“Oil could hit $220 a barrel on Libya and Algeria fears, warns Nomura”: Telegraph.
23 February 2011: This does not factor in wider Gulf problems. Spare capacity would then return to the water thin margins seen during the first Gulf War. “Speculative activities were largely not present” then, says a Nomura analyst. The price reaches $112 during the day. “Jeremy Leggett, a leader of the UK industry task force on peak oil and energy security, said the Mid-East crisis “shows the extreme fragility of the global system. People don’t realise how close we are to a potential precipice if this unrest reaches critical mass in enough OPEC countries. Governments need to draw up emergency plans and get cracking on proactive measures while we still have time,” he said.”
DECC consultation suggests “supply crunch if not a peak in oil production” very likely before 2020.
27 January 2011: UK Parliamentary question by John Hemming: “To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change whether he has estimated a date on which global production of crude oil will peak; and if he will make a statement. [36644] Charles Hendry: We have not estimated a date on which global production of crude oil will peak. However, we do look at a variety of sources that assess oil demand and oil depletion including the IEA, industry and other research organisations. In 2010, DECC’s chief scientist sent out a call for evidence on the prospects for future oil supply to a range of experts. A number of responses received argue that a supply ‘crunch’ (a tightness in the oil market), if not a peak in oil production, is very likely before 2020. We are very grateful for the excellent responses and will use the results to help ensure that our analysis is informed by all relevant factors and further develop energy policies that reduce the risks inherent in a resource constrained future.”
Saudi Arabia may double oil use by 2023, cut exports 45% by 2030.
23 November 2010: Bloomberg: “The kingdom consumes about 1.2 million barrels a day of oil and refined products for power generation and about the same amount of crude for processing, ACWA Power Chief Executive Officer Paddy Padmanathan said today at a conference in Abu Dhabi. Unless the government goes ahead with a plan to diversify power generation sources, crude available for export could slip to 45 percent of the total produced by 2030, he said. … Under a long term plan to diversify fuel sources by 2030, the country is likely to generate 20 percent of its power from solar plants, 20 percent from nuclear energy, 40 percent from gas and 20 percent from oil and crude products, Padmanathan said.”
“Oil shock warning to government from UK business:” BBC.
18 November 2010: “(The) UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES) has produced a briefing update called Peak Oil: the implications of the Gulf of Mexico spill. It warns that in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, tightened regulation of deep water drilling could see oil prices rise. Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Group is among the members of the industry taskforce, said the disaster in the Gulf had increased the chances of an “oil crunch” in the coming decade. He said: “The time to take out our insurance policies against such an outcome is now. We must do this to avoid the horrible shocks to the UK economy which will be mirrored in many other parts of the world.” The group warned that without a strong and co-ordinated response from ministers to protect the economy and society from rising prices, the cost of travel, food, heating and consumer goods would rise.”
“Protect us from peak oil, says Richard Branson (and others)”: FT.
18 November 2010: “In February, a group of business leaders (including Richard Branson) came together to issue the government a warning: we’ve had the credit crisis, the next crisis will be a peak oil crisis. Now they have repeated that call, with an additional warning: Macondo has made the situation even more pressing.” … The obvious response from government will be, “Why should we listen to you?” One of the reasons is that one of the spokesmen for the group is Jeremy Leggett, chairman of Solarcentury, but also a government adviser on renewables. But even he admits, “Many people in DECC have said, ‘We have looked at your analysis and we simply don’t agree.”
‘Peak crude oil’ hit in 2006, and ‘the age of cheap oil is over,’ says IEA’s chief economist.
12 November 2010: CS Monitor: “It was a looming doomsday scenario: “Peak oil” would someday hit, potentially sending food prices soaring, stock markets reeling, and countries to war to seize and protect remaining oil reserves., the International Energy Agency said Tuesday, peak crude oil already came and went unnoticed in 2006. Crisis averted, apparently.”
IEA WEO 2010: Questionable assumptions and major omissions, says The Oil Drum.
11 November 2010: “The World Energy Outlook 2010 makes quite a number of assumptions that seem wrong, and omits important ideas. Here are a few that Oil Drum staff members have mentioned. ”
“BP’s report into the Deepwater disaster realises all our worst fears about the oil industry”: Guardian editorial.
8 September 2010: “This is BP’s attempt to write the second draft of history – one in which as little blame as possible is apportioned to BP itself. An example: of the report’s eight key findings on the cause of the explosion, five read as though they are really the subcontractor’s responsibility rather than BP’s.”
A German Army think tank warns of a coming oil crisis that could threaten democracy.
31 August 2010: Der Spiegel runs a story on a study of global oil production, not meant for the public, by a think tank in the Bundeswehr. “A permanent supply crisis threatens – and only the fear of it can cause turbulence in commodity markets and stock exchanges. The topic is so politically explosive that it is remarkable if (sic) an institution like the army uses the term Peak Oil in public.” Conclusions include the probability of bottlenecks in the supply of important goods including food supply; partial or even complete market collapse …. “an alternative would be conceivable: government rationing and the allocation of important goods or the setting of production schedules and other coercive short-term market-based mechanisms in times of crisis.” Democracy could come under threat, the authors conclude.
Macondo spill is having little impact on global drilling in deepwater, now 7% of total production.
25 August 2010: NYT: “Large offshore accidents in Mexican, British and Australian waters since the late 1970s barely slowed deepwater development, and history may well be repeating itself. … That is not to say that foreign governments, regulators and environmentalists did not take notice of the BP accident ….But the limited reaction so far can be explained by the growing importance of deepwater drilling to world oil supplies, especially in countries like Norway whose production is in decline. Since 2006, nearly half the total oil and gas reserves added worldwide have been in deepwater areas. Six million barrels of oil a day, or 7 percent of total global production, is currently produced in such areas, and total deepwater world oil production is expected to double by 2030, according to IHS-CERA.”
Oil shock ‘very likely’ within decade, warns Huhne.
22 July 2010: Interview with FT: “It will be a world where we will have very substantial oil price spikes, which have an enormous capacity to provide shocks to the domestic economy and to the world economy, exactly as they did in the 1970s and 80s.” … “What worries me … is that we’re moving from a world where the UK is dependent on imported energy for only 27 per cent of our needs, to a world where it’s going to be anything from 46 per cent to 58 per cent within 10 years.” FT: “Mr Huhne promised to encourage take-up of energy efficiency measures and low-carbon technology through “a system of incentives, triggers and nudges”.”
Former Dow Jones reporter writes on Nasdaq.com that Saudi King’s view means peak oil is here.
21 July 2010: Brendan Coffey, , a doubter of peak oil until 2006, now with Cabot Wealth Advisory: “The departure from the successful script OPEC has followed is a remarkable signal of change to me, one that to my mind indicates peak oil is here – there is only so much oil left, and the Saudis want to sell it when the oil crunch becomes apparent again.” …. “About 10 years ago, OPEC sources indicated Saudi Arabia needed to sell a barrel of oil at $18 to break even. Two years ago, data from ratings agency Fitch (which cares because it evaluates sovereign debt) estimated Saudi Arabia’s breakeven had risen to $26. In January, Fitch pegged breakeven for the country at $68 a barrel. If it costs more to produce oil, it clearly is harder to get. And Saudi Arabia is the primary low-cost oil producer on the planet.”
Lloyd’s of London warns of “catastrophic” consequences if companies fail to prepare for peak oil.
14 July 2010: In a report with the Institute of Strategic Studies, the insurance institution says Britain needs to be ready for “peak oil” and disrupted energy supplies at a time of soaring fuel demand in China and India, constraints on production caused by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and political moves to cut CO2 to halt global warming. “Companies which are able to take advantage of this new energy reality will increase both their resilience and competitiveness. Failure to do so could lead to expensive and potentially catastrophic consequences”… “Even before we reach peak oil, we could witness an oil supply crunch because of increased Asian demand. Major new investment in energy takes 10-15 years from the initial investment to first production, and to date we have not seen the amount of new projects that would supply the projected increase in demand.
FT puts King Abdullah’s pronouncement in the context of 4,4 mbd spare capacity, and gas demand.
5 July 2010: FT: “Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi said in June that the country wouldn’t need to increase its oil production capacity until 2020. The country now reports it has 4.4m b/d of spare capacity – more than double the ‘cushion’ that it officially targets. Upstream reported in May that Saudi Arabia is exploring for hydrocarbons in the Red Sea, and has recorded 22,000km of seismic data there, among challenging geography including 2km-plus water depths, high temperatures and a layer of salt. It has also commissioned exploration around the Manifa oil field in the Persian Gulf. But the overall focus is on gas, not oil, because of the Kingdom’s domestic electricity supply problem. It heavily subsidises both fuel and electricity use, and consequently consumption is growing too fast for domestic gas supply to keep up with. Platts reported last month that Saudi Arabia diverts about 877,000 b/d – or 11 per cent of its current oil output – to its own domestic electricity supplies.”
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah orders a halt to oil exploration operations in the Kingdom.
4 July 2010: So the official Saudi Press Agency, or SPA, reported yesterday. “I was heading a cabinet meeting and told them to pray to God the Almighty to give it a long life,” King Abdullah tells Saudi scholars studying in Washington. “I told them that I have ordered a halt to all oil explorations so part of this wealth is left for our sons and successors God willing.” A senior oil ministry official, who declined to be named, tells Zawya Dow Jones the king’s order isn’t an outright ban but rather means future exploration activities should be carried out wisely.
BP “staked future on expanding offshore drilling”, released company strategy document shows.
28 June 2010: A strategy paper seen by the Guardian newspaper shows this was to be its number one area for long-term growth.
My view: The triple crunch log shows how the bad news about the Macondo well has been like a veil lifted by increments, day by day and week by week, until finally the worst case appears before us - that the leakage may never be stemmed until the pressure drops by means of haemorrhage from the reservoir. That could take up to four years, we now learn. In the process – and all the financial damage, brand erosion and operational constraint it will incur beyond the horrors to date – BP may well have committed suicide as a company. It has staked its future on deepwater drilling and lost: at minimum it has lost over a hundred billion in value, and more likely it has lost its life. But what of the other major oil companies? How much of their future have they staked on deep water drilling? The answer to this question, and the implication for peak oil, is a huge question mark hanging over an oil-dependent world economy.
After a sequence of failed efforts to stop leak, BP’s survival is now at stake.
1 June 2010: Arbuthnot in a note to clients: “BP has spent $1bn to date and the future costs will be significant. Adding in the inevitable litigation costs, this will have a major financial impact on the company which realistically cannot be quantified in the short term. What worries us the most is the emotive language coming from the Obama administration and the reputational damage done so far. It is difficult to see how the company can recover and it remains unclear what punitive measures will be put in place in terms of its operations in the Gulf of Mexico.”
CIBC’s Jeff Rubin likens the Deepwater Horizon to Three Mile Island.
5 May 2010: Writing in the Globe and Mail, he says: “Will the unfolding environmental catastrophe from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico become deep-water oil’s equivalent to the Three Mile Island accident? In terms of environmental degradation and economic cost, it’s already become much more. The real legacy of Three Mile Island wasn’t what happened back in 1979, though, but rather what happened, or more precisely didn’t happen, over the course of the next 40 years in the United States. Literally overnight, the near-meltdown of the reactor core changed public acceptance of nuclear power plants. No company in the U.S. has built a new one since.”
Costs of Gulf oilspill likely to exceed Exxon Valdez as backlash builds against BP.
30 April 2010: Brent Coon & Associates, an American law firm playing a large role in bringing cases against BP for the Texas City refinery fire in 2005, files a lawsuit on behalf of a rig worker injured in last week’s blast, and argues that criminal charges should be brought against the company for its repeated failure to act after a series of industrial accidents in the US. “They don’t learn their lessons, they are the most arrogant bunch of bastards I’ve ever dealt with,” says lawyer Brent Coon. “It’s like they just don’t care. At some point, we are going to have to put some of these executives in jail and withdraw their right to exploit our natural resources.”
Chevron CEO sees no future for his company in the shale gas rush.
25 April 2010: John Watson that the “price tag is too high” to justify the investments required, a big contrast with those who insist that new drilling techniques are a “game changer” and lift projections of reserves of shale gas from 30 years’ worth of supplies to 100 years.
FT.com suspects policymakers, economists and peak-oilists are starting to speak same language.
20 April 2010: “It’s still the rare politician or industry executive who would use the phrase ‘peak oil’. But in the UK, a country for whom domestic oil production decline is very much a concern, the issue has become almost mainstream.”
My view: This is encouraging, but I am not sure it is accurate. Pushing the earl-peak argument hardly feels mainstream to me at present. None of the UK political party manifestos mention peak oil going into the election. And when asked about at the Guardian debate on the environment, the three environmental spokespeople – Miliband, Hughes and Clark – show varying degrees of complacency, Miliband worst.
IEA forecasts oil will hit record levels this year and threaten recovery.
13 April 2010: The latest forecast is 86.6 million barrels of oil per day, 2% higher, up 1.67 million barrels a day. “Ultimately things might turn messy for producers if $80-$100 per barrel is merely seen as the new $60-$80, stunting economic recovery while prompting resurgent non-oil and non-Opec supply investment. A recovery in oil demand is moving apace. The return of economic growth and hence oil demand growth is fuelling the increase.” OECD recovery could be blighted, the monthly report concludes.
Kuwait Times: Kuwait needs to be more aware of peak oil and global warming.
3 April 2010: Staff writer. Abdullah Al-Qattan, speaking of the February report by Kuwaiti scientists that peak oil might be as close as 2014, writes: “If Peak Oil is this close, then, why are we failing to adapt? One reason might be widespread ignorance of the basics of environmentalism. Some people might not realize what terms such as ‘green building’ actually mean, with such critically important terminology missing from even our modern textbooks. This has led to a common unawareness of the global ecological crises and a consequent lack of any consideration for these urgent problems, such as global warming and pollution, which in turn will lead to further amplification of these problems.” If it wanted to, Kuwait could be a green country, developing plentiful renewables including solar, Al-Qattan says.
US Department of Energy admits that peak oil may come as early as 2011
25 March 2010: “A chance exists that we may experience a decline” of world liquid fuels production between 2011 and 2015 “if the investment is not there.” So says Glen Sweetnam, main official expert on oil market in the Obama administration, in an interview with Le Monde. Sweetnam is director of the International, Economic and Greenhouse Gas division of the Energy Information Administration at the DoE says the investments needed ar as yet “unidentified.” The DoE predicts decline of identified sources of supply at 2 percent a year, from 87 million barrels per day (Mbpd) in 2011 to just 80 Mbpd in 2015. But by then global demand is expected to be 90 Mbpd, meaning “unidentified” additional liquid fuels projects would have to fill in a 10 Mbpd gap within less than 5 years.
Richard Branson and other UK business leaders warn of oil crunch within five years.
8 February 2010: “The next five years will see us face another crunch – the oil crunch. This time, we do have the chance to prepare. The challenge is to use that time well. ….Our message to government and businesses is clear: act. Don’t let the oil crunch catch us out in the way that the credit crunch did.” There are signs that the UK government is already beginning to listen, and move away from the narrative given on peak oil by BP, Exxon and the Saudis. JL: “[We are] in regular contact with government; we have reason to believe their risk thinking on peak oil may be evolving away from BP et al’s and we await the results of further consultations with keen interest.”
Kuwaiti scientists forecast world conventional crude oil production will peak in 2014.
4 February 2010: The Kuwait Univerisity / Kuwait Petroleum Company study, published in the journal Energy & Fuels, describes the development of a new version of the original “single cyle” Hubbert model that accounts for individual production trends (i.e. a “multi-cycle” model) to provide a global oil production forecast. The researchers analyse production trends of the 47 oil-producing countries supplying most of the world’s conventional crude oil.
Petrobras CEO says oil capacity, including biofuels, will peak in 2010 and drop rapidly, at 5% pa.
4 February 2010: A 1 December 2009 presentation Jose Gabrielli gave in Sau Paulo is translated on The Oil Drum. In it, he says that the world needs oil volumes to replace the equivalent of one Saudi Arabia every two years to offset future world oil decline rates …just to keep production constant at less tham 90 mbd. TOD analysis shows Gabrielli’s additions exclude additions from unsanctioned projects and from oil yet to be discovered, so many potential Iraq projects and Brazilian Santos basin projects are not included. BP professes Iraq might produce another 8 mbd by 2020. Petrobras forecasts an additional 2 mbd from Brazil by 2020, making another 10 mbd capacity by 2020. That still leaves a required lower capacity addition of 19 to 24 mbd in 2020 to come from other sources: equivalent to production from about two Saudi Arabias. SA production was an average 9.3 mbd in 2008 and new capacity addition over two years 2008&9 was less than this (9.2 mbd).
Tony Hayward sees peak demand before peak supply – beyond 2020.
4 February 2010: “I personally – and BP – have never believed we will see peak oil because of supply. We always believed we would see peak oil because of demand. There will come a time – I believe it is beyond 2020 – when because of the changes in the energy portfolio, because of the drive for energy efficiency, because of the introduction of biofuels, demand for oil will peak.” There is plenty of oil in the world, not least in Iraq, expecting as he does production to grow from a couple of million barrels a day today to close to 10m. This makes it “a big part of oil security for the world.” he dismisses fears over dependence on Russian gas as “paranoic.”
Goldman Sachs: oil shortages will reappear in 2011.
18 January 2010: By then supply demand will be outpacing supply because of underinvestment. Analyst Jeffrey Currie forecasts demand exceeding pre-crash levels by Q3 this year. “It’s as good as it’s going to get right now in terms of supply growth,” says Currie. Goldman predicted in December that crude would average $90 a barrel in 2010 and $110 per barrel in 2011. Goldman’s outlook for this year is joint-highest among 38 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Ofgem sees a “cliff edge” in UK gas supplies in 2015-16.
13 January 2010: Alistair Buchanan, head of Ofgem, tells the FT he sees a risk that new Russian and the Caspian gas supplies might not be available in time to meet UK demand as domestic gas production falls. UK gas production is down 40% since 2000. Buchanan questions whether the ultra-competitive UK market is structured in the right way to guarantee security of supply.
Demand for oil is increasing at such a rate in Saudi Arabia that exports are likely to be constrained, analysts fear.
11 January 2010: Domestic consumption jumped 16.4 per cent year on year in August because of an unprecedented surge in the burning of crude. Inefficient power plants and shortage of gas led the reasons. As a result, the IEA has revised up its forecasts for Saudi domestic oil consumption to 2.8m barrels a day in 2010. Last year’s production was a record 12.5m barrels a day. The government has postponed some energy-intensive projects. Oil is sold for $5 a barrel in the Kingdom. FT: “Even Saudis complain that subsidised fuel and cheap cars encourage wasteful use of energy, especially by young people who have little means of entertainment in the conservative kingdom except driving or participating in unofficial drag races.”
Wall Street Journal asks why Saudi Aramco is using supercomputers for oil if peak oil is bunkum.
19 November 2009: Journalist Russell Gold asks “why bother throwing so much muscle into understanding the reservoir if there were no worries about its future performance. We’re not sure who is right or wrong in the peak oil debate. But the oil industry’s interest in speed computing is intriguing. It’s not just Saudi Arabia turning to computers to find increasingly elusive oil. The world’s fifth-fastest supercomputer – Tianhe-1 in Tianjin, China – will be used in part for oil exploration.
UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil calls for urgent review by government of impact of oil shortages.
15 November 2009: Chairman of ITPOES Will Whitehorn of Virgin says: “Given the revelations from within the IEA, we hope the government will be urgently reviewing the complacent approach to peak-oil risk evident in the Wicks Review.”
Swedish academics say the IEA report is “politicised” by countries with a vested interest in a low oil price.
12 November 2009: Kjell Aleklett of Uppsala university and others estimate global production in 2030 at 75 million barrels a day, rather than the 105 mbd the IEA suggests. The Uppsala team have a paper coming out in Energy Policy, setting out reasons for the descent to 75 mbd, putting the peak around now.
IEA whistleblower claims key oil reserve figures are distorted by US in the World Energy Outlook.
9 November 2009: The un-named senior IEA official, who fears industry reprisals if he goes public, tells the Guardian that the decline of existing reserves is being underplayed, and the prospects of finding more overplayed, in order to stop panic buying. He claims the IEA knows the world can never reach 105 mbd production. “Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources.” An ex senior IEA source added that a key rule at the organisation is an “imperative not to anger the Americans” and that “we have [already] entered the ‘peak oil’ zone. I think that the situation is really bad.”
Total warns that environmental constraints will accelerate the oil crunch by slowing exploration.
22 October 2009: “Governments need to assess the needs of this planet in terms of energy and stop saying we will develop solar and then not have enough,” Christophe de Margerie, Total’s chief executive, says in an interview with the Financial Times. “Carbon is not the enemy; carbon is life. ….“Don’t go to Copenhagen only with your concern about the environment. We also have a concern over energy access. If you take only one [concern with you], we are dead and we don’t want to die.” He warned that not only the planet would suffer if the UK and other governments failed to enact smart environmental policies. “I hope you have a lot of candles,” he said.
With oil at $79, a Global Witness report warns governments are ignoring the peak oil issue.
20 October 2009: Among the issues discussed: the IEA expectation that production from existing oilfields falls by 50% by 2020, meaning an additional 64m barrels a day of capacity is needed by 2030 – six times current Saudi Arabian production. Global Witness takes issue with the IEA’s recommendation that the oil industry spend $450bn a year on exploration. Climate change means this would would be better invested in transitioning to a post-oil world of renewable energy and conservation. Recent discoveries add up to nothing like the discovery rate needed, totalling around 16bn barrels, or only around 1.7m barrels a day.
ConocoPhillips boss fears oil will peak below 100 mbd.
20 October 2009: Jim Mulva tells reporters this in a side comment at the Oil and Money Conference in London.
ASPO USA annual meeting produces a consensus the peak oil will fall in the 2012-15 window.
16 October 2009: Analyst Chris Nelder compares the results of this meeting with the first, four years ago: “We now know that conventional crude did in fact hit its peak-plateau in 2005, having remained around the 74 mbpd level ever since. The expected growth from non-OPEC mostly failed to materialize, as depletion of mature fields took its toll and the cost of new projects soared—especially for deepwater and production from marginal sources. More pessimistic observers now think the 87 mbpd all liquids peak recorded at the height of the 2008 boom was the peak, and the more optimistic ones have cut their expectations to under 100 mbpd, with 90 mbpd looking more likely. ….. Most observers believe the globally averaged depletion rate has risen from 4.5% per year in 2007 to about 5 – 5.5% now, which will accelerate to around 6.5% per year by 2014. This is more or less in line with the average rates from IEA’s report last year.”
UKERC report on peak oil concludes that there is “a significant risk of a peak before 2020.”
8 October 2009: “….Although there are around 70,000 oil fields in the world, approximately 25 fields account for one quarter of the global production of crude oil, 100 fields account for half of production and up to 500 fields account for two thirds of cumulative discoveries. ….The average rate of decline from fields that are past their peak of production is at least 6.5%/year globally, while the corresponding rate of decline from all currently-producing fields is at least 4%/year. This implies that approximately 3 mb/d of new capacity must be added each year, simply to maintain production at current levels – equivalent to a new Saudi Arabia coming on stream every three years. ….More than two thirds of current crude oil production capacity may need to be replaced by 2030, simply to prevent production from falling. At best, this is likely to prove extremely challenging. ….For a wide range of assumptions about the global URR of conventional oil and the shape of the future production cycle, the date of peak production can be estimated to lie between 2009 and 2031. Although this range appears wide in the light of forecasts of an imminent peak, it may be a relatively narrow window in terms of the lead time to develop substitute fuels.”
My view: This report comes the UK’s premier energy research institute. The government has so far ignored the warning by the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security. Will it be able to ignore this one too?
First peak oil hedge fund for institutional investors set up in New York.
8 September 2009: Hedge fund investor, logi ENERGY LLC., announces The Peak Oil Value Fund, the first of its kind aimed at institutional and accredited investors. “We believe that the effects of Peak Oil on the markets are a temporary Global Macro series of events” says Larry Ortega, CIO. “We only have a few years to take advantage of these opportunities.” The fund’s investment strategy employs five approaches: 1) Publicly Traded Equities and Equity Options; 2) Investment in oil in storage; 3) Investment in Oil, Gasoline and Heating Oil spreads in the Futures Markets; 4) Private Investment in Public Equities of Oil and Gas Exploration Companies; and 5) Private Investment in Private Companies or Oil and Gas Fields.
BP finds giant oilfield in Gulf of Mexico and the media is full of talk that peak oil concerns are over.
2 September 2009: The Tiber field, in 4,100 feet (1.25km) of water might be as large as the 4 bb Forties field, BP says. JL: “This [BP] find is welcome but its not going to take concerns away at a time when existing fields are depleting faster than expected and the new discoveries have a very long lead time.” The FT reports a more sober “at least 3 bb” of which only 500,000 barrels is retrievable with today’s technology. The field is the deepest ever: almost 6 miles (9.4 km) below the sea bed. BP believes there could be a further 20bb to be found in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. (Us proved reserves are around 30bb, BP’s were 18.1 bb at the end of last year). The field is unlikely to be onstream before the second half of the next decade. Goldman Sachs argues that Tiber is no answer to BP’s “thin pipeline of new projects in the 2010-13 period,” Iain Reid of Macquarie?Securities argues that it “does scotch a few bears who thought there was a production black hole after 2013”.
See my Guardian blog on this.
Split in US oil industry over plan for “energy citizen” protest rallies against proposed climate legislation.
14 August 2009: A leaked American Petroleum Institute memo shows the umbrella organisation asking companies to stage up to 22 gatherings mobilising thousands of “citizens” to protest against proposed carbon-reduction measures such as forcing oil companies to invest in renewables. Exxon strongly supports the plan, but API members BP and Shell are members of the US Climate Action Partnership, that supports many of Obama’s proposed policies. Jack Gerard, API President, entreats members to keep the memo confidential, because it would arm “critics”, but it finds its way to Greenpeace anyway.
UK Government review of energy security virtually ignores peak oil.
5 August 2009: The author, former energy minister Malcolm Wicks, says of energy security generally – on page 1 of 119 – that “there is no crisis.” The whole report sits very uncomfortably with the IEA’s latest thoughts, as carried by the FT and Independent on Monday. As for the work of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES), the report does not mention it, much less our significantly less sanguine conclusions. The taskforce had two meetings with DECC officials, one of which Mr Wicks attended himself. Peak oil is mentioned but once, in a short box on page 45. This passage concludes: “Few authors advocating an imminent peak take account of factors such as the role of prices in stimulating exploration, investment, technological development and changes in consumer behaviour.”
IEA’s Chief Economist issues another energy crunch warning, this time on a front page.
3 August 2009: The Independent reports an exclusive interview in which the IEA’s Fathi Birol warns that catastrophic shortfalls in oil threaten global recovery.
My view: Dr Birol seems to become more trenchant with each interview. It’s as though the World Bank were warning about the credit crunch ahead of time. But still few appear to listen.
McKinsey Global Institute warns that a 1970s-type oil shock could follow the current recovery
29 July 2009: Scott Nyquist, a McKinsey Director, writing in Business Week: “unless business leaders and policymakers act decisively on both oil supply and demand, there is a risk that a second oil shock could follow economic recovery—indeed, one that could be lengthier than the second price spike that hit the world economy in the 1970s.” MGI says there is much governments could do to abate risk. They calculate that “investments to increase energy productivity that offer investors a return of 10% or more could reduce global oil demand by as much as 10% by 2020, or between 6 million and 11 million barrels per day—the amount required to keep demand and supply in balance.” But “it may already be too late to avert a second oil shock that could develop as early as 2010, depending on how quickly the global economy recovers.”
Oil & Gas UK warns that UK faces an energy crunch as exploration falls in North Sea
9 July 2009: A report shows investment in exploration is dropping 57% in the first half of 2009. It fell to £4.8bn last year, down £1.2bn on the previous two years, and could drop to £3bn next year, where £5bn is needed. Domestic reserves still contribute around two thirds of UK primary energy. 37bn barrels could be extracted, the industry believes. On this showing it will nearer 11 bn barrels.
Commodity Futures Trading Commission will hold hearings on potential US curbs on oil trading
7 July 2009: The reining in of speculators (not just in oil, but gas and other commodities) by setting limits is now on the cards. The traders are predictably unimpressed. One says: “People forget you need the speculator to take the other side of producers trade – if you have a producer who needs to hedge then you need a speculator.”
The threat of an oil supply crunch has receded with the recession, the IEA says
30 June 2009: The IEA has cut its oil demand forecast by fully 3.3 mbd by 2013. The agency foresees 0.6% growth of 540,000 barrels a day from 2008 to 2014, meaning consumption increases from from 85.8 mbd to 89. The Opec cushion is now expected to reach 7.78 million barrels a day, or 8%.
Comment: See the Reuters article of 23 June for a less sanguine view.
IEA sees potential for oil supply crunch by 2014
23 June 2009: This Reuters assessment differs from the FT’s portrayal, below. It could happen if global growth returns to 5% pa, IEA chief Nobuo Tanaka says. “If GDP only grows 3% we will probably see a postponing of the supply crunch until after 2014,” he adds.
My view: This is essentially the same view as the UK industry taskforce’s.
Brown asks for an emergency plan to stop oil prices wrecking the recovery
21 June 2009: The UK PM orders Treasury and Department of Business officials to prepare for a scenario where a rising oil price leads to a lending drought for UK companies. He will seek an international agreement to limit the price of oil, which is at nearly $72.
My view: There is something of Canute in this.
11 June 2009: Tony Hayward offered a restatement of his company’s position on peak oil at the release of the 2009 BP Statistical Review of World Energy. The review shows that in 2008, for the first time, total energy demand in poorer countries (including China and India) exceeded power and fuel consumption in wealthier nations. “Our data confirms that the world has enough proved reserves . . . to meet the world’s needs for decades to come,” Mr Hayward said, adding that constraints on production were “human, not geological”. Will Whitehorn, chair of the UK industry task force on peak oil and energy security, calls the findings overoptimistic. He says: “Many of the reserves figures are overstated.”
Goldman Sachs reverts to bullish forecast as oil nears $70 a barrel
4 June 2009: Surprising Wall Street, Goldman has forecast $85 a barrel by year end, ending a spell of bearish forecasting. As recently as end April it was predicting $45 within three months because of plentiful inventories and weak demand. Goldman predicted the “super-spike” above $100 ahead of anyone else, in March 2005 when crude was around $55, building much kudos. But then it had a spell of bad forecasts, including wrongly calling $200 oil.
Gulf faces gas shortfall: only Qatar and Iran have enough supplies for their own needs
26 May 2009: The cumulative gas shortfall for the 6 GCC nations may be at least 7 trillion cubic feet by 2015. Neither Qatar or Iran can necessarily help their neighbours. Qatar’s moratorium on new North Field projects extends to at least 2013, as things stand. In Iran, the problem is global and regional politics. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE are already burning oil for power and expected increasingly to do so. The UAE is turning to nuclear, after concluding they will need to add more than 40GW by 2020. They estimate not much more than half of that can feasibly come from gas. An un-named official from the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company: “Most people don’t recognize it, but the Middle East has one of the world’s fastest growing rates of [power] demand….and the the net effect is a lot of crude oil is getting diverted to the electricity sector.”
My view: This will boost oil use significantly in the oil exporting countries, imperilling supply for oil-importing countries once peak oil hits.
Saudi oil minister warns of oil price spike in 2-3 years, worse than the 2008 one
26 May 2009: Ali Naimi says the next spike will result from ongoing underinvestment in new capacity.
Russia cannot guarantee the EU that there will be no further disruptions to gas supplies
25 May 2009: President Dmitry Medvedev tells an EU-Russia summit in Khabarovsk that he cannot promise uninterrupted gas supply to the west. Neither, relatedly, will Russia be lending any more money to Ukraine, because it has concerns about Kiev’s solvency. Ukraine should be filling its storage facilities around now ready for winter, and isn’t. This itself impacts smooth transit to Europe.
The high oil price of early 2008 was due much more to peak oil than speculation
11 May 2009: Steven Kopits, Managing Director of Energy business analysts Douglas-Westwood, observes that global production plataued in October 2004, and in the four years thereafter the global economy expanded by 18% while oil supply didn’t grow. Prices rose because more new Chinese consumption hit the market than developed economy consumption fell out of it. And then the world economy collapsed. Now, market manipulation is rife. Opec is reducing production at millions of barrels a day and investment banks are using charted supertakers to hoard something like 100 million barrels to profit come the return to high prices. Why no outrage about the investment banks, he asks. Because people only care about high prices once they experience high prices. Regulators will have to contain oil prices if they are to prevent a “second peak oil recession.”
“Peak oil, not speculation,” Steven Kopits, Douglas-Westwood Industry Comment, 11 May 2009.
Backlog of untagged log entries: general
January 1, 2000 Change for Good, Clean Energy, Climate, Coal, Commentaries, Finance, Gas, Nuclear, Oil15 May11: Tepco now says reactor 1 melted down within a few hours of the tsunami hitting Fukushima and the automatic shutdown. Almost all the fuel rods melted and dropped to the bottom of the pressure vessel, from which all water had drained.
15 May 11: Iraq will miss oil output targets. So say senior company officials operating there. The plan was to quadruple by 2017: lift production to 12 mbd within 6 years, up from 2.6 mbd currently. This increase in production was to be a vital part of keeping oil prices manageable from 2015. Infrastructure is the problem.
15 May 11: Saudi must invest $88bn on power over next 10 years if electricity demand is to keep growing at 8% a year to reach the necessary 75 GW says the water and electricity minister.
5 December 2010: FT: “From Quakers to suited psychopaths: Too many socially minded businesses leave their conscience behind, argues a new business history that impresses Jeremy Leggett.”
14 February 2011: Huffington Post: US must help Saudi Arabia turn into “the Saudi Arabia of solar,” WikiLeaks cables say. I find it encouraging to see American diplomats thinking like Silicon Valley visionaries when it comes to the role renewable energy industries can have in generating a secure and sane world a couple of short decades from now.
14 May 11: UK will sign up to CCC carbon plan through 2027, the only government to have a legally-binding carbon target beyond 2020. Targets in the plan for 60% overall carbon emissions cuts og 60% by 203 include 40% of power from renewables by then, and 31% of new cars and 14% of cars on the road being electric. Cameron intervened on Huhne’s side against Treasury and BIS.
14 May 11: EDF PR bid to persuade British to embrace nuclear. De Rivaz is thought to be on the verge of admitting that 2018 is now no longer tenable: Fukushima will cause at least a year’s delay.
13 May 11: Rising Mississippi threatens 10% of Louisiana oil production. Heavy rain has been lifting the Mississppi and Ohio rivers for weeks.
13 May 11: Former IEA director: shale gas revolution will disappoint. Jean-Marie Bourdaire concluded at the recent ASPO conference that the US developed the infratructure and (lack of) polcy for a slow-growth industry. Europe will not permit this. China and Australia will not develop shale gas until the returns are better.
13 May 11: Threefold rise in UK of people unable to pay energy bills, in the last four years. So warns the Money Advice Trust.
13 May 11: The meltdown in Fukushima reactor 1 was complete, but it is still not clear whether the pooled fuel on the floor of the reactor vessel went critical again. A China Syndrome seems to have been avoided though.
12 May 11: Tepco discovers reactor 1 fuel rods are fully exposed at Fukushima. Its not clear for how long. Workers started entering the building for the first time last week.
12 May 11: Japan to shut down 35 reactors by end May. That means only around a third of its 54 reactors will be in service. 5 more will be shut down in the months therafter for regular inspections, meaning 75% could be offline this summer.
12 May 11: Japan dodges many rolling power cuts because people and businesses are saving on a whole new scale. Many scheduled rolling power cuts have not proved necessary.
12 May 11: Serious disaster plan problems at US nuclear plants, NRC finds. Inspections show unusable emergency equipment, and failure to consider two of the Fukushima problems: trouble at more than one reactor, and infrastructure failure.
12 May 11: World oil demand almost flatlined in March, the latest IEA data show. Global demand rose just 0.4%. Reasons include the drop in US demand, but also “exceptional events” such as Fukushima.
12 May 11: US gasoline prices fall just as Washington cranks up pricing investigation: gasoline futures are down 9.3% in two days. Prices have hit $4 a gallon in some areas of the US.
12 May 11: Exxon CEO: oil industry needs $21bn subsidies that Democrats are trying to cut over 10 years to help reduce the deficit. Tillerson tells the Senate Finance Committee that removing them would be “counterproductive.” Other company bosses agree.
12 May 11: Wikileaks cables show scramble for Arctic resources by the circum-Arctic nations. Peter Wadhams: the ice has “gone of a cliff.” Measurements have shown that there is now only a quarter of the ice there was in 1979.
12 May 11: Huhne cannot say what the green deal interest rate will be. This is a key question. The Germans only manage 100,000 homes a year even with a Government-supported 2.6% interest rate.
12 May 11: US natural gas revolution wildly oversold, a PostCarbon Institute study concludes. Author David Hughes argues that EIA estimates of quadrupled of shale gas by 2035, from 14% of US gas to 45%, overlook the fast decline rates of wells after as little as a year.
11 May 11: French lower house votes to ban fracking of fossil fuels. If the senate repeats the vote next month it will become law.
11 May 11: Dwindling oil threatens use of Alaksa pipeline. Oil used to flood in at 2 mbd hot enough to mean arrival atround 100 degrees three days later. No longer, it seems. A third as much enters, meaning a journay five time longer. For how much longer?
11 May 11: Vestas says offer of 2,000 UK jobs depends on policy. The wind turbine manufacturer has signed an option on land for a factory.
11 May 11: Huhne strengthens energy bill with edict for landlords forcing them to take prt in the green deal. From April 2016 they will not be able to refuse reasonable requests from tenants, and from April 2018 they won’t be able to reent properties with less than an E rating.
11 May 11: SSE found guilty of mis-selling to 800,000 customers. Doorsteppers were told to give the impression they knew the householder was paying more with another energy supplier, when they didn’t. Surrey County Council Trading Standards have prosecuted them successfully. Now they want to go for their assets under the Proceeds of Crime Act. Sentencing is on 27 May.
11 May 11: Rolling Stone: Goldman Sachs lied, and should be presecuted. In an article chronicling the extraordinary findings of the Senate Subcommittee on Investigations, they set out a considerable rap sheet: a tale of master manipulation of systemic fraud.
10 May 11: UK green deal criticised as too weak as the Energy Bill enters second reading in the House of Commons. Households and businesses will be able to pay for energy efficiency measures in installments on their energy bills. FoE proposes a “warm homes” amendment committing to numbers and forcing landlords to act.
10 May 11: UK cabinet split on CCC’s 60% cuts by 2030 recommendation. Cable has written to Huhne saying the proposed carbon budget will cost the economy too much. The Treasury agrees with him, saying the UK could not afford them. Climate Change Committee chairman Adair Turner meets ministers to lobby. Will the government reject the independent statutory committee’s advise?
10 May 11: UK set to miss carbon and renewables targets. Cambridge Econometrics says current and planned policies will entail narrowly missing the first and second target, and missing the third (2018-2022) by a long way. The key targets of 20% carbon cuts and 15% renewables by 2020 will both be missed.
10 May 11: Co-operative Energy opens shop with a low-carbon UK energy consumer offering: lots of renewables, but some gas and nuclear in the mix offered. They want to change the Big 6 to the Big 7, they say.
9 May 11: US study finds methane contamination of drinking water near fracking sites, with up to 17 times normal concentrations within 1 km of wells in Pennsylvania and New York. Companies expect to drill some 2,000 wells in Pennsylvania this year.
9 May 11: Solar PV industry protests climate committee treatment of solar: barely mentioned in the CCC report, and only as an expensive option, comparing out of date costs to wholesale price competition, not retail.
9 May 11: S&P cuts Greece rating two more notches into junk status on the prospect of a further bailout, which they argue would be equivalent to a default. Politicians have said the €110bn original bailout is not enough. The ECD has agreed a restructuring of the debt is needed.
9 May 11: Banks cave in on PPI mis-selling, starting with Lloyd’s. The floodgates are now open for the biggest-ever consumer payout.
9 May 11: Solar PV cell and module production up >100% in 2010. PV News reports 23 GW of cells and 20 GW of modules produced, by more than 100% year on year. 17.5 GW of installations exceeded 2009’s 7.2 GW by 141%. Germany installed 7.3, Italy 3.9. Tier 1 Chinese crystalline silicon module prices declined from around $2.20/Wp on average in 2009 to $1.75/Wp in 2010. Five cell producers are >1 GW: Suntech (1.5), JA Solar, First Solar, Yingli and Trina. China/Taiwan is now 59% of the cell market, up 152%. Cell and module production is expected to increase by over 50% in 2011.
8 May 11: UK public still favours nuclear post-Fukushima, and in so doing is out of step with the rest of Europe. 80% of British are either in favour or think that nuclear will have a role to play in climate policy. 16% are against in any circumstances. These figures, in a Populus poll, haven’t changed since 2007. 42% favour building new nuclear, and 31% are against. But the support for, unlike against, is increasingly “soft”, the poll shows.
8 May 11: Oil rebounds, but a hedge fund loses £400m on the slide: Clive Capital, the world’s largest commodities hedge fund. Most were wrongfooted by the unexpected fall.
8 May 11: Shale gas “will transform markets.” Renewables will rise at best to 7% of primary energy by 2035, and require mjor subsidy, says Nick Butler in the FT. But shale gas production has risen 12 fold in the US during the last decade, now providing a quarter of needs. Some talk of exports. This could happen elsewhere. Shale gas could be the future.
8 May 11: “Victorian orthodoxies” will not save the UK economy, argues Will Hutton in the Observer. At today’s interests rates, we should be borrowing and investing, creating demand. He cites E&Y’s calculation of £450bn investment needed in the next 15 years to fight climate change, of which only £70bn is planned, i.e. £380bn short.
7 May 11: UK government way off “greenest government” promise, a report for Friends of the Earth by former Sustainable Development Commission head, Jonathon Porritt, concludes. Little or nor progress can be claimed on three quarters of 77 sustainability policies.
7 May 11: Pirate solar PV salesmen are becoming a problem in the UK. The BBC describes a dire example involving a Poole-based operator who is not Micropower Certification Scheme (MCS) accredited.
6 May 11: BP has to concede in fight with AAR: TNK-BP will do the Arctic oil exploration. BP still hopes to keep the share swap with Rosneft alive. But this will entail Rosneft agreeing to work with TNK-BP. All this is as a result of the conclusions of an arbitration panel. BP failed in April to buy out the oligarchs of AAR, who demanded $35bn fo their 50% share.
6 May 11: Japan shuts down more reactors. The government asks for two south of Tokyo at Harnakoa, atop a fault, to be closed pending reviews of earthquake vulnerability.
5 May 11: Oil falls 10% in a day – $12, the biggest ever abolsute fall – and commodities generally suffer a rout. The reasons probably begin with new figures showing a slowdown in the US economy, but other factors probably figured.
5 May 11: Kremlin accuses Russian oil groups of price fixing. They have colluded to keep petrol out of the market, and this is why there are shortages, he says. He orders the anti-monopoly service to investigate.
5 May 11: Workers enter Fukushima reactor building for first time since the accident. They can only do 10 minutes each, so high is the radiation. They will fit ventilators.
5 May 11: Italy signs a decree capping solar feed-in tariff payments at levels it thinks will deliver grid parity by 2017: a gradual descent to 2013 (with a fixed limit through 2012), thereafter amounts tied to a €6-7 bn overall limit on spending through 2016, by which time they expect 23 GW installed.
5 May 11: Seven PV companies take Italian government to court over Italian solar feed-in tariff cuts. AES Solar, Martifer Solar, Würth Solar, Fotowatio Renewable Ventures, Siliken, Solarig and Akuo want to pressure the government to keep the existing Conto Energia 3 in place, at least until the end of the year. They claim stranded investments.
5 May 11: Gillian Tett has a sense of deja-vu over ETFs. Exchange traded funds remind her of CDOs. They seemed a good idea at first, but increasingly exotic ETF instruments may be priming a financial trouble spot, as the Financial Stability Board has said in a small little-noticed report.
4 May 11: IPCC on renewables: costs will fall, output will leap. Their most comprehensive IPCC renewables report yet concludes that the technical potential, especially for solar, is higher than projected world energy demand. Renewables will grow up to 20 fold by 2050, reaching 200-400 exajoules. (World energy supply in 2008 was 492 EJ).
4 May 11: Renewables firms struggle with austerity and cheap gas. Vestas, REC, EDP Renewables and First Solar all flag weak 2011 prospects.
4 May 11: “Cute” green energy won’t solve global problems, says Bill Gates, only big schemes like solar in deserts and nuclear will. Research is needed to find breakthrough technologies, he says. Isn’t here a danger of him sounding like the men from IBM?
4 May 11: Act now on peak oil or curtail mobility, EC Transport DG tells a meeting in European Parliament. Jeremy Leggett speaking at the meeting: … “warned the Brussels conference that the peak oil risk paradigm closely resembled the credit bubble shortly before it burst in 2008. “Our worst-case fear is that this will be experienced as a form of energy famine that – in a ‘just-in-time’ delivery world – could descend surprisingly quickly,” he said.”
4 May 11: Two US nuclear reactors are nearing completion. S&P analysts say they on course for operating licences by end 2011. S&P do not expect material delays as a result of Fukushima.
4 May 11: EU nuclear stress tests may be watered down. Beginning in June, they were to include terrorist attack and human error, but regulators are pushing for tests of natural disaster resistance only.
4 May 11: 5 men arrested at Sellafield had taken wrong turn. This morning, however, they and their suspicious “behaviour” of yesterday were front page “terrorist” news.
4 May 11: India looks to Australia for yet more coal. Adani Enterprises, the largest Indian coal importer, has bought an Australian coal terminal for $2bn.
4 May 11: FTSE 100 would be nearly a third carbon fuels after the Glencore IPO at the end of the month, if the likely valuation of c. £60bn holds. The mining, oil and gas sectors would make up some 34% of the index. Mining would be worth £320bn, more than oil and gas.
4 May 11: French bank volunteers to pay a Tobin Tax. The 0.01% self-imposed tax on Credit Cooperatif’s foreign exchange trading would raise an estimated €100,000 a year for development projects.
3 May 11: Iraq halves oil output target. It is now 6.5 to 7 mbd, down from 12, by 2017, according to Oil Ministry sources of the Times. It current pumps 2.68 mbd. The government is aware that too much production would depress prices, and that massive investment would be needed in order to hit the target: $150bn according to the IEA. Contracts will be rengotiated with BP, Shell and others.
3 May 11: Third Eurozone country bailed out: Portugal accepts €78 bn (¢116m) package from EU and IMF.
3 May 11: Goldman advises clients to sell commodities, while Morgan Stanley says continue to buy, for now. Goldman’s reasons include weakening demand in the US and Japan, and the risk of Middle East instability spreading.
3 May 11: US justice department sues Deutsche Bank for more than $1bn, over lies and “reckless” endorsement of risky mortgage loans during the run up to the financial crisis.
3 May 11: “More total fuel damage has occurred at Fukushima than all previous reactor accidents combined.” So concludes a Union of Concerned Scientists expert review of events to date.
3 May 11: Fukushima has triggered soaring EU concern about nuclear power, an FT Harris poll shows: around half are more concerned in UK and France. 8% of Germans and 71% of British find it feasible that renewables can replace nuclear within 30 years.
3 May 11: 5 men arrested at Sellafield hours after binLaden killing, on suspicion of terrorist activity. They are from Bangladesh, living in London.
3 May 11: UK solar workforce grows 32% in last 4 months. Most of the 951 new jobs are in sales.
3 May 11: Brightsource IPO may trigger a “Google effect” some investors enthuse, with solar the main sector of interest. Solarcity, SunRun and OPower are cited as other candidates.
3 May 11: Oceans could rise >5 feet by 2100: Arctic researchers. The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Project reports back, without troubling newspaper editors too much. Their estimates are higher th an the IPCC’s (up to 23 inches by 2100, in the 2007 report) because they factor in melting of the Greenland ice cap.
3 May 11: Climate change will bring more extreme precipitation and floods, scientists report. An Oxford-led study of 6,000 weather stations from 1951 to 1999, published in Nature, shows a rise in extreme events that cannot be explained by natural variability, but fits greenhouse-gas concentration increases. Humidity is loading the weather dice.
2 May 11: Climate change influenced record US tornadoes in April, top climatologists say. Kevin Trenberth says it is “irresponsible” not to mention climate change in the context of the record month, and record 24 hour period. There is around 4% more water vapour in the atmosphere than 30 years ago.
1 May 11: Centrica threatens to shut gas field in tax protest. The BG owner says it may not resume production in the field, supplying 6% UK of UK gas, unless chancellor Osborne’s recent tax is cut.
1 May 11: Radical new energy solutions may be possible, and will be needed: Scientific American special report. Examples of outliers considered include on the one hand machines that convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into fuel and on the other those capable of “igniting fission reactors with laser-driven fusion explosions that consume spent nuclear fuel.”
30 Apr 11: Renewables will overtake oil, gas, coal as main world energy source by 2025, say leaders of ……..oil, gas companies. The annual Maxwell Drummond International Energy Survey 2011 is based on responses from business leaders in major oil and gas operators and contractors in Europe, US, Canada, Asia, Africa, Australasia and the Middle East. Kevin Davidson, CEO: “In contrast to last year’s survey, alternative energy is now at the forefront of energy business leaders’ minds as an increasingly valuable source.
29 Apr 11: US gasoline price now $3.87, close to the 2008 high. Terrible news for President Obama. Polls show that Democrats tend to be blamed when gas prices rise. 69% want more offshore drilling. Exxon’s profits in Q1, just announced: $10bn. But cutting subsidies does not help the motorist, cutting tax does.
29 Apr 11: “Days of abundant resources & falling prices over forever”, guru fund manager Jeremy Grantham says in a quarterly newsletter to investors.
29 Apr 11: Can the Saudis maintain 9 mbd production? Maybe not, an Energy Bulletin analysis suggests. Consistent with earlier Barclays Capital analysis, they conclude that the Saudis are wrong to say the reason for the March production fall is that the market is oversupplied.
29 Apr 11: Scientists hunt million year old ice core. Ice age pulses occurred every 40,000 years or so before then, faster than the 100,000 years or so since. Why?
28 Apr 11: Africa’s largest solar factory to be built in Algeria by Centrotherm: 116MW, by 2014, €290m ($430m) cost. Tangiers plans to spend $60bn by 2030 on renewables, financed by an oil export tax.
28 Apr 11: Oil crunch in 2012-13, Chris Skrebowski predicts at the ASPO Europe annual meeting. Supply is getting tighter and not enough people view the supply issue in terms of flow rates.
27 Apr: 7 PV companies will take the Italian government to court over changes to the Conto Energia IV, a new law that reduces solar support from June. They seek to protect projects long ago started.
25 Apr 11: Greenland ice cores show 5-6 C changes in just years. So James White of the University of Colorado has shown with his research.
4 Apr 11: Virtually no UK mid-sized solar projects will go ahead under the government’s feed-in tarrif cuts, research by building giant Kingspan shows. Almost nothing above 50kW would be reach the 5% target return that DECC has in mind.
[i] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-28/total-to-begin-friendly-tender-for-up-to-60-of-sunpower-shares.html
[ii] http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/apr/29/total-solar-power-renewables
[iii] http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/apr/29/goldman-sachs-villain-financial-crisis
[iv] http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/u-energy-plan-sell-oil-reserves-profits-invest-124232376.html