Pre-vacation thoughts
Posted by Heading Out on July 10, 2006 - 11:55am
Speaking of beaches, or rather sand, attention is turning back to the Middle East again, I see. While rig counts continue to go up, and I leave most of that to Stuart, it is worth a note to follow up on Leanan's catching of the Wall Street Journal story on SA moves to "unlock" their heavy oil reserves. Some of this is, I suspect, related to Manifa, since this is the field that they count as being part of their deliverable reserve, even though it is not yet refinable. At present Aramco are building a refinery to deal with the oil themselves, with production slated to begin in 2009. Though I see that they are also looking at the same sort of steam stimulation that is being used in Alberta.
China will extend a 50,000 barrel per day (bpd) cut in Saudi crude oil imports into July and August after some refiners struggled to cope with new higher-sulphur supplies, industry officials said.There is another change in that a new exploratory well is being drilled in the Empty Quarter. After being extensively surveyed Shell, Total and Aramco are jointly drilling the well.
China contracted to buy 500,000 bpd of Saudi crude in 2006, but cut that back by 10 percent in the second quarter after refiners ill-equipped to handle the kingdom's mainly heavy-sour oil were forced to slow production after running the grades, the officials said.
SRAK began exploring the contract areas in January 2004. The Company has completed the largest high-resolution airborne gravity survey in the world and continues to conduct extensive seismic acquisition. A second drilling rig is planned to be mobilized to the area in 2007, the statement said.The time that it will take is interesting, since it is one more data point to plug into the production estimates for Saudi operations.
The well, Isharat-1, in southwestern Saudi Arabia is considered a rank wildcat because of the very significant distances from any previous exploration wells drilled within the kingdom, and its testing of new hydrocarbon plays. The well is anticipated to take up to four months to drill.
The fact that Aramco are bringing in partners is perhaps also indicative of the fact that, as the world is moving to the production of more and more expensive-to-extract oil, investment costs are going to be an increasing factor. Given the likely cost increases for production of the tar sands , the increased costs for deep water production, and this not to mention the costs for new production in Russia, I can't help but think that there is only so much investment capital to go around in this business. It may (grin) prove practical to get oil from shale, but, as with other things it is going to be expensive. And one wonders at the inertia of the financial side of things, if, for example, we know that there is a possible source out there, can all the capital be assembled to move all the needed projects forward.
This has been a theme of a number of folk who have surveyed the business, from the point of view that - "given the investment of $x trillion - we can find all the oil we will ever need." While I was never much enamored of that statement, seeing it as not much more than a fall-back excuse - it does begin to concern me that the curve may tip faster because investment capital for E & P has rather gone to buying other firms, as Gazprom has diligently demonstrated over this past year. Although I do note that they are now putting some money into exploring in Gujarat. But even they, apparently, are seeing the impact of higher costs. Although, as they continue to build their monopoly, their customers may soon find the bite to bring their profits back.
(Gazprom export head) Medvedev said the company would have no problems meeting demand in the future.It will be interesting to see if the G8 meeting has any effect
"Our reserve base is sufficient to meet not only the demand of Europe, but also our new markets: China, Korea, and the United States," Dow Jones Newswires quoted him as saying.
Medvedev also rejected allowing independent Russian gas producers to export gas from Russia.
With energy security topping the agenda at next week's Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg, the United States will pressure Russia and other countries to espouse open market policies in an effort to stabilize the increasingly volatile global energy environment, a top Energy Department official said yesterday.Somehow, as with the similar conversations that were held this time last year with Saudi Arabia, I suspect that these statements are likely to prove equally fruitless.Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs Karen Harbert stressed that the United States and other G8 countries are wary of Russia's push to increase state control of its energy sector as well as the recent decline in oil production.
"This is a time for responsible actors to try and act in responsible ways to calm a fairly unstable and volatile market," Harbert said.
It's the WSJ story by Bhushan Bahree. For free. :-)
Another tip: you can get a free 14-day trial of the NY Times TimesSelect service. Download up to 100 TimesSelect articles for free, then cancel before the two weeks are up so you don't get charged. (I'm a cheap news junkie. ;-)
Also, a lot of articles that are subscriber-only if you go in a newspaper's front door are free if you go in via Google News. Google must have some kind of deal worked out.
I believe Chevron has its own NG pipelines dedicated to bringing NG from the northern Rockies area for their Bakersfield operations. In a sense, at Bakersfield, Chevron runs a GTL (or GT Heavy Liquids) operation.
With both you and Stuart on vacation, I'll try to keep the content fresh.
best, Dave
This is newspeak for we want overproduction to lower prices. Transparency has nothing to do with the price of oil. The only way it could have is if reserve numbers are being kept secret and understated. If anything the reserves of OPEC are overstated and the market has been assuming essentially limitless supply. Now that the price is increasing to reflect the production reality it is being branded as "volatility" by self-serving government hacks. This is a new defintion for the word since volatility would be prices going up and down, not just up around $20 a year.
Plus, I can teach you to sail in one weekend (weather permitting). Would be delighted to do so.
This offer (plus free drinks at Don's American cafe plus my wonderful cooking) is open to all posters and commenters on TOD.
Don
sunfishsailor@hotmail.com
I can teach even lawyers to sail!
(Indeed, I have taught over 1,000 people to sail since 1963 and have failed only once--with a person who stopped taking her meds after leaving a locked ward in a mental institution. You can't win them all:)
Best,
Matt
Seriously, for powerdown let us:
5. Soar, soar, soar
http://www.ushga.org/
I live about three miles from Benson's airport, one of the best-known glider ports within the five-state area. They also have vintage and some experimental aircraft there.
Come visit.
Jet-skis are evil and horribly noisey.
Save the earth.
Learn to Sail.
Jet Ski is a.k.a. "Lake Lice"
I guess our discussions are ruffling a few feathers somewhere..
Sinkholes are also a problem:
Aha! This must be what the Saudis were talking about when they said that customers were turning down their offers of oil.
They're not turning them down becuase there is an excess, they're turning them down because the product is crap!
Heavy crude (with low api gravity) contains little of the valuable light hydrocarbons and is stuffed full of the nasty long chain heavy molecules - 30 to 50 carbons long etc. Heavy crude is black sticky stuff. This stuff is great for building roads but not much good for gasoline or jet fuel.
Refineries are normally tuned to a particular type of crude and most are tuned to refining light sweet. To refine heavy crude requires using crackers which break down the long molecules into shorter more user friendly molecules. This needs investement and is also more energy intensive to refine.
Sour crude contains a lot of sulphur (S) which also has to be removed - leading to mountains of sulphur being produced. In the form H2S, this sulphur can also be deadly. Some of the Saudi heavy oil fields are rich in this deadly gas.
Finally, light sweet crude is turned into heavy crude by the action of bacteria in the sub-surface. The end point of this process is tar sand.
Do you want to know more?