The Peakist

“It is already the world’s biggest country, spanning 11 time zones and stretching from Europe to the far east. But yesterday Russia signalled its intention to get even bigger by announcing an audacious plan to annex a vast 460,000 square mile chunk of the frozen and ice-encrusted Arctic…” writes Luke Harding in in the Guardian (more…)

As Baghdad burns, destabilising the entire region and sending the price of oil soaring, Calgary booms.

“The invasion of Iraq has set off what could be the largest oil boom in history,” writes Naomi Klein in Friday’s Guardian (June 1, 2007). “All the signs are there: multinationals free to gobble up national firms at will, ship unlimited profits home, enjoy leisurely “tax holidays”, and pay a laughable 1% in royalties to the government.

This isn’t the boom in Iraq sparked by the proposed new oil law - that will come later. This boom is already in full swing, and it is happening about as far away from the carnage in Baghdad as you can get, in the wilds of northern Alberta. For four years now, Alberta and Iraq have been connected to each other through a kind of invisible seesaw: as Baghdad burns, destabilising the entire region and sending oil prices soaring, Calgary booms.” (more…)

I hadn’t realised quite how much shale oil there was (2.6 trillion barrels of recoverable oil), how cheap it could be (economic at $40/barrel) and how well developed the extraction process is (Shell’s In-Situ Process).

See wikipedia

Yesterday I was more worried about peak oil, today I’m more worried about global warming.

By: Elliot H. Gue

Earnings season is a busy time for the stock market. And the January/February season–when most companies report fourth quarter results–is the busiest of them all. That’s because companies typically offer a look at the year ahead, shedding some light on new themes to consider.
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Chris Floyd, t r u t h o u t UK Correspondent writes: “The reason that George W. Bush insists that “victory” is achievable in Iraq is not that he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it’s that his definition of “victory” is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and online. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand. It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned “surge” of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand. At any time within the next few days, the Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve a new “hydrocarbon law” essentially drawn up by the Bush administration and its UK lackey, the Independent on Sunday reported. (more…)

Peter Cizek reports in Canadian Dimension Magazine (July/August 2006) on the appalling impact of mining the tar sands of Alberta:

Faced with the undeniable reality of “Hubbard’s Peak” in global conventional oil supplies, the world’s largest multinational energy corporations are now hell-bent on squeezing oil out of tar in northern Alberta, like junkies desperately conniving for one last giant fix in a futile attempt to quench America’s insatiable “addiction to oil” (described so eloquently by President George Bush II). Along the Athabasca River near Fort McMurray, a sub-arctic town almost 1,000 kilometres north of the U.S. border, tar literally seeps out of the riverbanks where Aboriginal peoples once used it to patch their birch-bark canoes. But most of the tar sands lie hidden below northern Alberta’s boreal forest, in an area larger than the state of Florida. (more…)

By William Mellor and Le-Min Lim

Sept. 27 (Bloomberg) — In a steamy jungle clearing in Myanmar, a lone drilling rig topped by limp red flags bears testimony to China’s insatiable thirst for oil. (more…)

Three companies led by US-based Chevron say they have found an oil field under the Gulf of Mexico that could boost US reserves by more than 50%.

Drilling at a test well yielded “a flow rate of more than 6,000 barrels of crude oil per day”, Chevron said.

The discovery may rival the biggest US oil field in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.

Experts caution that the true size of the oil field is not yet known and it will be a long time before any of the oil there enters the market.

“In the last 15 years, there’ve been so many great projects that started out and then petered out,” Matt Simmons, the head of a group of energy investment bankers, told Reuters news agency.

Recently in the Gulf of Mexico, “there’s been a lot more bitter disappointments than phenomenal surprises”, he said.

The head of an energy consulting firm, Art Smith, told the Associated Press news agency that despite the discovery, the US will still be importing more than 50% of its oil needs.

“The US still has a big difference between its consumption and indigenous production,” Mr Smith said.

Experts said the oil from the well is unlikely to be available for many years and the discovery is not going to ease spiralling global oil prices.

Three firms - US oil giant Chevron, Norway’s Statoil and US-based Devon Energy - said test results under the Gulf of Mexico “may indicate a significant discovery”.

“The full magnitude of the field’s potential is still being defined,” Statoil said.

Chevron first revealed it was prospecting for oil in the area in September 2004.

The oil field is located 435 km (270 miles) south-west of New Orleans and 282 km (175 miles) offshore.

According to John Kilduff, an analyst quoted by the AFP news agency, the new oil field could produce 400,000 barrels for 20 years - even at its lowest capacity.

As America and Europe diversify oil and gas supplies away from the volatile Persian Gulf, West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea is set to become its counterweight, argue Andy Rowell, James Marriott & Lorne Stockman in “The Next Gulf: London, Washington and Oil Conflict in Nigeria.”

“Since 9/11, the Gulf of Guinea has gained unprecedented strategic importance to the US and its allies. Washington wants the region’s oil and gas resources and is prepared to protect its access with military might. Nigeria is the biggest oil and gas producer in the region and therefore central to US strategy.

Forgotten in this new scramble for African resources are the people of the Niger Delta, who have received little benefit from 50 years of oil production in their midst.” (more…)

By TODD LEWAN, Associated Press/MIAMI .Some facts about America’s trade embargo with Cuba: It’s been U.S. policy since 1961. It has yet to loosen Fidel Castro’s grip on power.  It has cost America little strategically or economically. Until now, that is.

From here on out, say a growing chorus of experts, America will pay a price for maintaining its 45-year trade ban with the communist nation — a strategic and economic price that will have negative repercussions for the United States in the decades to come.

What has changed the equation? Oil. (more…)

The New York Times reports that American imports of oil could be eliminated by 2030, a new study by an interstate consortium asserts, if the nation turns to an aggressive program of energy efficiency and commercialization of four already-demonstrated technologies for making transportation fuels. (more…)

Money no object as the big players grab what is left of a diminishing resource

Terry Macalister reported in the Guardian on the huge prices oil companies are now paying for exploration rights - yet another signal of the unfolding depletion crisis and the shifting sands of global geopolitics as China positions itself for the oil end game and the producer nations gain unprecendented economic leverage. (more…)

Unlike the Antarctic continent spread around the south pole, the Arctic has no formal international treaty to regulate activities. And while howling winds, drifting icebergs and months of freezing darkness kept prospecters at bay, there was little activity to regulate. But as global warming thaws the ocean’s icy layer, oil giants, shipping companies and even the odd enterprising tourist operator are casting their eyes towards the high north.

Last August a Russian vessel, the Akademik Fyodorov, became the first to reach the north pole without an icebreaker - one of seven ships to make it to the top of the world last year. This summer, Russian icebreakers aim to go one better and take paying guests, for £17,000 each. If the ice continues to thin and shrink as expected, then within a few decades cruise liners, container ships and tankers could all head over the pole, shaving thousands of miles off their voyages across the globe.

The biggest boom could be oil and gas. The US Geological Survey surprised some experts when it declared that a quarter of the world’s undiscovered reserves lay under the Arctic Ocean. As the ice retreats, oil companies are scrambling to open a new frontier. (more…)

Mexican President Vicente Fox has announced the discovery of a new deep-water oil field, which is believed to contain 10bn barrels of crude.

The field is in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mexico says it could be bigger than its largest oil field, Cantarell.

Production there is said to have declined sharply in recent years.

Mr Fox made the announcement as figures showed the country’s total oil reserves had fallen 2% between 2003 and 2005.
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