This series concludes by visiting a political bloc that represents another major philosophical current in Europe. The Confederal Group of the European United Left – Nordic Green Left (GUE-NGL) is the Scientific Socialist reference at the European Parliament. Although composed at its core by state-level Communist parties, it also brings together some less Scientific parties that haven’t yielded to Liberalism. More than sharing a philosophy, GUE-NGL members share a common reluctance towards the Europen Construction process, at least in its current form.

Editors’ note: Apologies to readers. Luis completed this post a few days ago, but through a mix-up on the editorial end, it did not get promptly posted. Since these parties have platforms that may still be of interest, we offer it to you at this late date.

It all started 150 years ago when a German textile tycoon sent his young son to work at one of his factories in Manchester. During the two years spent there the young man became convinced that the Industrial Revolution was resulting in poorer, not better, living conditions for the majority of the population – the working class – which led him to write a book on the subject – his name: Friedrich Engels. After two years in England, Engels decided to go back to Germany. On the way, he stopped in Paris to meet another young thinker: Karl Marx; his journey ended there. Moving to Brussels the next year, they would spend three years writing “The Manifesto of the Communist Party”. The rest is history.

At least, that is one of the ways of starting the story. What Marx and Engels presented was the idea that social inequity had as its roots on the control that certain individuals had on the Commons, and on the means of production in general. To deal with that imbalance, the only proper remedy would be to simply eliminate any sort of private control of the Commons and deliver control of the enterprise to the working class.

A thorough accounting of what Communism achieved in Europe is beyond these simple lines, a profoundly rich story that would be quite extensive. Fast forward to the early 1980s with the second oil shock and Europe divided in East – surrendered to Communism – and West – surrendering to Liberalism. The collapse of oil prices in 1985 coupled to the peak of oil production in the USSR triggered the collapse of the Communist bloc, which eventually led to Europe becoming more uniform in political terms, with Communist parties relegated to the background in a Market Economy backed by rotating Democracies.

With the Globalisation process following the implosion of the USSR, a slow process (that was already in march in many states) shifting the working class from blue collar to white collar jobs ensued. The Communist parties largely failed to appeal to this emerging working class and progressively lost their grip on the electorate, something quite visible in their Parliament results, going from over 10% of the seats in 1979 to just over 5% in 2004.

Communist parties in Europe today are not exactly the same as those of the XIX century. Fully integrated in the Democratic process, they do not advocate for Planned Economies, choosing instead to advocate for state control of key services in a market economy framework. Their biggest flag in recent years has been the fight for workers’ rights, confronting the precariousness of labour contracts imposed by the Free Market. Modern Communist parties are sometimes compared to the Social Democrats of the early XX century, when Socialists of that time re-factored Socialism to integrate a multi-party democracy. As a reference for foreigners, many of the concerns of European Communists are common to the Socialist Party of America, although the latter goes further left in many issues.

GUE-NGL is less of a party and more of an ideological platform; its parliament members retain almost full independence, especially on state matters. There isn’t, for instance, a common Vision for Europe put forward. Of all the groups reviewed in this series, GUE-NGL is the least cohesive and farthest from the traditional concept of a party.

GUE-NGL’s website is sober but well organized, far from the mega-productions of the traditional parties. It has a great focus on the people: each parliament member is presented individually. Each state-level delegation is also presented in some detail. There’s even a section dedicated to the party’s staff, with a small file presenting a picture and contact for each. GUE-NGL also doesn’t present election specific content, something that seems exclusive of the big parties; possibly a consequence of budget limitations. But the website contains a section entitled Policy that a lists a good number of areas for which the party tried to present structured but simple ideas. Clicking on Energy, the reader is presented with two lonely paragraphs:

ENERGY

The GUE/NGL Group has contributed to adopting new legislation to enhance energy saving policies, to improve energy efficiency and to reinforce the use of renewable energies with the objective of respecting the commitments made by the European Union at the Kyoto Conference. We continue to press the case globally for renewable energies and we emphasise the role that research into energy efficient vehicles and investment in clean and ecological public transport systems could have on limiting pollution and protecting the future of the planet. The active development of renewable energy will go some way towards addressing the fossil fuel crisis and can lead to environmental improvements. It can also bring economic benefits through developing new technologies and creating new jobs.

“Contributing to meeting the energy challenges of the 21st century is a European responsibility, but it cannot be adapted to an unbridled race for profitability or competition. Preparing the post-oil era; progressing much further in the reduction of greenhouse gases; increasing the research effort to boost energy efficiency and diversity; transforming the organisation of transport; establishing the right to energy for all - these are the eminently political tasks that cannot, for risk of failing, be allowed to be kept in check by short-sighted market considerations.” Francis Wurtz.

“Post-oil era”. Words that are not that common in the political discourse these days (with the proper exception made for Commissioner Piebalgs). These lines attempt simply at a Mission and Vision, not at a real Policy. Some keys areas of action are identified; but it is not that clear if the party really aknowledges the emergency of the moment. And at the closing stages “the right to energy for all” ends up somewhat dislocated from the rest of text, no matter what good intentions are behind that sentence. Before the right to energy comes the access to, or production of it.

Such meager lines prompt a bit more of research through the website’s sections. There are a few loose articles on the matter which do not bring forth an integrated perspective. Worth reproducing is a two year old note by Francis Wurtz, the party’s President, on Liberalisation proposals by the Commission:

Statement by Francis WURTZ, President of the GUE-NGL Group in the European Parliament Following the Commission’s proposals on energy

Brussels, 19/09/07

As it had announced, the Commission has just proposed a new legislative “package” in the field of energy.

More than ten years after the adoption of the first liberalisation directives, the assessment is gloomy: in terms of prices, security of supply and of environmental performance.

Prices are escalating: electricity charges increased by 9% in the EU in 2006, the Union is not immune to the serious crises that are believed to be the preserve of other continents, such as the massive blackout of November 2006 which left millions of Europeans without electricity. As for the sustainable energy challenge, it is still worth noting that coal and gas account for 48% of the electricity production of the EU.

The official report is therefore sufficiently alarming so that one wonders about the justification of the method followed up to now. Instead of that, the Commission is pushing ahead, and now proposes a pure and simple separation between the production means and the distribution network - in other words the dismantling of major companies trusted by all for the quality of their service. It brings to mind the drunkard from St-Exupéry’s tale who, having drank too much, drinks without further ado to forget… that he drinks.

My group defends a radically different vision for the European energy domain. Energy is a strategic asset, essential to the economy as well as to society. It is a common asset to which any and everybody has to have access. The service of general interest that entails the production, transportation and distribution of energy has to be defined democratically and entrusted to public operators equipped with the necessary industrial means, and all the more accountable thanks to an irreproachable method of governance, with respect to their employees, with respect to consumers and the entire company. They must absolutely be preserved and put in a position to contribute to a genuine European public energy service.

My group will therefore fight with the employees, with consumers and with the advocates of public service, against the dangerous draft that the Commission has just submitted.

There’s life beyond Liberalisation. By nature, Communism and unbundling/deregulation don’t exactly match, but it is good to know that at least someone at parliament understands that these tactics will not provide Energy Security.

This peering into GUE-NGL’s Energy Policy ends up being a major disappointment. There’s no clear policy to show. It isn’t even clear if this is a priority area of intervention or not; too little information, without making any commitments. Being traditionally an opposition party and with a declining electoral base, GUE-NGL is one of those groups that can afford, and actually profit from, bringing to the debate those issues that aren’t comfortable for bigger parties. That’s more or less the Greens’ strategy, but unfortunately, such isn’t case with the Communists. If Peak Oil isn’t a disruptive event capable of triggering social change, then what will be?

Final notes

Taking the extra space haplessly provided by the GUE-NGL, these final paragraphs reflect on this series as a whole.

The first point to make is that Energy is not a determining area to choose between any of these parties; none of them provides a serious, congruent programme to deal with fossil fuel scarcity. Apart from the Greens-EFA, all the parties leave Energy in the background, with little or no priority. The Greens are willing to commit themselves to more objective strategies, especially in the Transport sector, scoring points in the Efficiency front, but don’t really grasp the urgency of the moment and compromise their stance with an unrealistic outlook on Nuclear.

To all these parties Growth is an accepted fact, an immutable constant, a goal pursuable and to pursue above everything else.

Before leaving, it is perhaps good to stress that although this series encompasses all of the major parties and political currents in Europe, this series left much uncovered. There are more political parties in Parliament and many more at state-level that do not have seats at the moment. An informed voting decision should properly look into those parties as well. To assist in finding parties, there’s a handy electronic tool that informs the citizen which parties are closer to his/hers philosophical profile:

EU Profiler

May the 2009-2014 term be the one when Europe overcomes its dependence on Fossil Fuels.

Previous entries of this series:

Greens-EFA

ALDE

PES

EDD-ED

Higher oil price gives renewables a boost

AFTER a year of swings, the oil price is moving toward a stable middle ground that will benefit not just the oil industry but the struggling renewables sector as well, experts say.

Brent crude closed at $67.82 a barrel last week - nearly double the $35 it plumbed in February but still less than half the record $146 a barrel it touched last summer.

Barclays Capital predicts it is now heading toward the $75 to $85 “Goldilocks” range - not so high that governments aggressively seek alternatives but enough for oil-producing nations to make a comfortable return on more exotic endeavours such as deep-sea drilling and tar sands.

Chavez to expand Venezuela oil nationalizations

CARACAS (Reuters) - President Hugo Chavez has already nationalized most of Venezuela’s energy industry and is preparing to bring chemicals under his wing, but he may still target firms running gas and oil services.

A former soldier inspired by Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Chavez has made energy nationalization the linchpin in his drive to build his own brand of socialism. He has also taken over assets in telecommunications, power, steel and banking.

Tribes keep Peru police hostage after Amazon fights

TARAPOTO, Peru (Reuters) - Hundreds of indigenous protesters were holding 38 police hostage early on Saturday in Peru’s Amazon jungle after fights between tribes and police killed up to 33 people in the worst violence of President Alan Garcia’s government.

Demonstrators also were threatening to set fire to an oil pumping station of state-owned Petroperu unless the government told police to halt efforts to clear weeks of blockades of roads and rivers that have hurt food and fuel supplies.

‘This is an oil war’

Lagos - Nigeria’s main armed group on Sunday intensified its threat to attack the oil industry in the coming days, warning that it will stand firm on a 72-hour ultimatum issued earlier.

“The ultimatum (to local and foreign oil workers) expires about midnight (Monday) … Our focus will be the oil industry as this is an oil war,” the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said in an emailed statement.

Oil: Up to $200 or Down to $25?

It is worrying for oil producers when the Russian President Dimitri Medvedev talks of $150 oil because it is so reminiscent of the $250 a barrel forecast last summer. A little hubris often comes before a fall.

Oil got down to $33 a barrel last December. Could another fall be on the cards this autumn?

Lawsuits target overseas oil company operations

NEW YORK — Royal Dutch Shell is preparing for a federal trial this summer where it would face allegations that it played a role in the executions of activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and other civilians by Nigeria’s former military regime.

It is just the latest in a series of trials seeking to hold big oil companies liable for human rights abuses or environmental damage overseas. As in a similar case against Chevron last year, the plaintiffs found a way to strike at Shell through the courts using an 18th-century law meant to battle piracy.

Average price of Russian oil in 2010 to be about US $60 - Klepach

In a talk with journalists within the framework of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on Saturday, Klepach said, “The most probable price of oil (for 2010) is $60 dollars.”

At the same time, he considers superoptimistic forecasts of a number of experts as unreal. “I don’t think that it will rise to 100 dollars, there are no fundamental factors for this,” Klepach said.

U.S. Interest in Caspian Sea Oil to Bring More Trouble for Russia

Oil and natural gas of the Caspian states seems to be of strategic significance for the West, Richard Morningstar, the US special envoy for Eurasian energy issues said. Why does the US administration show so much interest in the Caspian Sea region? Does it mean that US army bases will soon be deployed there?

Dismal day for Greens in Dublin

The Green Party has lost all its city and county council seats in Dublin, where most of its TDs are based.

Go on, tell it like it really is

Today, doubt is stirring in most corners of the world — mainly caused by the frightening spectre of climate change, peak oil, the global economic recession and rising poverty. To be harsh, but practical, these are probably the best things that have happened to humanity in a long time. They are causing us to wake up and rethink our frames of reference.

Deep ecologists say that modernism has led to a fundamental male-principle ethic of dominance and conquest played out in various hierarchical, militaristic, capitalist and industrialist forms. It disallows the feminine-principle values of caring and respect so necessary to the nurturing of life and the creation of balance in society.

Create a Metro Vancouver municipal party to cope with peak oil

Here’s an idea for a regional citizens’ group called Vancouver Peak Oil: form a political party and run a maximum of one candidate in every municipality across Metro Vancouver in the 2011 election.

The membership of Vancouver Peak Oil should choose the candidates, and each should run with the party label “Peak Oil” after their names.

Sacramento area drivers take the ‘Car-Free Challenge’

Joan Edelstein of West Sacramento made a public vow last week. She will drive her car no more than 200 miles this month.

The go-green pledge puts her among a handful of Sacramentans who’ve announced similar intentions at the new “Car-Free Challenge” Web site – not for pocketbook reasons, they say, but because it’s the right thing to do.

Just days in, however, Edelstein is learning an inconvenient truth about the movement to reduce driving.

Depending on where you live, it’s not easy.

Clean energy is the best option for U.S.

Global warming and unsustainable energy dependence are the foremost environmental issues of our time; they are also the signature economic issues of our day, providing enormous risks to future economic growth and unparalleled opportunities to create jobs and launch a different model of economic development.

‘Realists’ challenge claim of consensus on warming

Several hundred scientists, politicians and activists participated in the third annual International Conference on Climate Change on Tuesday, marking another stage in the timeline of a scientific social movement.

The conference, sponsored by the nonprofit Heartland Institute, hosted panels of climatologists and meteorologists as well as members of Congress to address questions surrounding global warming and climate-change legislation.

Health, climate change vie for boost in Congress

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Barack Obama may be pressuring Congress as no U.S. president has for decades as he aims to get two big domestic goals passed this year — reforming health care and fighting global warming.

“It’s not impossible to do both, but that would be more than a Congress has ever given a president, maybe since the first First 100 Days,” said Brookings Institution senior fellow Stephen Hess, referring to the start of Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” presidency in 1933.

Oil and gas industry’s costs of doing business slide

The oil and gas industry’s costs of doing business are falling amid a pullback in activity and the global recession, according to a pair of indexes kept by IHS/Cambridge Energy Research Associates released Friday.

However, the decline in costs is much slower than crude’s swift fall from last year’s unprecedented three-digit highs. Also, expenses for more fixed costs — like personnel or contracts for limited deep-water vessels — remain largely unchanged.

Daniel Yergin, IHS CERA chairman, said signs of the downward shift in costs emerged in the third quarter last year, before the recession really took hold.

But IHS/CERA’s latest cost analyses “place into clearer view the impact of the financial crisis, spending cutbacks and the fall in crude prices,” Yergin said.

Ukraine pays for Russian gas consumed in May - Naftogaz

KIEV (Itar-Tass) — Ukraine’s oil and gas company Naftogaz Ukrainy has paid in full for the Russian gas imported in May, the company’s press-secretary Valentin Zemlyansky said on Friday.

“The required sum has been entered to Gazprom accounts,” he said.

Big oil watches Iran vote, but investment distant

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran’s presidential election on June 12 may mark a small step toward the return of big oil’s cash to the country’s energy sector, but it could be years before investment flows freely.

Iran sits on the world’s second-largest oil and gas reserves, a mouth-watering prospect for international firms starved of access to Middle East fields. But Tehran has not signed a major deal with a large western oil company for years as political pressure over its nuclear program kept them out.

Nationalization spree continues with seizure of gas-compression plants

State-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa) continued its expropriation spree by taking control of gas-compression companies, under the law which reserves goods and services related to hydrocarbons primary activities for the state.

A month after the entry into force of the legal instrument and after the seizure of 76 oil service companies, President Hugo Chávez announced the timetable that the government will follow to seize about 70 gas-compression units in 14 Venezuelan plants.

Pdvsa, Citgo face financial and labor troubles

Futpv -which comprises some 67,000 workers- denounced that Pdvsa has breached the collective bargaining agreement as it has failed to disburse the trade union allowance. Further the oil giant failed to provide proper medical care and to deliver materials and equipments to carry out industry activities. Futpv also deplored the situation facing more than 8,000 workers in northwestern Zulia state, following takeover by the government of oil services companies.

Nigerian militants warn of “imminent attack”

LAGOS (AFP) – Nigeria’s main armed group Saturday warned oil workers in the southern Niger Delta to leave within 72 hours to avoid an “imminent attack”, which the Nigerian military dismissed as an “empty boast”.

“This is a final warning from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) to local and foreign workers in the oil services and exploration companies to vacate the region within the next 72 hours due to an imminent attack,” MEND said in an email statement.

The militants dubbed the attack “Hurricane Piper Alpha” which they warned “will not discriminate on tribe, nationality, or race when it sweeps across the region.”

Kuwaiti oil puts on 9.1 pct this week, at highest so far this year

KUWAIT (KUNA) — This past week can only be viewed as extraordinary for Kuwait’s crude oil, which was able to make up for some of its losses since July 2008, when its exceeded USD 135 per barrel (pb), only to begin its downward tumble.

British motorists turning their backs on volatile petrol car market, says car manufacturer

Figures show that an increasing number of UK motorists are opting out of the petrol car market and turning to Liquid Petroleum gas (LPG).

With petrol prices again on the rise and LPG costing around half that of petrol, LPG sales figures from Proton reflect consumers changing attitudes.

Energy firms expanding, but cautious over risks

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Energy companies are planning expansions to capture a bigger slice of future growth, looking past gloomy months on hopes the worst of the economic crisis is past, industry executives said this week.

But the optimism is tempered by the view the industry still holds many risks — Japan’s Idemitsu sees lower export margins this year and leading Asian trader Hin Leong says end user demand for distillates in Asia and Europe remains bad.

Total lives with oil at $50, sees $80

PARIS (Reuters) - Total is living with an oil price assumption of $50 a barrel this year but that could rise to $60 next year and $80 in the next two years, a senior company executive said on Thursday.

Saudi - Calling OPEC a ‘cartel’ nothing but show of Western bias

Technically speaking, there does not appear to be anything sinister in using the term “cartel” for OPEC, yet, journalistically speaking, the word definitely carries a negative, rather derogatory connotation. One cannot deny this.

OPEC sensitivity is definitely not without a background. In the Western media, OPEC has often been portrayed as a cartel, the gang bent upon destroying global economic prosperity. By endeavoring for a fair price, some accuse OPEC of masterminding the derailment of attempts at global economic recovery.

Somali Pirates Release Nigerian Tug, Crew Held Since August

(Bloomberg) — Somali pirates released a Nigerian oil field tugboat with its 11 crew, held captive since August, after friends and relatives of the hostages raised a $43,000 ransom, the Somali-American who led the talks said in an interview.

Uganda toughens as oil bullies close in

KAMPALA (Xinhua) — As Uganda prepares to start the commercial drilling of its oil, pressure has started setting in causing concern that the mineral may turn out to be a curse rather than a blessing like in many oil producing African countries.

Gazprom eyes takeover of Slovenia’s fuel retailer

LJUBLJANA (AFP) – Russian gas giant Gazprom may be interested in acquiring Slovenia’s largest fuel retailer Petrol, Slovenian daily Delo reported Saturday, citing unnamed sources.

“It seems that Petrol has become an interesting takeover target for Gazprom amid the global crisis in the capital market and the drop in share prices,” Delo reported on its frontpage.

Obama tax plans draw ire of energy companies

HOUSTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration’s plan to do away with billions in tax breaks for U.S. oil and natural gas companies faces a tough and expensive fight from the industry, which says the proposals would threaten energy security and raise costs for everyone.

Oil’s Ascent To Ground Airlines Again

Just when things started looking up for the carriers, higher fuel threatens to put a lid on gains.

Coal, Oil and the Human Difficulty of Grasping Long Duration Problems

In the mid 19th Century, William Stanley Jevons patiently tried to explain to his fellow countrymen that the rich energy content in coal was not a marginal but a pervasive influence on nearly every aspect of the British economy. He warned that coal production would inevitably migrate away from the easy, near-surface deposits to the deeper deposits that would take more capital, more labor–indeed more energy–to extract. His point was rather simple, but, it of course escaped the understanding of the general public. Jevons held the view that British coal would attain, and then surpass, an optimal point of price, production, and therefore utility to the British economy.

Does any of this sound familiar? Jevons was repeatedly misunderstood as saying that Britain was running out of coal. He took great pains to explain the scale of the problem, but Jevons was talking about a cycle whose duration would extend beyond people’s immediate concerns.

Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller (review)

This is a book about the implications of Peak Oil: the theory that the world’s oil production is past the highest level it will ever reach, or very close to it.

Merely by writing that sentence, I have ensured a healthy crop of angry correspondence for the FT. Believers in Peak Oil are quick and often intemperate in defence of their views.

Their zeal is understandable. If you had uncovered a truth that would mean the end of civilisation as we know it, but were being universally ignored, you too might seem a little wild-eyed. Yet that intensity often makes it hard for the Peak Oilists to get their message across.

It does not help that many of them are engineers and scientists, unskilled in the subtle arts of persuasion. Some, who stockpile shotgun shells and tins of beans with grim satisfaction, seem actively to relish the prospect of a harsher but simpler world after society has broken down.

The new economy of tomorrow

Rubin says the “new economy” will have a wide variety of goods produced regionally with less environmental impact.

“It will be a more diverse economy with more diverse job opportunities,” he says. “All of those things that we now import from somewhere halfway around the world - well most of those things we’re going to now have to learn to make for ourselves.”

But not everything will come from close to home, he admits.

“We’ve always got our tea and coffee from China,” Rubin says. “And it’s going to take a whole lot more global warming before we can start growing coffee in Canada.”

Toyota says hybrids will be the best ‘green’ car for some time

TOYOTA, Japan (AP) — A Toyota executive said Thursday a battery breakthrough is needed for electric vehicles to become mainstream, and hybrids will remain the best “green” car choice for some time.

His comments came just hours after the Japan Automobile Dealers Association said Toyota’s Prius hybrid was the No. 1 selling vehicle in Japan for May, clinching the top spot for the first time — even though the latest model had been on sale for only half the month.

Save money - car share

The county council has launched a Moving Forward campaign and part of the scheme includes a car sharing initiative.

The free service means people can find car share partners by matching journeys together online.

Alternative Energy Power Cost Parity By 2011 Experts Say

By 2011, solar power should be at a point where it has never been in history, which is being cost competitive with traditional power generation without taking any subsidies into account.

Antibiotic problem haunts biofuels

The Food and Drug Administration recently found that samples of a feed byproduct from dozens of corn-ethanol plants were contaminated with antibiotics. With that news, producing vehicle fuel from grain is looking not only like a wasteful and inefficient process but also like a danger to human health.

New device can make ethanol at home

This is how it will work: Interested motorists will buy the microfueler and keep it at home, probably in the garage. A normal wall socket and water supply are all that’s needed to churn the waste into ethanol. GreenHouse Energy will supply the liquid waste at no charge.

Motorists can then pull the car up and pump the ethanol at the going market price, currently about $2 a gallon. They will be billed a fixed rate for the fuel pumped, most likely monthly. The pump machine can make 40 gallons a day and will automatically notify the distributor when supplies are running low, company officials say.

Rainforest Conservation More Profitable Than Palm Oil Production

Writing in the peer-reviewed journal Conservation Letters on Friday, researchers noted that a system of selling credits to reduce carbon emissions in the Indonesian rainforest could provide a feasible method of conservation.

Authors of the new report stated that paying to reduce rainforest carbon emissions could actually amount to more income than initiatives to use the deforested land for palm oil production.

New clean energy 2009 investment seen sharply down

LONDON (Reuters) - New investment in clean energy will total $95 to $115 billion in 2009, representing a drop of 26-39 percent from last year’s total of $155 billion, data published by research group New Energy Finance showed on Friday.

The clean energy sector including wind and solar power enjoyed more than fourthfold growth in investment since 2004 but has suffered a sharp fall as a result of the financial crisis.

Clean energy depends on wider economy growth

LONDON (Reuters) - Clean energy has strong guaranteed government backing in long-term subsidies but its future growth hinges on wider economic recovery and European targets are in doubt, senior energy executives told Reuters Energy Summit.

The big picture for renewables is a sector which may emerge from recession as fast or faster than the wider economy, because government support is often in the form of guaranteed long-term price support.

The race for clean-energy innovation

ON A RECENT congressional delegation to Hong Kong, I toured a factory that is developing a thin solar cell that can be put on windows to generate electricity from the sun with zero carbon emissions. I thought of 1366 Technologies, a company in Lexington that is also racing to get advanced solar technologies to market.

It may seem like your typical competition between two companies, but this race is about much more than the solar market. It is about the race for trillions of dollars in clean-energy investments. As President Obama says, “the nation that leads in 21st-century clean energy is the nation that will lead the 21st-century global economy.”

The Next Climate Deal: How Big is the Battle for Cleantech IP?

Late last month, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce pulled together a small, motley crew of companies with a stake in upcoming climate policy to launch its Innovation, Development & Employment Alliance — a group trying to ensure that an international climate deal doesn’t weaken rules about who can profit from cleantech innovations. As we’ve noted before, the V-P of the Chamber of Commerce’s intellectual property center called the UN climate negotiations taking place in Copenhagen this December “the IP battle of the year.”

But for those waging battles to defend IP, the consequences of negotiators taking a “very collaborative” approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and sharing “all intellectual property as much as possible,” as U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has urged, may not be such big a threat.

Money grows on trees

Kevin Conrad, interviewed last week, said it was too early to conclude what went wrong but said an “independent review” was under way. He added that “carbon speculators” were putting pressures on landowners in many countries to sell large tracts of forest ahead of a possible deal on avoided deforestation in Copenhagen later this year.

The broader issue with any kind of carbon credit, however, is ensuring that governments of poor countries behave impeccably. Indeed, if problems like this can happen in Mr Conrad’s own back yard, it suggests that the challenges ahead for REDD are tough ones.

“Buy American” provision in House climate bill

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A new “Buy American” provision in a massive climate change bill working its way through Congress is a worrisome sign of increased U.S. protection, a business official said on Friday.

The provision offers financial aid to automakers building plug-in electric cars. But it stipulates those cars must be “developed and produced in the United States.”

Dodging a CO2 hangover

Even as they defend national interests, negotiators need to bear in mind the latest evidence of the continuing buildup of heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere despite the economic slump, and the projections for a further massive rise as growth resumes, particularly in Asia.

Deciding when to move plants and animals to save them from global warming

As the climate warms and alters the global ecosystem, many plants and animals will find themselves in habitats too warm or physically altered. For some, it may be a case of move or die. Some researchers have proposed using “managed relocation,” or assisted migration, to help move vulnerable flora and fauna to habitats where they are more likely to thrive.

Anglican Head Urges Churches to Pray, Act Now for Environment

LONDON – The head of the worldwide Anglican Communion has issued an appeal to churches to pray and act for the environment ahead of key UN talks on climate change later this year.

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams is urging churches to use Environment Sunday on June 7 as an opportunity to pray for the planet and the campaign for climate change to ensure that the best deal is reached by government leaders at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

Mexico promises CO2 cuts, activists urge consistency

XCARET, Mexico (AFP) – President Felipe Calderon has promised to dramatically reduce Mexico’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions as activists slammed the government for inconsistent energy policies.

Developed countries responsible for climate change: Chinese expert

Developed countries bear the historical responsibility for climate change and should provide compensation for that, an expert from Tsinhua University said on Thursday.

Study Finds Large Area of Africa Vulnerable to Climate Change

A new study on climate change warns that hotter weather and shifting rainfall patterns could ruin as many as one million square kilometers of marginal farmlands in sub-Saharan Africa by 2050. Scientists say poor subsistence farmers may have to depend much more on livestock to act as a source for food and income.

Climate insurance

Since those early days, when manmade climate change was a virtually unknown theory, other far-sighted reinsurers, chiefly giant Swiss Re, have joined Munich Re in aggressively warning of climate-change dangers. In doing so, the reinsurers have been doing their duty in maximizing shareholder profit.

Fear of climate change, in fact, has been the biggest boon in insurance industry history. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the insurance industry has no interest in minimizing future risks to the public, in climate change or in any other field. To the contrary, the more that risks exist and the more that the insurance industry can charge to insure against those risks, the larger the potential market for insurance industry products.

A few months back, Saudi Aramco commissioned a story about the first wells in the Ghawar oil field in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest. With the title “Ghawar’s Magnificent Five”, it was published first on the Saudi Aramco website but has subsequently appeared elsewhere. Saudi Aramco later published the same article along with the companion piece “Still Going Strong” (subtitled “57-year-old super-giant Ghawar oil field productive as ever”) in the Fall 2008 issue of SA Dimensions magazine, also available on their website¹. “Magnificent Five” is the newly minted moniker² for the group of discovery wells, one for each of the five major production areas of Ghawar: ‘Ain Dar, Shedgum, Uthmaniyah, Hawiyah, and Haradh. These articles are remarkable in that Saudi Aramco rarely reveals production details for specific wells in Ghawar, but something in this myth-building exercise is amiss — both in the consistency of the numbers provided and their use as indicators for the state of the wells and the overall field. In this article, I will examine the data provided for these wells and cross check with other available information including satellite imagery available within Google Earth. There is definitely more to the story, and this uncut version is actually more interesting than what Saudi Aramco has released to theaters.

¹http://www.saudiaramco.com. Click Newsroom/Publications/Dimensions.

²The wells’ new nickname invokes the grandeur of another movie: The Magnificent Seven. It is noteworthy, though, that most of the seven died prematurely.

First Things First

The first, (or discovery) well is certainly critical to the success of an oil field in that, well, there has to be one. Its story can also be one of drama, as is the case for the first (successful) well in Saudi Arabia, Damman #7 (aptly named “Prosperity Well”), located a short walk from Saudi Aramco’s headquarters in Dhahran. Here are some excerpts from an account of the drilling:

By May, 1937, everybody around Dammam admitted that the well was in bad shape and was going to be slow. There was a spurt in July that took them down to 2,400 feet, then delays again. On October 6 they had reached 3,300 feet. Tests then, as well as on the 11th and 13th at slighly greater depths, produced the same report: “No oil, no water.”

At 3,600 feet, on October 16, they got their first showing of oil—about two gallons, in a flow of thin gas-cut mud. On the last day of 1937, with the hole drilled to 4,535 feet, the well blew out when the control equipment failed. After contact was reestablished, measurements showed the well making 30 million cubic feet of gas a day against 1,600 pounds back pressure. Because of the high pressure they let it blow for seven hours while mixing mud to kill it with, and then killed it without difficulty. There was no oil in the gas it blew. … While he was selling them, Ohliger’s crew was drilling past the “fish” that it had been unable to pick up, and on March 4, 1938, San Francisco got the word that blew it back again into the euphoria of the summer of 1936. Tested on that day, No.7 flowed at the rate of 1,585 barrels a day. Tested three days later, it flowed at the rate of 3,690 barrels. The drilling party stuck the tester in the hole and couldn’t get it out, and the well, flowing as nearly open as possible through the stuck pipe, went on producing at a rate that made them cheer.

Pretty gripping stuff, and probably worth the well being immortalized with a nickname and by mounting the original wellhead at Saudi Aramco headquarters. Anyway, back to the “Magnificant Five”.

Given its size, Ghawar warrants five discovery wells (Fazran’s well didn’t make the team). Disappointingly, the tale related for each of these discoveries is not as gripping as that for Damman #7. Also, these are likely not the most productive wells in each of the areas, and lauding the achievement of any particular well in Ghawar seems somewhat akin to giving the straw credit for the margarita. So why tell their story? As shown in the excerpts below, it seems to be a case of wanting to cement the legacy while reassuring the world that the “Glory Days” are not gone.

Since the discovery of the Ghawar field in 1948, Saudi Aramco has implemented best-in-class reservoir management practices and leading technologies that have evolved over the years. As a result, the Magnificent Five have demonstrated extraordinary performance with extended lifecycles and outstanding oil recovery.

and in conclusion:

Altogether, the Magnificent Five have produced nearly 350 million barrels of oil. There’s no telling how much more they will produce — as the end of their story is not yet in sight.

Unless you go looking for it.

Sweeping In

Before we look more closely at the “Mag Five”, let’s address an important aspect of Ghawar not discussed in the articles. The Ghawar oil field has been subjected to peripheral water injection for nearly 40 years. The goal of the water injection is to maintain pressure at the oil/water contact (OWC) so as to enable the oil to flow uniformly towards the wells. As the OWC moves upwards as the oil is displaced, wells nearer to the periphery of the field will be expected to encounter water sooner than those in the middle. Ideally, the field would be developed in stages, with the first producers situated a modest distance from the (original) OWC and wells further updip either choked back (to concentrate flow on the first producers) or simply undrilled. This is shown below. Click the Start/Continue button to proceed through the various stages of field depletion.

Figure 1. Peripheral water injection.

If the first wells are drilled near the middle of the field, a successful sweep would mean that they would remain successful producers for most of the field’s life. As we will see, four of the “Magnificent Five” are indeed located in the middle of their respective areas of Ghawar. There was one slight miss, however.

The Ghawar field is 264 km (164 miles) long, but it is not the simple anticline pictured above. This is shown in the cross-sectional representations below. A single NW-trending anticline in the south becomes two in Uthmaniyah. This has implications for the uniformity of the water flood, as distance from the water injectors will tend to keep the “valley” between the anticlines dry longer than would be predicted from gravity-dominated drainage. Note the exaggerated vertical relief in most 3-D reservoir depictions.

Figure 2. left: location of discovery wells on 3-D rendering of Arab-D reservoir for Ghawar; right: cutaway rendering near ‘Uthmaniyah discovery well

Stacking the Deck

The “Mag Five” article provides some basic production data for each of the five wells, including production start, cumulative oil produced, and current flow. For these, one can calculate the average daily flow rate for each well. These data are summarized in the table below:

Two of the wells (Hawiyah-1 and Haradh-1) were presumed to be shutdown along with their respective fields during the price crash in the 1980s , so the years 1983-1990 were excluded from their calculated averages. And though the authors are loathe to type the words, the Uthmaniyah discovery well died a watery death some years ago.

Most of the production has come from the ‘Ain Dar and Shedgum wells, due mostly to their high flow rates, but also because they have been flowing more or less continuously. They are both down from their lifetime average flow rates, however.

A couple of months after the “Mag Five” article came out, a story in Forbes appeared which used similar information in a story on Saudi oil:

“We go really slow and soft,” says Al-Naim, the engineering chief. “Ghawar we treat as you would a young woman.” Every Aramco well is fitted with an adjustable steel choke that restricts a standard 3-inch-diameter well bore down to a quarter-inch or less. Slowing the well reduces the amount of water that is produced alongside the oil, and a gentler flow protects the reservoir from damage.

Aramco’s oldest operating well, Ain Dar 1, was drilled in 1948. This single well in the Ghawar complex has produced 152 million barrels from its original casing. The well’s free-flow rate is now 8,000 barrels a day, but Aramco restricts it to 2,500. It insists that rumors of Ghawar’s demise are premature. The field has given up some 45 billion of at least 100 billion barrels of original oil in place (only Aramco knows for sure, and it’s not telling), yet still easily produces 5 million barrels a day; its overall water cut has declined in recent years to only 28%. Says Nasser, “If I needed more production I could go to Ghawar and boost it to 10 million barrels a day.”

The suggestion here is that ‘Ain Dar-1 could be producing more than its lifetime average but is instead being throttled back to 2500 or lower. The more outlandish claim — that Ghawar could produce 10 million barrels on demand — does make one question any numbers provided. For one thing, there is no way to provide that much water to pump into Ghawar, and thus the field pressure would quickly collapse.

The “Still Going Strong” article presents similar numbers but also tantalizes us with a graphic showing the production history for the wells. Unfortunately, it was routed through Saudi Aramco’s data obfuscation department; their first act was providing running sums instead of showing actual rates, and the second was stacking the data to yield a completely meaningless summation of the five disparate wells. This graphic is reproduced below.

Figure 3. Stacked presentation of cumulative production for five Ghawar discovery wells

It is possible, though, to resurrect the more pertinent data from the above, more clearly delineating the production trend for each well:

Figure 4. Unstacked presentation of cumulative production for five Ghawar discovery wells. Note: The above graphic is interactive. Click on each of the five well names to highlight an individual production history. Each will be discussed in detail subsequently.

One could take this a step further by differentiating each curve to yield the instantaneous rate over time, but the noise level becomes too distracting to be helpful. Average daily flow rates can be obtained from periods of relatively steady production, however, as will be shown later. One thing that is apparent from the above graphic is that production for each of the Uthmaniyah, Hawiyah, and Haradh wells was rather minimal for a 20 year period. Possible explanations for the above production trends for each well will be covered in the next section.

Location Location

The “Mag Five” article shows approximate locations for each of the wells. More useful are old Saudi Aramco maps for Ghawar which show the well positions relative to other numbered wells, including Figure 3b from:

"Ghawar Oil Field, Saudi Arabia"

Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists

Vol 43, No. 2 (February, 1959), pp 434-454

Figure 5. Left: Discovery wells for Ghawar shown on Google Earth map. Right: Overlay of 1959 map section for north Ghawar on Google Earth. Large black dots are discovery wells, small dots are other 1959 wells. Move cursor over image to show actual locations of existing wells which correspond to those on 1959 map.

The well spacings on this map were overlayed on the actual spacings on the imagery in Google Earth. A combination of sufficient resolution on the map (in the vicinity of each discovery well) and the relatively sparse well placement in Ghawar permits an unequivocal identification of each of the five wells. A Google Earth KML file which includes the well locations and the Ghawar field boundaries can be found here.

For more information about (and examples of) using Google Earth to geo-reference maps, see the links below.

• Satellite ‘oer the Desert
• The Oil Drum: Satellite

Note: Underlying satellite imagery in the figures for this work are copyright Google and DigitalGlobe.

In the next sections, I will look more closely at each of the discovery wells — both literally and figuratively.

‘Ain Dar-1

The ‘Ain Dar discovery well, the first well drilled in Ghawar, is located in north central ‘Ain Dar. After pinpointing the exact location of the well a shown earlier, one thing to do is take a close look to see if anything is or has been happening around the wellhead. New features of Google Earth makes this a simple task, as archival images (if they exist) can be browsed to look for changes. For the area around ‘Ain Dar #1, images are available from 2003 and 2006, as shown below.

Figure 6. Close up satellite image of ‘Ain Dar discovery well from 2003. Mouseover reveals 2006 appearance.

Note that there are pipelines running both north (to Gas Oil Separation Plant #1) and south (to GOSP #2). From the images, it appears that the south pipeline is the one currently in use. There are some small changes visible, including a plumbing replacement at the wellhead. It is not likely that any other substantial modification of this well has been done. By way of comparison, consider the image pair (shown below) for another ‘Ain Dar well, located 4.5 km to the northeast of ANDR-1. This well was being re-drilled in 2006, and such efforts leave a pronounced footprint on the wellsite. Newer drilling procedures seem to require the staging of more equipment and facilities, thus requiring more physical area. Older wells which have not been redrilled retain the original footprint.

Figure 7. Close up satellite image of another ‘Ain Dar well obtained in 2003. Mouseover reveals 2006 re-drilling.

Although not much can be discerned from looking at the well itself, more is learned by looking at the surrounding wells. The north-central part of ‘Ain Dar was apparently an area of interest for Saudi Aramco in 2003-2005, with several new wells added to provide additional dry production for delivery to the existing Gas-Oil Separation Plants (GOSPs). Three articles from Saudi Aramco give useful information (often unwittingly) on the placement of a Maximum Reservoir Contact (MRC) well in northern Ghawar: ANDR-524.

• Water Management in North ‘Ain Dar, Saudi Arabia (SPE 93439
• Optimizing Maximum-Reservoir-Contact wells: Application to Saudi Arabian Reservoirs (IPTC 10395).
• Well Placement Optimization Using GIS (from 2005 ESRI International User Conference Proceedings

MRC wells typically have two or more laterals drilled horizontally from a single wellbore. Saudi Aramco had previously placed such wells in the low-permeability Shaybah field and more recently in the Haradh area of Ghawar (Haradh II increment). The ANDR-524 was the first MRC well targeting Ghawar’s higher-quality rock in the north. The goal was to tap into multiple reservoirs layers simultaneously with the capability of shutting off individual laterals as they became watered out. According to the above articles, this was an area that (in 2005 or so) was seemingly on the front lines in ‘Ain Dar for maximizing oil extraction from thinned oil layers before of the advancing water made it less accessible. The latter two articles included oil thickness plots which indicate the depletion state of the reservoir in the vicinity of the location of the new MRC well. In Water Under the Gas Cap in Ain Dar, I showed how Google Earth could be used to geo-locate ANDR-524 and these oil layer thickness diagrams. After pinpointing the exact location of ANDR-1, as luck would have it, I realized that it lies within area covered by the oil thickness plot from the ESRI article.

Shown below is an interactive view of a 25 sq. km area near ANDR-1 obtained using Google Earth. Mouseover the image to show exact wellhead locations, and then click on image to show the oil layer thickess contours. The date of the image is May 2006.

Figure 8. Section of Ghawar near ‘Ain Dar discovery well. Mouseover show actual well locations visible in May 2006.Click on image to view oil thickness plot superimposed on the satellite imagery. Labeled contours correspond to the top of the Arab-D reservoir in feet below sea level, and red trace indicates boundary of gas cap located at the crest of ‘Ain Dar. Click here to view the well area in Google Maps.

The 2006 image above shows mostly weathered well sites along with two newer wells. By comparing with the archival 2003 image, small changes were observed for seven wells similar to those noted for ANDR-1 above. Wells drilled prior to 2003 were at 1 km spacing, and from looking at the well layout in the overlay (click on image), they would seem to be vertical wells. New wells, including ANDR-524, are drilled horizontally with possible multilaterals. Thus, the location of the wellhead is less determinant of what part of the field is being drained by it. The laterals of ANDR-524 are targeting unswept oil to the east. At the top of the overlay, there is an indication of a bi-lateral well with one arm going after oil near ANDR-1, although the location of the northern-most new wellhead is a few hundred meters distant. The other new well is probably targeting the thinning oil column to the east similar to ANDR-524.

There was no scale for the oil thickness map provided in the ESRI article, but it is similar in color scheme to oil-thickness diagrams published elsewhere by Saudi Aramco engineers. There are 7-8 distinct color bands in the full image. Assuming a 200 ft. full thickness, this would give ~30 feet per division. Based on this estimate, the Arab-D reservoir where penetrated by ‘Ain Dar #1 is crudely estimated to have 50-80 feet of oil left. Unfortunately, it is not certain that this diagram accurately reflects the state of the reservoir just before ANDR-524 was drilled. However, the ESRI article describes the use of a software program with a specific purpose: assist in the placing of a new well by combining geophysical data and existing well placement data in a Geographic Informtion System. The program seems to rely on current data and does not have predictive capability (e.g. simulating the depletion state some years in the future).

The task of planning a new well in a field with a high density of wells, complex geological features, multiple formation targets and advancing flood front or expanding gas cap is extremely challenging. … The existing well locations, flood front/oil column maps and reservoir structure information can now be used as an effective guide to place new well locations.

Finally, the state of the reservoir near ANDR-524 as suggested by the diagram is consistent with this description from the first of the three referenced articles:

The well is placed at the top of the target reservoir in a partially flooded area of the field and is planned to produce dry oil while the surrounding vertical wells are producing at water cuts in the range of 32-62%. … Following the successful operation of this MRC well, additional complex wells are planned to be drilled to further develop the field and keep water-cut at the current level of 42%.

ANDR-1 Production History

The collective Saudi Aramco articles provide the following data — initial rate: 15,600 bpd; 2008 rate: 2100 bpd; cumulative: 152 million barrels; first water produced in 1999. Looking at the cumulative production profile below, the well was not produced at the reportedly high initial rate for long. Production did ramp up about the time that powered water injection was implemented in the field (gas was injected before this to maintain pressure, followed by gravity-fed water injection).

Figure 9. ‘Ain Dar-1 cumulative production.

The production dropoff around 1980 is conceivably explained by the overall cut in North Ghawar production about that time, as seen by the combined ‘Ain Dar/Shedgum production history (provided by Nansen Saleri, then of Saudi Aramco, in 2004) shown below. However, the nearly complete cessation of production in the early 1990s does not correlate with what was going on in the overall field. A more likely explanation than the one provided in the articles is that water hit the well in the early 1990s, and then it was shut down until more wells in drier areas could be put in so as to lessen the load on the GOSPs which, as revealed by Saudi Aramco, were processing all the water they could handle. The well was flowing again by 1999, although the rate has been decreasing somewhat since.

Figure 10. ‘Ain Dar/Shedgum daily oil production history

In summary, this well has had a remarkable, if somewhat erratic, production history. It clearly has its best days behind it, though, as the water level will keep rising until nothing but water flows. If it is not capped and redrilled as a horizontal, it will either be shutdown or throttled way back as newer horizontal wells drain the oil from its vicinity.

Haradh-1

The discovery well in Haradh was the second well to be drilled in Ghawar, and seemed to be quite productive initially (6,400 bbl/d). However, due to the distance to the existing production facilities at Abqaiq, HRDH-1 was not brought online until the early 1960s. A few dilineation wells had been drilled by then, as seven wells appear on the 1959 Haradh map. The well count increased to 12 by 1971, and then to at least 65 over the next twenty years. Haradh was completely shut off for most of the 1980s, and it wasn’t until the first of three redevelopment increments (Haradh-I) was completed in 1996 that Haradh contributed much to Ghawar’s total flow. This first increment was first completed with vertical wells and water injectors, but the water flood proved to be very erratic and many wells quickly watered out. Haradh is hightly fractured, and even though vertical wells rarely cut through them, these fractures, in combination with Super-k intervals, created conduits by which water could prematurely flow from injectors to wells, bypassing the oil. Super-k intervals are relatively thin sections of reservoir rock (as little as a few feet) which contribute disproportionally to the overall flow of the well. These are handy when flowing oil, but much less so when flowing water.

The vertical wells of Haradh-I were later supplemented with horizontal wells, and the plan for the Haradh-II increment called for all horizontal producers and injectors. 3-D seismic mapping of Haradh was performed to identify major fractures such that horizontal wells could be directed so as to avoid them. Problems still arose, however. During the drilling of several wells, lost circulation of drilling fluid was reported. Normally, drilling fluid (or mud) is pumped down to the drill head and returns to the surface carrying debris. If a fracture or Super-k interval is penetrated by the drilling, as much as 100% of the drilling fluid (or mud) does not get recirculated but instead gets pumped into the reservoir. This adds considerably to the time and expense of drilling the well, but also indicates a significant probability for early water breakthrough depending on where the loss is occuring and the distance from the water injectors. Somewhat after Haradh-II was brought online in 2003, a few MRC wells were added to the mix. The advantage of these was that individual laterals could be shut off if they started flowing water. This trend culminated in the decision to develop the final increment, Haradh-III, using only MRC producers.

The Haradh discovery well is located in the center of the “heel” and on the southern edge of what would become the Haradh-II increment, as shown in the figure below. The base image shows the locations of wells prior to the 1996 redevelopment. Mouseover reveals the locations of Haradh-II wells trajectories of the laterals. Mouseclick shows the locations of subsequent drilling in the area (caveat: the lower third of the image dates to 2004, whereas the upper two thirds dates to 2006). Note the added wells between HRDH-1 (discovery well) and the water injectors to the east. A closeup look at HRDH-1 isn’t particularly informative.

Figure 11. Google Earth view for central Haradh showing locations of early wells. Mouseover shows Haradh-II development. Click to show additions visible in 2006.

It is likely that HRDH-1 production was deemed inconsequential or perhaps counterproductive to the newer production plans, and this likely became more the case after Haradh-II was completed.

Any delineation between Haradh-II and Haradh-III oil is artificial, of course. The bottomhole pressure for HRDH-1 will be affected by downdip wells corresponding to both increments. Shown in the image below is a closer view of HRDH-1 relative to the newer wells. One of the Haradh-II wells, HRDH-489 the well closest to HRDH-1, experienced 100% circulation loss during drilling, but the later drilling of the MRC well HRDH-470 seemed to go more smoothly. As for Haradh_III, Saudi Aramco published some pressure measurements taken when the new injectors were completed (prior to production; see Figure 5 in this paper). The low pressure zone at the top of the figure corresponds to the area of the field encompassing wells HRDH-1, HRDH-13, and HRDH-28. A scale for the pressure gradations was not provided, unfortunately.

Figure 12. Closeup Google Earth view of wells near HRDH-1 (Haradh discovery well).

HRDH-1 Production History

As the plot below indicates, most of the cumulative production of HRDH-1 occured prior to the shutdown in the 1980s, despite the absence of water injection during those early years. Although the restarted production was boosted with acid stimulation up to 6700 bbl/d in 1990, this spurt only lasted a couple of years for reasons unreported. While it probably has the capability of flowing 2300 bbl/day as reported, this doesn’t appear to have been the case over the last few years.

Figure 12. Haradh-1 cumulative production.

‘Uthmaniyah-1

One close Google Earth look at the ‘Uthmaniyah discovery well reveals the current status rather clearly; it became a non-performing asset sometime prior to 2006.

Figure 13. The ghost well that is UTMN-1

As is the case with ANDR-1, there is some information as to the status of the reservoir in the vicinity of UTMN-1. Shown below is the area of the field near this well. Mouseover shows the oil layer thickness values reported in a figure from this paper but which can also be found here. This discovery well is clearly out to sea. The darker blue and green areas have 0-30 feet and > 120 feet of oil, respectively, remaining from over 200 feet initially. Click on the graphic to show the coutours for the top of the Arab-D reservoir. UTMN-1 is about half way up to the local crest for the east ridge, so it is not that surprising that is has watered out. It is amusing that the author avoids saying this outright, however.

Figure 14. Google Earth view showing wells near UTMN-1. Red and green placemarks denote older and newer wells respectively, green diamonds denote drilling rigs, and blue placemarks denote water injectors. Mouseover shows recent oil thickness as described in text. Click to show elevation contours for Arab-D reservoir.

UTMN-1 Production History

It is claimed that UTMN-1 produced at 11,300 bbl/day in its first year, and this is somewhat consistent with the reported cumulative production profile shown below. However, the well seemed to be offline in the early 1960s, and then was again rather useless by 1975 as the waterflood had overrun it. Dates were not given for the reported attempt to shut off the water-producing sections of the well or its unreported abandonment. Perhaps a good well, but in an unfortunate location.

Figure 15. ‘Uthmaniyah-1 cumulative production.

Shedgum-1

The Shedgum discovery well is located well updip of the water injectors on the east flank, but as Shedgum has been produced heavily for a long time, SDGM-1 is seeing higher water. Although the Saudi Aramco articles mention a recent project to drill a horizontal sidetrack of the well, the 2006 Google Earth/Maps view does not show recent evidence of this. There is a 2009 Digital Globe image of the area available, but GE hasn’t incorporated the high resolution version; the low-res version shows no obvious changes around the well.

As was the case for ANDR-1, SDGM-1 is located in an area for which an oil thickness plot was published (IPTC 10395). As shown in the figure below (click on image), water clearly has reached the discovery well. It does seem to be in a better situation than ANDR-1, so it is interesting that it has been redrilled while the latter has not.

Figure 16. Section of Ghawar near the Shedgum discovery well. Mouseover shows nearby oil (red) and gas (yellow) well locations. Click on image to show ~2005 oil thickness overlay. Click here to view the well area in Google Maps.

SDGM-1 Production History

This well actually started its life with a higher production rate than ANDR-1, although it slowly declined (possibly along with the pressure in the field). The rejuvenation just prior to 1980 followed the acid treatment by a few years, and powered water injection was started before then as well. Other maintenance didn’t seem to have much of an effect, though. Any connection to the overall Shedgum production is also not obvious.

If the most recent resurgence is due to the horizontal sidetrack, this would suggest this was done early in the current decade. 3700 barrels per day seems a bit high though.

Figure 17. Shedgum-1 cumulative production.

Hawiyah-1

Of all of the Ghawar discovery wells, Hawiyah-1 seems best positioned for sustained production. It is located near the center of a section of Ghawar which should a lot of oil left. Very little data on the production history or current status of Hawiyah has been made available. However, the following was reported in 2005:

Pre-mature water injection breakthrough into the mid-field areas, through high permeability zones and fractures, caused some wells to die, leaving trapped oil behind and affecting reservoir sweep efficiency. The field is being developed by drilling highly deviated and true horizontal wells. Many of these wells died right after drilling or after a short period of production due to excessive water production from high flow intervals. Water isolation in such wells is both a challenge and expensive. The challenges include understanding the mechanism of water movement in the reservoir horizontally and vertically that might enable communication of the water from the lower zones to the upper zones through the reservoir after the water zone isolation in the well bore.

Similar to the case for Haradh, the Google Earth coverage of Hawiyah is a patchwork of 2004 and 2006 imagery. HWYH-1 is located in the north-center of Hawiyah, somewhat closer to the west flank than the east, in an area photographed in 2004. As shown below, four new wells located about 1 mile east of HWYH-1 were drilled between 2004 and 2006. These newer wells are midway between the injector lines, and it is curious that new wells are being drilled there at this point in the production history for Hawiyah. Of course, horizontal trajectories could be pointing in any direction from the wellheads with extents of several kilometers.

Figure 18. Section of Ghawar near Hawiyah discovery well as photographed in 2004. Mouseover shows oil reveals 2006 imagery covering two-thirds of the view. Click here to view the well area in Google Maps.

HWYH-1 Production History

It was reported that HWYH-1 initially produced 4,800 bpd and then 7600 bpd after acid stimulation in 1977. However, the shown profile below is more consistent with these values reversed.

Figure 19. Hawiyah-1 cumulative production.

Also, the average rate over the last decade was higher (5700 bbl/d) than is reported for the current (4600 bbl/d). The improvements to the water injection for Hawiyah during the 1990s perhaps accounts for most of the increased flow from HWYH-1.

Hawiyah-1: A Natural Horizontal Well

Given the lower porosity and permeability values for southern Ghawar in comparison to the north, both the Hawiyah and Haradh discovery wells had better flow rates than one would predict. As for HWYH-1, it turns out that it is no ordinary well, but rather a Super-k well.

In 2000, a study by Meyer et. al. on Super-k wells in the Hawiyah area of Ghawar was published:

Stratigraphic and Petrophysical Characteristics of Cored Arab-D "Super-k Intervals, Hawiyah Area, Ghawar Field, Saudi Arabia"

Franz O. Meyer, Rex C. Price, and Saleh M. Al Raimi

GeoArabia, Vol. 5, No. #3, 2000, pp. 355-384.

This paper is not widely available, but several figures from it and discussion thereof are available in the doctoral dissertation of Joe Voelker (starting on page 111). A Super-k well is defined as a well which intersects an interval (rock layer) having a productivity/injectivity of 500 barrels per day per foot. Based on flowmeter measurements, 88 wells (both producers and injectors) were identified as Super-k, and 8 of these wells were cored for further analysis. One of these, identified as HWYH-C in the paper, is unveiled here as Hawiyah-1. The Super-k behavior of this well is rather extreme:

Ninety-one percent of the oil produced (1,161.8 bf/d/ft) is from a section measuring 15 ft in HWYH-C. Super-k flow (820 bf/d/ft) is from the bottom six feet, and high flow (342 bf/d/ft) also occurs from the top nine feet.

From these numbers, it would seem that we have some actual flow measurements that we can compare with those reported in the “Mag Five” articles. Unfortunately, the numbers from the Meyer paper don’t quite add up. Consider:

1,161.8 bbl/day/ft times 15 ft gives 17,430 bbl/day

However, if we compute the flow from the six and nine foot sections separately (and then sum), we get:

820 bbl/day/ft times 6 ft plus 342 bbl/day/ft times 9 ft = 7998 bbl/day

Either the average rate of 1,161.8 bbl/day/ft from the 15 ft. section is correct, or the rates for the six and nine foot sections are — but not both. Suspiciously, 820 plus 342 roughly equals 1161.8, so perhaps (astonishingly) the authors just added the two averages to get a new one. If is the case, then the total flow for the 15 ft section would really be 7998 b/d, or an average of 533 b/d/ft across the entire 15 ft. section. This is consistent with the reported production history of HWYH-1; dividing by .91 (the fraction of oil from the 15 ft. section) gives 8789 bbl/day for the entire well. In any case, this well is capable of higher production than is currently the case, and as of the 2000 publication date for the paper, was not producing significant water.

It is worth reflecting on this amazing phenomenon; a vertical well is drilled through ~200 feet of reservoir, but 56% of the oil flows out of a five foot slab and another 35% flows from an adjacent nine feet. But the permeabilities of the rock these intervals are not high enough to support these flows, so something else is going on.

Core plug analysis throughout the 15-foot thick flow zone indicates that good but not exceptionally high permeability (average 540 md) occurs in the predominantly grainstone interval. Furthermore, the average permeability is higher in the high-flow zone (612 md) than it is in the super-k flow interval (344 md). Fractures readily explain this discrepancy because they override the matrix permeability at the base of the super-k interval. Supporting evidence includes observed fractures in the recovered core, an underlying enterval of core rubble within the basal part of the super-k flow interval, and two feet of missing core immediately beneath it.

What does this flow look like? In his dissertation, Joe Voelker found that a linear flow model is better supported by the data than a radial flow model. Thus, it is perhaps best to think of a Super-k well as a natural horizontal well, where the Super-k interval acts as the (perforated) horizontal well bore. This is very adventageous when this oil flows into this interval (or fracture) from the immediate surroundings, but it is rather disasterous when water flows in. If the latter occurs, isolating the interval (blocking the flow) can dramatically lower the water cut, but the result is a much reduced oil rate. In many such cases, Saudi Aramco has chosen to produce the Super-k flow and deal with the extra water as the lesser of two evils. The Hawiyah discovery well seems to have avoided this fate so far, as the Super-k interval is in the upper layers of the reservoir — although a fracture could eventually produce water from lower layers as the flood front advances.

Conclusion

A closer look at the continuing saga of the five Ghawar discovery wells provides an interesting glimpse at the history and current state of the field. Ghawar is truly an outlier, even amongst supergiant fields. Its full story, with warts and all, is much more interesting than what seems to squeeze out of the Saudi Aramco PR department. But even a field as unique as Ghawar has a finite supply of oil, and most of the original wells are reaching the limit of their usefulness. Perhaps not coincidentally, Ghawar might be getting a respite. Saudi oil minister Al-Naimi has indicated that Ghawar output will be cut back as Khurais is brought online in a few weeks.

Credits

1. http://www.saudiaramco.com. Click Newsroom/Publications/Dimensions
2. “Ghawar Oil Field, Saudi Arabia”, Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Vol 43, No. 2 (February, 1959), pp 434-454
3. Water Management in North ‘Ain Dar, Saudi Arabia (SPE 93439)
4. (Optimizing Maximum-Reservoir-Contact wells: Application to Saudi Arabian Reservoirs (IPTC 10395))
5. Well Placement Optimization Using GIS (2005 ESRI International User Conference Proceedings)
6. Fifty-Year Crude Oil Supply Scenarios: Saudi Aramco’s Perspective
7. First Lateral-Flow-Controlled Maximum Reservoir Contact (MRC) Well in Saudi Arabia: Drilling & Completion: Challenges & Achievements: Case Study (SPE 87959)
8. A Probability Approach to Development of a Large Carbonate Reservoir with Natural Fractures and Stratiform Super-Permeabilities (SPE 81433)
9. Maximum Reservoir Contact Wells: A new Generation of Wells for Developing Tight Reservoir Facies (Salam P. Salamy, SPE Distinguished Lecturer Series Program 2004 -2005)
10. Reservoir Monitoring with Permanent Borehole Seismic Sensors
11. Inflatable Enables Successful Water Shutoff in High Angle Wellbores in Ghawar Field
12. A Reservoir Characterization of Arab-D Super-K (Joe Voelker Thesis, 2004)
13. Stratigraphic and Petrophysical Characteristics of Cored Arab-D “Super-k Intervals, Hawiyah Area, Ghawar Field, Saudi Arabia” Franz O. Meyer, Rex C. Price, and Saleh M. Al Raimi GeoArabia, Vol. 5, No. #3, 2000, pp. 355-384.

The Peak Oil Crisis: Watching a Mega-Crisis

We, in America, are deep in the midst of a four-sided crisis. The first side is an economic slump; second, surprisingly, is our government’s panicky efforts to stabilize the situation; third, the imminent peaking of fossil fuels and numerous other resources that seems to be in abeyance for the moment; and fourth, global warming which in the long run could overshadow the other three by a wide margin and is attracting considerable amounts of government and Congressional attention.

The important point is that the four aspects of what could easily turn out to be the mega-crisis of the century are all interrelated. Developments in any of the four will cause perturbations for better or worse in the others.

Petrobras well proves Tupi reserves

Petrobras said that the drilling of an additional well in the Tupi area has further confirmed estimates of a potential of 5 to 8 billion barrels of recoverable light oil and natural gas in the pre-salt layers of that field.

Drilling is still underway seeking for other objectives at greater depths.

BP Head Tells Russia To Drop Investment Barriers

BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward urged Russia, the world’s largest energy supplier, to drop barriers to foreign investment and mitigate risks at a time when “capital is in short supply.”

“Erecting barriers to the inflow of foreign direct investment is questionable,” Hayward said Thursday at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “Russia would benefit from higher investment.”

‘World’s cheapest car’ coming to US

NEW YORK (Reuters) — India’s Tata Motors hopes to offer the Nano, dubbed the world’s cheapest car, in the United States within two years, its chairman said.

Phosphorus Famine: The Threat to Our Food Supply

As complex as the chemistry of life may be, the conditions for the vigorous growth of plants often boil down to three numbers, say, 19-12-5. Those are the percentages of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, prominently displayed on every package of fertilizer. In the 20th century the three nutrients enabled agriculture to increase its productivity and the world’s population to grow more than sixfold. But what is their source? We obtain nitrogen from the air, but we must mine phosphorus and potassium. The world has enough potassium to last several centuries. But phosphorus is a different story. Readily available global supplies may start running out by the end of this century. By then our population may have reached a peak that some say is beyond what the planet can sustainably feed.

Moreover, trouble may surface much sooner. As last year’s oil price swings have shown, markets can tighten long before a given resource is anywhere near its end. And reserves of phosphorus are even less evenly distributed than oil’s, raising additional supply concerns. The U.S. is the world’s second-largest producer of phosphorus (after China), at 19 percent of the total, but 65 percent of that amount comes from a single source: pit mines near Tampa, Fla., which may not last more than a few decades. Meanwhile nearly 40 percent of global reserves are controlled by a single country, Morocco, sometimes referred to as the “Saudi Arabia of phosphorus.” Although Morocco is a stable, friendly nation, the imbalance makes phosphorus a geostrategic ticking time bomb.

Peru fertilizer plant would need gas line

HOUSTON — A grassroots nitrogen fertilizer complex under consideration in Peru would require construction of about 100 miles of gas pipeline.

Malaysia calls for calm over border dispute with Indonesia

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) – Malaysia’s deputy prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin called for calm Thursday amid reports that Malaysian warships had entered oil-rich waters off northeastern Borneo also claimed by Indonesia.

Total sees Iraq oil deals awarded this summer

PARIS (Reuters) - French oil major Total expects Iraq to award stakes in oil fields open to bids this summer, a senior executive told the Reuters Energy Summit on Thursday.

‘It is a matter of two or three months starting from now,’ Jean-Jacques Mosconi, head of strategy and planning at Total, said when asked when Baghdad would award contracts.

Canadian oil giants closer to finalizing takeover

CALGARY, Alberta (AP) — Petro-Canada shareholders have voted to approve the takeover of their integrated oil and gas company by Suncor Energy Inc., uniting two of Canada’s biggest oil companies.

Towns in transition

At the Sullivan Renaissance conference in February, author and keynote speaker James Howard Kunstler predicted jarring social changes coming our way, changes coming not just because of peak oil, meaning the time when oil supplies are in decline as demand increases, but also because of global climate change and global economic turmoil.

Those changes are also a concern of Liberty resident Tim Shera and Livingston Manor resident Maria Grimaldi. And as a way of dealing with them, Shera and Grimaldi are hosting a Transition Towns-Sullivan County meeting on June 9, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. at the Cornell Cooperative Extension Sullivan on Ferndale Loomis Road in Liberty.

The new ‘good’ job: 12 bucks an hour

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Massive investment in renewable energy could ultimately create 4 million manufacturing jobs. But for the workers in the bottom rung of this movement, the shift to green jobs could very well mean a pay cut of nearly 60%, a trend spreading across the entire manufacturing sector.

Many of the entry-level jobs making green energy components start at $12 an hour, much less than the now extinct $28 an hour job that had allowed high school-educated workers in the auto sector to achieve middle class status.

Goldman Sachs and the unrecognised energy crisis

There is a lot to look at in a new note from Goldman Sachs’ commodities team: a WTI price target of $85 for the end of 2009; a forecast that we are now in the beginning of a four-part bull rally.

More interestingly, the note talks about the ‘unrecognised energy crisis’ and concludes that underlying demand must fall in the OECD countries if the BRICs are to maintain their growth.

US Interior to Collect Billions from New O&G Fees in 2010

The U.S Interior Department has projected $14 billion in revenue collections for fiscal-year 2010, stemming from several new and increased fees.

A new fee on non-producing Gulf of Mexico offshore oil and gas leases would increase revenue by requiring lease holders to pay $4 per acre when leases are in non-producing status, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in prepared testimony before a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.

Gas Exporters May Meet in Qatar This Month, Iran Official Says

(Bloomberg) — The world’s biggest natural-gas exporters may meet in Doha, Qatar on June 30 as they pursue greater collaboration at a time of plummeting prices, an Iranian oil official said.

BP Norway Shaving Costs by Reworking Contracts

As oil producers battle falling revenues, BP Norway’s chief said the company is having success in lowering its supply costs in the country by renegotiating contracts.

At the same time, BP has an ambitious target of nearly doubling its Norwegian output to 80,000 barrels of oil equivalents a day by 2012, or 2% of the company’s projected global daily output of around 4 million barrels.

Reliance suspends exports to Iran

NEW DELHI (UPI) — Reliance Industries Ltd., the largest private-sector oil conglomerate in India, stopped petroleum exports to Iran under pressure from U.S.-backed sanctions.

Shell Confirms Reports of Large Gas Field Off Norway

Anglo-Dutch oil and gas company Shell has confirmed a Norwegian newspaper report that it has discovered a large gas field in the Norwegian Sea, the Dutch paper, Financiele Dagblad, reported on Wednesday.

More Mexico oil reforms unlikely after midterm vote

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican lawmakers are unlikely to attempt any further reforms of the country’s oil sector after midterm Congressional elections in July, where the ruling conservative party is expected to lose some ground. The country’s battered economy, its fight with powerful drug cartels and the need for a major overhaul of the tax system are a higher priority for lawmakers than revisiting the sensitive topic of opening the tightly controlled oil industry to more participation by foreign companies.

After months of emotional debate last year, Mexico enacted a package of laws that opened the door to more private-sector involvement in the oil industry.

Resources short Cuba cuts power to wasteful companies

Hundreds of Cuban entities and state-run companies were sanctioned when a drastic government plan to save energy entered into force, according to reports in the official media.

S.African refineries need $4.95 bln for clean fuels

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Refineries in South Africa will need to spend 40 billion rand ($4.95 billion) to upgrade facilities to conform with cleaner fuel specifications, a senior executive of petrochemicals group Sasol said on Thursday.

Sasol Executive Director Benny Mokaba said the upgrades necessary to comply with the new specifications, which South Africa has said it wants to introduce by 2012, exceeded the companies’ balance sheets.

Pipeline Operator Says Wind, Solar Not the Answers to Energy Crisis

Reuters TV has an interesting interview of Rich Kinder, the CEO of Kinder Morgan, who says that wind and solar energies are not the answers to reducing America’s greenhouse gas emissions or the country’s dependence on oil.

Rather, he says that natural gas, nuclear, and even clean coil are much more logistically viable options. We’ve previously covered the pros and cons of nuclear energy, more recently Germany’s attempt to utilize clean coal, and even energy think tanks that believe our energy policy should be governed by “facts, sound science, and good American common sense.” As we learn more about our energy capacities and potential, it seems like the debate over energy policy just seems to get more convoluted.

Nigeria: Electricity Crisis - Coal to the Rescue (1)

President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua in his inaugural speech on the 29th of May, 2007 offered Nigerians cause to celebrate by promising to tackle the energy crisis that had bedevilled the nation for some time. He further promised a complete overhaul of the energy sector to ensure that the populace enjoys steady electricity supply. He likewise said he wanted Nigeria to be one of the world’s biggest 20 economies by 2020. This tall ambition would largely depend on steady electricity supply. The President went further to establish the National Energy Commission to investigate and offer solutions to the current energy crisis. He has announced that he wants the Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) to generate 6,000 mega watts of electricity before December, 2009.

The Philippines: ‘Keep in mind risks of nuke plant’s operation’

OPPONENTS of the plan to revive the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP) on Thursday chided lawmakers for ignoring the risks involved in operating the plant.

Giovanni Tapang, spokesman for the No to BNPP Revival! said lawmakers seem to ignore the voluminous studies that document the danger of operating the plant.

Mike Ruppert reviews Carolyn Baker’s “Sacred Demise”

In the rare instances where I come across a book that is a feast for the mind and soul I wrestle with it as with a lover. Pages get dog-eared, the pen comes out and notes appear all over. Great passages are underlined. There are coffee and wine stains. This marks my affair with a great book. “Sacred Demise” is the first such book I have read in many years. In spite of the profoundly disturbing topic: the collapse of industrial civilization and possible extinction of the human race; it is a book which has left me feeling joyful, hopeful, humorous and deeply comforted. It has made me love more completely and – in that process – has allowed me to be more alive in this present moment.

It’s all interconnected, Weizmann scientist says

Berkowitz, who hails from Edmonton, talked about Water, Energy, and the Environment: Science and Sustainability, making it clear that no single solution will materialize to solve what many consider to be the two most serious environmental challenges facing the world today.

“It is a zero-sum game,” he said. “If you win somewhere, you lose somewhere else.… There ain’t no such thing as a magic bullet.”

Will Emerging Markets Make Renewable Energy More Democratic?

Think of the renewable-energy market as an oligarchy, with a handful of countries making up by far a super majority. The top 10 wind countries, for example, represented a whopping 87.8 percent of the wind market last year, according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC). And in solar, even just the top two markets — Spain and Germany — accounted for 72.9 percent of the total world market, with the top 10 making up 96.5 percent, according to the European Photovoltaic Industry Association.

Over the years, the industry has been expanding to new countries, dividing the market among a larger number of countries every year. But in an economic downturn, with price declines amid an oversupply of solar panels and wind turbines, that trend could be accelerating. And as more countries pass a variety of climate-change legislation, industry insiders predict that — in the coming years — the clean-energy oligarchy will become ever more democratic.

Climate change poses threat to Mideast security, report warns

BEIRUT: Climate change poses potential threats to security that could lead to conflict in the Middle East, a report presented Tuesday at the American University of Beirut (AUB) by Oli Brown of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) says. Brown co-wrote the report, which is entitled “Rising Temperatures, Rising Tensions: Climate Change and the Risk of Violent Conflict in the Middle East.” Brown said the report’s aim was to explore potential connections between climate change and conflict in the region and to generally raise awareness of the issue.

Allotment demand leads to 40-year waiting lists

Demand for allotments has reached such heights that in one London borough would-be gardeners will be waiting 40 years for a patch of land, it emerged today.

Goldman Raises Year-End Crude Forecast by 31% to $85

(Bloomberg) — Goldman Sachs Group Inc. raised its forecast for U.S. benchmark oil by 31 percent to $85 a barrel for the end of 2009 and predicted further gains next year as demand recovers and supplies shrink.

“As the financial crisis eases, an energy shortage lies ahead,” Goldman analysts Jeffrey Currie in London and David Greely in New York said in a report e-mailed today. The bank set a 12-month price target of $90 a barrel for West Texas Intermediate crude, up from $70, and introduced a forecast of $95 for the end of 2010.

Oil to Reach $70-75 by Year End, OPEC’s El-Badri Says

(Bloomberg) — Oil prices are likely to rise to between $70 and $75 a barrel by the end of this year because of expectations for an economic recovery and a weak dollar, OPEC Secretary General Abdalla el-Badri said.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has seen a pick-up in demand from China though the global economy isn’t recovering as fast as the price of oil, he said today at an energy forum in London organized by Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.

Don’t Buy Into This Energy Bull

This is starting to look like the endgame, Fools. After a gnarly April, Patterson’s May rig count decline decelerated significantly. In absolute terms (i.e. the number of rigs, rather than the percentage), this was easily the smallest sequential drawdown since the carnage began last fall. Of course, there just aren’t many marginal rigs left running at this point.

It looks like Mr. Market wasn’t being too crazy in bidding up these stocks back in March. As I pointed out in February, Patterson in particular was practically being given away. That said, I’m concerned that the rebound in oil services stocks, and energy stocks more broadly, is a bit overdone at this point.

Suncor Energy reports oil sands production numbers for May 2009

CALGARY /CNW/ - Suncor Energy Inc. reported today that production at its oil sands facility during May averaged approximately 296,000 barrels per day (bpd). Year-to-date oil sands production at the end of May averaged approximately 286,000 bpd. Suncor is targeting average oil sands production of 300,000 bpd (+5%/-10%) in 2009.

Trading Down Forever?

Does the recession spell permanent changes for how America lives? Probably not, say our experts, as people will always shop.

IATA: Airline 2009 losses to exceed $4.7 billion

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — The International Air Transport Association called for more liberalization to bolster the global airline industry, which is expected to lose more than $4.7 billion this year because of falling cargo and passenger traffic.

Our peak oil future? Electric vehicle startup unveils Chinese-made, $45K ‘economy’ car

The Coda sedan, which resembles a previous-generation Honda Civic, is a highway-ready, 80 mph five-seater that will travel 90 to 120 miles on a charge, according to the company.

And it is likely to be the first Chinese-made car to hit American roads. The car’s 333-volt lithium ion battery pack comes from the Tianjin Lishen Battery Joint-Stock Co., a huge state-owned corporation that supplies batteries to Apple and other consumer electronics companies. Coda has established a joint venture with Tianjin Lishen to design and sell batteries for transportation and utility storage. The sedan’s design, brand and intellectual property will be owned by Coda, but it will be manufactured and assembled in China by Hafei, a state-owned automobile and aircraft manufacturer.

Pickens left indelible mark on Obama

(AP:OKLAHOMA CITY) With a black Sharpie marker, T. Boone Pickens mapped out for Barack Obama the way to U.S. energy independence - right there on a white tablecloth.

It was a demonstration he wouldn’t soon forget. After Pickens’ wife encountered Obama at a function this week in Las Vegas, she relayed word that the president was still astounded by her husband’s indelible markings.

High hurdle for ethanol

Undoubtedly, ethanol and the renewable fuels industry will go through many fits and starts as it continues to move toward becoming a reliable source of alternative energy. Edwin Drake could probably understand that all too well.

Only a Total fool would be convinced by giraffes and solar panels

The French oil company’s investment in renewables sounds large, but it’s a drop in the oil barrel.

Still Digging Up Exxon Valdez Oil, 20 Years Later

Today, the coast is clear and clean. But clean is not the same as pristine. Decades ago, some of the spill found its way to a beach on Knight Island in the Sound, a site that scientists studying the accident would designate KN-102 but which during the multiyear cleanup would earn another name: Death Marsh.

Here, on Death Marsh, Mandy Lindberg, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Alaska’s Auke Bay, turns over a shovel of sand and broken rock to reveal a glistening pool of brackish oil. The crude can be chemically typed to the Exxon Valdez, and more oil can be found beneath the beach at Death Marsh and at a number of islands around the Sound. “I wouldn’t have possibly believed the oil would last this long,” says Lindberg. “Studying the spill has been a great learning experience, but if we had known in the years after the spill what we know now, we would have been looking for oil much earlier.”

A China-U.S. Partnership on Global Warming

Meeting with officials in China last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said little about human rights, a topic on which she has been notably vocal in the past, and instead focused on one of the big hurdles the United States faces in trying to tackle climate change: making sure China cooperates.

Alaska: Federal report says villages need better help in relocating

WASHINGTON — The federal government could be doing more to help relocate Alaska Native communities whose vulnerability to erosion and flooding has only worsened with global warming, concludes a report from the Government Accountability Office.

The Human Cost of Climate Change

Quick: What does global warming look like? A forlorn polar bear stuck on a splintering glacier makes for a gripping visual, but a new report says there are millions of climate-change victims we don’t see — and many look just like us. The Global Humanitarian Forum paints a grim portrait of the human toll inflicted by Earth’s gradual rise in temperature: 26 million people displaced, $125 billion in annual economic losses and more than 300,000 yearly deaths, as climate change speeds desertification and magnifies scourges from malnutrition to flooding. “We can no longer hold back from speaking out on the silent suffering of millions worldwide,” writes the group’s leader, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Calculating The True Cost Of Carbon

U.S. firms produce from $60 billion to $80 billion worth of carbon annually but don’t pay for it. What the carbon market could mean to investors.

Is a Popular Carbon-Offset Method Just a Lot of Hot Air?

A convenient way of cutting industrial gases that warm the planet was supposed to be the United Nation’s clean development mechanism (CDM). As a provision of the Kyoto Protocol, the CDM enables industrial nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in part by purchasing “carbon offsets” from poorer countries, where green projects are more affordable. The scheme, which issued its first credits in 2005, has already transferred the right to emit an extra 250 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), and that could swell to 2.9 billion tons by 2012. Offsets will “play a more significant role” as emissions targets become tighter, asserts Yvo de Boer of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

But criticism of the CDM has been mounting. Despite strenuous efforts by regulators, a significant fraction of the offset credits is fictitious “hot air” manufactured by accounting tricks, critics say. As a result, greenhouse gases are being emitted without compensating reductions elsewhere.

It’s the end of the world as we know it (annotated)

For your consideration: Two possible, if not probable, future scenarios for the human race should the business of fossil fuel combustion continue as usual for the next few decades. The first, an ABC-TV special that aired this Tuesday night, “Earth 2100.” The second, a film by UK documentarian Frannie Armstrong, “The Age of Stupid.” The former depicts a world that is increasing hostile to civilization as the century draws to a close, the latter an even less habitable planet, not just for humans, by 2055.

Are either visions realistic, or just more worse-case scenarios that grossly exaggerate what the science says?

Lester R. Brown: Melting Ice Could Lead to Massive Waves of Climate Refugees

As the earth warms, the melting of the earth’s two massive ice sheets–Antarctica and Greenland–could raise sea level enormously. If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt, it would raise sea level 7 meters (23 feet). Melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet would raise sea level 5 meters (16 feet). But even just partial melting of these ice sheets will have a dramatic effect on sea level rise. Senior scientists are noting that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections of sea level rise during this century of 18 to 59 centimeters are already obsolete and that a rise of 2 meters during this time is within range.