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Iran discovers gas field in Caspian SeaAP – Sun, Dec 11, 2011 TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's oil minister says the country has discovered a huge gas field containing an estimated 50 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Caspian Sea. **SNIP** Iran sits atop the world's second largest proven reserves of natural gas and is the second largest OPEC oil producer.

On 17 September The Wall Street Journal published a fascinating article on “peak oil,” “There Will Be Oil,” written by Daniel Yergin, chairman of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy research and consulting firm and deserved recipient of Pulitzer Prize for his 1991 book, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power. According to The Wall Street Journal, “There Will Be Oil” “is adapted from his new book, The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World.” The essay will doubtless have widespread influence amongst prosperous The Wall Street Journal readers, but in his glib...

Since the beginning of the 21st century, a fear has come to pervade the prospects for oil, fueling anxieties about the stability of global energy supplies. It has been stoked by rising prices and growing demand, especially as the people of China and other emerging economies have taken to the road. This specter goes by the name of "peak oil." Its advocates argue that the world is fast approaching (or has already reached) a point of maximum oil output. They warn that "an unprecedented crisis is just over the horizon." The result, it is said, will be "chaos," to say...

HOUSTON, June 14 -- Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Qatar Petroleum reported the Pearl gas-to-liquids plant in Qatar’s Ras Laffan Industrial City sold its first commercial shipment of GTL gas oil. The sale marked the start of production of GTL products from the plant. In coming months, production is to ramp up from the Pearl GTL project’s first train, and the second train is expected to start up before yearend. The plant is expected to reach full production capacity by mid-2012. It is the largest energy project ever launched in the Qatar, officials said. Qatar's Minister of Energy and Industry...

In his devastating 2008 book, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming, former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Nigel Lawson noted the perhaps unprecedented hypocrisy surrounding the climate issue. “Fortunately,” he concluded, “the gap between rhetoric and reality when it comes to global warming, between the apocalyptic nature of the alleged threat and the relative modesty of the measures so far implemented (not to mention the sublime disregard of international obligations solemnly undertaken), is far greater than I can recall with any other issue in a lifetime of either observing or practising politics.” Even more fortunately, as...

It has been a long wait for “peak oilers,” whose passionate belief is that the world will run out of oil in coming years, sending prices through the roof. This splinter religion came into being in 1956 when M. King Hubbert produced some simple supply/demand charts showing that US reserves of Texas tea would dry up by 1965-70, forcing a heavy reliance on imports with which we have become all too familiar. This was later expanded globally, implying that Western civilization would come to a grinding halt. It all seemed very prescient, when in 1973 OPEC raised prices from $3/barrel...

As far back as 2004, there was worry that the Saudis were fudging on how much oil they still had in the ground. Thanks to Wikileaks, we now have a little better idea. The Guardian: The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show.The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom's crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels -...

The US fears that Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude oil exporter, may not have enough reserves to prevent oil prices escalating, confidential cables from its embassy in Riyadh show. The cables, released by WikiLeaks, urge Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi government oil executive that the kingdom's crude oil reserves may have been overstated by as much as 300bn barrels – nearly 40%. The revelation comes as the oil price has soared in recent weeks to more than $100 a barrel on global demand and tensions in the Middle East. Many analysts expect that the...

"...The world is floating in hydrocarbon energy resources. Humans in developed societies must choose between the lefty-Luddite dieoff.orgiast philosophy -- as promoted by Obama's merry band of energy starvationists -- or a cleaner and more abundant future of limitless resources released by the unbound human mind."

In my last thoughts, Michael Ruppert said in his interview for “Collapse” that the earth's population stayed around a billion people until 1900 when oil was introduced into society, then our population skyrocketed to almost 8 billion people. Once oil is gone, the earth will balance out because oil will be taken out of the equation. Those who have the survival skills will outlast everyone, those who don't may turn into cannibals. It's estimated at current levels that we'll run out of oil between 2035-2055. I think the most important thing to do from here on out is to pass...

It seems the panic time for both green enthusiasts and peak oil pundits. According to a new paper by two researchers at the University of California – Davis, it would take 131 years for replacement of gasoline and diesel given the current pace of research and development; however, world's oil could run dry almost a century before that. The research was published on Nov. 8 at Environmental Science & Technology, which is based on the theory that market expectations are good predictors reflected in prices of publicly traded securities. By incorporating market expectations into the model, the authors, Nataliya Malyshkina...

A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how "peak oil" might change the global economy. The internal draft document -- leaked on the Internet -- shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis. * * * The study is a product of ... a think tank tasked with fixing a direction for the German military. The team of authors ... uses sometimes-dramatic language to depict the consequences of an irreversible depletion of raw materials. It warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new...

There is an open secret in the oil industry that dare not speak its name: peak oil. Well, two did speak its name and gained no acclaim for it. One, M. King Hubbert, died years ago. The other and the most controversial, Matthew Simmons, died at his Maine summer home Aug. 8. The peak oil idea is simple: Oil is a finite commodity, and one day we are going to use up all of it. Hubbert, a geologist, began speculating on the effects of the gradual decline in worldwide production in the 1950s. He expressed this in a simple graph,...

U.S. Dollar Crash Is Not Going To Happen Currencies / US Dollar Oct 22, 2009 - 01:26 AM By: Mike_Whitney The dollar is not going to crash. In fact, many economists believe that the dollar will rally when the Fed ends its quantitative easing program (QE) sometime in early 2010. The Fed is on track to buy nearly $2 trillion dollars of mortgage-backed securities, US Treasuries and agency debt. In other words, the Fed is printing money and pumping it into the housing market to keep the market from collapsing. This keeps interest rates low, but it also weakens the...

There's a big push in some corners of the US transportation industry to "bring high speed rail to America". Visions of relaxed, latte-sipping trips over the nation, no lines for security, low cost trips are certainly heady ideas, but do they bear out? Let's take a critical, cold, calculating look at the reality of the situation. As many know, I split my time between the US (Seattle, WA area) and Asia (predominantly Shanghai, China). China's been on a high speed rail building frenzy recently, and there are thousands of kilometers of line laid, with thousands more to come. Soon most...

OPEC tells us it has lots of spare capacity, but how much should we believe them? Even when prices were much higher than they are now, back in 2008, they did not make use of all of the spare capacity that they supposedly had. Figure 1 When one looks at a history of estimates of future productive capacity, we find too, that they have tended to decrease over time (up until the new 2010 report)--also raising questions about current estimates. The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently put out its Mid Term Oil and Gas Market Report 2010 (MTOMR 2010). Although...

At this morning's press briefing, Kent Wells of BP reported that pressures have now reached 6,745 psi, and are building at about 2 psi per hour. BP is estimating ultimate pressure will be around 6,800 psi. While this is not as high as originally expected, there are several reasonable explanations for this lower pressure reading, including the possibility that the well is now somewhat depleted, and therefore has lower pressure. BP seems to be encouraged by the results. Mr. Wells said several times, "We are encouraged that we have integrity," and "We find no evidence of lack of integrity."

With all of our problems in the Gulf of Mexico, we think about importing more from elsewhere. Let's look at some graphs of net imports of crude oil and refined products, and of some US production amounts, to see what is happening now. Perhaps this will give us insight as to what to expect going forward, and how many options we really have with respect to oil imports. Figure 1. US net imports of oil and oil products, using an EIA chart As one can see, US net imports peaked in 2005, and have been declining ever since. The year...

Advocates of a smooth transition away from petroleum may be surprised by the consequences of huge swings in the cost of oil. I first proposed a "head-fake" in the price of oil in 2008. My thesis was that the oil exporting nations had become so dependent on revenues from oil that even as prices plummeted in global recession, they would have no choice financially and politically to pumping every barrel they could. This would increase supply even as demand fell, causing prices to crash. This dynamic would drive prices down to lows which are widely considered "impossible" in an era...

Energy Policy: To save the environment, a senator from Pennsylvania wants to shut off a major source of natural gas. Weren't the roads to the Exxon Valdez and Deepwater Horizon disasters paved with equally good intentions? Environmentalism did not cause the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster, but it did help make it possible, just as 1989's Exxon Valdez disaster, which the Gulf Oil spill has now eclipsed, was also ironically made possible by a desire to protect the environment. The original plan when oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska's North Slope was to build a pipeline directly to the...

The BP Spill: Tuesday on Capitol Hill, oil executives were subjected to the Senate's latest show trial. Senators did not say the accident in federal waters was a federal responsibility or that nature spills more oil every day. The morning hearing by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee chaired by Sen. Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico and the afternoon session before California Sen. Barbara Boxer's Environmental and Public Works Committee prove White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's dictum that a good crisis is a terrible thing to waste — especially when your goal is exploiting the Deepwater Horizon disaster...

Media Bias: As the Gulf Coast faced ecological disaster, the president yukked it up with White House correspondents. His Saturday radio address didn't even mention the oil spill. President Bush, call your office. Rarely has media sycophancy been on such sharp display as in the largely indifferent response to President Obama's own indifference to the oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The coverage has been far different from that given to President Bush's handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The White House announced Saturday morning that Obama would head to the Gulf Coast on Sunday, just a...

Energy: The administration has banned new offshore drilling until the Gulf oil spill is investigated. Was its heart in it anyway? It seems environmental concerns apply only to certain forms of energy. No one pays much attention to the aquatic "dead zones" that have appeared off our shores at the mouths of our rivers due to agricultural runoff created by mandates for corn-based ethanol. Ethanol is green energy, good energy — never mind that such biofuels drive up food prices, increase hunger around the world and damage the environment in their own way. The explosion that blew apart an oil...

The Imminent Crash Of The Oil Supply: What Is Going To Happen And How It Came To Pass That We Weren't Forewarned APRIL 23, 2010 in COMMENTARY By Nicholas C. Arguimbau (The Intelligence Daily) - Look at this graph and be afraid. It does not come from Earth First. It does not come from the Sierra Club. It was not drawn by Socialists or Nazis or Osama Bin Laden or anyone from Goldman-Sachs. If you are a Republican Tea-Partier, rest assured it does not come from a progressive Democrat. And vice versa. It was drawn by the United States Department...

Energy: As the administration loosens restrictions on domestic energy development and offshore drilling, a reviled company develops technology to unlock America's vast shale resources. Drill, baby, drill. We have been among President Obama's harshest critics when it comes to the administration's overly restrictive energy policy, so we were pleasantly surprised to see him announce on Wednesday some light at the end of the pipeline. Some light, for many restrictions will remain in an energy policy best termed schizophrenic. Speaking at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., Obama announced the welcome news that his administration will let lease sales go...

Economic success, growth, and an affluent (happy) consumer lifestyle directly depend on an abundance of inexpensive energy. Conversely, the quantity and type of energy consumed can have a very adverse effect on the surrounding environment and world ecological balance. It then follows that politics, the subject of governing civilized societies, is also directly dependent on the common denominator of energy, just at a time that we are facing the imminent and terminal decline of our prime energy source, oil, and ultimately all finite fossil fuels. Yet, the advocates of different positions, for instance, climate change (man made or not), or...

Back in the days when US oil demand controlled the price of oil, a massive recession in the United States would have sent oil to 12.00 dollars a barrel. That era, which ended last decade, was defined by ongoing spare capacity in OPEC, low-cost oil in Non-OPEC, and nascent demand for oil in the developing world. That was then, and this is now. And so it’s rather quaint that the energy analysts from that previous era still gather each week on American financial TV, to discuss the inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma. Inventories at Cushing, Oklahoma? The US has been removing...

If I may, I would like to rebut or add a little objectivity to the flood of “Peak Oil” articles circulating around. When I see another crisis looming in the balance, and dramatized articles that warn of the “Dangers of Peak Oil,” I must question the validity or how this will effect the world, the USA, and you and I personally, and if indeed a crisis is at hand. As for world oil, if you ask the right questions, there are several new technologies/methods/alternatives and new finds that can easily supply enough hydrocarbon fuel for the next century or more....

When oil crossed $120 a barrel for the first time in May 2008, oil cornucopians knew they were in trouble. Prices had quadrupled in just five years, yet had failed to bring new production online. Regular crude had flatlined around 74 million barrels per day (mbpd). The case for peak oil was looking stronger with every new uptick in crude futures. The following month, prominent peak oil critic and cornucopian Daniel Yergin of IHS-CERA changed his stance: The peak oil threat would be neutralized by peak demand. Gasoline consumption had peaked in the U.S. and Europe, he argued, due to...

VENUSTIANO CARRANZA, Mexico — To the Mexican people, one of the great achievements in their history was the day their president kicked out foreign oil companies in 1938. Thus, they celebrate March 18 as a civic holiday. Yet today, that 72-year-old act has put Mexico in a straitjacket, one that threatens both the welfare of the country and the oil supply of the United States. The national oil company created after the 1938 seizure, Pemex, is entering a period of turmoil. Oil production in its aging fields is sagging so rapidly that Mexico, long one of the world’s top oil-exporting...

Last month, I explained in an article how and why the world is approaching a worldwide peak in oil production sometime in the next decade. Although there are large implications throughout the economy, I want to say upfront that I do not think this will bring on Armageddon. Oil prices that are significantly higher than earlier in our lifetimes will bring about great change, yet I firmly believe that our economy has the ability to successfully adapt. Despite the strong headwind oil scarcity will create, I am still an optimist. I have structured this article by segmenting the "winners" and...

Energy The administration asked for public comments on a plan to expand offshore drilling. When they came in 2-to-1 in favor, the Interior Department sat on the news. Time for a "Texas tea" party? When you ask for public comment on a major policy issue, at some point you should make the results public, not hide them until you can figure out a way to spin the public reaction to support a conclusion you've already drawn. On its last business day in office, the Bush administration published a proposed draft of a five-year plan to lease areas in the Atlantic...

American Grain Harvest Impact On Agri-Food Prices Commodities / Agricultural Commodities Feb 01, 2010 - 01:48 PM By: Ned_W_Schmidt The North American Agri-Food harvest is either complete, or almost complete. We say that as much of the corn crop remains still in the field due to being wet, frozen, or covered with snow and ice. For all the best efforts of those involved in the Global Warming Scam, the winter of 2009-10 has been far more powerful than their now clearly questionable documentation would have suggested. Despite the weather, the North American 2009 harvest appears to have been good, with...

Oil use in rich industrialised countries will never return to 2006 and 2007 levels because of more fuel efficiency and the use of alternatives, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency said on Thursday. The bold prediction, while made previously by some analysts, is significant because the IEA advises 28 countries on energy policy and its oil demand forecasts are closely watched by traders and policymakers. "When we look at the OECD countries -- the U.S., Europe and Japan -- I think the level of demand that we have seen in 2006 and 2007, we will never see again,"...

The economy has about six months to live. Especially the part that consists of swapping paper certificates. That’s the buzz I’ve gotten the first two weeks of 2010, and forgive me for not presenting a sheaf of charts and graphs to make the case. Just about everybody else yakking about these thing on the Web provides plenty of statistical analysis: Mish, The Automatic Earth, Chris Martenson, Zero Hedge, The Baseline Scenario… They’re all well worth visiting. Bank bonus numbers are due out any day now. The revolt that I expected around the release of these numbers may come from a...

John Kilduff: Oil To $100 In The Next Six Months Graham Winfrey Jan. 12, 2010, 1:45 PM Last week, we reported that former CIBC World Markets Inc. chief economist, Jeff Rubin had predicted the price of oil to reach $100 by the end of 2010. On Monday, CNBC contributor John Kilduff sliced Rubin's prediction in half, claiming that oil will hit $100 a barrel in the next six months, thanks in part to a humming Chinese economy, Business And Media reports. When Kudlow asked whether the U.S. should look to windmills in the Nantucket sound to provide a new power...

One nagging question that the industrial world has been asking itself since the discovery of the first oil well is what happens when the wells begin to run dry. The answer is relatively simple to imagine. We had a dry run, so to speak, when Dubai’s economy tanked a few years ago. And although the causes of Dubai’s ills and ails were financial and not oil related, the drama which unfolded gave us a watered-down version of what might transpire if and when the oil wells stop producing. But before we run the Armageddon tape that the world will stop...

Washington, D.C. are reporting laboratory evidence supporting the possibility that some of Earth's oil and natural gas may have formed in a way much different than the traditional process described in science textbooks. Their study is scheduled for Nov./Dec. issue of ACS' Energy & Fuels, a bi-monthly publication. Anurag Sharma and colleagues note that the traditional process involves biology: Prehistoric plants died and changed into oil and gas while sandwiched between layers of rock in the hot, high-pressure environment deep below Earth's surface. Some scientists, however, believe that oil and gas originated in other ways, including chemical reactions between carbon...

Saturn's orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to new data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes. ... Cassini has mapped about 20 percent of Titan's surface with radar. Several hundred lakes and seas have been observed, with each of several dozen estimated to contain more hydrocarbon liquid than Earth's oil and gas reserves. The dark dunes that run along the equator contain a volume of organics several hundred times larger than...

A detailed look at the largest Oil Companies, how they operate and who the major players in the field are. The Oil Companies take a lot of Flak, but are they as bad as you think? Companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP and Royal Dutch Shell now produce only 10% of the world's oil and gas and hold a mere 3% of its reserves. Big Oil’s primary “Movers & Shakers” according to “The Financial Times,” are: Aramco of Saudi Arabia, CNPC of China, Gazprom of Russia, NIOC of Iran, PDVSA of Venezuela, , Petrobras of Brazil, as well as Petronas of...

Can New technology divert a potential Oil Crisis? We take a look at the latest technology and techniques being used by Oil Companies in the field of Oil Drilling. With our dwindling supply of fossil fuels, oil drillers are finding themselves in great demand and as their techniques become more sophisticated Oil Fields are lasting longer and producing more of the black stuff. I suppose the first order of business would be to mention the continual fine tuning and innovative advances that are taking place almost daily within the technology of “Three Dimensional Seismic Imaging. For those with their head...

Leadership: As Palin jousts with Biden on energy independence, the government reports that we lead the world in energy reserves. From oil to gas to coal, we are sitting on prosperity. So why are we importing anything? One of the interesting sidelights of the NY-23 race was an exchange on energy independence between Vice President Joe Biden and the former governor of energy-rich Alaska, Sarah Palin. Biden, who came in to campaign for Democrat Bill Owens, was reminded of the issue of energy. "The fact of the matter is that Sarah Palin thinks the answer to energy was 'Drill, baby,...

Ecology: The administration creates the mother of all protected habitats for a species whose numbers have increased since Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth." It's our hopes for energy independence that are drowning. When filmmaker Phelim McAleer, whose documentary "Not Evil Just Wrong" takes apart the myths of global warming, got to ask Gore a question at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, McAleer brought up the nine critical errors in Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth." A British court two years ago listed them and said they must be righted before the film could be shown in schools...

James Burkhard, IHS CERA's global oil director, is a self-described "peakist." But it's not what you might think. Whereas most adherents to peak oil theory believe petroleum production has plateaued and will fall back down, driving up oil prices, Burkhard sees the situation somewhat in reverse, with global oil demand peaking and falling off as developed countries become more efficient with how they use oil and require relatively less of it. Not even the seemingly insatiable appetites of countries such as China and India can reverse the trend, he said in an interview Thursday. "The long-term rate of oil demand...

Energy: An amazing number of oil finds have been made this year, including the biggest in California in 35 years. If the world is running out of oil, why do we keep finding more of it? The mantra of the anti-drilling crowd has been that oil companies like to sit on their leases and the oil in the ground, hoping to drive up the price. They should use the leases they have or lose them, these critics say. They also like to add that the world is running out of oil so it doesn't matter anyway. Occidental Petroleum hasn't been...

Energy: An amazing number of oil finds have been made this year, including the biggest in California in 35 years. If the world is running out of oil, why do we keep finding more of it? The mantra of the anti-drilling crowd has been that oil companies like to sit on their leases and the oil in the ground, hoping to drive up the price. They should use the leases they have or lose them, these critics say. They also like to add that the world is running out of oil so it doesn't matter anyway. Occidental Petroleum hasn't been...

The biggest find in the state in 35 years, somewhere in Kern County, could herald new exploration in California and the U.S., experts say. But some worry it could lead to a false sense of security.A few years ago, Occidental Petroleum Corp. executive Stephen I. Chazen sounded like a cryptologist out of a Dan Brown novel as he told investors that an oil bonanza awaited any outfit that could "crack the code" of California's seismically fractured underground. Occidental's engineers may have done it. The Westwood company revealed in July that it had found the equivalent of 150 million to 250...

Researchers at KTH have been able to prove that the fossils of animals and plants are not necessary to generate raw oil and natural gas. This result is extremely radical as it means that it will be much easier to find these energy sources and that they may be located all over the world. “With the help of our research we even know where oil could be found in Sweden!” says Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the KTH Department of Energy Technology in Stockholm. Together with two research colleagues, Professor Kutcherov has simulated the process of pressure and heat that occurs...

Energy Policy: Ignoring peak-oil Cassandras, BP has made another giant oil find in the Gulf of Mexico. We're not running out of oil. Our government just doesn't want us to look for it.The world is running out of oil and good riddance. That's the environmentalists' mantra. But since the first well was drilled near Titusville, Pa., 150 years ago, the prophecy has gone unfulfilled. Trouble is, those darn greedy oil companies keep finding the stuff. Oil has been produced in the Gulf of Mexico since the first well was drilled by Kerr-McGee Corp. in 1947. Some of the wells are...

Energy Policy: New York's governor wants to tap into a shale formation that can supply the entire U.S. with natural gas for 65 years. Will NIMBY environmentalists let him stimulate New York's and America's energy economy?Last week, David Patterson released a draft report of his Energy Planning Board that does something Democrats are loath to do: It proposes developing a domestic energy resource — the huge amounts of natural gas trapped in the Marcellus Shale formation. New York produces 5% of its natural gas in-state and imports more than 95% from the Gulf Coast and Canada. The Marcellus Shale stretches...