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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (3084)	11/11/2005 11:54:21 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 24206

Here's my report on the first day (Thurs) of the ASPO-USA conference in Denver. HO and Dave are both here also and are giving their own perspectives. Prof G is supposed to show up tonight also..... Tom Petrie is CEO and Co-founder of Petrie, Parkman and Co, a boutique investment bank in the oil industry. His company is basically a competitor to Simmons Co, and has offices in Denver and Houston. As such his presentation was extremely interesting, not because he said anything profoundly surprising to someone who has been following Peak Oil, but because he shed a great deal of light on the question: is Matt Simmons isolated in his views within the energy investment banking community? Answer: no. Petrie is a little more moderate in his views than Simmons, but basically the big picture is the same: he believes Peak Oil is not too far off, he thinks OPEC reserves are exaggerated, and he thinks alternative hydrocarbons, EOR, etc will soften the decline, but nonetheless considerable demand side adaptation to declining liquid fuel supply is going to be required. He differs from Simmons -- "I don't completely agree with Matt" -- especially in thinking that "the Saudis probably have a little more fat", and perhaps in thinking peak is somewhat further out, but believes Simmons has done a great job of elevating the profile of the debate. Tom worked through several scenarios around being more or less optimistic about the amount and timing of new projects and more or less optimistic about depletion of the fields currently in production. Only if depletion of FIP is very mild and delays can be ignored do we avoid peak oil before 2010. More likely, we are peaking sooner. theoildrum.com

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (3084)	11/13/2005 4:47:50 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24206

Kuwait's biggest field starts to run out of oil It was an incredible revelation last week that the second largest oil field in the world is exhausted and past its peak output. Yet that is what the Kuwait Oil Company revealed about its Burgan field. Kuwait: Saturday, November 12 - 2005 at 08:46 The peak output of the Burgan oil field will now be around 1.7 million barrels per day, and not the two million barrels per day forecast for the rest of the field's 30 to 40 years of life, Chairman Farouk Al Zanki told Bloomberg. He said that engineers had tried to maintain 1.9 million barrels per day but that 1.7 million is the optimum rate. Kuwait will now spend some $3 million a year for the next year to boost output and exports from other fields. However, it is surely a landmark moment when the world's second largest oil field begins to run dry. For Burgan has been pumping oil for almost 60 years and accounts for more than half of Kuwait's proven oil reserves. This is also not what forecasters are currently assuming. Forecasts wrong Last week the International Energy Agency's report said output from the Greater Burgan area will be 1.64 million barrels a day in 2020 and 1.53 million barrels per day in 2030. Is this now a realistic scenario? The news about the Burgan oil field also lends credence to the controversial opinions of investment banker and geologist Matthew Simmons. His book 'Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy' claims that the ageing Saudi oil filed also face serious production falls. The implications for the global economy are indeed serious. If the world oil supply begins to run dry then the upward pressure on oil prices will be inexorable. For the oil producers this will come as a compensation for declining output, and cushion them against an economic collapse. However, the oil consumers then face a major energy crisis. Industrialized economies are still far too dependent on oil. And the pricing mechanism of declining oil reserves will press them into further diversification of energy supplies, particularly nuclear, wind and solar power. Geological facts All this was foreshadowed in the energy crisis of the late 1970s when a serious inflection in oil supply by the year 2000 was clearly forecast. How ironic that those earlier forecasts now look correct, while more modern and recent forecasts begin to look over optimistic and out-of-date with geological reality. Nobody can change the geology, and forces of nature that laid down reserves of oil and gas over millions and millions of years. Could it be that we have been blinded by technological advances into thinking that there is some way to beat nature? The natural world has an uncanny ability to hit back at the arrogance of man, and perhaps a reassessment of reality at this point is called for, rather than a reliance on oil statistics that may owe more to political maneuvering than geological facts. ameinfo.com