by Robin Mills, August 20, 207 UAE Ed The National
The Middle Eastern countries that are looking at coal are trying to diversify their fuel mix, and to reduce vulnerability to economic or supply shocks. Gas is cheap at the moment but its price is volatile, and states such as Dubai, Egypt and Turkey do not want to be too import-dependent. For Dubai, which attracted a very competitive bid from Acwa and Harbin, coal is a key part of strengthening its negotiating position with other suppliers. Iran and Turkey are trying to maximise the use of their domestic coal, and for Turkey, reliance on rivals Iran and Russia for two-thirds of its gas is dangerous.
Despite gas prices being low at the moment, coal is cheaper still — at least once the required import facilities are constructed. Chinese power and engineering companies, looking for other markets, are offering their expertise and low-cost financing.
Total rachète le Danois Maersk Oil pour plus de 7 milliards de dollars, soit sa plus grosse acquisition depuis celle d’Elf Aquitaine en 2000. Grâce à elle, le pétrolier vise 3 millions de barils-jours en 2019.
That’s the peak oil argument in a nutshell, but the peak demand argument is entirely different. In this case, oil production falls — not because of geological factors — but because the world turns its back on oil as cleaner, cheaper options become available. Electric vehicles and ride-sharing on a massive scale are envisioned as two of the key factors that will make oil obsolete.
“We should view the Permian Basin as a permanent resource,” he says, “The Permian is best viewed as a near infinite resource – we will never produce the last drop of economic oil from the Basin.”
No one disputes that the resource in the Permian is huge, but ‘infinite’ is a big word. I asked him to expand on that concept.
“With the decline of North Sea gas and our ever increasing reliance on gas imports, including shale gas imported from the United States, developing an indigenous source of natural gas is critical for U.K. energy security, our economy, jobs and the environment,” Cuadrilla CEO Francis Egan said in a statement. “We are proud as a Lancashire company to be at the forefront of that effort.
Le Venezuela se trouve à la croisée des chemins. Se dirige-t-il vers le modernisme ou va-t-il poursuivre sa révolution bolivarienne vers le socialisme qui l’a conduit à la débâcle à laquelle nous assistons aujourd’hui ?
Le pays possède tout ce qu’il faut pour connaitre la prospérité et la paix. Ses abondantes ressources d’hydrocarbures auraient pu en faire la Norvège de l’Amérique latine
As noted in my article four years ago, Japan has a program for producing natural gas from methane hydrates located near its coast, and predicts it will be successful by 2019.
Most people believe that Japan’s objective is highly optimistic, but it does shed light on the efforts currently underway to develop the technology for extracting natural gas from methane hydrates.
Les 5 supermajors sont par ordre de chiffre d’affaires en 2015 :
Royal Dutch Shell (Pays-Bas) : 272,2 milliards de dollars et une production de 3,0 millions de barils équivalents pétrole par jour contre 421,1 G$ et 3,1 Mbeb/j en 2014);
ExxonMobil (États-Unis) : 268,9 G$ et 4,1 Mbeb/j (contre 411,9 G$ et 4,0 Mbeb/j en 2014) ;
BP (Royaume-Uni) : 226,0 G$ et 3,3 Mbep/j (contre 359,8 G$ et 3,2 Mbep/j en 2014);
Total (France): 165,4 G$ et 2,3 Mbep/j (contre 236,1 G$ et 2,15 Mbep/j en 2014) ;
Chevron (États-Unis): 138,5 G$ et 2,6 Mbep/j (contre 200,5 G$ et 2,6 Mbep/j en 2014).
U.S. evolves into coal, gas and oil global energy giant supplying world’s hungry energy markets
David Middleton’s excellent WUWT article addressing the resurgence of the American coal industry as well as the growing role of U.S. natural gas production in creating global gas export markets hits the nail on the head in demonstrating how dominant the U.S. has become in producing and supplying global energy markets at home and abroad with growing demands for fossil fuels.
The IEA agency clearly recognizes the U.S. as the global driver of a huge transformation of the world’s natural gas energy markets.
While US scores with increased rig count and production, the oil industry in the Middle-East is festering with under investment. Said to be in trillions, the lack of investment could boomerang as supply deficit within a decade. Let’s not forget that oil exploration is a long term development in which a decade is but short. Why are the investors moving away?
Weinberg advised OPEC to change tack and go back to what it set out to do initially: stifle U.S. shale by pumping at maximum. “They should let prices crash to kill shale and then aim for steady price increases in the long term,” Weinstein told Bloomberg. The question remains, however, whether OPEC, with oil-reliant budgets already strained, could afford this tactic reversal now that they’ve suffered price lows for an extended period of time.
Saudi Arabia has lagged the U.S. in oil production for the last four years, according to federal data compiled by University of Michigan economist Mark Perry.
Perry created a chart Saturday showing just how far behind Saudi oil production has trailed U.S. production. Rising U.S. production combined with OPEC policies drove crude oil prices down to new lows. Monday, a barrel of oil costs $46.26, while the same barrel would have sold for $109.04 in June 2014.
On Wednesday, Premier Oil Plc, Sierra Oil & Gas and Talos Energy LLC announced the first Mexican discovery by explorers other than state-owned Pemex in 80 years, a reservoir with an estimated 1.4 billion to 2 billion barrels
Global energy investment fell by 12% in 2016, the second consecutive year of decline, as increased spending on energy efficiency and electricity networks was more than offset by a continued drop in upstream oil and gas spending, according to the International Energy Agency’s annual World Energy Investmentreport.
Global energy investment amounted to USD 1.7 trillion in 2016, or 2.2% of global GDP. For the first time, spending on the electricity sector around the world exceeded the combined spending on oil, gas and coal supply. The share of clean-energy spending reached 43% of total supply investment, a record high.
Hubbert’s fame in peak oil circles comes primarily from the assertion that he accurately predicted the 1970 U.S. peak. Because of this prediction, Hubbert is widely-regarded among peak oil adherents as a visionary. He has been called an oracle and a prophet. A recently published article — What Hubbert And Pickens Got Right About Oil, And What’s Next — recounts the uncanny accuracy of his prediction.
Source: Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels by M. King Hubbert
But now, just as shale gas prices are finally rebounding from last year’s all-time-lows, the United States’ two biggest shale gas deposits are producing record amounts of fuel, threatening to push gas prices back down. As the Appalachian Marcellus shale basin and the Texas-based Permian basin rush to conquer a market share, the U.S. gas glut shows no signs of stopping.
Methane emissions influence but do not undermine the environmental case for gas. If the industry can build on the progress to date and deliver a clearer picture on the level of emissions and actions to address them, the arguments for gas displacing coal in power generation and oil products in transport become much stronger.
“End-Coal” Global Coal Tracker does a magnificent job of showing how essential coal is around the world, and which countries are pathetically backwards in developing new coal plants. It’s probably not what the “CoalSwarm” team was hoping to achieve, but this map is a real asset to those of us who want to show how tiny Australia’s coal fired assets are compared to the rest of the world
The study found that dispersants broke up the oil into tiny droplets, making them less buoyant and unable to float to the surface. This meant that the oil formed a layer deep below the surface of the water, making it easier for microbes that live in the deep ocean to eat it. However, scientists weren’t able to measure the exact amount of oil eliminated by the microbes.
Due largely to these oil-eating bacteria, the Gulf of Mexico recovered from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill faster than scientists thought possible and has returned to pre-spill levels of environmental health.
For the past two years, U. Alberta geophysicist Mirko Van der Baan and his team have been poring over 30 to 50 years of earthquake rates from six of the top hydrocarbon-producing states in the United States and the top three provinces by output in Canada: North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia, Alberta, British Columbia, and Saskatchewan.
With only one exception, the scientists found no province- or state-wide correlation between increased hydrocarbon production and seismicity. They also discovered that human-induced seismicity is less likely in areas that have fewer natural earthquakes.
Norway on Wednesday proposed to open up a record number of blocks in the Barents Sea to oil exploration despite protests from environmentalists and others fearing possible damage to the Arctic region.
The Norwegian oil and energy ministry offered oil companies 93 blocks in the Barents Sea and nine others in the Norwegian Sea, all located beyond the Arctic Circle.
Petroleum, natural gas, coal, renewable energy, and nuclear electric power are primary energy sources. Electricity is a secondary energy source that is generated from primary energy sources.
The speed and scale at which U.S. shale production has bounced back from the slump in 2015/16 has confounded OPEC and all the other major forecasters.
The oil market is on an unsustainable course with output from U.S. shale and other non-OPEC sources 010increasing rapidly, while OPEC and its allies trim production to reduce inventories and prop up prices.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects non-OPEC output will increase by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in 2018 (“Oil Market Report”, IEA, June 2017).
If that proves correct, non-OPEC suppliers will capture all the increase in demand next year, because the IEA predicts consumption will increase by only 1.4 million bpd.
La géologie, une science plus que passionnante … et diverse
