Olieprijs op 55 dollar; OPEC verlaagt productie

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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.

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Op maandag 22 september 2008 21:48 schreef SeLang het volgende:

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Het lijkt op een soort van shortsqueeze.
Vandaag was de laatste dag dat het October contract verhandeld kon worden. Traders die niet fysiek de olie willen leveren or geleverd willen krijgen MOETEN hun contract op z'n laatst vandaag sluiten. Het lijkt erop dat er traders short zaten en nu tegen elke prijs contracten terug moesten kopen omdat ze anders de plicht hebben om olie te leveren die ze niet hebben.

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If Matt Simmons is right, the recent drop in crude prices is an illusion - and oil could be headed for the stratosphere. He's just hoping we can prevent civilization from imploding.

(Fortune Magazine) -- Matt Simmons is as perplexed as anyone that it has fallen to him to take on OPEC, Exxon, the Saudis, and all the other misguided defenders of conventional wisdom in the oil patch. Why should one investment banker with a penchant for research be required to point out what he regards as the obvious - that from here on out, oil supplies can't meet demand, and if we don't act soon to solve this crisis, World War III could be looming?

Why should a man who scorns most environmentalists have to argue that locally grown produce and wind power are the way of the future? Why should a lifelong Republican need to be the one to point out that his party's new mantra - "Drill, baby, drill!" - won't really fix anything and that his party's presidential candidate is clueless about energy? That the spike in oil prices earlier this year wasn't a temporary market anomaly and the recent retreat in prices is just a misleading calm before a calamitous storm? That we're headed toward $500-a-barrel oil?


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And so he did. But writing the book didn't exhaust his passion. Today he is more convinced than ever that we've reached peak oil. If he's right, current world oil production- 86 million barrels a day- is about as high as we're going to go.
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No one disputes that oil production will top out some day. It is, after all, a finite resource. The argument is about how far off the peak is. As Simmons and others point out, many of the world's largest oilfields - Prudhoe Bay, the North Sea - have already gone into decline. The most optimistic estimate for the average depletion rate of the world's currently producing oilfields is between 4% and 5% annually, or about four million barrels per day at our current rate of production. That means that each year we must find enough new oil to first replace those four million barrels of lost daily production before we even add enough to meet new demand. This is all the more worrisome because world oil discovery of new reserves has been slowing since the mid-20th century.
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Earlier this year Abdallah Jum'ah, CEO of Saudi Aramco, the kingdom's national oil company, called peak oil "a myth." The multinational oil giants are only slightly less optimistic. While they acknowledge that crude is getting harder to find and produce and that so-called unconventional oil (like natural-gas liquids) will be increasingly important, they don't think a peak is imminent either. Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500) has run ads that dismiss peak oil as a far-off problem. This summer Tony Hayward, BP's (BP) chief executive, bet a peakist that oil production in 2018 will be higher than it is today. "It's unbelievable," says Simmons. "These guys don't even understand their own business."

One difficulty in assessing the situation is the lack of transparent information about oil production and reserves, particularly in OPEC countries. Back in the 1980s, after OPEC decided to base its production quotas on reserve figures, several of the cartel's producers abruptly raised their claims of "proven reserves" by 40% or more. Saudi Arabia, for instance, raised its proven-reserve figure from 170 billion barrels to about 260 billion in 1988. Amazingly, that figure has stayed more or less constant since then - even as billions of barrels have been pumped out of the ground. "We need to send in the audit troops," says Simmons regularly in his speeches. "The major oilfields of the world need to be invaded by third-party inspectors so that we can figure out how bad things are and deal with it."
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John McCain is energy illiterate," Simmons is saying. "He's just witless about this stuff. As a lifelong Republican, I'm supporting Obama." A dozen oil and gas men sitting around a conference table in Lafayette, La., chuckle nervously as he continues. "McCain says, 'Oh, we're going to wean ourselves off foreign oil in four years and build 45 nuclear plants by 2030.' He doesn't have a clue."
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McCain's midsummer move to begin campaigning on a platform of more offshore drilling has only hardened Simmons's position. "What a hypocrite," says Simmons, who supported McCain's rival Mitt Romney in the primary - no surprise given Simmons's history with the Romney family. "Here's a man who for at least the past 15 years has strenuously, I mean strenuously, opposed offshore drilling. And now it's 'drill, drill, drill.' And he doesn't have any idea that we don't have any drilling rigs. Or that we don't have any idea of exactly where to drill." (As for McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, Simmons says: "She's a very colorful person, but I don't think there's a scrap of evidence that she knows anything about energy.")
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Simmons believes that a radical change in the way we live is inevitable. "We should basically be going back to creating a village economy, so that we really reduce the energy intensity of how we live," he says. "We need bigtime conservation, not feel-good conservation. Make things where they're used. You'll end long-distance commuting, and we have the tools to do that now with webcams. Grow food locally. Grow food in your backyard. If they're not commuting, people will have time to do that."
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On the way out, I asked Simmons if seeing the lab made his virtual institute feel more real. "Oh, yeah, very impressive," he said. "But we need to compress the time frame - 2020 is way too far out. That plan is fine assuming that we go along like we are now, and everything is okay in the world. But it's not going to be okay. We're going to need this stuff much sooner."

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Op dinsdag 23 september 2008 11:04 schreef RM-rf het volgende:
omdat die 'matt simons' toevallig zegt wat jij de hele tijd hard loopt te denken?


nee sorry, maar als de prijsontwikkeling nu juist iets bewijst is dat de marktprijsontwikkeling verdomd weinig nog met daadwerkelijk aanbod en vraag te maken heeft maar dat allerhande effecten van de markt, zoals het 'aflopen van short-contracten' er een veel grotere invloed op hebben...

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Uiteindelijk is het wel een ontzettend groot nadeel voor de aantrekkelijkheid van olie deze ongezonde prijsfluctuaties, maar dat is dan weer zelf een voordeel voor eventuele investeringen in aanpassingen van de energie-voorziening, waardoor de economie steeds onafhankelijker van olie wordt ...
dat is overigens al een aspect dat allang aan de gang is.... de afhankelijkheid van olie voor energie is stukken minder dan in de 70'er jaren: er bestaan veel meer energie-alternatieven die zeer kosten-efficient zijn en marktgedrag op de oliemarkt als die nu plaats vind versterkt enkel het voordeel daarvan....

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Uitspraken als
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zijn wat mij beteft een teken van iemand met een zeer zwak verstand ...we leven hier niet in en communistische maatschappij waarbij de 'manier waarop mensen leven' kennelijk van bovenaf bepaald kan worden en ik denk niet dat dat een idee is waarnaar we moeten streven

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Op dinsdag 23 september 2008 12:07 schreef SeLang het volgende:
Met olie >$100 zijn opeens een hoop onrendabele velden rendabel geworden. Als de olieprijs verder stijgt naar bijv $200 dan wordt dat nog veel meer. Daardoor kan 'peak oil' wel eens wat verder weg liggen dan velen denken. Oliemaatschappijen rekenen nu nog steeds met $60 olie ofzo. Maar als men ervan overtuigd is dat de hoge olieprijs blijvend is dan zullen er meer investeringen komen in velden die voorheen niet rendabel waren. Zal overigens wel even duren voordat dat online komt.

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Op dinsdag 23 september 2008 12:35 schreef RM-rf het volgende:

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en dat noem je snel?

man, die column geschreven op een prijsontwikkeling die in een halve dag plaatsvind en dat wil je direkt gaan verbinden met een aanbod-effect dat we 'zullen merken' in 5 jaar ?

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Alles leuk en aardig, maar het 'pieken' van de olieproductie is ook niet iets dat je op het moment van en piek direkt zult merken en pas achteraf aantoonbaar kan zijn als je daadwerkelijk macro-effecten kunt traceren op bv grafieken van productie-ontwikkeling..

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verder, het zou een absoluut unicum zijn als er daadwerkelijk een piek zou ontstaan door een echte 'onmogelijkheid' te winnen...
de meeste pieken in bv productie van grondstoffen ontstaan vooral doordat alternatieven relatief gunstiger worden en veelal ook beter winbaar of andere voordelen blijken te hebben, hierdoor daalt de afhankelijkheid van een bepaalde grondstof
er is een algemeen bekend effect bij natuurlijke grondstoffen dat de prijs hiervan na een eventuele piek juist verder daalt... dat is ook zo bij bv kolen dat de voorganger was van olie als 'energie-grondstof', en allle grondstoffen die in de voorgaande geschiedenis de 'hoofddrager' waren van de economische vooruitgang.

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Er bestaat overigens helemaal niet waarnaar we moeten 'streven' behalve dat de mens bepaalde financiele en economische mogelijkheden heeft en het een evolutionair proces is dat die volkeren het verste komen (of domweg hun voortbestaan kunnen verzekeren) die effectief het best gebruik maken van hun toegang tot bepaalde grondstoffen of productie-markten

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“Considering the many productive uses of petroleum, burning it for fuel is like burning a Picasso for heat.”
—Big Oil Executive

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Op dinsdag 23 september 2008 13:33 schreef RM-rf het volgende:
het is echter verder gewoon en gegeven dat zal ontstaan door verdere innovatie van bestaande technieken en natuurlijk... iedere verdere technologische innovatie bouwt nu net weer nieuwe afhankelijkheden in... maar dat is eigen aan de mensheid en begonnen vanaf het moment dat er 'culturen' ontstonden die op basis van gecultiveerde' productietechnieken in hun voedselvoorziening gingen voorzien (rond 10.000 v chr. , wat samengaat met het ontstaan van georganiseerde religie-vormen, de uitvinding van de landbouw en bv ook die van het schrift en het ontstaan van vaste nederzettingen e.d.)

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vast leuk om uit een soort van 'principe' zulke ideeen aan te halen, maar veel realsime zit er niet achter en dan heb ik meer vertrouwen in juist die marktwerking van een bedrijfsopzet die domweg de verantwoordelijkheid tegenover andeelhouders hebben om gedane investeringen ook weer terug te winnen.... (en nee, ik ben geen groot gelover in marktwerking tegen alles in, of een vrijemarkt-utopist)

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Op dinsdag 23 september 2008 14:00 schreef RM-rf het volgende:
als je dacht dat je auto kon rijden zonder dat technologische inovatie je daartoe de mogelijkheid in de eerste plaats geboden heeft, mis je ergens wat ....

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jouw hele leven, en dat van 99,9% van alle mensen op deze planeet (ja zelfs in de meest achteraf liggende gebieden muv. die volkeren die kennelijk nooit gecultiveerde technieken ontwikkeld hebben als landbouw) is gebaseerd op die voortdurende technologische innovatie..

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en wil de mens zijn voortbestaan verzekeren is hij ook per definitie afhankelijk van een voortdurend verdergaande ontwikkeling... dat te willen ontkennen is domweg essentuiele eigenschap van de 'cultuur'-basis van het menselijk bestaan niet willen zien (ik gebruid aar de term 'cultuur' in de vorm van het tegengestelde van 'natuur': "In brede zin wordt het gebruikt voor 'alles wat door de samenleving wordt voortgebracht'. 'Cultuur' wordt dan tegenover 'natuur' gesteld.")

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Op dinsdag 23 september 2008 14:49 schreef Basp1 het volgende:

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Nou zoveel zonnecellen hebben we ook weer niet nodig, ongeveer een oppervlakte ter grootte van frankrijk om met de huidge zonnecellen de hele wereld van net zoveel energie als we nu gebruiken te voorzien.

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A petroleum executive suggested Thursday that Gov. Sonny Perdue should cancel Saturday's football game between Georgia and Alabama.
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"That gas needs to be used for people to go to work, and for people to take care of their families," Pitfield told WGAU in Athens.

The governor's office quickly rejected the idea.

"The governor is not going to consider a ridiculous idea like this,” Perdue spokesman Bert Brantley said late Thursday. “We’re also not going to stop living our lives. People understand there are common-sense things they can do.”

UGA Police Chief Jimmy Williamson said fans who can't make a round trip on one tank should stay home.

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Gas shortages are afflicting drivers across the Southeast. Some of the problems were caused by Hurricane Ike affecting oil production and refining along the Gulf Coast, but empty gas pumps also are being blamed on the consumers themselves.
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Asheville, North Carolina
City officials in Asheville have closed the civic center, parks and offices because of the gas shortage, CNN affiliate WHNS-TV reports.
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Athens, Georgia
A petroleum executive suggested that the football game between the University of Georgia and University of Alabama should be canceled this weekend because fans could drain all the gas in the Athens area, WSB-TV in Atlanta reported.
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Atlanta, Georgia
Ray Sheffied's gas station had been open 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 13 years. But the streak ended when a lack of supply forced him to close early, WGCL-TV in Atlanta said.
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Charlotte, North Carolina
Drivers camped out overnight in the hope that a shipment of gas would arrive at a station in Charlotte, WSOC-TV found.
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Raleigh, North Carolina
North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley promised that more gas was on the way from other states, but WXII-TV found many stations dry or with only one or two grades of fuel left.

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NEW YORK (Fortune) -- While Congress and Bush administration officials have been working to complete a bailout plan and stem the financial contagion on Wall Street, a different kind of economic crisis emerged across the South this week: A severe, hurricane-related gasoline shortage has curtailed trucking from Atlanta to Asheville, N.C., and created a wave of panic buying among motorists.

The return of gas lines has largely flown under the radar of politicians who are usually keenly attuned, because their constituents are, to what's going on at the pump. But more of the Capitol gang should be paying attention to this.

That's because nationwide our gasoline inventory is shockingly low. Liquidity must be restored soon to this market, or we could be facing a crippling run on the gasoline bank. And if you think Americans are outraged about Wall Street, wait until their Main Street grocery store doesn't get the bread and milk delivery for a week or two.

Back to the '70s

The scenes over the past several days in places like Nashville, Tenn., Anniston, Ala., and western North Carolina looked like file footage from 1979 - with bags over empty gas pumps and quarter-mile long lines of cars waiting to fill up at stations that hadn't run out. AAA reported that drivers were so desperate that they were following tankers to gas stations to ensure a fill-up.
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A bigger problem
But while the current shortages can be traced directly to the two hurricanes, the severity of the problem points out a bigger issue: The U.S. has been operating for a while with razor-thin spare gasoline capacity.
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As he (Matt Simmons) told me the other day: "If we end up having gasoline shortages, the odds are about 90% that Americans will do what we always do: We'll top up our tanks. And in topping up our tanks, within three or four days we'll drain the pool dry and then within seven days we'll run out of food."

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GASTONIA, N.C. -- Tuesday night, paramedics hoping to fuel their ambulances in Gaston County ran into a minor emergency of their own.

Gas pumps were open, but there was no gas to get out of them, diesel or otherwise.
The assistant director of emergency services, Jeff Waldrep, said finding gas in Gaston County is “kind of like a shell game.” It’s anyone’s guess where there might be fuel.

Places that used to always have gas now have only give apologies for being empty.

Waldrep said the problem has not interrupted emergency services in part because workers have started keeping a log of where they can find gas.

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Op zaterdag 27 september 2008 10:17 schreef El_Matador het volgende:
De olie is nog lang niet op, maar het verbruik moet omlaag.

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ORLANDO — Barack Obama and John McCain are promising voters a Tomorrowland of electric cars and high-speed trains and solar panels, a vision of American life without a drop of imported oil.

But their plans to get there look more like Fantasyland.

A host of energy policy experts agree that true "energy independence"—a key catch phrase of this presidential campaign—would be far more expensive and disruptive than either candidate is telling you.

Our oil addiction hamstrings America's foreign policy and military, contributes to global warming and has robbed the nation of trillions of dollars. One of the country's leading energy modelers estimates that foreign-oil dependence cost our economy $750 billion this year, a little more than the daunting price tag of the proposed Wall Street bailout.
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Experts suggest the candidates are wildly understating the cost and time that true independence would require. The transition to a national life without imported oil appears so expensive that none of more than a dozen scientists and scholars interviewed by the Tribune could calculate a price tag. Only one even ventured a ballpark guess: $1 trillion to $2 trillion.
[..]
Presidents and candidates have promised energy independence since the oil shocks of the early 1970s. To see why they all failed, and why the goal is so daunting for this year's contenders, it helps to examine what it would take for one fast-growing American city to achieve "independence" within a generation.
[..]
In one scenario, Americans abandon sprawl and freeways for high-density, public-transit-powered urban living. In the second, we keep our exurban commutes but make them in cars that use little or no gasoline—super-efficient hybrids, perhaps fueled by electricity or biofuel or hydrogen. Many experts predict a mix of the two.
[..]
McCain's energy speeches emphasize domestic oil drilling, which would replace a small fraction of imports, and building a fleet of nuclear power plants—which would only reduce foreign dependence significantly if America converted to electric cars.
[..]
"To truly woo us away from oil, you're looking at somewhere between 1 and 2 trillion dollars," says Charles Ebinger, a longtime energy consultant in developing nations who now directs the Energy Security Initiative at the Brookings Institute. Compared to what dependence costs the economy, he adds, the nation can afford it.
[..]
"History teaches that if we relent, believing that the problem has been solved, our oil dependence problem is likely to return."

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The welcome sign is going out to oil and gas companies off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

A quarter-century ban on offshore exploration expires in this coming week, but don't expect to see a chain of drilling platforms from the beaches anytime soon.

It will take a couple of years, at least, before any oil or natural gas leases are issued, years more before any oil is found and perhaps a decade before any of it begins to flow to refineries.
[..]
While the freeze ends this Wednesday, the start of the new budget year, oil and gas companies are not revving up their seismic monitoring boats — much less their drilling rigs.

"We do think ... the reserves are significant, so we're very interested in having those areas open for exploration," said Marvin Odum, president of Shell Oil Co., a dominant player in deep-water oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico.

The available data "shows good resources on both coasts," Odum said in a recent meeting with reporters, adding that other companies as well as his own would be interested in pursing those areas. But he also said he is "keeping a close eye" on what the government does next.

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ELK POINT, S.D. — The United States hasn’t built an oil refinery on a new site in more than 30 years, but a pair of projects eyeing out-of-the way corners of South Dakota and Arizona are slowly working their way up to the big leagues.
[..]
“It’s been more cost-effective to expand than to build new, and it makes sense because you have a lot of the existing infrastructure in place,” said Cindy Schild, refining issues manager for the American Petroleum Institute.

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Op zondag 28 september 2008 17:49 schreef El_Matador het volgende:
Rijswijk produceert volgens mij al jaren niet meer. En op de Noordzee is het toch voornamelijk gas.

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Op zondag 28 september 2008 19:33 schreef El_Matador het volgende:

[..]

Er wordt genoeg gezocht. Je kan niet produceren wat er niet is.

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Unleaded 26-Sep
Beginning Inv 178.7
Imports 9.1 1.3 (week, p/dag)
Production 60.9 8.7 (week, p/dag)
Available 248.7
Ending Inv 179.6
Balance 69.1
Balance/day 9.87
Prod Supplied 8.9
Actual Change 0.9

Distillates 26-Sep
Beginning Inv 125.4
Imports 1.365 0.195 (week, p/dag)
Production 25.9 3.7 (week, p/dag)
Available 152.665
Ending Inv 123.1
Balance 29.565
Balance/day 4.22
Prod Supplied 3.8
Actual Change -2.3

Crude Oil 26-Sep
Beginning Inv 290.2
Production 27.727 3.961 (week, p/dag)
Imports 63 9 (week, p/dag)
Total Available 380.927
Provided to Ref 87.5 12.5 (week, p/dag)
Ending Inventory 294.5
Actual Change 4.3

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Vraag 45 - Zijn de gegevens uit tabel 2.1 gebaseerd op de gegevens van de betreffende olieproducerende landen zelf? Zo ja, is het kabinet bekend met de vrijwel onmogelijke stijging van de oliereserves die de OPEC-landen in de jaren 80 doorvoerden in hun statistieken?

Antwoord - Tabel 2.1 is gebaseerd op de “2007 Survey of Energy resources” van het World Energy Council (WEC). Het WEC is een internationale netwerkorganisatie met 94 autonome Member Committees waarin per land zo veel mogelijk verschillende partijen zijn verenigd die actief zijn op energiegebied (www.worldenergy.org). De genoemde studie is tot stand gekomen met behulp van deze Member Committees. Ook is gebruik gemaakt van veel verschillende openbare informatiebronnen. Het kabinet is bekend met de doorgevoerde veranderingen in de schattingen van de reserves bij de OPEC-landen in de jaren ’80. Dit was een gevolg van de introductie van quota-afspraken binnen de OPEC-landen. De in dat kader gehanteerde sleutels bij de verdeling van de quota hebben diverse OPEC-landen ertoe gebracht hun reserveschattingen indertijd fors ophoog bij te stellen.

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The credit crunch is already having an impact on energy markets. New projects are harder to fund. Highly leveraged companies are sometimes finding it necessary to shed assets. Some players are finding themselves to be the indirect casualties of other players, like Lehman, that have already failed. Long term, we will probably see consolidation and lower production than would have been the case without the credit crunch. Of course, if there is a major recession, it is possible that we won't need as high production.

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Some ideas that have been suggested include:

1. More work at home plans, possibly a few days a week.

2. Using a four day (or three day) work week. (See The Four Day Work Week: Sixteen Reasons Why This Might Be an Idea Whose Time Has Come.)

3. Moving closer to work.

4. Using public transit.

5. Using car pools or van pools.

6. Using a more efficient car.

7. Using a motorcycle or moped instead of a car.

8. Using a bicycle.

Of these, work at home (1), four day work week (2), and car pools (5) seem to be the lowest cost alternatives, since they do not require the addition of any other infrastructure, and do not require moving. Using a bicycle (8) is also inexpensive, and gives a person exercise as well. More use of public transit (4) requires infrastructure investment and a longer time frame. In a credit constrained environment, they may not be as feasible.

Meer ideëen in de reacties

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Op vrijdag 3 oktober 2008 13:36 schreef Liewec het volgende:
Ach, olie. Alsof de techniek niet allang vervoer kan verzinnen dat niet afhankelijk van olie is. Zolang Shell en consorten onwaarschijnlijkjoen euro per jaar verdienen met olie is het allemaal gelul in de marge. Laat de olie maar z.s.m. opraken, dan kunnen we eindelijk op water gaan rijden.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. oil demand in July fell to the lowest level for the month in 11 years, with consumption 736,000 barrels per day less than previously estimated and down 1.335 million bpd from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
[..]
U.S. highway travel fell by 3.6 percent, or nearly 10 billion miles in July compared to the same period last year, according to a separate report this week from the Transportation Department.

The decline was less than the drop of 5 percent, or 12.2 billion miles, reported for June.

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The supply of oil from the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) in September has fallen, the first monthly decline since April, according to survey from Reuters. The survey has indicated that output from source of two in every five barrels of oil, was falling even before it agreed at a meeting in September to trim output and prop up prices.