<News from the blogs The Oil Drum First morning of the Conference>

Conference is underway

Posted by Heading Out on November 10, 2005 - 1:52pm

The hall is not quite full, but the organizers have capped attendance at between 420 and 450.  The first two talks by Tom Petrie and Chris Skrebowski brought that quiet hush at times that you hear when there is really bad news.  The talks were full of information, and give reason why it is a lot more informative to be here than just to look at the slides, though they will be posted to the ASPO-America site.

Tom was the more optimistic, but in part built that optimism on depletion rates worldwide of 2.5 to 5%.  As Chris noted it may be going up to 7%.  (His question to CERA was why they were not willing to accept the rates of decline that folk like TOTAL and Exxon Mobil report).

Well with only a 20-min break I must return, perhaps some of the others may wish to append more.

Conference is underway

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9 comments

rtz on November 10, 2005 - 7:29pm Permalink | Comments top
Is this of any significance?

http://urbansurvival.com/week.htm

rtz on November 10, 2005 - 8:31pm Permalink | Parent | Comments top
Specifically:  "several friends who insist that gasoline imports from Europe will be drying up toward the end of this month and when that happens, expect to see gasoline prices here increase dramatically, perhaps edging back toward that $3 per gallon range."
sisyphus on November 10, 2005 - 9:07pm Permalink | Parent | Comments top
That comment is referring to Kunstler's blog this week - http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/2005/11/attention_defic.html#comments

He claims that "last week the International Energy Agency (IEA), Europe's energy security watchdog, declared that it would now end the 2 million barrel a day shipments to the US."  The shipments began in Sept to alleviate the price spike after the hurricanes, but I have seen nothing to corroborate Kunstler's claim.

Has anyone seen anything about this?  Is Kunstler playing a rumor?

Not that I think he's far off.  I would guess that the IEA will likely be cutting the shipments soon and gas prices will rise again, but the GOM shut-in oil and gas is gradually coming back online to give some supply balance.  Heating demand still looks like the killer this winter.

Yankee on November 10, 2005 - 9:39pm Permalink | Parent | Comments top
When I saw that on Kunstler's blog, I tried to find some official news about it so I could post it here. But I couldn't find anything. So yeah, if someone has a more authoritative announcement about the ends of the European shipments, let me know.
Heading Out on November 10, 2005 - 11:31pm Permalink | Parent | Comments top
You can get some sense of the size of the imports from the EIA data plots that I have put up for the past two weeks.  There was also a news story that some of the time for the loans had been extended - so that my memory suggests it will be around Dec 3 that the last shipments sail.  Given that there is a delay before they get here that may make the cruch more evident toward the end of December.
peakearl on November 10, 2005 - 11:18pm Permalink | Parent | Comments top
I'm wondering about the status of European reserves - not sure where to find them.

I think a selfish motive is behind all the shipments we've got to this point. Without their gasoline, prices in the US would have skyrocketed well beyond what they did, and the resulting international price of gas/oil would have hurt them badly as well as the US. However, we know that their help can't go on forever.

Maybe they believed the misleading pronouncements by the MMS after Rita - about how quick production would be restored. It seemed so ridiculous at the time - saying not much damage well before personnel had even returned to the rigs. Just barely back to 50% even today.

Sunlight on November 10, 2005 - 11:57pm Permalink | Parent | Comments top
One thing for sure: increased supply in the US was offset by decreased supply in Europe, at least according to the IEA's very informative (to me, anyway) World Oil Market Report:
http://omrpublic.iea.org/currentissues/full.pdf

IEA also notes record freight rates for oil tankers. Not the sort of news that feels warm and fuzzy.

peakearl on November 11, 2005 - 1:44am Permalink | Parent | Comments top
Thanks, great link. Hadn't been reading this before, although I'd been hearing about the reports.
mcain6925 on November 11, 2005 - 12:17am Permalink | Comments top
I found Henry Groppe's demand-side predictions interesting. His chart appeared to have world-wide petroleum demand peaking in about 2010. How big a global recession would it take to halt demand growth? Or are there sufficient alternatives (eg, LNG) by then to allow continued growth? Or sufficient increases in efficiency?

A nice round of applause at the end of the afternoon when TOD was mentioned :^)

Conference is underway

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9 comments