News from November 2005

China Oil Shortage To Reach 270M MT In 2020 – Petrochina

China’s current oil shortage will rise to 270 million metric tons in 2020, a senior official at state-owned Petrochina Co. Ltd. (PTR) said Thursday. “China’s (natural) gas consumption shortage will reach 40 billion cubic meters in 2020,” Lian Jianjia, deputy director-general of Petrochina’s planning department, told the Asean Council of Petroleum, or Ascope.Yahoo! Finance

Oil Execs Admit Gov’t Contacts, Deny Role in Task Force

Five oil industry executives acknowledged frequent company contacts with government officials to discuss energy issues but insisted they had responded truthfully at a recent Senate hearing when they denied participating in Vice President Dick Cheney’s 2001 energy task force…. Irving, Texas-based Exxon Mobil Corp. said its chairman, Lee Raymond, responded accurately when he said no [...]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Washington Stirs

Until recently, the phrase Falls Church News-Press

Southern ocean beckons explorers

Rights to explore for oil and gas across huge swathes of the Southern Ocean have been put up for grabs by the New Zealand Government in the hope that some of the world’s largest oil companies will start searching. Soaring world energy prices have made probing the farthest reaches of the globe attractive and demand [...]

Another Peek at Peak Oil

Brian Gorman recently took a look at BP’s big investment in alternative energy. He suggested that the driving factors behind this investment are the desire for energy independence, consumer consciousness, and government support for alternative energy. From my perspective, when I see a major oil company investing $8 billion outside the oil patch, I think [...]

Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age

The ocean current that gives western Europe its relatively balmy climate is stuttering, raising fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age. The dramatic finding comes from a study of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, which found a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water [...]

Test-driving the hydrogen future

We put Honda’s hydrogen fuel cell car through its paces in the real world of Manhattan. NEW YORK (Fortune Small Business) – The stubby Honda two-door cut through Manhattan traffic like a skateboard. It accelerated smoothly, braked quietly, and-best of all-consumed no gasoline and generated no greenhouse gases. Sticker price: upwards of $1 million. The [...]

Lower Profits For the Oil Sands

Those Canadian oil-sands that looked like winners a few months ago are having to reduce their forecasts because oil prices don’t just rise. thestalwart

EU, GCC seek to raise oil output

The Gulf Cooperation Council and the European Union agreed to set up a joint team to help use European technology to raise energy output in the Gulf region, an official said. The team will work to transfer technology, increase investments, boost production efficiency and eventually raise output capacity,” Issa al-Oun, undersecretary of Kuwait’s energy ministry, [...]

U.S. racing the clock to find alternate fuels

Even if nothing disrupts the projected flow of Middle East petroleum, Energy Department consultants warned earlier this year that “the world is fast approaching the inevitable peaking” of global oil production – a problem “unlike any faced by modern industrial society.” They wrote that the United States and other nations are in a race with [...]