Energy / Crude Oil

• Massive Oil Field Discovered in the North Sea

  With relatively little fanfare on the international stage, Lundin Petroleum and Statoil (and partners) have just recently jointly discovered one of the largest oil fields ever found in the North Sea. The Aldous Major South - Avaldsnes discovery on the Utsira High structure is currently estimated to contain 1.7 to 3.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil. The astonishing thing about this discovery is that it has lain undiscovered in a mature oil province for so long providing ample encouragement for explorers to go on exploring. The recoverable resource estimates have grown with every well drilled and with a new delineation…

• The Falklands - Is There Oil?

  On 13 December British-based oil and gas exploration company Rockhopper Exploration Plc announced that a new well proved its Sea Lion field 80 miles off the Falklands coast is bigger than expected. Rockhopper Exploration Plc’s final well in its North Falkland drill program penetrated all four reservoir targets and wireline logging indicated that the reservoirs are hydrocarbon bearing. Rockhopper Exploration Plc has licenses to explore oil and gas in the North Falkland Basin. Rockhopper has 100 percent of four offshore licenses in the North Falkland Basin, PL023, PL024, PL032 and PL033. PL023 and PL024 licenses collectively cover 811 square miles…

• A Severe Decrease in Oil Supply Could Devastate the World Population

  The ownership of the largest deposits of oil, notably in the former U.S.S.R., e.g. Siberia and Kazakhstan and the Caspian region generally, in addition to the fields in the Middle East, will likely determine the future balance of world power. "The New World Order" as it is sometimes referred to. It is interesting that it is scientists from the former U.S.S.R. who throng among the ranks of "Hubbert detractors" - those who do not believe in an imminent "peak oil" scenario. There appears to be a conflict of opinion, and probably of interest too, between Western and Soviet oil experts,…

• A Sobering Look at the Bakken Oil Boom

  “That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.” Aldous HuxleyIn 2009, U.S. oil production began to climb after declining for 22 of the previous 23 years. The shale oil production of the Bakken formation, which straddles the Montana-North Dakota border and stretches into Canada, has been a significant contributor to this temporary uptick in oil production.Figure 1: Map of the U.S. Bakken-Lodgepole Total Petroleum System (blue), five continuous assessment units (AU) (green), and one conventional assessment unit (yellow) (Source: USGS)The Bakken boom has…

• North Dakota's Bakken Oil Fields go from Strength to Strength

  The "Economic Miracle State" of North Dakota pumped another record amount of oil during the month of October, producing more than 15 million total barrels in a single month for the first time ever, at a daily rate of 488,068 barrels (see chart above, data here). Compared to October of last year, oil production in North Dakota is up 42%, and production has more than doubled over the last two years, from 240,000 barrels per day in October of 2009.  North Dakota's rich Bakken oil fields produced almost 9% of America's domestic crude oil production for the month of October,…

• Is Saudi Arabia Heading for a Downfall?

  Saudi Arabia recently announced that it had halted a $100 billion oil production expansion plan to raise capacity to 15 million barrels a day by 2020. At this point, the country claims to have capacity of 12 million barrels a day. What does this mean for its future? Let’s take a look behind the figures.  Figure 1. Saudi Arabian oil production and exports, from Energy Export Data Browser. Note that oil production is in grey, oil exports are in green, and the black line represents consumption. The figure shows that Saudi Arabia has not been increasing its production for many…

• Possible Implications of an Iranian Oil Embargo

  Does Thursday's announcement that the EU is considering to ban oil imports from Iran epitomise the draining of power from west to east? The big winners here will be China and India, who do not fear rising Iranian influence and who will gladly soak up any additional oil exports they may have to offer. However, ending this small dependency upon Iranian oil imports in Europe (Figure 2) does clear the way for military action without the need to ponder the immediate consequences on oil imports. Figure 1 Iran displays export land traits where growing domestic consumption is eating into the…

• The IEA's Dire Warnings on Peak Oil and the Desperate Need for Energy Innovation

  Last week the International Energy Agency released its annual report (600 pages) on just where energy production and consumption in the world is going over the next 25 years. Four or five years back, producing the annual World Energy Outlook was a rather straightforward task. All the IEA had to do was to take the world's current rate of economic growth, calculate how much oil, coal and natural gas it would take to support that growth and publish the results. There was never much consideration of whether resources would start to run out or become too expensive to exploit, or…

• South Sudan Offers Khartoum "Package" Over Oil Shipments

  Call it a “package,” though a more accurate word might be “bribe.” South Sudan’s government has offered Sudanese authorities in Khartoum a “package” to break the rising tension-filled gridlock over South Sudan using its northern neighbour’s pipeline network to ship out its oil exports. Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) Secretary General Pagan Amum Okiech announced in Juba that the “package” is part of the proposal they plan to present to the African Union (AU) High Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP) on Sudan, chaired by former South African president, Thabo Mbeki. Amum, head of the South Sudan negotiating team on post-independence negotiations,…

• Conflict Rising in Iraq Over Oil Contracts and Revenues

  In a development that surprises no-one except armchair analysts, trouble is brewing in Iraq over the sharing of oil revenues between Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region and the central authorities in Baghdad over the Kurdistan Regional Government’s unilateral agreement just signed with U.S. oil giant, Texas-based Exxon Mobil, to develop the region’s oil resources. The agreement sets the stage for conflict between central authorities in Baghdad, who insist that the central government has overall oversight for the country's energy agreements and Kurdish authorities in Arbil, working to carve out increased autonomy for retaining an increased share of their region's oil…