World oil output to continue rising: Analyst
Business Times
October 12 2005
LONDON, Wed: Global oil supplies will keep rising as investment and technology increase producers’ ability to exploit and find deposits, delaying the depletion proposed by the “peak oil” theory, said UBS AG oil analyst James Hubbard.
Surging consumption has provoked concern that demand may soon outpace production, reviving theories about an irreversible drop in output.
Companies and producer nations reined in the amount they spent to pump more in the 1990s, when prices averaged less than US$20 (US$1 = RM3.77) a barrel, compared with today’s US$63 in New York.
“Increased investment in the world’s current oil fields will extend their lives and recovery factors,” said Hubbard, who spent about a decade studying oil reservoirs in countries including Saudi Arabia as an engineer with Schlumberger Ltd, the world’s largest oilfield-services company.
Investors who back the peak oil theory, such as Boone Pickens, a Dallas hedge fund manager and former oil executive, have fueled the price rally of the past two years.
Disruptions caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita to refining sent average petrol pump prices in the US to records above US$3 a gallon, reducing demand in the world’s largest consuming nation.
Saudi Arabia’s oil minister Ali al-Naimi and the president of Exxon Mobil Corp, Rex Tillerson, last month said world petroleum reserves will last for decades.
The International Energy Agency, an adviser to 26 industrialized nations on energy, today said oil demand this year will average 83.4 million barrels a day, compared with production of 83.8 million barrels a day in September.
“Although it’s obvious a peak in oil production is inevitable, the timing of it and the post-peak production decline have been, at the very least, overstated by some in the peak oilcamp,” Hubbard said in the October 3 report.
He wrote that the conclusion reached by peak-oil proponents is “alarming” and“ worthy of review.”
Increased investments mean that the closest estimate for the “real” ultimate recoverable reserves of conventional oil will be a 3.1 trillion-barrel forecast by the US Geological Survey, Hubbard said.
That compares with the 1.9 trillion forecast by Colin Campbell, a geologist and founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas.
Tillerson said at a conference in Johannesburg last month that an estimate of 2 trillion barrels was “on the low side” of what Exxon Mobil expects to be recovered. — Bloomberg
October 12 2005
LONDON, Wed: Global oil supplies will keep rising as investment and technology increase producers’ ability to exploit and find deposits, delaying the depletion proposed by the “peak oil” theory, said UBS AG oil analyst James Hubbard.
Surging consumption has provoked concern that demand may soon outpace production, reviving theories about an irreversible drop in output.
Companies and producer nations reined in the amount they spent to pump more in the 1990s, when prices averaged less than US$20 (US$1 = RM3.77) a barrel, compared with today’s US$63 in New York.
“Increased investment in the world’s current oil fields will extend their lives and recovery factors,” said Hubbard, who spent about a decade studying oil reservoirs in countries including Saudi Arabia as an engineer with Schlumberger Ltd, the world’s largest oilfield-services company.
Investors who back the peak oil theory, such as Boone Pickens, a Dallas hedge fund manager and former oil executive, have fueled the price rally of the past two years.
Disruptions caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita to refining sent average petrol pump prices in the US to records above US$3 a gallon, reducing demand in the world’s largest consuming nation.
Saudi Arabia’s oil minister Ali al-Naimi and the president of Exxon Mobil Corp, Rex Tillerson, last month said world petroleum reserves will last for decades.
The International Energy Agency, an adviser to 26 industrialized nations on energy, today said oil demand this year will average 83.4 million barrels a day, compared with production of 83.8 million barrels a day in September.
“Although it’s obvious a peak in oil production is inevitable, the timing of it and the post-peak production decline have been, at the very least, overstated by some in the peak oilcamp,” Hubbard said in the October 3 report.
He wrote that the conclusion reached by peak-oil proponents is “alarming” and“ worthy of review.”
Increased investments mean that the closest estimate for the “real” ultimate recoverable reserves of conventional oil will be a 3.1 trillion-barrel forecast by the US Geological Survey, Hubbard said.
That compares with the 1.9 trillion forecast by Colin Campbell, a geologist and founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas.
Tillerson said at a conference in Johannesburg last month that an estimate of 2 trillion barrels was “on the low side” of what Exxon Mobil expects to be recovered. — Bloomberg
posted by Marcel at 3:41 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home