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Keystone XL backers hail government's warning on oil-by-rail

A government warning about the dangers of increased use of trains to transport crude oil is giving a boost to supporters of the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline. U.S. and Canadian accident investigators urged their governments Thursday to impose new safety rules on so-called oil trains, warning that a "major loss of life" could result from an accident involving the increasing use of trains to transport large amounts of crude oil. The announcement came in the wake of a string of high-profile accidents. In July last year, a crude oil train crash in Quebec caused an explosion and fire that killed 47 people . Another train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded in North Dakota last month . No one was killed, but the incident prompted evacuation orders for residents of a nearby town. Pipeline supporters said the stern joint warning by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and the Transportation […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Keystone XL backers hail government’s warning on oil-by-rail

A government warning about the dangers of increased use of trains to transport crude oil is giving a boost to supporters of the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline. U.S. and Canadian accident investigators urged their governments Thursday to impose new safety rules on so-called oil trains, warning that a "major loss of life" could result from an accident involving the increasing use of trains to transport large amounts of crude oil. The announcement came in the wake of a string of high-profile accidents. In July last year, a crude oil train crash in Quebec caused an explosion and fire that killed 47 people . Another train carrying crude oil derailed and exploded in North Dakota last month . No one was killed, but the incident prompted evacuation orders for residents of a nearby town. Pipeline supporters said the stern joint warning by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and the Transportation […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Energy Crunch: Will Britain get on board with fracking?

Image via The Prime Minster’s Office/flickr. Creative Commons 2.0 license.   Three things you shouldn’t miss this week Commentary: America’s Feel-Good Oil Bonanza -What the EIA says matters—regardless of its veracity or substantiation. In this light, let’s take a look at what the EIA is now saying in AEO 2014. Commentary: 6 reasons why there’s no community in fracking – Fracking is too capital intensive to allow communities to set up and run their own wells, even if they wanted to…Income such as is being proposed is only one small part of the bigger picture of thinking about what a resilient community needs. Commentary : In brief: The EU’s new 2030 climate and energy package – The European Commission today announced new energy and climate targets for the EU. The UK is to go all out for shale gas and David Cameron is asking British people to get on […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Peak Oil: Investment Issues

Several months ago, I discussed the issue of “Capex compression.” When decreasing oil industry revenues cannot keep up with the increasing exploration and production costs of unconventional resources such as deep-water and shale fields, investments decline. Not exactly rocket science….   GETTING LESS = HAVING LESS   As I noted in that post, and as common sense suggests, when they invest less, we wind up with less. We now live in a world where demand is forecasted to increase [see this ] and conventional crude oil  production continues to decline by 3-4 million barrels per day—depending on which source is referenced. Lower investments and thus lower supply from resources harder to find, extract, and produce to begin with, means that we’re confronted with some legitimate supply and demand issues most fifth-graders would understand: Less supply and higher demand = a problem. Of course, prices at the pump could increase […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Davos delegates warned of imminent oil crisis

Some of the planet’s richest nations are to hear a warning that a global oil crisis could happen as early as next year. A British businessman will tell world leaders meeting in Switzerland today that it is dangerous to argue that fracking for shale oil and gas can help to avert a global energy crisis. Jeremy Leggett, a former Greenpeace staff member who founded a successful solar energy company, has been invited to the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos from 22 to 25 January. The theme of the meeting is The Reshaping of the World: Consequences for Society, Politics and Business. Leggett told the Climate News Network: “The WEF likes to deal in big ideas, and last year one of its ideas was to argue that the world can frack its way to prosperity. […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Has Petroleum Production Peaked, Ending the Era of Easy Oil?

Despite major oil finds off Brazil’s coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada , fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau—roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day—since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency—an energy cartel for oil consuming nations. To support our modern lifestyles—from cars to plastics —the world has used more than one trillion barrels of oil to date. Another trillion lie underground, waiting to be tapped. But given the locations of the remaining oil, getting the next trillion is likely to cost […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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CMU researchers find controlled charging of PHEVs can cut cost of integration into electricity system by 54-73%; higher benefits with wind power

CMU researchers find controlled charging of PHEVs can cut cost of integration into electricity system by 54-73%; higher benefits with wind power In a new study published in the journal Applied Energy , Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers found that controlled charging of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) reduces the costs of integrating the vehicles into an electricity system by 54–73% depending on the scenario. More specifically, controlled charging can cut the cost of integrating PHEVs approximately in half. The magnitude of these savings is ~5% to 15% higher in a system with 20% wind penetration compared to a system with no wind power, and the savings are 50–60% higher in a system that requires […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Oil Futures Higher in Asia on U.S. Oil Demand

Crude-oil futures were in positive territory in Asian trade on Friday after U.S. inventory data showed an overall decline in oil and oil product stocks. On the New York Mercantile Exchange light, sweet crude futures for delivery in March traded at $97.58 a barrel at 0624 GMT–up $0.26 in the Globex electronic session. March Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange rose $0.17 to $107.75 a barrel. U.S. crude inventories in the week ended Jan. 17 increased by 1 million barrels to 351.2 million barrels–the first weekly increase since November–compared with an estimated increase of 1.2 million barrels, Energy Information Administration data showed. Gasoline stocks rose by 2.1 million barrels to 235.3 million barrels. But, distillate stocks including heating oil and diesel fuel fell by 3.2 million barrels to 120.7 million barrels–indicating stronger fuel demand in January so far as a result of extreme cold. Nymex […]

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WTI-Brent Spread Near Narrowest in Two Months on Keystone

West Texas Intermediate narrowed its discount to Brent to the least in more than two months following the start of a pipeline carrying crude out of the U.S. storage center in Cushing, Oklahoma . The spread between WTI and Brent on the ICE Futures Europe exchange shrank to $9.82 a barrel today, the smallest gap since Nov. 11. WTI advanced as much as 0.5 percent in a fifth daily gain in New York , the longest rally in seven weeks. The Gulf Coast line, the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, was initially transporting 288,000 barrels of light, sweet crude a day to Nederland in Texas. “The Keystone XL south is about to increase arbitrage between Cushing and the Gulf Coast,” which will cause inventories at Cushing to decline, said Eugen Weinberg , head of commodities research at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt . WTI’s discount of about $10 […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Brent, WTI Crude Prices Converge

European crude futures dipped Friday although the price gap with U.S. WTI narrowed, with few upward price signals for Brent and plenty of demand for U.S. products as the cold weather continues. The spread, or price difference, between WTI and Brent has closed in to the narrowest point since early November, as a North American cold snap supports demand for oil products and drives up the price of the raw material used by refiners. Brent crude for March delivery fell as much as 131 cents, or 1.2%, at $106.26 a barrel on ICE Futures Europe. U.S. crude-oil futures were down 63 cents, or 0.6%, at $96.4 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. In Thursday’s Energy Information Administration report, distillates stocks decreased by more than expected, by 3.2 million barrels. BNP Paribas, in a note to clients, said stocks remain "below the bottom of the five year range." […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple