Short-Term Energy Outlook (U.S. Energy Information Administration)

Short-Term Energy Outlook
December 11, 2007 Release

To see details of this forecast update, go to: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/contents.html

Highlights

Global oil markets will likely remain tight through the forecast period. EIA projects that world oil demand will grow much faster than oil supply outside of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), leaving OPEC and inventories to offset the resultant upward pressure on prices.

However, at last week’s meeting in Abu Dhabi, OPEC decided to maintain existing production targets, noting that, in its view, the global oil market continued to be well supplied. Additional factors contributing to expectations that prices will remain high and volatile through 2008 include ongoing geopolitical risks, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) inventory tightness, and worldwide refining bottlenecks.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) monthly crude oil prices averaged more than $85 per barrel in October and almost $95 per barrel in November, up $27 and $36 per barrel, respectively, from a year earlier. The daily closing spot price for WTI peaked at $99.16 per barrel on November 20, but started falling near the end of the month in anticipation of additional OPEC production and is expected to continue to decline slightly through 2008. Monthly average prices for WTI are expected to exceed $80 per barrel over the next year.

The $80-plus per barrel projected crude oil prices are likely to result in historically high prices for the major petroleum products. Residential heating oil prices are projected to average $3.23 per gallon this heating season, a 30-percent increase over the previous heating season. Both motor gasoline and diesel prices are projected to average well over $3 per gallon in 2008, with gasoline prices peaking at over $3.40 per gallon next spring.

Working natural gas in storage reached 3.44 trillion cubic feet (tcf) as of November 30. This high level of storage going into the heart of the winter, combined with limited remaining fuel switching capability, has insulated the natural gas market from the impact of the recent price increases in petroleum markets to some extent.

Consequently, while petroleum product prices are expected to increase and remain historically high, only moderate gains are expected for natural gas prices through 2008. The Henry Hub natural gas spot price is expected to average about $7.21 per thousand cubic feet (mcf) in 2007 and $7.78 per mcf in 2008. Average household natural gas expenditures this winter are expected to show an increase of about 7 percent compared with last winter.

Global Petroleum Markets

Expectations that tight market conditions will persist into 2008 are keeping oil prices high. Despite the OPEC decision to hold production steady at its meeting last week and downward revisions to projected consumption growth in 2008, the oil balance outlook remains characterized by rising consumption, modest growth in non-OPEC supply, fairly low surplus capacity, and continuing risks of supply disruptions in a number of major producing nations.

Although the balance assumes a mild slowdown in world economic growth, the major downside risk remains the possibility of a sharper-than-expected economic slowdown brought on by the fallout from the unsettled financial markets that would dampen oil demand and ease oil price pressures.

Consumption.

China, non-OECD Asia, and the Middle East countries are expected to remain the main drivers of higher world oil consumption through 2008. World oil consumption in the fourth quarter of 2007 is expected to rise by 1.7 million barrels per day (bbl/d) above fourth quarter 2006 levels and oil consumption in 2008 is projected to rise by 1.4 million bbl/d. Both projections are slightly lower than last month’s assessment.

Indeed, higher prices appear to be dampening oil consumption in a few countries, including the United States, in recent months. (Table 3a indicates U.S. consumption in third quarter 2007 was 210,000 bbl/d lower than third quarter 2006 levels, compared with a year-over-year rise of 170,000 bbl/d during first half of 2007.)

In 2008, China alone is expected to account for over 400,000 bbl/d, or one-third, of world oil consumption growth. Downward revisions, however, in consumption growth are certainly possible, particularly if the slowdown in world economic growth is greater than expected.

Non-OPEC Supply.

Non-OPEC production is expected to rise by 0.5 million bbl/d in the fourth quarter of 2007 compared with fourth quarter 2006 levels.

For 2008, non-OPEC supply is projected to grow by 0.9 million bbl/d over 2007. Gains in Brazil, the United States, Russia, and Canada will more than offset lower production in a number of countries, including Mexico, the United Kingdom, Norway, and Egypt. Russia and the other countries of the former Soviet Union combined are projected to account for nearly half of the gain in non-OPEC supplies in 2008.

Non-OPEC supply is expected to increase by less than global oil consumption in 2008, putting pressure on OPEC and inventories to bridge this gap. Projected growth of production capacity is very sensitive to the progress of several large-scale projects, including the already-delayed Sakhalin II project in Russia, the Marlim field in Brazil, and the ACG project in Azerbaijan.

Recent history has shown non-OPEC capacity growth projections often fall short of expectations.

OPEC Supply.

OPEC members decided to maintain existing production targets at last week’s meeting in Abu Dhabi. The combination of recent price weakness, downward revisions in demand projections, and higher supplies already expected from Saudi Arabia, Angola, Iraq, and Abu Dhabi (after recent maintenance), led OPEC to dismiss the need for additional supplies.

EIA projects that OPEC crude production in the first quarter of 2008 will average about 31.6 million bbl/d, an increase of 400,000 bbl/d from fourth quarter 2007 levels. For full year 2008, EIA’s balance assumes that OPEC crude oil production will average 31.7 million bbl/d. In addition, OPEC production of non-crude liquids is expected to increase by 300,000 bbl/d in 2008. OPEC countries’ plans to add substantial crude oil production capacity in 2008, with growth totaling roughly 1.3 million bbl/d by year’s-end, should help meet growing oil demand.

Saudi Arabia and Angola will account for most of the growth in capacity. Despite higher capacity, our balance indicates that OPEC surplus production capacity, held mostly in Saudi Arabia, will remain fairly low, averaging about 2 to 3 million bbl/d.

Inventories.

Total OECD commercial inventories continue to fall. Preliminary and partial data indicate commercial OECD inventories fell by 16 million barrels in October, leaving inventories slightly below the 5-year average at an estimated 2.6 billion barrels.

Last year at the same time, inventories were 125 million barrels above the 5-year average.

Preliminary data for the United States indicate that inventories declined by more than the past 5-year average during November. EIA’s oil balance suggests that OECD commercial stocks will be just below their 5-year average at year’s-end.

Even with the additional OPEC production expected next year, OECD commercial inventories (measured on a days-supply basis) would remain in the low end of the 5-year range in 2008.

U.S. Petroleum Markets

Consumption.

Total domestic petroleum consumption is projected to average 20.8 million bbl/d in 2007, up 0.4 percent from the 2006 average.

A further 1.1-percent increase to an average of 21.0 million bbl/d is projected for 2008. Motor gasoline consumption is projected to increase by 0.6 percent in 2007 and 1.0 percent in 2008. Reflecting moderate economic growth and assumptions of normal weather during the upcoming winter season, total distillate consumption is projected to increase by 1.8 percent in 2007 and 1.4 percent in 2008.

Production.

In 2007, domestic crude oil production is projected to average 5.1 million bbl/d, 0.2 percent higher than 2006 production levels. Domestic production in 2008 is projected to rise by 2.3 percent to 5.23 million bbl/d. Contributing to output growth are the Atlantis deepwater platform, which began production in October, and the Thunderhorse platform, expected to come on stream late in 2008.

Prices.

The refiner acquisition cost (RAC) of crude oil is projected to increase from an average of $60.23 per barrel in 2006 to $67.89 per barrel in 2007.

Although RAC prices are expected to decline slowly from their November peak, they are expected to average almost $80 per barrel in 2008. WTI prices are projected to increase from an average of $66.02 per barrel in 2006 to $72.05 per barrel in 2007 and to nearly $85 per barrel in 2008.

Slower U.S. economic growth of 2.1 percent is projected for 2007 and 1.8 percent for 2008, compared with 2.9 percent in 2006, which may be a mitigating factor for even higher crude oil prices.

Gasoline prices, which hit a recent weekly peak of $3.11 per gallon in mid- November, fell by about 19 cents per gallon over the last several weeks corresponding drop in crude oil prices. Nevertheless, by the middle of next spring they are projected to rebound to over $3.40 per gallon as the driving season begins.

In 2008, heating oil prices are projected to average $3.11 per gallon while diesel fuel prices are expected to average $3.21 gallon.

Inventories.

Commercial crude oil inventories have generally been declining since May, a trend that is expected to continue through the forecast. As of November 30, total motor gasoline inventories were an estimated 201 million barrels, down 3.4 million barrels from 2006 and 5.5 million barrels below the previous 5-year average. Distillate stocks were an estimated 132 million barrels on November 30, down 8 million barrels from 2006 but about equal to the previous 5-year average.

Natural Gas Markets

Consumption.

Total natural gas consumption is expected to increase by 5.0 percent in 2007, largely driven by increases in the residential, commercial, and electric power sectors that occurred earlier this year. The return to near-normal weather in 2008 is expected to increase total consumption by 1.1 percent.

Even though consumption of natural gas in the industrial sector is projected to decline by 0.7 percent in 2007, the weaker U.S. dollar and global demand for natural-gas-intensive goods produced domestically are expected to contribute to a 0.8-percent increase in industrial sector consumption in 2008.

Production and Imports.

Total U.S. marketed natural gas production is expected to rise by 2.1 percent in 2007 and by 1.6 percent in 2008. In 2007, a portion of the 2.8-percent rise in marketed natural gas production in the Lower-48 onshore region is being offset by a 1.7-percent decline in Gulf of Mexico production. However, new deepwater supply infrastructure in the Gulf and ongoing efforts to develop unconventional reserves are expected to increase Gulf of Mexico and Lower-48 onshore production by 5.1 and 1.0 percent, respectively, in 2008.

Imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) are expected to reach about 790 billion cubic feet (bcf) in 2007, a 35-percent increase over 2006, and about 940 bcf in 2008, a 19-percent increase over 2007. In recent months, LNG imports have slowed due to complications with key production and liquefaction facilities as well as increases in global demand.

The expansion of global liquefaction capacity is expected to boost LNG shipments to the United States in 2008, but the risk of project delays and production shortfalls, as well as negative price differentials between the U.S. market and other LNG-consuming countries, could temper the number of spot cargoes directed to U.S. ports next year.

Inventories.

On November 30, 2007, working natural gas in storage was 3,440 bcf (U.S. Working Natural Gas in Storage). Current inventories are now 273 bcf above the 5-year average (2002-2006), and 32 bcf above the level during the corresponding week last year.

Prices.

The Henry Hub spot price averaged $7.31 per mcf in November, $0.37 per mcf more than the average October spot price. Despite high storage levels and the relatively moderate winter weather thus far, the onset of seasonal natural gas demand for space heating has caused an steady increases in the monthly average spot price since September.

Spot prices at the Henry Hub are projected to reach a winter peak of $8.22 per mcf in January 2008. On an annual basis, the Henry Hub spot price is expected to average about $7.21 per mcf in 2007 and $7.78 per mcf in 2008.

Electricity Markets

Consumption.

Total electricity consumption in 2007 is projected to increase by 1.9 percent over last year. Cooling degree‐days in 2008 are assumed to be about 12 percent lower than in 2007. The assumed return to near-normal temperatures should keep residential electricity sales growth relatively flat at a rate of 0.2 percent next year. Slow macroeconomic growth in 2008 will also limit growth in electricity sales to the commercial and industrial sectors.

Prices.

U.S. residential electricity prices are expected to average 10.6 cents per kilowatthour in 2007, 2.1 percent above prices in 2006. Residential prices are expected to grow at a somewhat lower rate of 1.7 percent in 2008. Most States that had planned to let price caps expire within the next year have either delayed those plans or changed the expiration schedule so that increases occur over a longer time frame.

Coal Markets

Consumption.

Electric-power-sector coal consumption, which accounts for more than 90 percent of total U.S. coal consumption, is expected to grow by 2.2 percent in 2007. Slow growth in electricity consumption, combined with projected increases in natural-gas-fired and hydroelectric generation, will lead to a 0.5-percent decline in 2008.

Production.

U.S. coal production, which increased by 2.8 percent in 2006, is expected to fall by 1.0 percent in 2007. Interior region coal production is expected to grow slightly (by 0.5 percent) in 2007. The projected decline in coal consumption, coupled with continued draws on inventories, will lead to a 1.7-percent decline in total coal production in 2008, with declines occurring in all coal producing regions.

Inventories.

Withdrawals from primary (producer/distributor) and secondary (consuming sectors) inventories are expected to supply approximately 28 percent of the projected coal consumption increase in 2007.

Total coal stocks are expected to fall by 3.6 percent in 2007 to 180 million short tons. Primary inventories are projected to fall by an additional 11.2 percent in 2008, and secondary inventories are projected to be 2.2 percent lower than the previous year.

Politics 'threatening energy security'

Politically driven state energy companies are hindering access to global oil reserves, threatening worldwide energy security, senior oil executives said today.

High oil prices and perceptions of soaring industry profits have prompted many producing countries to give national oil companies more power to extract richer fiscal terms and greater control over resources, pushing out international players, Rex Tillerson, chief executive of US supermajor ExxonMobil, said.

Such policies will lead to tighter oil supplies as ExxonMobil and other majors stop deploying their technology, know-how and capital in some of those countries, he said.

"If there's no room to share it then there is no role for us - it's a simple as that," he told business and political leaders at a meeting in Calgary, Reuters reported.

"I think that's something that national oil companies have to get their minds around and they've got to help their governments get their minds around."

Exxon left its Venezuelan operations behind this year after it refused to accept more nationalistic terms set by President Hugo Chavez, which gave state-controlled PDVSA bigger stakes.

"The big value in resources development is not in the upfront bonus money that you're paid, it's in the incremental recovery over the life of that resource that's of huge value to the host country," he said.

State oil companies now control 75% of the world's proven oil reserves and international companies like ExxonMobil, Anglo-Dutch supermajor Shell and French giant Total account for about 10%, he said.

Total chairman Thierry Desmarest agreed that many countries in regions like the Middle East, former Soviet Union, Africa and South America have been putting more political obstacles in place, restricting access to new reserves.

Meanwhile, production in most of the rich countries of the West is expected to keep declining.

Still, Total agreed to Venezuela's new terms, allowing it to maintain some heavy oil operations in the Opec country.

"We have made our choice because we think that Venezuela's oil potential is substantial. The country needs the world-class technology that my company and other companies provide," Desmarest said. "And we think that in the long term the convergence of interests should be recognised."

The two other big issues for the industry as it struggles to meet rising demand in developed and developing countries are improving technology to get at hard-to-reach reserves and meeting stringent environmental regulations, oil bosses said.

"For every barrel of oil or cubic metre of gas that you consume today, to replace that barrel it costs more, so our industry gets a lot more more capital intensive per unit all the time," said Jeroen van der Veer, chief executive of Shell.

All three of the companies, along with numerous others, have invested billions of dollars to develop Canada's massive oil sands, access to which has not been hindered by politics.

Upstream Online

New Allies In Arctic Oil Scramble

Germany And Norway Form Partnership, While Russia Plans Oil Exploration

They all say it’s not a land grab. Really, it isn’t. It’s an oil grab.

The scramble for the oil and other natural resources at the top of the world intensified — quietly — this week, as Norway and Germany announced a new oil exploration partnership, the Daily Telegraph reported today, and Russia confirmed its state-controlled oil companies would do its business in the Arctic, Russian state media reported yesterday.

The neo-colonial overtones were unmistakable last month when Russia planted a flag at the North Pole, even it if was little more than a publicity stunt. Canada decried the “15th Century” tactics, and the United States sent a ship — on a purely scientific mission, it claims — to the Arctic, even as the Senate continues to drag its feet on the signing of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, the key treaty that governs territorial claims in the open ocean.

Why is the icy realm suddenly so lucrative? First, global warming is opening up the ice. The extent of sea ice in the Arctic reached a record minimum this year — and a full month ahead of the peak of the Arctic summer free-ice period. Second, as much as a quarter of the world’s untapped fossil fuel reserves are locked under the remaining ice.

With so many questions remaining about the world’s supply of oil — a growing, if fringe, group of “peak oil” analysts believes the world is nearing a period when demand will far outstrip supply — any country that gets a lock on those reserves could wield tremendous power in the coming decades.

Oil grab? Scientific exploration? Call it what you want. It’s the geopolitics of global warming and peak oil, and the game is getting interesting.

Dan Shapley/ News Editor Blog

United States, China Clash over Peak Oil May Endanger World Peace

By Ann Weaver Hart

Peak Oil may have put the United States on a collision course with China as the two nations compete for African oil reserves. "Peak Oil" refers to the fact that worldwide, per capita petroleum production peaked in 1979. Owing to population growth, even though more actual barrels of oil per day are extracted, the amount of oil pumped per person continues to drop.

American companies helped create the situation, but seem unconcerned over the prospect of facing off with China over petroleum.

In the late 1990s, one of GM's annual reports focused on that company's efforts to open the Chinese market to American-made cars. The report stated that GM intended to bring personal transportation to 1 billion Chinese. Investors and oil companies loved the idea of practically limitless profits, and GM continues its commitment to personal mobility in heavily populated Asian nations today.

In the United States, auto makers, encouraged by weakened environmental standards, produced and marketed gas-guzzlers like turbo-charged pickups, SUVs, and Humvees, which Americans bought in droves.

After the bombing of the World Trade Centers, Americans were barraged with advertisements for vehicles with low- and zero-interest loans. These promotions were almost exclusively for high-consumption vehicles. There were efficient vehicles being produced.

Toyota introduced both the Echo, a four-cylinder wonder that got 40 mph and the Prius, a gas-electric hybrid during this time, but the vehicles went nearly un-promoted. Soon after WTC, the U.S. military deployed to countries where petroleum production was the major business, coincidentally destabilizing governments and the oil markets, and causing gasoline prices to first double, and at times, triple.

Transportation is not the only petroleum-dependent industry in the United States. Prices of agricultural products are beginning to rise with production costs, and as the demand for agriculturally produced fuels places upward pressures on the price of corn.

Meanwhile, auto makers are creating a Chinese version of the American dream, with a car in every driveway, and the Chinese are faced with a rapidly growing demand for gasoline that has already outstripped domestic production.

At present, the U.S. military is present in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the current administration is eyeing Iran. Meanwhile, Chinese companies are busy in Africa attempting to stake their claims to that region's black gold. Not to be outdone, the United States Department of Defense is preparing AFRICOM for operations beginning in October.

In a Defense Department report, officials downplayed the military aspect of the operation, stressing its economic and diplomatic aims, but the organization is responsible for security, a primarily military objective, and is headed by General William E. "Kip" Ward.

Meanwhile, American and Chinese citizens burn as much gasoline as they can comfortably afford. Hybrid cars are expensive and still consume gasoline. Petroleum resources are finite.

The Chinese want oil, and lots of it. What remains to be seen is what they or the United States are willing to do to get it.

###

Read more about Peak Oil

Watch Peak Oil Video

Peak Oil Forecasters Win Converts on Wall Street to $200 Crude

On a sweltering Tuesday in mid-July, in the fields outside Pisa, Italy, Willem Kadijk scribbles notes as a ragtag troupe of doomsayers predict the end of the Oil Age.

With his shaved head, jeans and sandals, Kadijk, 48, blends into a crowd gathered under a white tent to hear of the coming calamity. The death of cheap, abundant crude, the forecasters warn, might unleash war and plunge the world into a second Great Depression.

That's not the prophecy of some apocalyptic cult. Kadijk, a hedge fund adviser, had flown from Amsterdam to attend a conference on a geologic theory known as peak oil.

Proponents of this controversial idea say global oil production is now at or near its zenith. Once the flow crests and starts to decline -- and some geologists say it already has -- oil will no longer be able to slake the world's growing thirst for energy. The result will be the oil shock to end all oil shocks. The price of a barrel of crude will spiral to $200 -- and keep rising. To the peaksters, today's energy crunch is nothing next to the pain that will follow.

``Peak oil is a reality,'' says Kadijk, a senior equity salesman at Kepler Equities, an Amsterdam-based brokerage. He plans to start a fund to capitalize on what he sees as a looming crisis for the world's fossil fuel-based economy and the ultimate bull market in oil.

As energy prices soar and violence convulses the Middle East, the peak-oil movement -- an unlikely alliance of geologists, physicists, oil industry consultants and environmental activists -- is winning converts. Peak-oil ideas are bubbling up from scientific journals and offbeat Web sites, much the way warnings of global warming did a decade ago. For the first time, the peaksters have begun to grab the attention of Washington and Wall Street.

Congressional Caucus

U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, former boss of Boston- based Cabot Corp., an oil and chemicals company, has asked the National Petroleum Council, which advises him, to investigate whether oil supplies can keep pace with demand. The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan congressional watchdog, is due to release a study on peak oil this November. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, a Maryland Republican, has formed the Congressional Peak Oil Caucus to sound the alarm.

``The world has never faced a problem like this,'' Bartlett says.

Everyone agrees we'll run out of crude eventually. Oil, after all, is a finite resource: The Earth holds only so much of it. The controversial issue is when a global peak will occur -- and what will happen then.

Colin Campbell, a British geologist who popularized the peak- oil theory in his book ``The Coming Oil Crisis'' (Multi-Science Publishing Co. and Petroconsultants SA, 1997, 210 pages) says world production of conventional oil, the kind that comes from gushing wells, is reaching its apex.

End of Oil Age

Society isn't prepared for the consequences, Campbell, 75, says. It's too late to develop alternative sources of power, such as solar cells, nuclear reactors and windmills, to fill the oil gap before energy prices soar, says Campbell, who has a doctorate in geology from the University of Oxford and more than 40 years of experience in the oil industry.

``We have come to the end of the first half of the Oil Age,'' Campbell says.

Nonsense, says Russ Roberts, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's largest oil company. Exxon Mobil, which has reaped record profits as the price of oil has surged, has taken out ads dismissing peak oil in U.S. newspapers such as the New York Times.

The Irving, Texas-based oil giant says the peaksters are being alarmist. In all, the world probably has 4 trillion barrels of oil left, four times the amount we have used so far, the ad says.

Time to Think

``The world is nowhere near running out of oil,'' Roberts says. Exxon Mobil geologists believe global oil production will keep rising through 2030, he says.

Cambridge Energy Research Associates, whose chairman, Daniel Yergin, is a leading peak-oil critic, says production will reach an ``undulating plateau'' sometime in the future.

``Our outlook goes to 2020, and we see no evidence of a peak,'' CERA geologist Peter Jackson says. ``Eventually, we will start to see a decline. There is still time to think about alternatives.''

Predictions of an imminent oil famine are as old as the industry itself. When production at the first U.S. wells, located in western Pennsylvania, began to decline in the late 19th century, some people predicted the country would soon run out of oil. Then crude was discovered in east Texas, whose oil fields yielded so much black gold that the Texas Railroad Commission capped production to support prices.

Peak Moment

In the past, Campbell or his disciples have forecast the oil peak down to the year or even the day only to push back the fateful moment. In 1997, Campbell said it would occur in 2001. Now, he says total production, which includes oil from deep-water wells and fuel derived from natural gases, will reach its height sometime after 2010.

Kenneth Deffeyes, a geologist and professor emeritus at Princeton University, first pinpointed Nov. 24, 2005, as the peak- oil date and then revised it to Dec. 16, 2005.

Campbell says the exact day or year isn't important. What matters is that peak oil is coming, and soon. Almost a century and a half after the first U.S. wells were drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, production has begun to decline in more than a dozen countries, including the U.S., according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Production at the giant Cantarell oil field in Mexico is likely to decline 8 percent this year, according to Mexican state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos.

U.S. Addiction

At a time when U.S. President George W. Bush has urged the country to break its addiction to foreign oil, the fact is, the U.S. is becoming ever more dependent on overseas crude. U.S. oil production peaked 36 years ago, in 1970, at 11.3 million barrels a day. Since then, output has fallen 39 percent, to 6.8 million barrels a day, or 8 percent of the world total, in 2005, according to BP.

Investors have started to listen to the peaksters. Billionaire Boone Pickens says he's a peak believer. So does Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal Inc. and now runs Clarium Capital Management LLC, a $2.1 billion hedge fund firm. Pickens, Thiel and other investors are positioning themselves to profit from what they say will be the biggest oil squeeze of all time.

Even some oil companies and industry veterans sound nervous. Chevron Corp. has run a series of full-page ads in U.S. newspapers that highlight surging oil consumption and declare, ``The era of easy oil is over.''

Chicken Littles

Thierry Desmarest, chief executive officer of Paris-based Total SA, told the World Gas Conference in Amsterdam in June that global oil production would peak in 2020. Matthew Simmons, whose Houston-based investment bank, Simmons & Co., trades oil and gas stocks, says Saudi Arabia's production may decline soon.

Alex Cranberg, chairman of Denver-based independent oil company Aspect Energy LLC, calls the peaksters Chicken Littles -- misguided souls who think the sky is falling.

In fact, Cranberg hired two people to dress in chicken costumes and hand out fliers dismissing peak oil at the conference Kadijk attended in July.

Like many oil-industry vets, Cranberg, 51, says market forces and technological advances will ultimately cure our energy ills. As oil prices rise, companies will be more willing to hunt for crude and extract it. They'll invest in expensive deep-water wells and new technologies to wring more oil from existing fields. Consumers will start conserving energy. Even now, stock market investors and Silicon Valley venture capitalists are pouring billions of dollars into companies developing ethanol, solar power and other alternative sources of energy.

$3-a-Gallon Gas

More and more, however, the peaksters are drowning out everyone else, Cranberg says. ``You can't turn around without seeing or hearing these ideas,'' he says. ``I think they are gaining.''
You don't have to be a geologist to understand why. The price of crude has tripled since 2000. In the U.S., $3-a-gallon gasoline has sapped consumers' confidence. Nearly half of Americans believe the economy is doing poorly, according to a July 28-Aug. 1 Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll. Fifty-nine percent of Americans expressed a negative view of Bush's handling of the economy.

``If oil was still at $20, no one would be talking about peak oil,'' says Manouchehr Takin, senior petroleum upstream analyst at the Centre for Global Energy Studies, a London-based consulting firm.

High oil prices are only part of the story, however. The world is straining to feed its energy habit. Today, we consume 85 million barrels of oil a day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). By 2030, the world will devour 118 million barrels a day, as China and India emerge as economic superpowers.

Big Question Mark

No one knows for sure how much oil the world has. That's a big question mark because the peaksters say production will max out once half of the oil has been pumped. So far, we've extracted about 1 trillion barrels in all. In 2000, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated global resources at 3 trillion barrels, enough to push peak production out to 2037, according to the EIA. Campbell puts the total lower, at 2.5 trillion barrels.

Oil is certainly getting harder -- and more expensive -- to find and extract. Oil discoveries plummeted to 5 billion barrels in 2005 from 90 billion barrels in 1964, according to Campbell.
``Discovery is in long-term decline, and spending more money won't increase it,'' says Chris Skrebowski, editor of the London- based Petroleum Review, an industry journal.

OPEC's Stash

Oil companies have to find enough crude to offset dwindling production at existing fields, which can decline by more than 8 percent a year, and to keep pace with rising demand. Most of that increase will have to come from members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which are often cauldrons of discontent, war and terror.

The cartel's members -- Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela -- together sit atop 75 percent of the world's reserves and account for about 42 percent of total production, according to BP.

OPEC countries are hardly paragons of economic and political stability. Most of the terrorists who attacked the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, came from Saudi Arabia. The war in Iraq has hurt that country's ability to pump oil. Bush says Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez has said he wants to diversify oil exports away from the U.S.

In its 2005 Energy Outlook, Exxon Mobil says the combined production of non-OPEC countries will peak sometime from 2010 to 2020. OPEC will be able to fill the gap, the report says. OPEC produced about 30 million barrels a day in 2005; by 2030, OPEC would have to churn out 47 million barrels a day -- almost 57 percent more than it did last year -- to satisfy the world's needs, the report says.

Meeting the Call

``We believe the resource base will support this increase, assuming that investments in development are made in a timely fashion,'' the report says.

OPEC countries will invest a combined $100 billion in the five years through 2010 so they can increase output, OPEC spokesman Omar Ibrahim says. ``We are set to meet the extra call on OPEC to 2030,'' Ibrahim says.

Yet even now, OPEC nations are struggling to keep up. Since 2000, OPEC has gradually lost the spare pumping capacity its members can use as an emergency reserve to moderate prices. The cushion has dwindled to about 1.5 million barrels a day from 6 million barrels a day, Takin says.

What's more, neither the peaksters nor oil industry executives know for sure how much oil OPEC has and how much it can actually produce. OPEC countries haven't been transparent about their reserves or production capacity, says Mike Rodgers, a partner at PFC Energy, a Washington-based oil industry consulting firm. ``OPEC is the big unknown,'' he says.
Overstated Reserves

Many energy analysts believe OPEC nations began overstating their resources in the 1980s, when the cartel linked members' production quotas to the size of their reserves, says Mamdouh Salameh, an independent oil economist. In the late '80s, cartel members raised their reserve estimates by a combined 300 billion barrels even though none of them had actually found much more oil.

In his 2005 book ``Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy'' (John Wiley & Sons, 448 pages, $24.95), Simmons says the Saudis have pumped so much oil so fast that the country's biggest oilfields face declining output.

``Saudi Arabia is keeping everything in the dark,'' Simmons, 63, says.
Saudi officials have dismissed peak-oil theorists and suggestions that their country is running on empty.

Saudi Assurances

``We currently manage approximately 260 billion barrels of oil,'' Abdallah Jum'ah, CEO of Saudi Aramco, the government-owned oil giant, said at an oil and gas conference in June. ``We continue to expand our reserve base, and conservatively estimate our additional potential of recoverable oil to be in the range of 200 billion barrels. At Saudi Aramco's present production levels, that means we will have well over a century's worth of oil to produce.''

Herman Franssen, former chief economist at the Paris-based International Energy Agency, says some OPEC members, such as Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Venezuela, may be reluctant or unable to produce more oil even as prices soar, largely for political reasons.

``We may never see the volumes of conventional oil production that we see in official forecasts,'' says Franssen, who's now an oil industry consultant in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Sadad al-Husseini, who spent 35 years working for Saudi Aramco, says Saudi Arabia's reserves are sound but that Kuwait, which says it has reserves of 101.5 billion barrels, probably has half that much. Iran, with official reserves of 132.5 billion barrels, has likewise overstated its reserves, says Husseini, who was an executive vice president at Saudi Aramco before retiring in 2004.

Assume the Worst

``Even with high prices, it will be very difficult for world production of conventional oil to exceed 90 million barrels per day within the next 10 years,'' he says. That's millions of barrels a day short of what the EIA says the world will need in 2015.

Political leaders, business executives and investors should assume OPEC won't be able to satisfy future demand, Rodgers says. ``From an energy-security point of view, if you believe in a non- OPEC peak and OPEC is not being transparent, we have to assume they don't have it,'' he says.

The precarious balance of supply and demand in the oil markets became even clearer in early August when London-based BP Plc announced it would temporarily shut down its Prudhoe Bay oil field on the North Slope of Alaska because of pipeline corrosion. The news drove already-high oil prices up more than $2 to almost $77.

Alaskan Decline

Prudhoe Bay, the largest oil field in the U.S., is part of the peak-oil story. The field was discovered in 1968 and came onstream in 1977. Since then, it has yielded more than 11 billion barrels of oil.

Yet even before the August mishap, this vast field had begun to die. Its output has fallen 73 percent to 400,000 barrels a day from a height of 1.5 million barrels a day in 1989.

Prudhoe Bay is following the life cycle of oil fields across the U.S. and around the world, a phenomenon known as the Hubbert Curve, which takes its name from M. King Hubbert.
Fifty years ago, Hubbert, then a geologist at Shell Oil Co.'s research lab in Houston, postulated that U.S. oil production would follow a bell-shaped curve.

At the 1956 meeting of the American Petroleum Institute in San Antonio, Hubbert predicted that total annual U.S. output would climb steadily, level off sometime between 1965 and '70 and then decline after about half of the country's reserves had been depleted.

Hubbert's Peak

The U.S. reached what geologists now refer to as Hubbert's Peak in 1970. Hubbert died in 1989 at the age of 86.

It wasn't until the late 1990s when Hubbert's ideas, which had percolated for decades in academia and oil circles, began to reach a wide audience via Campbell, the British geologist.
Now in his eighth decade, Campbell is a grandfatherly man with a shock of gray hair. He hardly comes across as a doom- monger. He works out of a two-story house in Ballydehob, a village on the western edge of Ireland.

Campbell spent 40 years exploring for oil for Amoco Corp. and other companies. He helped Amoco search for oil in Ecuador and then, during the 1980s, led its exploration in Norway. He later joined PetroFina SA, the oil exploration company now owned by Total.

After retiring from PetroFina in 1990, Campbell joined forces with Jean Laherrere, a retired French geophysicist who had spent 25 years working at Total, to analyze production profiles for the world's countries.

Campbell says he and Laherrere, now 75, looked at their data and concluded global oil production was approaching its zenith. In 1998, they co-wrote an article for Scientific American magazine titled ``The End of Cheap Oil'' that helped popularize their cause.

Coming Crunch

``The world is not running out of oil -- at least not yet,'' Campbell and Laherrere wrote. ``What our society does face, and soon, is the end of the abundant and cheap oil on which all industrial nations depend.''

In 2000, Campbell founded the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, an informal organization for fellow travelers. Now known as ASPO International, the group has sponsored five annual conferences, including the one in Pisa in July, which drew more than 230 people. It's now run by Kjell Aleklett, a physics professor at Uppsala University in Sweden. Twenty independent national ASPO groups have sprung up around the world, from Australia to France, to the U.S.

Many peaksters are driven by a moral imperative to spread the word. Campbell says he's a scientist, not a social or environmental crusader. Even so, he says he's worried that oil has harmed human society and the planet. Since the Oil Age dawned, nearly 150 years ago, the Earth's population has soared six-fold, he says.

Man Alone

``Man is the only animal that uses external energy,'' Campbell says.

Asked why he has championed the peak-oil theory, Laherrere quotes Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of ``The Little Prince'': ``We don't inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.''

Activists have jumped on the peak-oil bandwagon and added their own, often strident, voices to the debate over the future of oil.

Jim Kunstler, a writer-activist who lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, says peak oil will ultimately destroy suburbia and plunge the U.S. into a violent dark age of feudalism.

``The question is, Can we run our shit the way we are running our shit?'' Kunstler, 57, says. In 2005, Kunstler wrote ``The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century'' (Atlantic Monthly Press, 320 pages, $23), which warns of the havoc to come.

Dieoff.com

Lifeaftertheoilcrash.net, a Web site run by lawyer and peak- oil entrepreneur Matt Savinar, warns, ``Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon.'' The site sells peak-inspired books and products, including an investor's guide to peak oil.

Another site, dieoff.com, says wars over oil and other natural resources will eventually erupt and millions of people will be wiped out.

Stephen Andrews, a Denver-based energy consultant who founded ASPO-USA in June 2005, says the alarmists have hurt the peak-oil movement.

``The peak-oil tent has different voices -- some shrill, some more sober -- reaching different conclusions from the same facts,'' Andrews, 59, says.

Andrews has attracted more-sober voices to the movement. Last November, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper helped co-sponsor a two- day peak-oil conference organized by Andrews.

``I think the people most exuberant about peak oil underestimate how much unconventional sources of oil will help flatten the peak, but to say that there is no peak is shortsighted,'' Hickenlooper says.

Crash Program

The world would have to embark on a crash mitigation program 20 years in advance to prevent peak oil from hobbling the global economy, says Robert Hirsch, a senior energy program adviser at San Diego-based research and engineering firm Science Applications International Corp.

``And I consider myself an optimist,'' says Hirsch, 71, who included his findings in a 2005 study on peak oil for the U.S. Department of Energy and estimates such a program would cost the world $1 trillion a year.

Some investors and analysts see lots of opportunities in a post-peak world.

Charles Maxwell, senior energy analyst at Weeden & Co., an independent research firm based in Greenwich, Connecticut, says high oil prices will spur companies to invest in unconventional sources. Few people, however, realize how much such projects will cost or how long they will take to come onstream, he says.

Take the Canadian oil sands. This region in Alberta holds 175 billion barrels of oil, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), the world's second-largest reserves.

`Really Big'

``It's big. It's really big,'' Neil Camarta, senior vice president for oil sands at Calgary-based Petro-Canada, says of the region. ``It can keep America going for 25 years.''

The oil sands hold vast stores of bitumen, a tarlike substance that is mined, rather than pumped, and then processed into oil that can be refined. The process is expensive -- and getting more so. Rising operating and capital costs have driven the price of mining and upgrading bitumen to as much as $40 a barrel, Camarta says.

By 2020, Canada's oil sands will yield 4 million barrels a day, almost four times what they do now, according to CAPP. That sounds like a lot until you realize that 4 million barrels is just over a third of what Saudi Arabia produced per day in 2005.

Pickens, who built Mesa Petroleum Co. into one of the world's largest independent oil and gas producers, says he sees trouble -- and opportunity -- in peak oil. Pickens, who collected a degree in geology from Oklahoma State University in 1951, has called for the construction of more nuclear power plants and the promotion of alternative energy. He says he's invested in the Canadian oil sands.

Pickens's Picks

``I'm a disciple of Hubbert,'' Pickens, 77, says. ``I think we've peaked and we are going to see an undersupply of oil.''

Clarium Capital's Thiel says he began thinking about peak oil in 1999. As the Internet bubble grew that year, Thiel, 38, says he started to wonder about other risks that investors might be ignoring and seized on the uncertain future of oil.

``Energy will be systematically undervalued until peak oil is priced in,'' Thiel says. He's bought shares of Calgary-based EnCana Corp., which has invested in exploration and new production, and of oil services companies like New York-based Schlumberger Ltd. and Houston-based Weatherford International Ltd., which stand to profit as explorers hunt for oil and drill wells. Thiel says he's leery of U.S. oil majors, such as Exxon Mobil, because they may become targets of new taxes once the government wakes up to peak oil.

Thiel himself says the peak will come by 2008 -- if it hasn't already. ``Geology will trump technology,'' he says.

Coal, Uranium

Eric Sprott, CEO of Toronto-based Sprott Asset Management Inc., says he became a peak-oil convert after hearing Campbell speak in 2004. Sprott, who helps manage 3.6 billion Canadian dollars (US$3.2 billion), says the bull market in energy has only just begun. He's invested 36 percent of his firm's assets in a variety of areas that could benefit from peak oil. His flagship hedge fund returned 41 percent in 12 months ended July 31, he says.

Sprott's investments include St. Louis-based Arch Coal Inc. and Brisbane, Australia-based Macarthur Coal Ltd. His oil and gas picks include Halifax, Nova Scotia-based Corridor Resources Inc.; Denver- based Delta Petroleum Corp.; and Houston-based Ultra Petroleum Corp. He has also invested in Australian uranium companies Energy Resources of Australia Ltd. and Paladin Resources Ltd.

Midnight Ride

Meanwhile, the peaksters aren't about to let up. They'll convene in Boston on Oct. 25-27 to sound their alarm at a conference called ``Time for Action: A Midnight Ride for Peak Oil.'' The title is a reference to the American patriot Paul Revere, whose horse ride in 1775 warned Massachusetts colonists that British soldiers were advancing. The battle that followed, at Lexington and Concord, marked the beginning of the American Revolution.

It was just 84 years after Revere took his ride, on Aug. 27, 1859, that Edwin Drake struck oil in Titusville, ushering in the Oil Age. Exxon Mobil says the era of oil isn't about to end. In one of its ads, the company says, ``Oil is a finite resource, but because it is so incredibly large, a peak will not occur this year, next year or for decades to come.'' The ad depicts a man looking through binoculars at a snowcapped mountain whose summit is hidden by clouds.

Campbell says the illustration actually drives home the point Exxon Mobil is trying to avoid. ``Even though it is obscured by clouds, we know there is a peak,'' Campbell says. His investor followers are betting he's right.

To contact the reporter on this story: Deepak Gopinath in New York at dgopinath@bloomberg.net .

US Appeals Court Blocks Shell Drilling in Arctic

US: August 16, 2007

LOS ANGELES - A US federal appeals court in San Francisco Wednesday upheld an order blocking Royal Dutch Shell Plc from exploratory drilling in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's north coast.

"We are disappointed," said Shell in a press statement that added that no drilling will mean the loss of "hundreds of permanent jobs that would be created if Shell is successful in Alaska." The statement also said Shell's efforts to explore in Alaska will continue.

The ruling deals a serious blow to Shell's plan to drill up to four exploration wells during the brief Arctic summer to test a $44 million bet the company placed on the region in 2005.

Environmental groups, who say the area is also threatened by global warming, vowed to keep fighting Shell's drilling, which they say harms an area of the Arctic where endangered bowhead whales migrate.

"If polar bears are to survive as the Arctic melts in the state of global warming, we need to protect their critical habitat, not turn it into a polluted, industrial zone," said Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the petitioners.

The ruling essentially says that a handful of environmental groups, Alaska Native groups and the North Slope Borough have merit in their arguments that the drilling could harm the environment.

This sets up proceedings for the same Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to look into the matter more fully.

With December being the first chance for the three-judge panel to address the issue again, this shuts out Shell from drilling before the Beaufort Sea freezes for winter.

The three-judge panel ruled Wednesday that the groups challenging Shell "raised serious questions and demonstrated the balance of hardships tips sharply in their favor," according to the ruling.

The ruling upholds a July 19 hold on Shell's operations called until the ruling issued Wednesday.

Whaling and environmental groups said the US Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service did not study the possible negative impact of drilling fully when it approved Shell's drilling plans in February 2007.

Shell officials, on the other hand, say they believe they have met all requirements and can adequately safeguard from harming the Beaufort Sea and the North Slope.

"There are a number of different views from a wide range of stakeholders in regards to Shell's plan for exploration in Alaska," Shell spokeswoman Sarah Andreani said: Shell said it is in Alaska to stay.

"Alaska is a long-term commitment for Shell," the company's statement said. "Despite today's court decision, we see a bright future for Shell in Alaska."

Story by Bernie Woodall
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE