ODAC News
Wednesday 10 Oct
The Oil Depletion Analysis Centre
Peak Metals
1/ Peak Metal (theologyweb, Tue 09
Oct)
Gas Supplies:
2a/ Credit
squeeze linked to Ukraine gas dispute (The Financial Times, Mon 08 Oct)
2b/ Russia
settles dispute over Ukraine gas debt (The Financial Times, Tue 09 Oct)
2c/ The
Turkmenistan - Russia - Ukraine Natural Gas Saga Comes Back To Life – Feedback
Natural Gas Exports -
3a/ Azerbaijan:
Looming Gas Power? (Energy Intelligence [World Gas
Intelligence], Wed 10 Oct)
3b/ Harsh
Realities Cloud Caspian Hopes
(World Gas Intelligence, Wed 26 Sep)
LNG Imports –
4/ China's Spot Appetite
(Energy Intelligence [World Gas Intelligence], Wed 10 Oct)
US Energy Information Administration Forecasts
5/ US Energy Information
Administration Forecasts for Winter 2007/8
(Energy Intelligence, Wed 10 Oct)
Economy -
6/ UK’s trade deficit
narrows (Financial Times, Tue 09 Oct)
7/ Patrick Holden, Peak
Oil, Local Food and Transition (Transition Culture / BBC, Wed
10 Oct)
Shortage of Oil and Gas Workers
8/ Help wanted...lots of
it (Platts [The
Barrel], Fri 05 Oct)
Biofuels
9/ Biofuel Bandwagon Slows
as Feedstock Prices Surge (
10/ UK
conference: Oil Depletion - continuing the debate, Energy Institute,
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1/ Peak Metal (theologyweb, Tue 09 Oct)
http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?t=102750
Comment: ODAC News rarely covers peak
metals, but this looks like a good short-summary.
Article: I was asked by The Green Man
to write something on peak metal. It took me a couple of days to put this
together from various sources. As I commented in a previous thread, many metals
are becoming rare. Many people know of my views on peak oil. Oil has nearly
tripled in value in the past 3 years because demand is outstripping our ability
to bring it to market. The same phenomenon is going on with many metals. There
is one big difference between metals and oil. In general, metals are
recyclable. Oil isn’t. Once oil is burned, it is gone. Scrap metal amounts to
around 40% of the production of many metals. But, peak production problems are
out there.
[main part of article, discussing iron, copper, zinc,
platinum, gallium, indium]
If one looks at the performance of a metals
heavy mutual fund (ignax) compared with an oil heavy
mutual fund (ienax) over the past 4 years, one sees
that metals have been outperforming (getting scarcer more rapidly) than oil. Ignax is up over 100% while Ienax
is up only 90%. The market place is clearly saying that peak resources are just
around the corner. Like it or not, the world is running out of resources. I am
invested in these increasingly scarce commodities.
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2a/ Credit squeeze linked to
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7c9032ca-752a-11dc-892d-0000779fd2ac,s01=1,stream=FTSynd.html
Comment: The FT explains that it is
not so much the Ukrainian govt that owes
Article: Ukrgaz-energo,
a trading company that controls the supply of gas to industry in
As a result, debts at the company, a Russian-Ukrainian
joint venture, swelled to about $1bn (€706m, £489m), according to spokesman Vitaliy Kisil. Poor payments for
gas resold by
... Officials in
RosUkrEnergo’s
main debtor is Ukrgaz-energo. This joint venture is
jointly owned by RosUkrEnergo and Naftogaz.
Ukrgaz-energo
still has hopes of agreeing short-term financing to pay for gas held in
underground storage facilities that are key for meeting peak demand in
... Speaking on Russian television, Gazprom’s board
chairman Dmitri Medvedev
said the price
While
2b/
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/05743b16-7672-11dc-ad83-0000779fd2ac.html
Article: Gazprom has avoided another
energy standoff with
The agreement, signed during a trip to
... Viktor Zubkov, Russian
prime minister, said the debt had risen by early October to $2bn, although Rosukrenergo, monopoly supplier of gas to
Gazprom’s spokesperson, Sergei
Kupriyanov, would not comment on why, how, or if, the
debt had increased to $2bn from $1.3bn.
... Gazprom’s latest threat against Kiev has also been
viewed as politically motivated, coming after parliamentary elections in Kiev
which look set to return to power a pro-western coalition headed by former
prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Ms Tymoshenko has pledged to remove ”shadowy” intermediaries
from the gas trade between
James Sherr of the
”Gazprom is squeezing
2c/ The
Feedback from Monday’s item 6a. The article began:
“Tuesday Gazprom warned that it might cut off
and followed up with:
“Gas flows to Europe briefly fell during that feud,
undermining confidence in
Feedback: Would you agree that it would
be more accurate to say that
It is thus not fair to say that
Comment: The
issue is more one of the reliability of gas flows from Russia, rather than the
reliability of Russia itself, given that the gas pipelines cross Ukraine and Belorussia, but the UK media has tended to not let minor
details like this get in the way of a good story. At least in the
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3a/
No link, newsletter.
Article: Buoyed by a new discovery at
the BP-operated Shah Deniz field and with its sights set on developing other
offshore structures, Azerbaijan is gearing up to become a major gas exporter
within 10 to 15 years. If so -- and if outstanding issues, including
3b/ Harsh Realities Cloud Caspian Hopes (World Gas
Intelligence, Wed 26 Sep)
http://www.energyintel.com/documentdetail.asp?document_id=212943
Comment: The article is a summary of
potential natural gas exports from
Article: Western officials never miss
an opportunity when visiting the Caspian to state their desire to buy more gas
directly from the region in order to enhance European Union energy security and
reduce reliance on
It's a game that involves by twists and turns the
region's complex geopolitical relationships with major powers including
Austrian gas and oil company OMV trumpeted the
memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed during a recent visit to
OMV, which is promoting the line and has opened an
office in Baku, added that, "in accordance with the MOU," it and
Azeri state Socar would start detailed talks on the
procurement and transport of gas to the Baumgarten
hub near Vienna via the estimated $5.8 billion Nabucco pipeline from Turkey to
Austria. The four other current Nabucco consortium members are
But while
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4/
No link, newsletter
Article: North African LNG looks to
have become global swing supply, with the eastward parade of cargoes having
starting sooner than many imagined and apparently set to continue, as
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5/ US Energy Information Administration Forecasts for Winter 2007/8
(Energy Intelligence, Wed 10 Oct)
Comment: From the commentary section,
‘World Watch -- Comment & Interpretation on Today's News’, of the daily
newsletter, so the above title is ODAC’s.
The EIA’s “Short-Term Energy
and Winter Fuels Outlook” (http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/contents.html)
was released yesterday (9th Oct).
Article: After paying record gasoline
prices this summer, US consumers won't get much relief this winter as heating
costs are expected to be well above last year's levels. Prices for crude oil
and refined products are likely to be higher in 2008. That's the view from the
US Energy Information Administration's (EIA) Winter Fuels Outlook conference in
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6/
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7f0528ec-7649-11dc-ad83-0000779fd2ac.html
Comment: The article covers the
Article: … The oil trade deficit
doubled to £0.5bn, the highest level in a year, partly due to annual
maintenance work in the
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7/ Patrick Holden, Peak Oil, Local Food and Transition
(Transition Culture / BBC, Wed 10 Oct)
http://transitionculture.org/2007/10/10/patrick-holden-peak-oil-local-food-and-transition/
Comment: BBC Wales broadcast a
documentary on Peak Oil yesterday (Tuesday 9th Oct). Rob Hopkins of
Transition Culture gives a brief description and a link to the documentary,
which is available online for a week. The first three minutes consist of a
weather report and BBC ads, but otherwise as Rob says, a rather good
documentary.
Article: A rather good documentary
aired on BBC Wales last night, called Back to the Land, which was part of a
series called ‘Week In, Week Out’. In featured Patrick Holden discussing peak
oil and the impact that finding out about it had on his life and on how he
farms his farm in
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8/ Help wanted...lots of it
(Platts [The Barrel], Fri 05 Oct)
http://www.platts.com/weblog/oilblog/2007/10/help_wantedlots_of_it.html
Comment: In Monday’s newsletter, items
3a and 3b were articles from the Financial Times covering a new report
from Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) warning of a growing shortage
of skilled workers in the oil and gas industry. It was pointed out that CERA is
one of the flag-bearers for the anti-Peak Oil movement. This Platts article
from ‘The Barrel’ highlights the same point.
Article: No doubt about one of the hot
jobs of tomorrow: anything involved in getting oil out of the ground.
In a report that is mostly significant for who it came
from, Cambridge Energy Research Associates this week released a study that
talks about the long-discussed squeeze on the supply of the type of people
needed to make upstream projects a success.
The author is important not just because CERA is
well-known and well-respected, but because it has traditionally been one of the
most optimistic voices about the industry's ability to continue increasing
production over the next several years. And while the brief summary of the
report released by CERA doesn't have any output projections, it does say this:
"This analysis confirms that engineering and project management personnel
are already insufficient to meet 2007 upstream project demand and it forecasts
that design and project management availability will be an important factor
going forward for development of new oil and gas fields."
The conclusion then is if one of the more optimistic
analysis firm is seeing a tightening of people who can make these projects a
reality, what must the peak oil theorists be thinking?
Even the CERA summary is fairly precise in laying out
numbers on the magnitude of the problems. There are about 55,000 international
and regional engineering contractors at present. The problem is that their
average age is 51, and more than half are expected to retire by 2015. That's a
six percent attrition rate. The rate of new hires next year is expected to be
about 2%.
It will rise to 5% by 2010. But that's not enough, as
CERA reports there will be a "10-15 percent shortfall of qualified,
available staff by 2010 ... (which) will (result in) increased costs and
further delays that will have cascading effects in other markets. As the project
engineering talent pool continues to shrink and the number of technically
difficult projects such as deepwater, heavy oil, or severe climate operations
increases, the demand for the remaining highly qualified staff is expected to
increase significantly."
The complete release can be found here (http://www.cera.com/aspx/cda/public1/news/pressReleases/pressReleaseDetails.aspx?CID=9006).
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9/ Biofuel Bandwagon Slows as Feedstock Prices Surge
(
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/44667/story.htm
Comment: There have been one or two
articles from
Article: The biofuels bandwagon may be
running out of gas with soaring costs for feedstocks like wheat and palm oil
prompting producers to shelve planned plants and cut output at existing
facilities.
"There are lots of plans (for new plants) now but
whether these are going to materialise we simply don't know," Robert Vierhout, Secretary General of the European Bioethanol Fuel
Association, told a conference this week.
"In the present circumstances of very high raw
material prices it is understandable if some producers say well it seems to me
we need to wait a couple of years until things stabilise."
Biofuels, mainly produced from agricultural crops such
as maize, sugarcane and vegetable oils, are seen by many as a way to cut
emissions of greenhouse gases and to boost energy security at a time when oil
output may be at or near its peak.
... "Most of the plants which are now completing
construction are not being commissioned as it is just not viable," said
M.R. Chandran, an independent industry analyst and
former head of the Malaysian Palm Oil Association.
... The European Union led by
Major tax incentives fuelled
"If we will not have any change in our regulation
in
... The fledgling
... Last month, the Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) called on governments to cut their subsidies
for the sector, saying biofuels may "offer a cure that is worse than the
disease they seek to heal." ...
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10/
The resource-limited peak in the global production of
conventional oil looks to be very close. Although hydrocarbon resources are
large and not fully quantified the volumes of conventional oil that can be
easily and rapidly developed are quite restricted. This peaking of readily
available oil supply is likely to be disruptive and to have serious economic
consequences.
This conference will examine the data and calculations
that indicate the imminence of oil flows peaking, and present some of the
challenges to be faced. The meeting will conclude with a panel discussion on
the implications of the peaking of oil supplies.
Date: Wednesday 14 November 2007
Venue: Energy Institute, 61 New
Confirmed Speakers
Martin Fry FEI, Vice President Energy Institute,
visiting Professor of City University
Claire Durkin, Director of Energy Markets, BERR
(formerly known as the DTI)
Chris Screbowski, Energy
Institute
Colin Campbell, ASPO's
founder
If you would like to book a place at this event
download a booking form here (http://www.energyinst.org.uk/documents/bookingform_002.pdf)
or contact Vickie Naidu, Events Organiser, Energy Institute:
t: +44 (0)20 7467 7179, e-mail:
vnaidu@energyinst.org.uk
Further Information - http://www.energyinst.org.uk/template.cfm?page=events
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