ODAC Newsletter

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Welcome to the ODAC Newsletter, a weekly roundup from the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, the UK registered charity dedicated to raising awareness of peak oil.

This week the oil price struck yet another all time high - $111.80 on Monday – but then underwent a major correction through the rest of the week, sinking to around $100, and settlling at just under $103 as ODAC went to print. The depth of America’s economic troubles were being offered as the main explanation and the exit of hot money.

However, the avid oil market observer will know that these explanations flip-flop almost by the day, one minute the American economy is beling wheeled into the morgue, the next it has bounced back and is ready for the next bubble.

The slump came against the backdrop of wild swings in commodity and equity markets, the collapse of Bear Stearns, another aggressive rate cut from the Fed, and as the Bank of England pumped an extra £5 billion into the London money markets. Only in days like these could the halving of profits at major investment banks Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers be a cause of ecstatic relief.

Shell’s delayed announcement of its 2007 reserve replacement received a generally positive press, but the underlying numbers are hardly reassuring. Shell claimed to have replaced its oil and gas production by 124%, but that number is only valid if you exclude the impact of Russia’s expropriation of the Sakhalin II project.

Otherwise Shell’s 20-F filing shows that its oil replacement was just 37% and its gas replacement a paltry 8% - despite a major upward revision in its Qatari gas reserves. On a barrels-of-oil-equivalent basis, Shell replaced just 17% of its oil and gas production overall.

We’ve said it before, but no wonder Shell and their peers are jockeying for position in Iraq, especially as Russia appears to be limbering up for another round of expropriation of oil and gas assets, and as Dick Cheney acknowledges that the world has essentially no spare oil production capacity.

If oil was the reason for invading Iraq, as many suspect, the strategy has had minimal success at an exorbitant price. On its fifth anniversary, the war is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of people, cost trillions of dollars, while Iraqi oil production is not much higher than before the invasion. Yet having made such a fine job of Iraq, Tony Blair now apparently thinks he can solve climate change single handed. Happy Easter!


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Oil
Crude extends slide
Shell wants to produce five times more oil from tar sands
Shell counts rising cost of squeezing oil from sand in Canada
Our reserves are healthy, insists Shell
Reserves don't matter as much as the cost of getting the oil out the ground
Cheney says high oil price reflects market reality
Guest Commentary: Mark Griffiths BSc FRICS FAAV
Mexico grapples with oil's direction

Iraq
Bush defends Iraq war five years on
Forbidden fields: Oil groups circle the prize of Iraq’s vast reserves
The high cost of fighting a losing battle

Gas
Ukraine insists on removing intermediary from natural gas trade with Russia
Israel deplores Swiss natural gas deal with Iran

Coal
Australia plans carbon storage under ocean
Carbon capture is turning out to be just another great green scam

Nuclear
British Energy shares rise 20% after confirmation of tie-up talks with rivals

Renewables
Green power station site opened
Australia commits $1 billion to renewable, clean energy projects
Rising costs 'threaten green agenda'
Centrica extends deal for unique wind turbine barge

Climate
Push to bar oil sands to US military
Home is where the heat is: why old can be good as new
Glaciers suffer record shrinkage
EU’s move on emissions targets
What can Blair's climate trip achieve?

Economy
Gold crashes as investors bail out
Ask the oil producers to rescue Wall Street
Banks meet BoE as industry jitters persist
Utility bills lift UK inflation to 9-mth high

UK
Scottish & Southern raises prices
Rising energy costs hit middle-class families

Business
Police raid BP’s Russian venture
Guest Commentary: James H Neale - citicom
Russia accuses brothers Alexander and Ilya Zaslavsky of being 'oil' spies
Delta cuts staff as it struggles with tie up
EasyJet shares plummet on profit warning

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The original at at the ODAC site has links and more commentary. -BA

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Original article available here.
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