Thursday, August 16, 2007

Gas storage plan may go cold

Taken from http://www.theage.com.au

http://www.theage.com.au/news/business/gas-storage-plan-may-go-cold/2007/08/12/1186857344482.html

EXXONMOBIL has again raised doubts over the future availability of hydrocarbon reservoirs in Bass Strait for the storage of greenhouse gases.

The US giant's Esso subsidiary has revealed that apart from extending the life of the current oil and gas fields to more than 20 years and 30 years respectively, it was now launching a study into the untested gas potential of geological structures deep beneath the existing fields.

It is both depleted fields and the deeper untapped structures in Bass Strait that the planned $5 billion Monash Energy coal-to-liquids project in the Latrobe Valley, a joint venture between Shell and Anglo American, plans to use for carbon storage.

The Monash project plans to turn brown coal into gas for further conversion into 60,000 barrels a year of synthetic diesel. A key element of the project is the separation of a concentrated stream of carbon dioxide for geosequestration. Without carbon capture and storage (CCS), the greenhouse gas emissions would be at unacceptable levels.

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OECD fails IEA reliability test

Taken from http://www.energybulletin.net

http://www.energybulletin.net/33536.html

To correct for earlier over-optimistic forecasts, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has reduced its estimates for non-OPEC oil production by 410 kb/d from second quarter 2007 onwards. This change has been little noticed in the press.

According to the July 13 issue of the IEA's Oil Market Report, the original non-OPEC forecasts for 2005 and 2006 proved over-optimistic to the tune of 1.0 mb/d. This discrepancy is mostly due to decreasing OECD production. Moreover, OECD supply has consistently come in below initial forecasts for the past ten years.

This has forced the IEA to introduce what is called a "reliability adjustment", reducing their total non-OPEC forecasts with 410 kb/d, applied from second quarter 2007 onwards.

IEA relies on national forecasts, so who are the culprits? The country-by-country adjustments are as follows (sorted by amount):

Norway -162 kb/d
USA -125 kb/d
UK -125 kb/d
Canada -97 kb/d
Brazil -34 kb/d
Malaysia -34 kb/d
Other OECD Europe -24 kb/d
Egypt -24 kb/d
Colombia +20 kb/d
Australia +22 kb/d
Kazakhstan +25 kb/d
Azerbaijan +26 kb/d
Mexico +27 kb/d
China +97 kb/d