pipelines going from the Gulf Coast to the East Coast.

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There are a lot of issues that I might have mentioned, but didn't. One of the more important is the possibility that the pipeline system may be near minimum operating level, and that some sections will no longer function if the level gets too low. The areas that would seem to be most at risk are the ones at the ends or lines, or on small spur pipelines. If this should happen, residents in the areas affected areas might find themselves out of all types of refined products (including diesel and jet fuel), unless they had extra supply stored in local supply tanks. Additional supply could theoretically be trucked in, but we have a limited number of trucks for transporting fuel.

Colonial pipeline is one of the pipelines that has had difficulty with adequate supply. The supply begins in Texas/Louisiana. The areas I would expect to be most at risk are on the spur pipelines and farthest north.

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The good news is that it is plentiful. Around the world, there are thought to be roughly 3 trillion barrels of oil locked in oil shale deposits. And more than half of that is in the United States. Most of the U.S. oil shale is located in an area known as the Green River Formation, which stretches across Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. It is possible that there is more oil in these U.S. deposits of oil shale than there is oil left in "normal" crude oil deposits worldwide. In other words, oil shale could provide the United States with oil for many decades.

The bad news is that the oil in oil shale is not so easy to extract. With a normal oil well, you are tapping into an underground lake of oil. An oil company drills down to the lake and then pumps the liquid oil to the surface. This liquid crude oil can flow through pipelines directly to a refinery.

With oil shale, you start with something that looks like a rock. You dig this rock out of the ground, usually using the same kind of techniques used to mine coal. This rock obviously contains energy, because the rock burns if you light it. In some countries, oil shale rock is a fuel for power plants.

But, if you want to convert oil shale into something like gasoline or diesel fuel, you need a few more steps. The most common technique is to heat the rock to a high temperature to turn all of the oil contained in the rock into a gas. The heating is done in a container that does not contain any oxygen, so the oil won't burn. Once you cool the gas back down, much of it liquefies. This liquid is processed and refined to form different liquid fuels.

An obvious problem here is the heat. You have to do something to heat up the rock. One solution is to burn some of the oil coming out of the rock. This is easy and obvious, but it lowers the yield and creates more pollution. Another more ambitious idea uses heat from a nuclear power plant to release the oil.

In any case, after all of this processing, you end up with something like 10 to 60 gallons of shale oil from each ton of rock that you mine from the ground. The mining and processing means that the oil coming from oil shale can be relatively expensive compared to crude oil that is pumped from the ground. When oil costs $10 a barrel, oil shale does not make economic sense. But when oil is at $100 a barrel or more, oil shale has a lot of economic justification.

Even with economic viability, however, oil shale has another problem: It has a relatively large effect on the environment. Mining is not great for the environment to begin with. Then the process of heating the rock and extracting the oil creates pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, processing the oil shale can consume a lot of water. And then there is all the shale left over once the oil is extracted. Millions and millions of tons of it, and it all has to go somewhere. Often it goes right back where it came from, where there are more environmental costs involved. New techniques, like heating and extracting the oil while the shale is still in the ground, lower some of these environmental costs.

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Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, will need crude prices to remain above $49 a barrel to avoid a fiscal deficit, a senior International Monetary Fund official has said.

“If it goes below that level we would start seeing a fiscal account deficit,” Mohsin Khan, director of Middle East and central Asia at the IMF, told Dow Jones Newswires.

Oil prices have fallen drastically in the past two month, shedding over $50 in value since they hit $147 a barrel in July, raising concerns over the continued strength of Persian Gulf Arab economies.

Saudi Arabia, the Middle East largest economy, depends on oil and gas sales for 90% of its export income. “Saudi Arabia’s break-even price is the highest among the Gulf Co-operation Council Countries because they are spending on a lot of projects right now, and oil money is used to fund these projects,” he said. Further declines in oil prices could tip the region’s economies over the edge as they continue to spend heavily on infrastructure projects.

According to Middle East Economic Digest, Gulf states are spending about $2.3tn on projects.