Peak Oil (was "petroleum geologist explains US war policy")

[Backatcha Bandit]

This seems significant, but I've not fully processed it yet, so I'm just sticking this here so I don't lose it:

Russia's Rosneftegaz closes Rosneft privatisation deal

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian state holding company Rosneftegaz on Wednesday closed a deal with the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and commodities trader Glencore (GLEN.L) to sell a 19.5 percent stake in state-owned oil major Rosneft (ROSN.MM), Rosneft said.

The privatisation deal, which Rosneft Chief Executive Igor Sechin called the largest in Russia's history, was announced by Rosneft in a meeting with President Vladimir Putin in December.

Its success suggests the lure of taking a share in one of the world's biggest oil companies outweighs the risks associated with Western sanctions imposed on Russia over the conflict in Ukraine.

"The technical procedures for closing (the deal) required the preparation and signing of more than 50 documents and agreements," Rosneft said in a statement. "All this reflects the unprecedented complexity of the deal."

Italy's Intesa Sanpaolo (ISP.MI) said on Tuesday it would provide a loan for up to 5.2 billion euros ($5.4 billion) to help the QIA and Glencore purchase the stake.

 

[yield]

This seems significant, but I've not fully processed it yet, so I'm just sticking this here so I don't lose it:

Russia's Rosneftegaz closes Rosneft privatisation deal

More details about the deal on Dances with Bears from last month

In fact, Kremlin and Russian banking sources acknowledge, the money originated from the Central Bank of Russia, recycled through the Russian state banks to Rosneft and back, and finally concealed inside secret fiduciary agreements with a consortium of Glencore, the Swiss trading company, and the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), an Arabian Gulf state agency. The agreements appear to make Glencore and QIA the owners of a 19.5% shareholding in Rosneft – when they are fiduciary shareholders – and that’s not the same thing as owners.

 

[Backatcha Bandit]

Cheers, Yield... Update here: ROSNEFT TRIES 3-MONKEY SOLUTION FOR ITS SHARE SALE PROBLEM, ITALIANS AND SWISS TOO

QIA money still in play, just the Italians now bowing to US pressure on sanctions? Swiss just doing what the Swiss do?

RT also mentioned "Mubadala, an Abu Dhabi government sovereign wealth fund" last week...

So much money, so many unnamed sources.

 

[Backatcha Bandit]

Still not sure what to make of the Rosneft thing...

Putin sees success for Glencore, Qatar, Intesa in Russia post-Rosneft deal

Putin said since the deal was announced on Dec. 7, Rosneft's market value had risen 18 percent.

In other Russia news:

Russia Wrests Crown of Top China Oil Supplier From Saudi Arabia

Russia overtook Saudi Arabia as China’s top oil supplier last year for the first time ever amid the ongoing battle for market share in the world’s biggest energy market.

Interesting timing: Chinese warships tour Gulf Arab states for first time since 2010

-

Also worth a read, this piece from Alastair Crooke discusses global financial issues within the context of energy:

https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2017/01/what-is-this-crisis-of-modernity/

 

[Argonia]

I find the excellent Peak Prosperity website to be on the money when it comes to peak oil.

 

[gosub]

The End of the Oil Age Is Upon Us

A new report suggests that over the next 30 years, at least 80 percent of the oil industry will be wiped out.

www.vice.com

Interesting times

 

[elbows]

The End of the Oil Age Is Upon Us

A new report suggests that over the next 30 years, at least 80 percent of the oil industry will be wiped out.

www.vice.com

Interesting times

Well it was only a question of time, and how events are framed.

Some of the basic premises of this thread survived to a much greater degree than some would have us believe. Mistakes were less to do with the central premise and more to do with the timescale of how long various plateau and unconventional supply scenarios could carry on for, the extent to which the narrative would switch to the demand side rather than the supply side, etc.

I still think the financial crisis and the policies that followed have more to do with the oil situation than in acknowledged. The financial crisis changed the trajectory for a decade and now pandemic-related demand destruction has a similar opportunity to alter the trajectory. Whether this actually leads to a permanently changed trajectory or just some additional bought time due to only temporarily suppressed demand, I will have to wait longer to determine.

Theres a couple of paragraphs in that article which are not a bad summary of the way things have gone in the lifetime of this thread.

Earlier in February, I reported on a major study by the Geological Survey of Finland which assessed the implications of the fact that conventional oil production began to plateau around 2005. After this point, the world has become increasingly dependent on unconventional oil and gas supplies. Since 2008, the rise in demand has been met almost entirely by more expensive and difficult to extract sources such as shale oil, tar sands and offshore drilling.

While market prices have remained too low for oil companies to make a meaningful profit relative to rocketing extraction and production costs, they have ramped up billions of dollars in debt to keep the show on the road: all enabled by massive post-2008 quantitative easing. Thus, the study warned:

“The era of cheap and abundant energy is long gone. Money supply and debt have grown faster than the real economy. Debt saturation and paralysis is now a very real risk, requiring a global scale reset.”

In June, a peer-reviewed study led by Dr Roger Bentley of the Petroleum Analysis Centre in Ireland found that global conventional oil production had indeed reached a “resource-limited plateau” from 2005 onwards. Although this was relieved by the rise in US shale oil, even before the pandemic there were signs that the shale boom “may be fairly short-lived.”

We shouldnt really be surprised. Transition is a very long process that began long ago and where the timescales involved are inconvenient for our standard ways of viewing the world and its looming big issues with a sense of imminency. This may serve certain subthemes well but can introduce errors into our way of trying to view the whole story, a story that no doubt last longer than an average human life, and where dramatic crunch points might be harder to predict the exact timing of than people thought back in the early 2000s. There are clearly ways to prop certain things up and manage decline in a manner which avoids even acknowledging the underlying causes of the situation, and I am far past the point where I would dare to confidently predict when or even if the underlying realities are given proper star billing in the common narrative about the times we live in.

 

[Donald H]

Is oil going to be very important for many years to come? Let's have a close look at Venezuela and US plans for war there.

The US has held off getting that war going for much too long on the scale of what's normal for US aggression. Two possible reasons why:

1. The US doesn't need the oil.

2. Russia and China have interests there and the US would be risking a third world war if it tries.

And so, #1 is completely out of the question. Venezuela would have been toast long ago if not for Russia and China.

 

[Crispy]

1. The US doesn't need the oil.

The US doesn't need the oil (right now). It's been a net exporter for quite a while, thanks to shale and fracking.

 

[Donald H]

The US doesn't need the oil (right now). It's been a net exporter for quite a while, thanks to shale and fracking.

That's quite likely bullshit but it's pretty hard to prove.

 

[Pickman's model]

That's quite likely bullshit but it's pretty hard to prove.

why don't you just Google 'is the United States a net exporter of oil"?

 

[Donald H]

why don't you just Google 'is the United States a net exporter of oil"?

Do it for me and make sure you keep 'oil' separate from 'petroleum based energy products'. And while you're on the task, check out the cost of all of it so you'll be prepared for the discussion.
But still be prepared for US bullshit to keep the cover up on why they run roughshod over the ME with their wars.
I've heard it suggested that they invaded Iraq for the fall cabbage crop!

 

[Streathamite]

That's quite likely bullshit but it's pretty hard to prove.

Actually, it's been extensively documented. fracking and shale are huge in the US right now.

 

[yield]

Actually, it's been extensively documented. fracking and shale are huge in the US right now.

Were huge. Still struggling to survive the oil price crash from the spring.

The whole industry has been in relative decline for sometime.

ExxonMobil booted from the Dow after close to a century. FT. August 24, 2020 Outline - Read & annotate without distractions

 

[Donald H]

Were huge. Still struggling to survive the oil price crash from the spring.

The whole industry has been in relative decline for sometime.

ExxonMobil booted from the Dow after close to a century. FT. August 24, 2020 Outline - Read & annotate without distractions

When their heads are full of propaganda it's pretty well impossible to set them straight yield. I've taken on Streath as a longterm project. But for now, it's pretty dumb to say that the US isn't interested in cornering the world's oil markets. This is the kind of stuff that wars are started over!

 

[elbows]

I was quite entertained by this report from a year or so ago:

Peak oil, 20 years later: Failed prediction or useful insight?

20 years ago, in 1998, Scientific American published a paper by Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrère titled “The End of Cheap Oil” [1], starting a …

www.sciencedirect.com

Its even got one graph that turned out to be the classic shape in it, lol.

.

 

[Jay Park]

why don't you just Google 'is the United States a net exporter of oil"?

can you give over being a supporter of US imperialism, please

 

[Pickman's model]

can you give over being a supporter of US imperialism, please

I am not supporting American imperialism.

If someone says 'the Americans have invaded 40 countries since 1945' or 'the us has waged 40 wars of aggression since 1945' they are making specific claims. You may recall how the invasion of Iraq in 03 was widely seen as illegal as waging aggressive war in a way say Vietnam or Korea weren't. Being economical with the truth like the miserable Donald h undermines anti-imperialiam as many of the more egregious cases, like Vietnam, weren't invasions or aggressive war in the sense Iraq was at all. In Korea the United States etc were repelling an invasion, fighting under the auspices of the United Nations.

In dh's shoes I'd simply have said the us has intervened in 40 or more countries since 1945, toppling governments like Arbenz in Guatemala and Allende in Chile, supporting brutal regimes like Saddam hussein's when it suited them - and that's before considering their use of armed force against their opponents.

If you're going to oppose imperialism you should be honest about what it is, what it does, and frankly Donald h wasn't.

 

[Jay Park]

I am not supporting American imperialism.

If someone says 'the Americans have invaded 40 countries since 1945' or 'the us has waged 40 wars of aggression since 1945' they are making specific claims. You may recall how the invasion of Iraq in 03 was widely seen as illegal as waging aggressive war in a way say Vietnam or Korea weren't. Being economical with the truth like the miserable Donald h undermines anti-imperialiam as many of the more egregious cases, like Vietnam, weren't invasions or aggressive war in the sense Iraq was at all. In Korea the United States etc were repelling an invasion, fighting under the auspices of the United Nations.

In dh's shoes I'd simply have said the us has intervened in 40 or more countries since 1945, toppling governments like Arbenz in Guatemala and Allende in Chile, supporting brutal regimes like Saddam hussein's when it suited them - and that's before considering their use of armed force against their opponents.

If you're going to oppose imperialism you should be honest about what it is, what it does, and frankly Donald h wasn't.

Pickers, I’m sorry, I was trying to be irreverent. Of course I know you’re not that. I’ve always followed your every word and learnt a lot from you, fella.

 

[elbows]

If there is one thing I've learnt/had confirmed on this subject in the last 11 or 12 years, its that this world of capitalism finds it much easier to consider the realities of oil when it is presented as a straightforward demand side story. The pandemic is going to underline this further.

I havent attempted to read the story yet but I saw via the BBC front pages article (Newspaper headlines: Tory 'rebellion' and lockdown 'blow' to health) that this story is on the front page of the FT on Monday:



Despite not exploring the detail of that story yet I did read a BP review soon after this thread lurched back into life recently. I just didnt get as far as commenting on it.

I will quote the first bit of it that caught my eye when I was reading it, since it puts one aspect of pandemic disruption into a bigger context which, despite its framing as climate change mitigation driven, will be familiar to those who are aware of the challenging slope of the most likely end of the age of oil scenario.

The disruption to our everyday lives caused by the lockdowns has provided a glimpse of a cleaner, lower carbon world: air quality in many of the world’s most polluted cities has improved; skies have become clearer. The IEA (International Energy Agency) estimate that global CO2 emissions may fall by as much as 2.6 gigatonnes this year. That has come at considerable cost and as economies restart and our lives return to normal there is a risk that these gains will be lost.

But to get to net zero by 2050, the world requires similar-sized reductions in carbon emissions every other year for the next 25 years. This can be achieved only by a radical shift in all our behaviours. By using resources and energy more efficiently. And by implementing the full range of zero and low carbon energies and technologies at our disposal – including renewable energies, electrification, hydrogen, CCUS (carbon capture
use and storage), bioenergy and many more. These technologies exist today – the challenge is to use them at pace and scale.

From Statistical Review of World Energy | Energy economics | Home which doesnt cost anything even though the download goes into a shopping basket when you press the button.

And like I said, I havent even looked into thr FT story of what from BP it is based on.

 

[elbows]

As expected, more 'peak oil reframed as a demand side phenomenon'. The comforting illusion of humanity being in the driving seat, of these things being a choice.

Reuters | Breaking International News & Views

Find latest news from every corner of the globe at Reuters.com, your online source for breaking international news coverage.

uk.reuters.com