To: BigBull who wrote (87118 ) 2/13/2001 6:34:43 PM From: excardog Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 95453 Big Bull Word floating around is there's a pretty big batch of oil headed our direction. 65 million barrels worth. This if true should start showing up in next few API's. Thought this was interesting: Exxon says oil production times must be slashed HOUSTON, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Oil companies and governments of producing countries must work together to cut the time it takes from discovering oil and gas to producing it, if the industry is to meet future growth in demand, a senior Exxon Mobil Corp. (NYSE:XOM - news) executive said on Tuesday. Harry Longwell, a senior vice president at the world's biggest oil company, said it currently took an average of seven to eight years to bring new discoveries into production. ``If we are to meet the demand we expect in the future, we'll need to cut years off that time frame,'' he told the Cambridge Energy Research Associates conference in Houston. ``If we don't shorten the time from 'here to there', we could be asking for trouble if, for whatever reason, supplies become short,'' he said. Longwell said global oil and gas demand was growing at 2 to 3 percent per year, but that production would have to grow at 7 percent to meet demand and also offset depletion of existing fields that is running at 4 to 5 percent a year. The world therefore needs to add some 80 million barrels of oil equivalent per day of new production by 2010, he said, adding this implied that half the oil and gas required 10 years from now had not yet been brought into production. Longwell said the industry could meet this challenge, noting it currently had some 700 billion barrels of oil equivalent in reserves that have not yet been developed. However, the cost of adding the 80 million barrels per day of new production could exceed $100 billion a year, compared with the $60 billion a year that the industry spends now," he said.