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Tech Talk - Splitting the Sudan may increase oil production
Posted by Heading Out on February 13, 2011 - 7:54am
The disruption that began in Tunisia is continuing in Egypt, with changes also starting in countries such as Jordan and Yemen. And in the midst of this turmoil, the (finally) democratically dictated separation of Sudan into two separate countries is moving towards the July 9th separation date. At that time Southern Sudan will divide from the North. Sudan has only been selling its oil on the world market since 1999 and the transition will impact those exports.
With the hopeful end to the conflicts in the country, there is also now an increasing possibility that the oil and natural gas resources of the two new nations will be developed. Until recently China has been the most active player in the region, but as the results of the vote have become apparent, Russia too is indicating an interest.
Like other players in the world oil market, Russia would like to promote its energy interests in that region. Moreover, it is capable of becoming a serious competitor for both Western and Chinese companies in oil production and power supply. Russia’s clear competitive advantages are its technological experience in developing oil fields in many regions of the world, its investment potential and the absence of any political conditions for energy cooperation. The latter is important both for Khartoum and Juba, the current administrative centre of South Sudan, because after the referendum both sides will have to reconsider the criteria of their independence.
The EIA notes that in 2009 oil was the major revenue generator for the country, bringing in more than 90% of foreign earnings. Within the country the primary energy source is that of combustible renewables and waste, reflecting the rural, non-electrified population of much of the country. And although BP (as reported by Energy Export Databrowser) suggests that virtually all the oil it produces is exported:
The EIA find that there is a significant, and growing, domestic market, that uses a significant percentage of production. Various estimates of the size of the export market (for reasons given below) hover around the FT estimate of around 500,000 bd.
The EIA note, as is shown on the graph above, that production and exports developed after a pipeline was run 1,000 miles from the oil fields up to Port Sudan. And it should be noted that while about 75% of the oil reserve (perhaps 6.5 billion barrels) is mainly in the South, that port (map above) is in the North. And as European nations in particular, but also those of the FSU, know from the past, those who control the pipeline can often remain in a position of power. The previous arrangements and actual distribution of funds have been viewed with some suspicion.
Much of this is due to the opacity with which Khartoum's captured state machinery operates, siphoning as much as 40% of total oil revenue through various forms of mispricing. Meanwhile, though the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005 established that 50% of revenues must be remitted to the Government of South Sudan (GOSS), this share is determined not by volume but sales. Khartoum markets the oil nearly exclusively and determines price as well as volumes exported, with little or no independent monitoring. According to U.K. watchdog Global Witness, major discrepancies of between 9% and 26% have been documented, underpaying the GOSS by as much as $700 million. Little is known of the $7 billion in oil revenues remitted to the South as accountability mechanisms were never factored into the CPA.
That initial agreement is set to expire this July. The pipeline supplies oil to two refineries (at El Obied and Khartoum) that supply the domestic market.
One thing that may change this is the construction of s second pipeline, running from the South to Mombasa in Kenya. This would also feed a new refinery proposed for Lamu, which is near Mombasa. However the pipeline would be 870 miles long and have to go uphill to get into the Kenyan highlands, making it quite expensive. An extension of a railway line has been suggested as an alternative. But it now appears that the rail link will go through Uganda, rather than directly to Lamu.
North Sudan is currently producing about 100 – 110,000 bd of Sudanese total production, but it hopes, by increasing production from the Balila oilfield in South Kordofan from 60 kbd to over 100 kbd, among other gains, to raise this level to 195 kbd by 2012. It has also been exploring for oil offshore in the Red Sea.
Meanwhile exploration in the South is expected to increase, and there are hopes that production might increase to 2 mbd by 2015, from their current estimated production of 450 kbd.
Conditions in the South however are not currently ideal for oil production, even for the Chinese
He said trucks bringing in fuel vital to operations were stopped at 12 illegal checkpoints on one 200km stretch of road alone, each time being charged $300. Waste oil has been set ablaze and workers kidnapped, he added.
These conditions may make China less likely to invest at the scale required for the new transport network. On the other hand China is but one of several partners in production.
For while China has a 40% interest, Malaysia has a 30% interest, and India in 3rd place with 25% in the current production company. And with the Russians expressing interest, who knows what may transpire.
And a small editorial note: With the changing standards for posts on The Oil Drum not all the individual posts in this series now qualify for publication here. This will make the flow a little more discontinuous, for which I apologize. For those interested the series originates at Bit Tooth Energy, where, for example, the post I had originally planned for today was posted last week.
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The reason the formation of South Sudan may increase oil production is the same as for Iraq - peace, not war.
I don't think the oil question was far away in the thoughts of many Western leaders as they prepared the ground for secession.
South Sudan is also a mostly christian nation whilst the northern part is mostly muslim(and usually more violent and fanatical).
This will make the two sides become more aggressive towards each other, but it's better to have clear lines than to mash them all up in the middle, which resulted in genocide just a few short years ago.
The question is, for me at least, how will China's role be in all of this? They are buying up energy and resource assets all over Africa, there's almost 1 million Chinese citizens in Africa now.
As the power of the U.S. fades and it's capabilities of Power Projection fades in sync, and considering the ruthlessly anti-Globalist(and hypernationalist) foreign policy of China, it's a shroud of secrecy, the notion that this might benefit the world.
Of course, some will rightly point out that the U.S. is not that much more sanguine than it's Chinese competitor when it comes to the nitty gritty, but I disagree. America does indeed think like a world police. China is more powerful than for a long time but still feels and acts like a more minor player than it is, thinking mostly of narrow national interests (which was evidenced at the Copenhagen 2009 climate change summit).
Given the political turmoil in the region and the crucial role Africa plays in the Chinese foreign policy of late, I think the main constraints to production will be political, perhaps not technical(at least to such a degree).
Oh, and as an aside which is related to the topic of world production: Perhaps we all have seen the furious denial of the recent Wikileaks' report on Saudi Arabia by the man himself, Al-Husseini?
He essentially said that production will go up to 12.5 mb/d in 2020 and then flatline for 10-15 years before decline (On Saudi Arabia)
Now he may use this as a red herring to disguise what he has previously said(This time on the total world production):
“We are going to face shortages in capacity within 2-3 years.”
(This would mean late 2011 to late 2012 as these words were said in the closing months of 2009)
He also said that he’d been tracking the numbers of investments for a ‘long time’ and that ‘it’s not enough to make up for the declines in the next 5 years. It’s not enough’.
But the most interesting quote what was he had to said about those who were trying to ‘pacify people’
“So, these kind of complacement positions or these centers of information or knowledge that try to pacify people, trying to tell people that there is no challenge, with good intentions are probably comprising the solutions. They’re not helping.”
I can understand if Mr. Husseini feels he needs to backtrack on his previous, more private and discreet comments with fullblown denial when it’s out in the open to remain his politicial ties and friendships.
But that cannot get in the way for Peak Oil, which is far more important.
And his quote above fits perfectly on himself. But apparently when push comes to shove, all his supposed 'concern' vaporises into pragmatic self-interest, keen as he is to maintain his close contacts with the Saudi establishment.
These quotes can be heard in this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUVY2qrEfd8&
(Apologies for slight offtopic post to the mods, but I'd just thought of this in relation to the disucssion on world production.)
That's OK. I think the most important discussions revolve around world production. Micro-discussion on some isolated production area certainly won't add much evidence one way or another to the global trend.
An interesting parallel occurs with election voting. Yes, we all realize that "every vote counts", but when it comes down to it, the election can be predicted from just a sample survey of the population. The important aspect of the survey is how it is designed; first and foremost, it has to be cross-sectionally balanced so as not to generate biases.
Now put this into terms of doing research on production in Sudan. It may interest some who have curiosity in the logistics or in playing the market, but in the greater scheme of things its like trying to predict the outcome of an election by conducting a sample survey at your local smoke shop. So it's an easy and convenient thing to do, and it might predict the trend among tough-guy male cigar-chompers, but it really does not add a lot of depth to the bigger picture. Such is the way that statistics are understood by the general audience.
While I agree that knowing when global peak oil production occurs is of general and academic interest, I am of the opinion that the "micro-discussions" are also extremely important. Although each of us is part of "the world", the reality of our day-to-day existence is determined almost entirely by what micro part of the world we live in. Similarly, oil importing nations don't import oil from "the world" but from some combination of individual nations.
If we want to understand where our fossil fuel supplies might come from in future years it is important to examine each individual producer in detail. I am interested in our future ability to import liquid fuels we want at affordable prices. That involves all sorts of "micro" issues like:
Besides, the "micro" tells more human, more historical and to me more compelling stories than the statistically averaged story.
Cheers,
Jon
Thanks Heading Out for putting together this information, every "micro discussion" gives us another piece of the jigsaw puzzle of global peak oil. Calculating peak oil just from reserves with no knowledge of political developments will only miss the mark by a long way.
What happens in Sudan is just as important as peace in Nigeria, Angola and political decisions in Mexico.
If 30 years ago one would have applied production curves to Iraq, it would look nothing like what actually happened in the real world.
Analysis of all significant oil producing country enables us to narrow down global peak oil with any real certainty.
It also provides us with the facts which most people require to be convinced of the real problems we face.
Anybody want to help out?
It takes a couple dozen lines of code to feed some discovery data or reserve numbers into the oil shock model. You can add any kind of disturbances you like.
This is the complete Oil Shock Model code instantiated for Russia, which can be run from a Linux command line:
cat fsu.txt | ruby exp.rb 0.17 | ruby exp.rb 0.17 | ruby exp.rb 0.17 | ruby shock.rb shocks.txt # exp.rb def exp(a, b) rate = b length = a.length temp = 0.0 for i in 0..length do output = (a[i].to_f + temp) * rate temp = (a[i].to_f + temp) * (1.0 - rate) puts output end end exp(STDIN.readlines, ARGV[0].to_f) # shock.rb def shock(a, b) length = b.length temp = 0.0 for i in 0..length do output = (a[i].to_f + temp) * b[i].to_f temp = (a[i].to_f + temp) * (1.0 - b[i].to_f) puts output end end shock(STDIN.readlines, IO.readlines(ARGV[0]))With that you can do all sorts of geo-political analysis:
This model of Russia reproduces the ASPO production curve (brown) based on applying the Shock Model to the discovery data (fsu.txt, one data point per year) plus extrapolated dispersive discovery (green curve).
The lower curve is shocks.txt (one extraction rate per year).
This is the tech talk that no one wants to discuss because it is based on real statistical evidence and probabilistic reasoning and not just anecdotal ponderings.
So you agree that knowing real time facts about a country a essential to having any chance in predicting when that country will peak and at what level?
Your graph on Russia, does that take into account the effects of the government changing it's tax policy, at the moment looking for oil in Russia does not pay. A change in tax policy would increase exploration.
http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Oil/8272870
Appsala’s study on Russian oil production has three possible production peaks depending on URR. Pg 61.
http://www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/Publications/Aram_Thesis.pdf
What is your production peak and date and decline rate for Russia?
More importantly Iraq production has a range of possible peaks and dates any thoughts on Iraq?
Give it a go, the math is all there. That's why we do this, we create a foundation so that you can attempt to answer your own questions.
BTW, if you think that exploration doesn't continue, consider that the base search technology is high tech (some fraction of it virtual) and the temptation for riches is too great for this to stop.
That is my point, I cannot read the future, so predicting what Iraq will produce in 2016 ot 2018 is a guess at best. If the government of Iraq agree production and revenue sharing with all parties then production may reach the high end of estimates. If they do not and sabotage of pipelines and facilities continues then production many not increase much over todays levels.
It would have been interesting to see your graphs for Iraq but nevermind.
Graphs of what exactly?
Your calculations of Iraq's future oil production.
Where did I say that I did calculations of Iraq's future oil production?
No, you showed some national examples, but did not cover Iraq in your book, I thought you may have done it at some time or other.
I believe oil production will peak in next few years, there are very few countries which could delay it by much.
Iraq is problably the most important, if production could be increased before OPEC runs out of spare capacity then we have more time and a much lower decline rate. If they cannot, then OPEC's spare will be gone by 2013 and the global decline rate will be very difficult to adapt to.
One man can only do so much ...
You are probably right in your assessment of Iraq.
OK, but no one does any serious kind of statistical analysis of the data. All that gets presented is a data dump.
Let me give an example of a neighboring country, Libya. In The Oil ConunDrum on p. 271, I deconstruct the reserve numbers for Libya. In this I use a model of the production process and extrapolate numbers from Campbell's data.
No reason that this can't be done for Sudan, but it probably won't.
Keeping on my previous analogy, in some sense I think Political Science is more of a science that Geology is. When it comes to doing a deep statistical analysis of numbers that have an impact to policy, pollsters have geologists and any kind of earth scientists beat. Kind of embarrassing but I have never seen any evidence to the contrary. If someone finds something that contradicts my claim, I can add it to the book.
I find the pipeline map puzzling. Uganda has a major field, called the biggest in Sub-Saharan Africa in "at least 20 years".
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_...
Initial estimates are 1 billion barrels with another 1.5 billion "un-discovered". Tullow is planning a 200,000 day refinery.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-11/tullow-says-oil-production-in-u...
China bought half of the deal after international bidding by Tullow Oil (of which I own shares :-) and also offered to build a pipeline to the field as a bonus. Routing such a pipeline north through an infant republic with decades of conflict and with a void of law and order seems very odd to say the least.
A rail line has the advantage of dramatically lowering shipping costs (including local "tolls") for development and support of oil production as well as providing an outlet for the export of crude oil and oil products.
PS: As of 10 days ago, Uganda is planning to refine their oil and export products for regional use. Regional markets (including South Sudan) can certainly absorb 200,000 b/day with substantial transportation savings.
Alan
A map of Sudanese rail lines, all narrow gauge but a mix. South Sudan is talking about building standard gauge through Uganda.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sudan_1991_transportation_map.png
I am intimately familiar with the Sudan and it's oil having worked there for sometime. A couple of things to point out is that the agreed upon border puts much of the discovered producing oil in the north (Heglig, Bamboo etc) whereas as the south gets Unity, Toma and Toma South fields as well as the discovery that Lundin oil made near Abyei (can't remember the name of the field). Unity has been producing the longest and hence has the least reserves remaining....Toma and Toma South have very high wax content are relatively expensive in terms of treatment (pore point depressant and flash heating). The southern reaches of the Muglad basin are relatively unexplored and for good reason. This area is swamp and under water for much of the year. Lundin used Lousiana swamp buggies in order to acquire seismic and they were in a relatively dry portion of the south. It will be a huge challenge to develop this area.
More importantly I need to correct the idea that the south is "mainly Christian" and the north "is militant muslim". In reality the south is a mix and mostly animist, not Christian. The north is comprised mainly of muslims but there are Coptic churches in Khartoum and the copts are left to their own devices. The south was fraught with tribal warfare for generations prior to the troubles with the Khartoum government. I can't see any reason to suspect that situation will change which likely means development of oil infrastructure in the south will be a long drawn out process.
One of the issues that everyone misunderstands is why the Khartoum gov't didn't put up much of a fight over turning over oil fields to the south. The south still has to pay for access to the central processing plant and the pipeline infrastructure. From the Khartoum gov't perspective the facilities were capitalized quite awhile ago so basically they may lose some oil revenue but they will make up for some of that in pipeline tariff revenue. A pipeline south to Lamu is a bit of a fantasy to my mind. You would need a heck of a lot more oil to justify it. The Uganda pipeline that Tullow will be involved with doesn't go north but rather goes south and then directly east so there would be no synergy with a Sudan line.
Couldn't either the Tullow pipeline and/or Ugandan railroad be a terminus to expand northward from into South Sudan ?
Alan
The Tullow pipeline is being designed to handle the oil from the Ugandan fields. I doubt there is much there in the way of spare capacity to take additional oil from Sudan. I can't see that there would be any reason for the Ugandan gov't to create space for Sudan oil other than transit revenue in which case the economics for the southern Sudanese oil going south (fees to Uganda) versus north (fees to Khartoum) would likely be worse.
As well the situation with the Lords Resistance Army would have to be sorted.
Competition will keep costs down vs. monopoly choice. And their has to be resentment/hatred towards Khartoum.
Increasing diameter of a pipeline is cheap. Add pumping stations as needed.
And I was not aware of a long standing rebellion (or sorts) in northern Uganda.
Alan
A new pipeline south would be somewhere in the order of 1000 km in length and would require a number of pumping stations to deal with the elevation change and waxy nature of the crude. The tarrif north into the main Khartoum line would almost certainly be a cheaper means of egress.
Can't see that they would cut off their nose to spite their face.
Rail tank cars do not care @ viscosity. And a rail line extension would significantly reduce development and operating costs as well as providing significant aid to development for South Sudan.
If the existing pipeline had reasonable tariffs, use it. But there would be competition.
I think you underestimate the impact of strong emotions on governmental choices.
Alan
It is really about viscosity but about the waxy nature of the crude. Toma South crude sitting in a jar at room temperature is a big lump of solid material. Heat is required to keep waxes from percipitating. The pipeline solution with additional pumping stations helps given that there is significant frictional heating created by turbulence in the line, enough to keep the oil above pour point as long as it is moving. The plan for the Ugandan crudes (assuming they try the truck/train solution) is to have heated containers. I have no idea what the extra cost for this would be but imagine it wouldn't be insignificant.
For decades, China imported all of it's oil from Russia by rail. A vast majority of crude oil grades are solid at temperatures typical of Siberia in February. Yet the oil was imported and refined.
Internal deliveries within Russia of Siberian production faced the same issues.
My guess is that provisions were made at the refinery to somehow heat the rail cars delivered in the winter.
A problem, but a soluble one.
Alan
Just a thought - could you chill the containers and then effectively move it like ore or coal, then reheating at the refinery?
Sorry if that sounds daft - It's been a long day.
On a sunny, surprisingly warm day, you could lose some of the lighter hydrocarbons (coal does have a slight smell for that reason BTW). Better to keep it warm enough to load into a tank car and let it solidify there, preserving as much of the oil as possible.
Not a daft idea BTW.
Alan
Alan - Not just a problem (and solution) with tank cars. I once handled a field in Miss. that produced a nasty asphalt crude. Barge would swing by one a month to pick it up. Ran steam generators for 3 days in order to get it to flow down to the barge. But got clever: put in a cogen. Used the e to run the well pumps and took the radiator water and circulated it through the oil tanks continuously. Keeping the oil warm also eliminated a $35,000/month bill for a chemical used to deal with a paraffin problem. Bottom line: increased the profit margin by $700,000/year.
Another trick in the same field : a previous operator had let a lot of this nasty crude accumulate at the bottom of a small lake. Didn't catch that little environmental nightmare until after we closed the purchase so the bill would have been on us. But instead of spending a huge chunk of our profit to have it hauled to a disposal site I had it dredged out and used it to pave all the miles (had over 80 production sites) of the lease roads. Bottom line: had the nicest production lease in my career: all electric with hard top roads. As you know so well there are many solutions out there. Just need to think about a bit. And then just do it.
What about solar collectors on the pipes? Would add a lot of heat in Africa.
Black paint works well :-)
Alan
likely not when the pour point is 38 C!
Tullow is talking about heated railcars or trucks in their plans for early production. I doubt anyone wants to deal with a trainload of candles at the end of the line. They still believe the pipeline is the best solution but will still require a considerable amount of pumpstations and possibly heat added along the way.
One of the interesting things regarding oil rheologic behavior in the Sudan fields is that whereas the fields in the south (eg Toma and Toma south) have very high wax content and higher pour point and the fields further north (eg Heglig) have much lower wax content and lower pour point and even further north where they are shallow (eg Bamboo, Bamboo West) have no wax and high asphaltenes (biodegraded). The transportation of the crudes through the pipeline to Port Sudan is actually helped by the ability to mix all of these crudes. My understanding is that whereas the Heglig and Unity crudes benefited greatly from pour point lowering through flash heating the same can not be said for the Ugandan crudes due to the make up of the waxes. Hence going north provides a bit of benefit for the southern Sudan crudes ( a better mix which requires less PPDM, no pipeline heating and limited pumpstations.
Obviously politics will come into play but the south needs money and it would be surprising to see them give up extra money just to avoid paying Khartoum tarifs. But like everyone else I'm guessing at an outcome.
My engineering solution would be insulated rail cars with electric resistance heating (mainly on outside, under the insulation, but also a couple of rods inside).
Paint flat black and dump liquid into rail car. Solid but warm when is gets to refinery. Plug in and open drains are a decent interval.
African trains have uncertain journey times so heating along the way is uncertain. Better a plug in and reheat. (A small hydropower plant for the new refinery would be a good idea. Perhaps not 100% of power, but a cost saving alternative for much of the electricity required).
If refinery has excess process steam, a good alternative is a steam coil through the tank, but getting wax off the walls is best done with resistance heat.
Heat pumps should be an energy saver in Africa. Some ideas there as well that I can detail if they are interested.
Best Hopes,
Alan
Black paint in New Orleans (30 degrees latitude) can get well above 38 C.
The problem is not day time temperatures but night time temperatures which get relatively nippy compared to daytime.
I wonder what affect there is on oil quality (BTU) having the oil completely waxed off and then reheated? You would think everything would be completely miscible but I suppose there might be changes in the chemical hydrocarbon structure.
I don't know the answer to this one and don't have my reference books on hand to look it up. I do know that every petroleum engineer I've run into dealing with waxy crudes trys to avoid cloud point let alone full blown waxing of the fluid stream.
Fractions separate (not 100% though) as the mixture cools. And once separated, differences in specific gravity will keep them largely separated
However, Step 1 at the refinery is separating out the paraffins.
The waxes will collect along the walls of an insulated container first, more at the bottom, while the center stays relatively warm and liquid with less wax.
A coil for steam or refrigerant in the center, with a center tap, would draw off the low wax crude fraction. And then resistant heating of the sides would draw off the mainly wax crude.
Separating these two streams would be a significant advantage to the refinery. Purify the high % paraffin stream and extract the "waste" for further refining and ship candle raw material out as a solid. Take the reduced paraffin crude, eliminate the residual paraffin (for later purification) and refine away. Easier to handle with much lower % wax.
Idea: An electrified railroad would provide the best and cheapest/easiest source of heat along the way. Build some small hydro to help power it.
I could put something together if you would like.
An electrified rail line would dramatically reduce the cost of development and operations once operating, especially at above the current crawl speed of the existing Kenya-Uganda line. Add a refinery to be built and operated.
Safety of travel will also be much better with decent rail than via road.
Best Hopes,
Alan
PS: There would be a lot of advantages of largely double tracking and using either composite or concrete ties for the new tracks and rehabilitation. The rail line. Maintenance on one track will not shut line down and average speed and reliability of shipments will take a jump up.
Good signals and dispatch could give much the same effect (except for taking a track out for maintenance) at lower cost, but that solution is not as robust.
See Rockman's comment above about the cost of dealing with paraffins. Might cost a lot to get the tanks cleaned out.
NAOM
Paint cars black, with dump valves on the bottom. Fill and let them do whatever they want en route.
Build an elevated trestle at the receiving end, oriented east-west, with a collecting trough below in the middle. Place mirrors on the north side to put about 10 sun's worth of heat near the bottom of where the tank cars would be when parked. Bring the train in in the early morning before sunrise, open the dump valves, and move it out again well after dark. ;-)
I think it would work.
The issues would be
1) daily throughput (200,000 b/day range) Rough calcs are yes with multiple trains
2) Cloudy, rainy weather. Plan B needed then.
Alan
Up until a few years ago I used to follow the different wars and rebellions going on in Africa, but not as much now. But my latest info on the LRA is they are getting weaker and more desperate. Some report I read tells about them raiding residences to steal clothes. (Meaning they didn't even had any clothes to wear.) They seem to be in a very bad shape. Any input on that?
Well given the fragmentation that you suspect will slow the South's infrastructure development to a crawl, the Tullow pipeline might well be looking for shippers by the time the bulk of the South's oil comes on line.
Release of Bundeswehr PO study
On an unrelated note, the approved version of the Bundeswehr PO study has just been released, though it is dated Nov. 2010:
http://www.zentrum-transformation.bundeswehr.de:80/portal/a/ztransfbw/!ut/p/c4/DclBCoAwDAXRs3iBZO_OW6gb-RErpZKWNlHo6S2zegzvPFK88YbFrHh45e2Ms3zUkhzdKrSFIZerHq6N4EHgnSB2xceVuifXYA00NpKVmrmkZfoBJvMf9Q!!/
At 125 pages, it is longer than the 99 page draft version, but this seems to be due to the larger font size, not to further elaboration.
The very important Section 3.2 on Tipping Points has survived with its key points intact, but there are changes to the supplementary information.
Hmmm... same problem I had with the original study. Seems to be written in a foreign language :-)
Greetings from icy Lithuania (-23 C, this morning). I can offer a workaround, but it is a bit clumsy. If someone else can offer a more elegant solution, please speak up. Here is the workaround:
1) Download the original .pdf in German to your computer.
2) Using Adobe Reader, save the .pdf as .txt (the resulting file is about 305K).
3) Open the .txt file, and copy/paste reasonable chunks into Google Docs, which are then translated using Google Translate.
For example, here is the (translated, but unedited) Table of Contents:
CONTENTS
1 Introduction ................................................. ........................................ 9
2 The importance of oil .............................................. .................. 13
2.1. Oil as a determinant of globalization ............................................. ............ 13
2.2. Oil as a potential conflict factor .............................................. ......................... 17
2.3. Oil and energy security aspects of German ............................................. .... 19
3 Possible developments after the global peak oil .................... 25
3.1. Possible Peak Oil-induced effect relationships ......................................... 26
3.1. 1. Oil as a major factor in shaping international
relations ........................................ .................................................. ......... 26
3.1.2. Changing roles of public and private sector
stakeholders ............................................ .................................................. .............. 37
3.1.3. Development of additional and alternative energy resources ...................... 45
3.1.4. Internal social risks of the Peak Oil ............................................. .... 56
3.2. Systemic risk in excess of the "Tipping Point "........................... 62
3.3. Conflict situations relating to oil ..................................... 68
4 Security Implications .............................................. 73
4.1 . Supply relationships in Germany and possible dependencies ..... 73
4.2. Design of supply relationships with countries of the Strategic Ellipse ...... 76
4.3. Balance of interests and values orientation in foreign policy ................ 82
4.4. Conflict and potential for collaboration in producing countries andand
importing countriesother ....................................... ................................................ 85
5.4 . Proliferation of nuclear technology and materials ......................................... 89
4.6. Critical energy infrastructure .............................................. ................... 92
4.7. Long-range energy regions ................................................ ............................ 94
4.8. Consequences of Peak Oil for the armed forces ............................................ ........................ 97
5th Conclusion ................................................. ............................................ common
101questions ... .................................................. .................................... 104
# 1 What does Peak Oil ?...... .................................................. .............................. 105
# 2 As critics argue against the occurrence of the peak oil ?....... 108...............
# 3 What types of resources are there?........................... ............................................. 111
# 4 What is the difference between conventional and
non-conventionaloil and how it is funded ?................................... ........ 112
# 5 What is the significance of new oil discoveries ?................................. ........................ 113
# 6 How to work refineries ?................... .................................................. .............. 114
# 7 What is the significance, the EROI for oil prices ?...................... ............. 115
# 8 Are there opportunities for the Bundeswehr with the peak oil deal ?.... 117
Best regards,
Baltic Man
You do have to hope that the split will increase oil production because it seems doubtful that the oil revenue is enough to subsidise two countries given that it was barely enough to aid a country and an autonomous region. The real fear is that neither Sudan nor South Sudan diversify beyond being an oil economy: South Sudan relies on oil for 98% of its total economy, which is a staggering figure.
I should mention at this point that I have a book out today about Africa’s gas and oil, and it pays close attention to Sudan’s secession. Ultimately, the conclusion I draw in African Lions (www.africanlionsbook.com) is that the split is a good thing for the South and less so for the north (given that they have significantly fewer fields in their territory. The problem is that it’s a messy divorce: the South still needs to rely on the north because of a lack of pipeline infrastructure to capitalise on their reserves, as you’ve all discussed above.
One major fear, which ties into the geopolitical element of the book, is the dominance of China and, as also uncovered in the post itself, Russia’s muscling in. There is very much a risk of resource colonialism happening, especially in a new country like South Sudan and a widowed country like the north. They’re already held to ransom through Chinese contracts, and it seems that they have little choice other than to continue to keep those contracts alive and seek new ones – which is stifling for two countries coming out of such a monumental split, where they’re both likely to feel like they’re missing a limb.
It’d be interesting to see all your responses to the book: it’s just under £10 for a hard copy (which is less than $15) and the ebook version is even less (just shy of $10). Hope to see some of you reading it.
Chris
www.africanlionsbook.com
I'm interested in your comment that there is more oil in the south. According to the map I've seen that shows the division the south ended up getting Unity, Toma and Toma South fields and the discovery by Lundin oil whereas the north got Heglig, Bamboo, a field discovered by CNOOC in Block 6 (north of Bamboo) and the discovery in Block 3/7 by CNOOC. If that boundary is correct it seems to me that on a remaining recoverable proved producing basis the fields in the north still hold more than their counterparts in the south. On a undiscovered basis there is certainly more potential resource in the south but there is also risk in realizing those volumes.
Do you have a map or breakdown of the field distribution?
Thanks as always for this piece of information.
Am I the only one to think that this is great news for weapon sellers? two countries, not liking each other, with a common border, and both having petrodollars ?