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EIA Update, March Production Numbers

The EIA updated their International Energy Statistics  with the February production numbers about one day after they updated the January numbers. Then on Monday, July 7th, they posted the March numbers. So after preparing a complete post using the February data, I just trashed it and created a new one. World C+C production reached a new high in February, up 531 kb/d to 77,257 kb/d. It was down 525 kb/d in March to 76,732 kb/d. Non-OPEC C+C production reached a new high in December at 44,910 kb/d in December. Since then it has been down 362 kb/d in January, up 270 kb/d in February and up 19 kb/d in March. OPEC C+C The big change has been in OPEC C+C which peaked at 33,745 kb/d in April 2012. In the 23 months since it is down 1,850 kb/d to 31,895 kb/d. Non-OPEC Less USA Non-OPEC less USA is down […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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EIA expects higher gasoline prices for driving season, full year

During the April-September summer driving season this year in the US, regular gasoline retail prices will average $3.66/gal, 8¢/gal higher than last year and 4¢ higher than projected last month, according to a forecast from the US Energy Information Administration in its July Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO). As lower refinery margins more than offset higher crude oil prices , regular gasoline retail prices are projected to fall from an average of $3.68/gal during the second quarter to $3.64/gal during the third quarter. EIA expects regular gasoline retail prices to average $3.54/gal in 2014 and $3.45/gal in 2015. This compares to the agency’s forecasts of $3.50/gal in 2014 and $3.38/gal in 2015 in last month’s STEO. In the recent monthly outlook, total US liquid fuels consumption is expected to average 18.88 million b/d in 2014, 50,000 b/d lower than projected in June, and 18.95 million b/d in 2015, compared […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Russian oil production expected to drop

An anticipated drop in oil production by 2016 is expected to hurt the Russian economy, the Russian said Monday. The ministry said Monday it expects a $4.5 billion decline in oil export revenue because of an anticipated 6.3 percent drop in oil production from 2014 figures. The ministry said the federal budget next year will receive about $2.2 billion less than expected because of a contraction in exports. A report on the Russian economy from the World Bank in March said real gross domestic product growth in 2013 was 1.3 percent, compared with 3.4 percent in 2012. There’s a "confidence crisis" emerging within the Russian economy, the bank warned. "In the past, the lack of comprehensive structural reforms was masked by a growth model based on large investment projects, continued increases in public wages, and transfers — all fueled by sizable oil revenues," it said. Russian energy exports last […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Oettinger: Shale gas could meet 10 percent of EU demand

Shale could eventually meet about 10 percent of the energy demand among European nations, European Energy Commissioner said. Oettinger said companies with reservations about hydrualic fracturing, the controversial drilling practice dubbed fracking, should keep all options on the table. "I estimate that Europe has the potential to secure about a tenth of our needs this way in the long term," he said Sunday . Some countries in Eastern Europe are examining their shale natural gas potential. Other countries in Western Europe, however, have placed moratoriums on the controversial drilling practice. Shale efforts in Great Britain, meanwhile, are in their infancy. European leaders are looking for ways to break the Russian grip on the region’s energy sector. Russia meets about 20 percent of Europe’s demand for gas. Oettinger in May said members of the European Union should develop stronger energy partnerships to avoid falling victim to "political and commercial blackmail." […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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UK became a net importer of petroleum products in 2013

U.S. Energy Information Administration, from UK Department of Energy and Climate Change Fossil fuels (petroleum and other liquids, natural gas, and coal) account for most of the United Kingdom’s (UK) energy consumption. Although renewable energy use is growing, particularly in the electric power sector, fossil fuels accounted for 86% of total primary energy consumption in 2012. Like the United States, the UK has experienced significant changes in its net reliance on imported fossil energy sources since 1970. Beginning in the 1980s, the UK first became a significant net coal importer following the removal of domestic production subsidies and trade barriers. With the opening of North Sea production, the UK became a significant net exporter of crude oil beginning in the early 1980s, but has been a net importer since […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Blueprints for Taming the Climate Crisis

Here’s what your future will look like if we are to have a shot at preventing devastating climate change. Within about 15 years every new car sold in the United States will be electric. In fact, by midcentury more than half of the American economy will run on electricity. Up to 60 percent of power might come from nuclear sources. And coal’s footprint will shrink drastically, perhaps even disappear from the power supply. This course, created by a team of energy experts, was unveiled on Tuesday in a report for the United Nations that explores the technological paths available for the world’s 15 main economies to both maintain reasonable rates of growth and cut their carbon emissions enough by 2050 to prevent climatic havoc. It offers a sobering conclusion. We might be able to pull it off. But it will take an overhaul of the way we […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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World can still stop globe from warming more than 2 C, experts tell UN

Significant climate change may not be inevitable if governments take swift and decisive action now to reduce greenhouse gases, according to a report released Tuesday that rolls back some of the bleaker and more pessimistic assessments of recent climate negotiations. The report , prepared for the United Nations by experts from leading research institutes from 15 countries, challenges the idea that the world can’t avoid breaching a 2 degrees Celsius rise in global average temperature — many climate scientists have warned that an increase of 3 to 4 C is now inevitable. Moreover, they suggest defeatism on the 2 C limit target would contribute to dithering by heavily industrialized countries most responsible for climate change — the United States, China, India, major European economies and rising economic powers like Brazil and South Africa.  “We do not subscribe to the view held by some that the 2 C limit is […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Are We Running Out of Oil?

For many years, a number of industry experts have been sounding the alarm that America, and the world, are about to run out of oil. This is nothing new. In 1914, the Bureau of Mines said that U.S. oil reserves would be exhausted by 1924. The Interior Department said global reserves would last 13 years… and that was in 1939. In 1956, Shell Oil geoscientist Marion King Hubbert advanced his peak oil theory, which said that world oil production had peaked and would begin to decline until all of the oil was gone. Every expert who’s predicted “the end of oil” has been wrong in the past. But with global energy consumption at an all-time high, and much of the world’s economy dependent on oil, the question needs to be asked: Are we about to run out of oil?… The Peak Oil Theory Hubbert, whose […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Debt: Eight Reasons This Time is Different

In today’s world, we have a huge amount of debt outstanding. Academic researchers Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have become famous for their book This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly and their earlier paper This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises . Their point, of course, is that the same thing happens over and over again. We can learn from past crises to solve our current problems. Part of their story is of course correct. Governments have gotten themselves into problems with debt, time after time. This is happening again now. In fact, the same two authors recently prepared a working paper for the International Monetary Fund called Financial and Sovereign Debt Crises: Some Lessons Learned and Some Lessons Forgotten , talking about ideas such as governments inflating their way out of debt problems and pushing problems off to insurance […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Tech Talk – of longer wells and drawdown pressure

There are, simply, three major parts to the coming global economic mess that will be created as we enter into the period of Peak Oil. The first of these comes from the current rising demand for oil, particularly emphasized by those countries, such as China and India, where demand is rising fastest. The second part is the declining production from existing fields as their reserves are drawn down. (Though it should be remembered that even when “exhausted” the fields will still contain vast quantities of oil, but oil which is at present not economically recoverable). And finally there is the oil in the undeveloped, and undiscovered wells and fields that can be added to the existing reserve to help ameliorate the imbalance between demand and supply from existing wells. The high decline rates from long horizontal wells drilled into, and along the shale deposits in the United States, most […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple