Prices and production
After the markets digested China’s $586 billion stimulus package on Monday, prices fell from a week’s high of over to $65 a barrel until at one point oil was trading below $55. All the bluster about future production cuts could not compete with an avalanche of bad news about the global economy. Oil closed out the week at $57.04 a barrel. The weekly US oil stocks report shows US gasoline
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The Next OPEC Meeting
It is now confirmed that the meeting of Arab OPEC members in Cairo on November 29th will be expanded into a general OPEC meeting to discuss production levels. As the average price for OPEC produced oil is now somewhere in the $40s, most OPEC members are, or soon will be, running into major financial problems that were unforeseen 6 months ago. Nearly every member is talking production cuts beyond the
The IEA World Energy Outlook 2008
The official release of the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2008, has already brought forth a flood of new stories and commentary. Most of the immediate press stories focused on the need to find 64 million b/d of new production in the next 22 years to offset depletion and provide for some modest growth. This was cast in terms of finding four new Saudi Arabias, or a new Kuwait a year. The IEA’s
Venezuela & The Price Drop
Of all the OPEC members, Venezuela may be the one suffering most from the precipitous drop in oil prices over the last five months. Although Caracas claims to be producing 3.1 million b/d, nearly all outside observers put the number at 2.3. Then there is increasing domestic consumption in a country where the number of cars has increased from 2.6 to 4 million in the last six years. President Chavez
General Motors
The drama over the future of the US automobile industry –or lack thereof - continued last week. Representatives of GM are running around Washington saying that if the company is allowed to go bankrupt, the US economy would be irreparably harmed. President-elect Obama and some Congressional Democrats are pushing for allowing the industry access to the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program,
Briefs - November 17, 2008
A crude oil pipeline that feeds into the Chevron-operated Escravos export terminal in Nigeria’s Delta state was attacked late Friday. One security source said 100,000 b/d of oil output had been cut because of the attack.(11/16, #7) The weak US economy will reduce America’s oil demand this year by 1.1 million b/d, or 5.4 percent, the first time annual oil consumption
Quote of the Week
The U.S. could soon find itself scrambling to make up 11 percent in lost oil imports. Mexico, the third-largest foreign supplier of U.S. oil, faces the real possibility of having to halt oil exports in four years, a former top Mexican energy official was reported as saying Tuesday in Mexico’s El Universal newspaper Houston Chronicle, November 11, 2008
A Peak-Oiler, but still in the closet? IEA’s 2008 Report
By Aage Figenschou, with Matt Simmons The groundbreaking new IEA World Energy Outlook 2008 is still a product of a somewhat schizophrenic organization. Here and there you still have references to how abundant the resource base is (9 trillion barrels all in) and how satisfying demand is only a question of timely investments. The oil optimists are still an important group of the IEA, but it is
