Nigerian Oil Production: Analog for Iraq?

Indian Tribe Appeals to James Cameron for Help

Oil Companies May Book Iraq Reserves

There's a very interesting story leading the new Iraq Oil Report. Unfortunately, it's behind a paywall (though you can get a three week free trial). However, the story is interesting enough I'm going to mention it anyway. The gist is that the major oil companies with contracts in Iraq are planning to book the reserves:

Avatar and the Unabomber

I had said I would do a book review each weekend. However, I'm going to violate the pattern from the very beginning by starting with a movie review instead. But all is not lost: in explaining what I think about Avatar, I'm also going to have to work in discussion of half a dozen books that were formative in developing my worldview, and which are currently sitting in a pile on my desk, pulled off the shelf for the purpose.  However, this essay ended up going so long that I'm splitting it into a series which will probably run from now to sometime around Oscar night (March 7th).

Avatar, if you've been living under a rock, is the blockbuster movie written, directed, and produced by James Cameron (Titanic, Terminator, Aliens...) and released last month, which is now the highest grossing movie of all time (taking in $2.1 billion as of this writing - admittedly these comparisons are not adjusted for inflation, which is tricky to do right because of the 3-D).  It's becoming one of those must see events in which people are compelled to go a second and third time to take their friends, and just to see the movie again.

Here I'm going to assume the reader has seen the movie and I will try to analyze the strength of the feelings most of us have had to it - love it or hate it.  If you haven't seen it yet, just go do it, ok?  It's an amazing experience, and you're not going to be altogether culturally literate in future if you haven't seen it.

Mexican Oil Consumption

Crosschecking US Oil Demand Statistics

Dec 2009 Iraq Stability Report is Still Missing

The US Department of Defense is mandated to produce quarterly reports on the stability of Iraq to congress.  The reports are a very useful compendium of all kinds of data about the stability of the country.  According to the schedule of recent years, the last report would have been in Dec 2009.  It's now February 2010, and we are still stuck reading the September 2009 report (see the above screenshot which I just made now).  That's a very long quarter!

Where is the Dec 2009 report?  Inquiring minds would like to read it please.

Update: Gotta love Google. Within twenty minutes of posting this, it's the number four result on a Google search for "iraq stability report". Quite right too.

Saudi Aramco: Peak Oil is Nonsense (but we are at peak)

I'm a bit behind the curve in commenting on this, but did anyone else find this hilarious:

Khalid Al-Falih: The nonsense of peak oil is now hopefully behind us. Sees no difficulty in getting above 100mb/d. Saudi Arabia has 1/3 of its capacity (4mb/d) idled at the moment. Will attempt to continue its role as price stabiliser (although idling capacity is v. expensive). Brought 2mb/d capacity onstream last year.

Incremental barrels of onshore Saudi oil capacity now cost 6-7 times what they used to in 2000. Projects take 7-10 years to come on stream. Will make investment to maintain capacity, scoffs at IEA former predictions of 25mb/d Saudi oil, but will stay at about its current level. Has long list of projects to offset its decline in current fields.

Very confident that technological improvements will facilitate increased production.

Very pissed off at rhetoric about 'moving away from oil' or misleading notions of 'energy independence'. Energy security should be addressed through the framework of energy interdependence. Fossil fuels predominant for decades to come. Focus on efficiency, renewable deployment will be very slow.

So "nonsense of peak oil" but Saudi Arabia's oil production capacity "will stay at about its current level". What does he think we should call it when a country can't/won't raise it's oil production capacity any higher?  And if Saudi Arabia can't/won't raise it's capacity, who does he think has more oil than them?

This tends to confirm my impression that the peak oil question is now mainly about Iraq.

OPEC MOMR: Oil Demand Recovery Mainly in OECD

Rumaila to increase by 110kbd in July or August

The WSJ reported yesterday:

Crude oil production from the giant Rumaila oil field in southern Iraq is expected to increase by 110,000 barrels a day either in July or August, a senior Iraqi oil official said Monday.

Rumaila, Iraq's largest producing oil field, is currently producing an average of 1.07 million barrels a day, Abdul Mahdy al-Ameedi, director-general of the Iraqi Oil Ministry's Petroleum Contracts and Licensing Directorate, told Dow Jones Newswires

BP PLC (BP) and China National Petroleum Corp., known as CNPC, signed a 20-year technical service contract in November last year to develop the field, which holds oil reserves of 17 billion barrels.

"According to the plan submitted by the contractors, oil production from the field will increase by 10% in July or August, which means an additional 110,000 barrels a day," Ameedi said.

That would be a modest start, but a start...

Also, the deal for West Qurna Phase II is final.

Biofuels and Farm Prices

Iraqi Production Flat in December

Biofuels: the Biggest Supply Response to the 2000s Oil Shock

Real annual average oil price according to BP (top graph), and estimates of volumetric production/capacity for various oil alternatives (bottom).  1975-2008/9.  Note that these are total volumetric estimates: about half of tar sands production is sold as bitumen, not synfuel, and the energy density of the biofuel stream is only about 70% or so of that of crude oil.

State of the Blog, Jan 2010

Gas-to-Liquids Production Statistics

Shatha al Musawi

Who is this member of the Iraqi parliament who is suing to stop Dr al-Shahristani in his tracks?

The picture at right is from Troopscoop.  The New York Times covered her in 2005 (worth reading in full):

Tracking al-Shahristani Plan: Iraq Oil Contract Status

It seems worth keeping a regular eye on Dr al-Shahristani's is-he-crazy-or-a-genius plan to develop a sizeable fraction of Iraq's oil reserves all in parallel. Therefore, I've updated the table from my original post with the contract status in each case, and will maintain this periodically in future. Dates that were anticipated are in italics if either they are still in the future, or I haven't been able to confirm yet that they actually happened.

Overall, the final contract negotiation and signing process seems to have gone pretty smoothly and rapidly.

Failed State Index: China in Worsening Economic Decline

Coal-to-Liquids Production Statistics