ODAC News
Thursday 22 March
ODAC - The Oil Depletion Analysis Centre
1/ Burning the
Furniture (Global
Public Media [Richard Heinberg], Thu 22 Mar)
2/
3/ UK Gas prices
3a/ Pressure Mounts on LNG? [
3b/
3c/ Many UK manufacturing jobs lost in
2006 (Andrew Mackenzie, Oct 2006)
4/ The UK Chancellor’s
Speech -
5/ Premier targets the Middle
East (The Times [
1 ton of crude = approx 7.3 barrels of oil (6.6-8.0
bbl. of crude oil with 7.333 bbl. taken as average)
100 million tonnes/year = 2 million barrels/day
(approx)
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1/
Burning the Furniture (Global Public Media
[Richard Heinberg], Thu 22 Mar)
http://globalpublicmedia.com/richard_heinbergs_museletter_179_burning_the_furniture
Richard discusses a soon-to-be-published report that
suggests we are not as well-endowed with as much global coal reserves as we
thought. If true, this would be fairly devastating news (for the global
economy, not the climate):
<<A soon-to-be-released study by the Energy
Watch Group in Germany on the future of global coal supplies has implications
so surprising and far-reaching that energy policymakers may take years to
digest it. This essay is intended to help speed that process. The report’s central conclusion is that minable
global coal reserves are much smaller than is commonly thought, and that a peak
in world coal production is likely within only ten to fifteen years.
I will first offer some context for appreciating these
conclusions, by way of some general information about global coal usage. Then I
will describe the basis for the report’s conclusions,
and finally will attempt to draw out some of the implications (not discussed by
the report’s authors) for world energy supply and
climate policy.>>
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2/
“The deal became controversial in
<<Iran has yet to finish building a platform and
pipeline to link its offshore Salman gas field to the
United Arab Emirates, some nine months after exports through the line were due
to start, a Dana Gas executive said on Sunday.
"For technical reasons the platform and the
pipeline have yet to be completed," Dana Gas External Affairs Manager
Nasser Akram told Reuters.
Akram could not
say when imports would begin to the UAE, which needs the gas to meet rapidly
rising domestic demand.
... An extended wrangle over the imported gas price
between
The deal became controversial in
Last month,
... Dana Gas was set up to deliver gas to utilities
and industrial users in the UAE. With the agreement to import Iranian gas
delayed, the company has virtually no operating income and has looked for new
routes for expansion.
Dana bought Canada-based oil and gas explorer
Centurion Energy International in January for $979 million, a step in its
strategy to expand the scope of its operations in the Middle East and North
Africa.>>
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3/ UK
Gas prices
It is now clear why
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3a/ Pressure
Mounts on LNG? [
No link.
The Feb issue of McCloskey’s
UK Powerfocus notes that the price of natural gas in the
3b/
http://www.dtistats.net/energystats/et4_1.xls
(Excel spreadsheet)
Figures published by the UK Dept of Trade and Industry
show that
Total Demand (GWh)
Q1
Q2
Q3
2005
358,044
240,202
188,788
2006
355,174
220,513
169,291
% fall
0.8
8.2
10.3
3c/ Many UK
manufacturing jobs lost in 2006 (Andrew Mackenzie, Oct 2006)
http://www.igem.org.uk/f/1_-_Andrew_Mackenzie_-_presentation_4.pdf
(554 Kb)
This presentation given at the IGEM Winter Outlook
Seminar in Oct 2006 suggests that thousands of
"Impact on UK Manufacturing
(1)": Glass
Sector Closures in the last 18 months – 6000 jobs lost
Impact on UK Manufacturing
(2):
Paper Sector Closures in the last 18 months
Impact on
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4/ The
UK Chancellor’s Speech -
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/21_03_07_budget_speech.pdf
From the Chancellor’s Budget
speech yesterday (bottom page 2):
<<Our forecasts of the current balance from
2007-08 to 2011-12 are affected by one major change in the last year - the
sharply lower levels of production and yet higher costs in the North Sea -
which have this year reduced tax revenues from £13 billion to £8 billion and
for each year into the future cut them by an average of £4 billion a
year.>>
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5/ Premier
targets the Middle East (The Times [
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article1552212.ece
There has been quite a lot of, for want of a better
word, propaganda in the UK media over the last few years about ‘how much’ oil
there is still left to find in the UK sector of the North Sea, when in fact
they mean ‘how little’. This article leaves little doubt:
<<Bid-target Premier Oil today joined the
growing list of explorers targeting the Middle East as it said there was little
of value left to find in the North Sea.
... Simon Lockett, Premier Oil’s
chief executive, said that while high taxes meant there were few incentives to
explore in the North Sea, the bigger problem was that most oil and gas in the
“I’m not surprised the
Chancellor left the tax regime unchanged, It doesn’t
make me happy but unfortunately the oil industry is an easy target,” he said.
“But the basic problem is geological, the remaining rocks in the
... The group said it was well placed to hit a
production target of 50,000 barrels a day in the medium term but said UK output
had fallen 30 per cent in the past year.>>
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