Graeme wrote:Shell Says Shale Oil Reserves "Difficult to Find and Develop"Here's an interesting tidbit from today's Wall Street Journal:
Royal Dutch Shell PLC on Thursday posted a 60% drop in second-quarter profit, largely because the oil and natural-gas giant wrote down the value of its North American shale assets by more than $2 billion after tax, highlighting the difficulties that energy companies face in finding new oil they can pump at a profit.
....Shell cited disappointing drilling results at its North American shale assets, which it said turned out to contain less oil than it had hoped. Even excluding the charge on those assets, Shell's earnings fell well short of analysts' expectations as the company struggled with production declines and rising costs.
I wouldn't make too much of a single report like this, but it does fall in line with other evidence suggesting that although North America has a lot of shale oil, it probably doesn't have quite the gargantuan quantities that some people think. What's more, the shale oil we do have has turned out to be fairly expensive to get at. Plus shale oil deposits tend to deplete rapidly. Bottom line: don't get too caught up in the shale oil hype.
motherjones
August 1, 2013
Exxon Mobil stumbles after big earnings miss
It was a big miss for the world’s biggest publicly traded oil company.
Exxon Mobil Corp. XOM -1.09% posted its smallest profit Thursday since October 2010. Behind the numbers lurk weak global energy markets, lower profit margins at the pump, rising exploration and drilling costs, and continued downward drift in production volumes.
Meanwhile, Exxon’s cash flow is down and its debt load is up.
The news sent shares of Irving, Texas-based Exxon 2% lower, reducing its market capitalization by $9 billion to $408 billion and relegating it once again to second fiddle behind Apple’s $414 billion in the struggle to claim title to the world’s biggest company.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/exxon- ... 2013-08-01
ROCKMAN wrote:It's also good to remember that what any public oil company posts as their "profit" for a quarter or for the year has no bearing on the profitability (or lack thereof) of their drilling efforts today or at anytime in the past. It's just a quick snap shot of the balance between their income and spending less such huge adjustments as the Shell write down.
If you want to see market irrationality in action, look no further than current stock market valuations for the world's major oil, gas and coal companies.
At a time when governments are supposedly preparing for a global climate change deal that will cut carbon emissions, energy multinationals are investing in carbon assets like there's no tomorrow.
Put bluntly, either we're heading for a climate catastrophe, or the carbon asset bubble will go the way of sub-prime mortgage stock.
Yesterday's disappointing second-quarter results for Royal Dutch Shell provided a useful guide to the future. Over the past couple of years the company has invested heavily in exploration. It has pumped billions of pounds into fracking for natural gas in Ukraine and Turkey; the development of tar sands in Canada, and drilling in the Arctic. The market verdict, prompted by a dip in prices, reduced profits, and concern over costs: a drop in share prices.
You can't help wondering what will happen when carbon prices are aligned with climate imperatives. We are now just two years away from the crucial 2015 UN climate negotiations. If successful, they will put a price on carbon, driving down returns on fossil-fuel investments by capping carbon emissions. Market reactions will make Shell's results look positively healthy. Yet there is little evidence that institutional investors have recognised that they are sitting on a carbon asset timebomb.
Doesn't Estonia do this?dissident wrote:Whatever. When are we going to see a kerogen to syncrude conversion plant, even an experimental one?
Enefit140 oil plantEnefit uses the two Enefit140 units to process around 1.6 million tons of oil shale per year and produce more than one million barrels of various shale oil fractions. Water consumption for production of oil shale derived syncrude in Estonia is 1,06 bbl/bbl.
Oil production
Maximum production capacity is 240,000 tons, or 1.5 million barrels of liquid fuel per year
In recent years, annual production has reached over 1,3 million barrels
Three fractions of shale oil are currently produced
At the same time, 40 million Nm3 of high calorific retort gas (47 MJ/m3) are produced
At current production volumes, about 1,9 million tons of oil shale are used each year for oil production
Enefit280 oil plantThe new Enefit280 plant produced its first oil in December, 2012 and the operation of the plant will increase step-by-step to the designed parameters.
The new plant
will consume per year 2.26 million tons of oil shale
will produce per year 1.9 million barrels of shale oil
Shale oil extractionShale oil extraction is an industrial process for unconventional oil production. This process converts kerogen in oil shale into shale oil by pyrolysis, hydrogenation, or thermal dissolution. The resultant shale oil is used as fuel oil or upgraded to meet refinery feedstock specifications by adding hydrogen and removing sulfur and nitrogen impurities. As of 2010, major long-standing extraction industries are operating in Estonia, Brazil, and China.
Is the US Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) forecast for the future of renewable energy in America wrong? It’s an important question, considering policy decisions and private investments are often set by EIA guidance.
EIA’s “Annual Energy Outlook 2014” early release overview predicted renewables would supply only 16% of US electricity demand by 2040, but a new analysis of EIA’s own data finds the outlook is “almost certainly wrong.”
According to the Sun Day Campaign, renewables will make up a much larger percentage of America’s energy portfolio, much faster than EIA projects – roughly 20 years faster, in fact.
EIA data shows renewable energy sources (biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, and wind) grew from less than 9% of total US supply in 2004 to nearly 13% in 2013 on the strength of solar photovoltaic and wind energy’s rapid growth.
Is the US Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) forecast for the future of renewable energy in America wrong? It’s an important question, considering policy decisions and private investments are often set by EIA guidance.
EIA’s “Annual Energy Outlook 2014” early release overview predicted renewables would supply only 16% of US electricity demand by 2040, but a new analysis of EIA’s own data finds the outlook is “almost certainly wrong.”
According to the Sun Day Campaign, renewables will make up a much larger percentage of America’s energy portfolio, much faster than EIA projects – roughly 20 years faster, in fact.
EIA’s Renewable Energy Forecast “Simply Wrong”
EIA data shows renewable energy sources (biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, and wind) grew from less than 9% of total US supply in 2004 to nearly 13% in 2013 on the strength of solar photovoltaic and wind energy’s rapid growth.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration released the full content of the Annual Energy Outlook 2014 (AEO2014). The complete report includes a Legislation and Regulations section that discusses evolving policies incorporated in the projections, a Market Trends section that highlights projections for energy demand, supply, and prices, a comparison of the AEO2014 Reference case with projections from other organizations, and descriptions of the 29 alternative cases completed as part of AEO2014. The Reference, or base, case by itself was released on December 16.
The full-content version of AEO2014 also includes components that were released over the past several weeks, including several Issues in Focus articles, which provide in-depth discussions on topics of special significance.
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