Petroleum reserves Pt. 2 (merged)

[pstarr]

Man are you slow on the uptake. See my post above. According to USGS Venezuela just lost 216 billion barrels.

[Maddog78]

Jobs for the boys coming soon in Angola.



http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-2 ... cmpid=yhoo

BP Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp. were among companies awarded rights to explore offshore pre-salt blocks in Angola that may contain deposits to rival the biggest discoveries in decades.

Sonangol SA, the African nation’s state-run oil company, awarded 11 concessions to 13 explorers, also including Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips, the company said today at a press conference. It was the first Angolan bidding round since 2007.

Angola and the explorers will be looking in geological formations similar to the pre-salt structures in Brazil that scientists say may hold at least 124 billion barrels of oil. Petroleo Brasileiro SA’s Lula field, discovered in 2006 and formerly known as Tupi, was the biggest find in the Americas since Mexico’s Cantarell in 1976.

“Exploration of pre-salt oil requires a greater technology complexity, it involves financial and human resources of a dimension that we have never done in Angola,” said Carlos Saturnino, Sonangol’s director of negotiations. “The comparison term should be the Tupi pre-salt in Brazil. In Angola, we’re heading in more or less same dimension.”

The explorers will negotiate with Sonangol until March to work out details for the blocks, the company said.

Other producers awarded licenses include Norway’s Statoil ASA, Total SA and Eni Spa.

[Graeme]

Brazilian Amazon May Hold `Super Giant' Fields of Light Oil

Brazil’s Amazon may hold “super giant” fields of light oil in an area the country is starting to explore, HRT Participacoes em Petroleo SA Chief Executive Officer Marcio Mello said. The shares gained.

The Rio de Janeiro-based oil-exploration company will start producing from its wells in the Amazon’s Solimoes river basin as early as June, Mello said today in a Bloomberg Television interview in New York. HRT will begin drilling in February and expects to reach an oil reservoir in May, he said.

HRT raised about $1.5 billion in an initial share sale in October to help fund exploration in the Amazon and off the coast of Namibia. It has majority stakes in 21 exploration blocks in the Solimoes Basin and five offshore blocks in the African nation. HRT will drill 12 wells at the Amazon this year.

bloomberg

[Sixstrings]

Oh nice, another reason to tear up the Amazon.

[AirlinePilot]

Continued Drilling Delays to Negatively Impact Deepwater GOM
Policy advisers for the American Petroleum Institute (API) warned that continued delays for deepwater drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico would negatively impact deepwater Gulf development as well as Gulf region jobs and the nation's energy security.

http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp ... 447&hmpn=1

[Xenophobe]

This is just...terrible.

However, if Katrina couldn't kill off Gulf oil production as some were hoping, I seriously doubt the bureaucrats can do any better.

[AirlinePilot]

I do not recall anyone here talking about Katrina "killing" GOM production. I think that hurricanes are a large inconvenience but ive not ever entertained the idea (nor have I seen anyone else) that it would do anything but temporarily hit production.

I think the present situation does nothing but cloud the future with respect to what we can do in the GOM . I also believe that future projects will have higher risks and we will see more "problems" associated with deep water production as we look to lower EROEI sources to maintain the plateau.

[Plantagenet]

Its a classic "Catch-22" situation.

The Obama administration currently doesn't forbid offshore drilling.

They just don't issue any permits for offshore drilling.

[Xenophobe]

I do not recall anyone here talking about Katrina "killing" GOM production.

Again, the peaker world is not defined posters on this website who no one knows except you. It is defined by those with a public personae or go out and represent peakers in the MSM and various other places, or those with a microphone to the outside world.

"What is not being discussed rationally by the mainstream media is Katrina’s impact on energy production. They don’t dare. By my calculations and those of oil energy expert Jan Lundberg, the United States has just lost between 20% and 25% of its energy supply. My projection is that it’s not coming back — at least not most of it."

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/w ... life.shtml

Of course, it came back.

I think the present situation does nothing but cloud the future with respect to what we can do in the GOM . I also believe that future projects will have higher risks and we will see more "problems" associated with deep water production as we look to lower EROEI sources to maintain the plateau.

Permitting is a regulatory issue. If they want people to develop the GOM, they'll ease up. If they do not, they clamp down. Certainly no one in the Obama administration has said that EROEI is a consideration in doing one or the other any more than any oil company in the history of the world has used this measure to determine if they should, or should not, drill.

[bratticus]

Double bombing in Iraq kills 27, injures dozens
Most of those slain in the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk are police officers. A roadside bomb injures eight policemen rushing to the blast scene.
By Asso Ahmed and Ned Parker / Los Angeles Times / May 19, 2011

A double bombing killed at least 27 people, almost all of them police officers, and wounded dozens in a parking lot outside the main police offices in the oil-rich city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq on Thursday, according to security officials.

... Kirkuk is rife with ethnic and sectarian tensions among Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens, all of whom view themselves as the rightful owners of the province with immense oil reserves. The Kurds wish to annex the area to their semiautonomous Kurdistan region, while Arabs insist it should be under Baghdad's control. Despite eight years of U.S.-backed efforts to mediate a solution, the sides remain at loggerheads. ...

[bratticus]

Two North Iraq’s Oil Company injured in Kirkuk IED blast
Aswat Al Iraq / May 19, 2011

“An IED blew off under a vehicle of two employees of the North Oil Company in Kirkuk in Riyadh Township, 45 km to the southwest of Kirkuk, seriously wounding both men and causing serious damage to their vehicle,” Brigadier Sarhad Qader told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

[bratticus]

Police chief escapes car bomb attack in Iraq's Kirkuk, 4 bodyguards killed
People's Daily Online / May 20, 2011

Colonel Aras Mohammed, head of counter-terrorism department of Kirkuk province, survived unharmed the blast that targeted his convoy in central Kirkuk, the capital city of Kirkuk province, the source said on condition of anonymity.

Bomb attacks in Iraq kill 32, months before U.S. pullout
by Jamal Hashim / People's Daily Online / May 20, 2011
"Obviously, the attackers used old tactic which depends on creating a secondary blast to attract people, then they carry out a massive blast to get heavier casualties," the source said.

Months before? We should be counting the minutes or seconds it's going to be in just, well an INDEFINTEly short about of time--in our hearts we're already not all there, our infofeeds are busy pumping out more important stuff like what to buy next:

Kirkuk bombs threaten Iraq's oil security
UPI / May 19, 2011

Oil supremo Hussein al-Shahristani says Iraq's oil reserves have risen to 200 billion barrels, making it the country with the third highest oil reserves; but bombings in the oil city of Kirkuk underline how security in Iraq remains precarious.

The bombings Thursday came as Britain's military operation shut down its deployment in Iraq, once second only to the Americans.

The Royal Navy team that has trained Iraqi sailors to protect offshore oil platforms in the Persian Gulf was withdrawn amid a continuing pullout by U.S. forces.

Three bombs aimed at Iraqi security forces in Kirkuk, divided between Kurds and rival Arabs, killed 25 people and wounded scores more.

The city is the hub of the Kirkuk oilfields in northern Iraq that contain about one-third of the country's oil reserves.

The Kurds claim Kirkuk and the oil fields, which export oil via pipelines to neighboring Turkey, as part of their semi-autonomous enclave across three northern provinces.

... skip ...

The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has undertaken a massive $50 billion infrastructure upgrade of its energy industry that's vital to its plans to raise oil production from the current 2.6 million barrels per day to 6 million bpd by 2014 and 12 million bpd by 2017.

Those pesky explosions are no match for our plans!

[AirlinePilot]

http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNe ... il/8035709

"The International Energy Agency Thursday announced a release of 60 million barrels of oil held in emergency stockpiles by its member countries in response to the disruption of oil supplies from Libya. IEA members have agreed to release 2 million b/d of oil for a period of 30 days, the IEA said in a statement, in what will only be the third stock release in the agency's history."

60 mb over next two months, 30 from the US SPR apparently. I thought the markets were well supplied?

This is DOUBLE any previous release amid what apparently has NOT been a supply emergency according to the very agency which engineered this.

Curious.

Desperation move? Had not expected to see this sort of stuff yet.

[Cid_Yama]

It's called giving the speculators a bloody nose.

[gnm]

Odd very odd... Trying to drive down prices ahead of popular travel holiday? <shrug>

-G

[peripato]

IEA makes 60 million barrels of oil available to market to offset Libyan disruption

The IEA are going to ride to the rescue of oil production, which has swooned markedly since Libya went offline, by releasing 60 million barrels, principally from the US SPR, over the following month to help ease prices! (Give me a break...)

Oil has dutifully done a swan dive since the announcement, which is all part of Ben's wider plan of course to cause a strong correction in both commodities and equities, in preparation for the eventual justification of QE3. Oh, and he gets to help out the Eurozone as well, which has been having a few problems of its own lately, what with those PIIGS and all.

“Today, for the third time in the history of the International Energy Agency, our member countries have decided to release stocks.” Mr. Tanaka (Executive Director, IEA) said. “I expect this action will contribute to well-supplied markets and to ensuring a soft landing for the world economy.”

Of course the question remains, where is all that Saudi spare capacity, that the IEA has to step into the breach?

I guess desperate times call for desperate measures. The global elite must be quacking in their boots...

[AirlinePilot]

The reasons are apparent, but dont make sense other than short term political expediency. Thats a bullsh1t reason for tapping the SPR, here or anywhere.

What happened to everybody being "well supplied"

[peripato]

The reasons are apparent, but dont make sense other than short term political expediency. Thats a bullsh1t reason for tapping the SPR, here or anywhere.

What happened to everybody being "well supplied"

Hey I've just started a topic about the same thing. Might see to getting them merged please.

[Hughj]

The beauty of being an incumbent president. Release the SPR into a falling oil market
and the voters think you are really doing something.

[peripato]

The beauty of being an incumbent president. Release the SPR into a falling oil market
and the voters think you are really doing something.

Good thing for the pollies that most people don't know how to count (gee, 60 million, that sure sounds like a lot!) and have the attention span of a flea.

Of course, nature doesn't give a tinker's cuss if the world chooses not to pay attention to the iron laws of physics and is sharpening up its trusty fruit knife all the same...