Welcome to ASPO International

ASPO is a network of scientists and others, having an interest in determining the date and impact of the peak and decline of the world's production of oil and gas, due to resource constraints. Read more.

On this page you will find news related to ASPO International, or any of its national organizations. For more news related to Peak Oil, see the News section on our links page.

USGS: Alaska's untapped oil reserves estimate lowered by about 90 percent

The U.S. Geological Survey says a revised estimate for the amount of conventional, undiscovered oil in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska is a fraction of a previous estimate. The group estimates about 896 million barrels of such oil are in the reserve, about 90 percent less than a 2002 estimate of 10.6 billion barrels.

The new estimate is mainly due to the incorporation of new data from recent exploration drilling revealing gas occurrence rather than oil in much of the area, the geological survey said. "These new findings underscore the challenge of predicting whether oil or gas will be found in frontier areas," USGS Director Dr. Marcia McNutt said in a statement. "It is important to re-evaluate the petroleum potential of an area as new data becomes available."

Read more: CNN

IEA: Unclear If Oil Reserve Growth Will Contribute to Future Supply

Recent increases in oil reserves in Iraq, Iran and Venezuela are "good news," but it remains unclear whether they will contribute to future supply, Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the International Energy Agency, or IEA, said on Monday 25 October 2010.

"To have more reserves is certainly good news, because it gives us a more precise prediction of costs and necessary investments," Tanaka told Dow Jones Newswires at an energy conference in Moscow. "But the issue is how much investments will happen to develop these reserves, how this will increase production capacity. "Until then, we're not sure whether it will contribute to future supply," Tanaka said.

Iraq dramatically increased the estimate of its proven oil reserves earlier this month, the first revision to the data since 2001. Following the increase, Iran and Venezuela--both rivals for a share of total production within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries--said they were raising their own reserves estimates.

New Zealand parliament report: The next oil shock?

On 13 October 2010, the New Zealand Parliament released a research report entitled "The next oil shock?" dealing with peak oil and future supply for the world.

Some key aspects of this paper concluded that "Low-cost reserves of oil are being rapidly exhausted, forcing oil companies to turn to more expensive sources of oil. This replacement of low-cost sources of oil with higher-costs sources is driving the price of oil higher" and that "there is a risk that the world economy may be at the start of a cycle of supply crunches leading to price spikes and recessions, followed by recoveries leading to supply crunches".

The main finding was that: "New Zealand is heavily dependent on oil imports and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Gazprom rankled by 'Great Wall' of gas

Gazprom warned the European Union today that proceeding with the bloc's gas industry reforms would mean the end of stable supplies as the Russian energy giant would send more gas to Asia.

Gazprom's export chief, Alexander Medvedev, said that Europe's gas-sector initiatives would build "a sort of Great Wall of China" that would cut off his company, which supplies a quarter of the EU's gas needs, from gas transmission infrastructure. EU legislation requires pipelines to be open to all companies, which threatens Gazprom's position in countries such as Poland where it is a dominant supplier via its Yamal pipeline.

"Having no opportunity to get reasonable income while the gas pipeline is operating or take part in its operation, the suppliers will not wish to make such significant investments. They will start searching for more attractive markets," Medvedev said in a Reuters report.

Read more: Upstream Online

Schlumberger: "World will need higher prices, more investment to meet oil demand"

Speaking at the Barclays Capital conference in New York Andrew Gould, chief executive of oilfield services giant Schlumberger said that if the world is to have any chance of meeting aggressive demand growth for energy in the years to come it will require massive investment by oil companies and a need for ever more advanced technology.

Gould also said that right now the world is still enjoying a sufficient supply of oil discovered back in the years following the price spike of the early 1980s. Sluggish investment in the 1990s and 2000s has only begun to be ameliorated by an uptick in exploration triggered by the boom period of 2003 to 2008.

Much more is needed, Gould said. He cited as a warning the International Energy Agency’s forecast for global energy demand to grow 40% by 2030, with coal, oil and gas expected to supply 80% of energy needs. To find and develop the resources to supply that demand will require investment of $350 billion a year for the next 20 years.

Coal and Oil: The Dark Monarchs of Global Energy

The secretary of ASPO International Mikael Höök has now made his thesis public by using a nail and hammer and this ”nailing” is an old tradition at Uppsala University, Sweden. The thesis "Coal and Oil: The Dark Monarchs of Global Energy: Understanding Supply and Extraction Patterns and their Importance for Future Production” can be downloaded from Uppsala University (go to download). You can read the articles in the thesis by downloading the “Athors version“ of the listed publications.

The public defense of the thesis will be on September 24th at 9 AM at Ångström Laboratory, Uppsala. This is the third thesis about Peak Oil related subjects from Uppsala Global Energy Systems.

Abstract:

The formation of modern society has been dominated by coal and oil, and together these two fossil fuels account for nearly two thirds of all primary energy used by mankind.

Australia: Running on empty?

The most influential progressive think tank in Australia, The Australia Institute based in Canberra, recently published a paper on peak oil and its importance for the government.

Summary of the content and conclusions:
Like climate change, the possibility of peak oil poses an uncomfortable challenge to citizens and governments alike in the 21st century. 'Peak oil' is the term first used by M K Hubbert in the 1950s to describe the point in time at which the worldwide production of crude oil extraction will be maximised. But while it is inevitable that production will peak at some point, it is uncertain when that point will be reached.
Peak oil concerns exploded during the rapid escalation of oil prices prior to the 2007 global financial crisis (GFC), and resurfaced recently when oil prices appeared to resume their upward trend. These concerns have been underscored by official bodies such as the International Energy Agency (IEA) warning of a possible 'supply crunch' brought about by a lack of new investment following the GFC.

Peak Oil - an analysis by German Military

A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how "peak oil" might change the global economy. The internal draft document -- leaked on the Internet -- shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis.

The Peak Oil issue is so politically explosive that it's remarkable when an institution like the Bundeswehr, the German military, uses the term "peak oil" at all. But a military study currently circulating on the German blogosphere goes further.

The study is a product of the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Center, a think tank tasked with fixing a direction for the German military. The team of authors, led by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Will, uses sometimes-dramatic language to depict the consequences of an irreversible depletion of raw materials. It warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the "total collapse of the markets" and of serious political and economic crises.

AttachmentSize
German_Peak_Oil.pdfGerman_Peak_Oil.pdf1.94 MB

UK peak oil alarm revealed by secret official talks

Behind government dismissals of 'alarmist' fears there is growing concern over critical future energy supplies. Speculation that government ministers are far more concerned about a future supply crunch than they have admitted has been fuelled by the revelation that they are canvassing views from industry and the scientific community about "peak oil".

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is also refusing to hand over policy documents about "peak oil" – the point at which oil production reaches its maximum and then declines – under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act, despite releasing others in which it admits "secrecy around the topic is probably not good".

Terry Macalister and Lionel Badal has written an article about this in The Guardian where they highlight the events going on behind the scenes in the UK government.

Read more: The Guardian

Syndicate content