4 entries filed this month:
In the latest EIA weekly petroleum inventory report shows refinery capacity utilization last week nudged upwards ever closer to max, now at 96.3 percent of operable capacity (near 17 mb/d). In today’s Crude Realities I’ve included a chart of capacity vs price of crude.
Mexico’s Congress Approves Bill to Reduce Pemex Taxes
Lower taxes will help the company reduce the amount of new debt needed to finance projects designed to turn around a two- decade decline in proven oil reserves, Pemex Chief Financial Officer Juan Jose Suarez Coppel said in an interview on June 15. This year Pemex will add about $2.5 billion of debt to finance its $12 billion spending plan, Suarez Coppel said.
(Peak oil means something different at the country level. Mexico today is still a net exporter of oil.)
Irans proven oil reserves put at over 132b barrels
Iranian Students News Agency quoted Mehdi Hosseini as saying. He said, Irans proven oil deposits have officially been put at over 132 billion barrels, 102 billion barrels of crude oil plus 30 billion barrels of liquids, and the figure has been registered by OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) too. He rejected some estimates that put Irans exploitable crude deposits at about 40 billion barrels and commented, I do not agree with that figure.
(Everyone wants their number to appear higher, but the reality is you only know for sure when it runs (almost) dry)
U.S. Senators Weigh Gulf of Mexico Oil Inventory
“The big-picture politics have changed,” said Mark Ferrulo, executive director of the environmental group Florida PIRG. “We’re seeing the most aggressive and vociferous attacks on Florida’s coast by the industry and their allies in Congress that we’ve seen in many years.” Joe Murphy, coastal expert for the Sierra Club in Florida, said this year marks the biggest threat of large-scale drilling off Florida’s coast in the past 20 to 25 years. “The industry smells the blood in the water.”
(Why bother seriously promoting conservation and alternatives when there are still places to drill?)
Added a new category to my Blog, Peak Oil.
I haven’t spent much time discussing Peak Oil, on my personal blog or on my work blog, but since crude may have put in a local top this week, perhaps starting a list of links and commentary might not be a bad idea lest declining oil – however temporary or not – cause the topic to fade into the background.
Mostly we just go about living our lives as if a) peaking oil is now or will be a reality, and b) even if the forever oil folks are some how correct, continuing to burn ever increasing amounts of the stuff just can’t logically be good for the plant.
So, we walk a lot, take busses, run (literally) the 2km to the school and walk home with our kids. We also ride bikes. Lots lots of bikes, including a tandem that I pilot my two sons around (#2 comes in via a very study attachment, the Burley Piccolo – while its more costly its far sturdier, more responsive, better designed, more reliable than the Norco/Adams Trail-a-Bike).
Back to Peak Oil. Today I put together a basic, publicly accessble, gentle primer on peak oil. Its worth downloading and reading some of the linked articles and PDF files. Have a good read through the US Energy Information Agency’s own material.
Then you might go back and read an article on demand I wrote. From an investor’s perspective its interesting, even if you don’t know or care what Peak Oil is, as , so far, EIA estimates on demand seem awfully light and do not fully take into account the increase in demand from developing nations like China and India.
In Oil – Demand Growth Connundrum I’ve attempted to outline a case that a) demand for crude from the two largest consumers, China and the US, is higher than forecast for this year, b) that demand growth from China will continue to be substantial, c) that the current supply/demand balance is precarious and d) crude prices are likely to rise further, even on the back of OPEC‘s recent announcement to lift quotas.
It may be that market participants blink first and back off, but it does seem as if a show down with OPEC is in the making here.
Ironically, $70, $80 oil might cause energy stocks to fall, as fears of an energy crisis and global recession are likely to rapidly mount. There hasn’t been much evidence to support such a thesis – so far, consumers and businesses have been adapting remarkably well to higher crude prices.