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Petrol $6 a litre by 2010

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Just heard...its possible petrol prices could be $6 a litre by 2010....Cause of dewindling oil supplies and expected higher demand.
 
David123 said:
Just heard...its possible petrol prices could be $6 a litre by 2010....Cause of dewindling oil supplies and expected higher demand.

crazy as it sounds i hope so but seriously i doubt it . if you really believe it might be time to start a bike shop . im long a few oilers so it wouldnt bother me at all


.................... bris
 
Alarming though it sounds, most of our state governments have just come up with a nice-sounding plan to make Australia more dependent on oil and especially gas in the name of benefiting the environment (through using less coal).

End result? Well they do forecast a 50 - 100% rise in wholesale electricity prices... But then they're assuming oil prices crash 50% or so and stay down and that natural gas supplies are basically unlimited.

Completely ignoring the reality that (to my understanding) there's only 230 or so metres between the top of the oil column at Cantarell (Mexico, world's second largest producing oil field) and the water pushing up from below and that is falling at about 2 metres per week. Completely ignoring the announcement by Kuwait that their massive Burgan field has peaked. Completely ignoring Australia's own falling oil production. And on I could go.

And gas? Suffice to say that oil and gas are far more closely linked than most realise. Markets are rapidly globalising and already industrial users in Western Australia are feeling the effects of rising US gas prices and the general situation with faltering production in the US, UK, New Zealand etc whilst global demand soars. The market sets the price of everything and Australia does not exist in isolation from that market.

We'll pay world market rates to use Australian produced gas or shiver in the dark as it heads offshore. Relying on it for electricity is absolutely unsustainable. It will cut emissions that's for sure - because we can't afford to use any power.

Suffice to say that I'll be in contact with the proponents of this plan with a few facts they have chosen to overlook. :banghead:
 
I have some reservations on unlimited rise of oil prices.

Some limiting factors are competitors with currently uneconomical fuels just waiting to get past break even level.

From what I heard, bio-fuels, ethanol, solar, hydrogen will be very attractive alternatives when oil unleaded petrol price reaches $2.50 to $3.00

Users will gradually move away from petrol, lowering strain on supplies, and price will be controlled by competition between all fuels, not just companies providing one fuel.
 
Hi Happy

Im with you there once the price gets over $2.50 a whole range of other fuel possibilities open up. including gas to oil conversion
LNC.AX
http://www.lincenergy.com.au/
and rubbish to oil conversion
http://www.changingworldtech.com/

lots of other novel ways to carry hydrogen around to
Aluminium storage
you burn the Aluminium underwater to turn it back into alumina and release the energy used in refining it as H2 and CO.
This actual device probably does not work and comes from a dubious energy conspiricy site but you get the idea
http://www.keelynet.com/energy/cornish.htm
Sodium Hydride storage
http://www.investorcommunications.net/reports/prbl/
ps I think PRBL have gone into liquidation they started a few years too soon.
I could go on
but thats a start
John
 
As Smurf says it is inevitable.

I just think it is too much for the average investor, average share commentator, much less the public to get their head around it.

If you have not got a substantial holding in solid oil and energy stocks esp. Woodside and if you are in deep debt then watch out.
 
I'm sick and tired of these so-called "forecasts" saying the petrol price will reach $x (enter ridiculously unrealistic number here) by 20xx (enter a year beyond 5-10 years from now). They are always wrong and they have no proof whatsover. What happened to the claim that the petrol price will reach $2 by the end of the year? I seriously doubt it'll go up that high within the next 3-4 months unless all the oil fields in the world are targetted by terrorists or something.
 
coladuna said:
I'm sick and tired of these so-called "forecasts" saying the petrol price will reach $x (enter ridiculously unrealistic number here) by 20xx (enter a year beyond 5-10 years from now). They are always wrong and they have no proof whatsover. What happened to the claim that the petrol price will reach $2 by the end of the year? I seriously doubt it'll go up that high within the next 3-4 months unless all the oil fields in the world are targetted by terrorists or something.

Alternately, what happened to the claim that oil would go to $35 a barrel when it rose from the low 20s to the 50s (now 70s). Even the official government energy officials were saying the price would drop to the 50s in the near future. I am hoping the price may drop to the 60s short term but get ready, the world is changing whether people believe or want it to.

This was predicted in Scientific American 15 years ago.
 
coladuna said:
...the petrol price will reach $x (enter ridiculously unrealistic number here) by 20xx (enter a year beyond 5-10 years from now). They are always wrong .....unless all the oil fields in the world are targetted by terrorists or something.
Well people I meet say that BHP will reach $20x by 2020 (when I plan to retire). Some tell me it's $50 stock. They're the pessimists. The rest tell me it's $100 stock (when they're sober) or $200 (when they're not).

As for the oilfields being targetted, I dont want to go there mate - or give your scenario any weight - not that it doesn't have any credibility - but I think we are all in denial about it. But many would say that it doesn't need that trigger for oil to go mad. Just the fact that oil comes from the Middle East is enough to make it unstable. If Im not mistaken, one of the factors which screwed up the predictions about the price of gold in the early 80's was the Iran Iraq war. Iran sold reserves, and gold crashed. Call it Force Majure.

Anyway AAE went down a few days ago - Wouldn't you think ethanol was a sure winner in all this - heck, I just wish even a small percentage of the market made sense.

_______________
Man who never made a mistake never made anything
 
i put this forward - 12 years ago i bought a house in an inner suburb, when prices were still relatively cheap, and were comparable to those in outer suburbs - i ensured i was surrounded with all the services i could need in the future (was single at the time, now married with 3 kids) - services like schools, shops, parks, multiple forms of public transport etc etc - and lastly made all efforts to get a job close to home - 12 years later i have sold the car, with no need to buy another (i get a taxi if i really need a car).

and why did i.............surely we all knew oil/petrol supplies were going to dwindle, and the powers at be weer going to do their all to hinder development of alternatives.

it might appear as so - but it aint a brag session - just acted on what was known, and most likely in the future.
 
There is no reason why oil can't be $40 per barrel in 2010 or beyond.
It is simply a matter of supply and demand economics.

If new fuels get a foothold all that will do is cause an orchestrated drop in the price of oil. The arabs and OPEC will be satisfied to sell at $40.
They were before and that will still keep them rich.

I know oil is non renewable but I still believe there is plenty around and more to be found.
 
123enen said:
There is no reason why oil can't be $40 per barrel in 2010 or beyond.
It is simply a matter of supply and demand economics.

If new fuels get a foothold all that will do is cause an orchestrated drop in the price of oil. The arabs and OPEC will be satisfied to sell at $40.
They were before and that will still keep them rich.

I know oil is non renewable but I still believe there is plenty around and more to be found.

OPEC have stated that they will turn off the taps when they need to; to make sure oil doesnt go below us$60

As for "plenty around"; companies have been looking for major oil fields in just about everywhere in the world and nothing massive has been found since 1970

Ghawar along with the other saudi oilfields are running at full capacity of about 9.5million barrels a day and they cant increase this; though oh would they love to

The only source of oil we have left that HAS been discovered is oil shale and tar sands; but the technology to extract this efficiently has never been proven on a commercial level. In fact, the Canadian energy national body has targeted 1million barrel a day by 2010... and thats nothing compared to the 84million barrels the world uses daily and thats now

As for the demand side of things; when China decides they want to have the same % automobiles at Korea; we will need 2 more Saudi Arabias and frankly, they just dont exist... and u also have the other BRIC nations...

If u go long BHP, with an oil division bigger than WPL and OLympic Dam for Uranium, IMO over the next 5-7years u cannot go wrong... :2twocents

IMO we will never see oil below us$50 again...
 
I'll just post a few bits of info for everyone to consider...

Ghawar (Saudi Arabia) is the world's largest prducing oil field with daily production around 4.5 million barrels per day (mmbpd). It has for some time now been heavily flooded (intentionally) with sea water in order to maintain extraction rates (that is, to avoid the normal decline as the reservoir depletes).

Water flood in this manner doesn't increase the overall recovery of oil, in many cases it reduces it, but it maintains high production rates until near the end. The horizontal wells they have drilled at Ghawar have the same objective - high production rate but not necessarily high overall recovery of oil.

Think of it like this. You have a "pool" of oil floating on water (the oil is physically in the structure of rocks but I'm keeping this simple). On top of the oil you have natural gas. So, three layers - gas, oil and water.

It works like an aerosol can where you have a liquid (eg cleaning spray etc) in the can and pressurised gas above that liquid. A small pipe extends from the top of the can to the bottom. When you press the button, the pressure from the gas forces the liquid from the bottom up the pipe. (Hence why only gas comes out if you turn the can upside down.)

Much the same with oil. In a typical new field using conventional vertical drilling, the pressure of gas (natural gas, the same stuff you use for cooking etc) forces the oil into the pipe and out it flows. This incredibly high pressure is what makes blowouts etc possible. As with the aerosol can, some gas will come out with the oil - this is either reinjected (put back in the ground), flared (burnt off - total waste) or used as fuel (natural gas).

But as oil and some gas is taken from the field the pressure gradually falls and the flow rate drops. At the same time, natural water ingress to the field often occurs so you have water coming up with the oil as well as gas. So, lower volume of production and some of that production is water. End result - oil production slowly but persistently falls.

In order to overcome this, the pressure can be maintained rather than allowed to fall. Injecting nitrogen is an option, so is carbon dioxide but the easy option is usually water. In the case of Saudi Arabia, that's sea water.

So, push more water in the bottom of the field thus pushing the remaining oil up higher (since oil floats on water) and compressing the remaining gas. End result - higher pressure.

Now, to get the best from this you don't want heaps of water coming up with the oil. That's a real problem when you're pumping more water in than you're taking out oil (since you want to increase pressure). Solution? Rather than drill the wells vertically, drill them horizontally straight into the oil. So you literally take the oil out of the middle and leave the gas on top and the water below.

As the oil is extracted, the thickness of the "oil" component falls - the field becomes more and more water. Problem is, once the water reaches the horizontal well it basically dies there and then. No gradual decline, the oil just stops and out comes water. Since it's not even drinkable water, it's no use at all.

Overall, it's like a sprint runner versus a marathon runner. The sprinter runs faster but basically collapses once they cross the finish line whereas the marathon runner covers a greater distance at a slower pace. What the Saudi's (and plenty of others) are doing is comparable to the sprinter - push as hard as you can until it falls apart. A bit like revving your car engine until it blows rather than cruising at moderate speed.

This is what's being done at Ghawar according to virtually all outside knowledge on the field. It is also known to be the case at Cantarell (Mexico, world's second largest producing oil field).

Now, this is the scary bit. PEMEX (the Mexican national oil company) quite freely admits that the thickness of the oil column at Cantarell is down to about 230 metres and falling at about 2 metres per week. Do the maths there... Within 2 years their wells will be swapping from oil to water and once that happens it's game over. Since there are multiple wells drilled into Cantarell, they won't all stop at once but it will happen faster than anyone would like.

Has this happened before? The Yibal field in Oman is the best known example. Once natural decline set in, they went for the abovementioned strategies particularly horizontal drilling. Spectacularly, production went up and up until it peaked in 1997. Since that time, production collapsed even more spectacularly than it rose and it is now only one third the rate it was 9 years ago.

The Saudi's, Mexico and others are using the same techniques as used at Yibal. If it ends the same way (Mexican data strongly suggests it will in their case) then we're in serious trouble.

Kuwait admits that their Burgan field (worlds second largest in terms of reserves but not production) is in decline and that they can no longer sustain previous production rates. They seem to be taking a different approach - slower production over a longer period. The world will likely interpret this as withholding oil from the market to force up prices but it is simply a matter of geology.

Recently in Alaska, production has been cut by half to 400,000 barrels per day due to pipeline problems. What the media fails to mention is that in 1989 production was running at 2 million barrels per day. The field is, roughly, 90% depleted (excluding reserves in ANWR) according to most data so production decline is inevitable.

Or closer to home where Bass Strait production has crashed 80% since its' peak in 1985.

As for the Saudi's, their production is down from 9.6 mmbpd to around 9.1mmbpd over the past 6 months. They say they can't find buyers for their oil (but they could before...) whilst at the same time outbidding everyone for drilling rigs. In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina which hit oil fields in the US, several drilling rigs headed straight to Saudi Arabia because they outbid US oil companies. Hmm... You can't sell your oil and say you've got plenty and then spend a fortune hiring 120 drilling rigs to look for more? I don't think so...

If that's not enough, you could always look to the UK where North Sea production of both oil and gas has seriously slumped since peaking in 2000 - end result is surging gas / electricity prices, a return to coal etc. Or you could look to New Zealand and wonder whatever happened to the giant methanol plants which a few years ago supplied 10% of world demand. What happened? The gas is running out and the plants are uneconomic using expensive imported LNG.

Oil production over the life of a field, group of fields, a whole country (and in theory the whole world) follows a curve that isn't easy to explain. The best I can do is use the following analogy:

When a human is born, it has virtually no physical strength. From that point on, as long as it gets some sort of food (not necessarily the best food) and doesn't succumb to some unfortunate incident, strength will increse. At the age of 10, it will have drastically more strength than it had 5 years earlier. And this will continue. Even if you start drinking regularly, smoking and eating junk food as a teenager, your young age largely prevents any immediate fall in physical strength. Just keep putting food in and strength continues to grow.

But then the point comes where it gets harder. It's harder to maintain growing strength at 30 than at 18. You have to have better management - eat the right food, limit the alcohol etc or your strength will decline.

But it keeps getting harder. By the age of 50, your strength is likely to be in decline. Sure, you can start exercising more etc but you will NEVER get back to your peak strength. You have peaked just like an oil field and all you can do now is manage the decline. Do it right and the decline will be slow, do it wrong and it will be rapid but you'll decline no matter what.

Ultimately, by age 100 you'll have little stength if you haven't already died. 100 year olds just aren't as fit, no matter how much they exercise, eat the right foods etc as an 18 year old who pays no attention to such things. The cycle of rise, peak and decline.

It's the same with oil. As long as you drill wells and build pipelines etc, production will rise in a young field without any real difficulty. But then it gets harder and ultimately impossible to increase production. And then it falls, ultimately to zero.

But what about technology? You could take drugs to boost your stength in your 40's and avoid the early stages of decline. But all that's likely to do is make the final decline far steeper than it otherwise would have been - an early death. You'll be stronger for longer but you'll die early and have less overall productive ability over your lifespan. Same with horizontal drilling etc - more now but a lot less tomorrow.

Once the collective fitness of the world's oil fields peaks, that's it. We'll still have oil but in decreasing quantities. How fast the decline is depends on how it's managed - accept the inevitable and do everything possible to prolong life, albeit with slowly declining fitness. OR live in denial, take drugs to halt the decline for the moment but face an early death.

Apart from the technicalities of actual production, gas is and will almost certainly continue going the same way as oil. Time lag is about 30 years historically although above trend increased usage once oil peaks may shorten that somewhat. :2twocents
 
David123 said:
Just heard...its possible petrol prices could be $6 a litre by 2010....Cause of dewindling oil supplies and expected higher demand.

What's the source of your information?
Sometimes I think this sort of claim is made up by some journo looking for a sensational headline that will sell newspapers.

Bunyip
 
bunyip said:
What's the source of your information?
Sometimes I think this sort of claim is made up by some journo looking for a sensational headline that will sell newspapers.

Bunyip
Agreed that it sounds like a very doubtful scenario unless there's a real war in the Middle East (one that actually disrupts most or all oil exports), terrorists blow up multiple major fields and/or refineries, the government simply ups petrol tax by a few $ per litre or the AUD crashes.

Judge for yourself how likely any of those things are, but I'm not filling the jerry cans (yet).

Update to my previous post regarding Cantarell oil field. Mexican government forecasts see prodution falling to 0.5 - 1.2 mmbpd by 2010, down from 2.1 mmbpd in 2005. Given that the government runs it and it's the country's most important source of revenue, they're unlikely to be overstating the seriousness of the situation IMO.

Some recent reports suggest that the steep decline is now underway with output falling at 13% compared to this time last year. So far, the field is tracking the worst case scenario in the forecast range - doesn't look at all good. They have closed 40 or so wells at Cantarell because water has reached them... :eek:

(All based on info that I believe to be accurate but do your own research before making any financial decisions etc.)
 
In terms of oil discoveries, Africa is yet to be truly discovered.
Libya currently produces 1.5 mill barrels per day and WHEN the politics subsides it could get to 3 million.

The rate of discovery of new oil reserves in Africa has been the fastest in the world in the past five years, according to the U.S. Corporate Council on Africa.

The United States currently receives more than 15 percent of its oil imports from sub-Saharan Africa. The US National Intelligence Council estimates that the percentage will probably increase to 25 percent in the next decade as Africa continues to discover new offshore oil reserves. And the importance of African oil is growing: in the last five years, Africa's west coast accounted for about one-third of the world's new oil discoveries.
 
From ABC, August 21, 2006
Petrol prices force motoring innovation: expert
An international oil expert believes the soaring price of fuel may lead to a change in the motoring industry.
London-based expert Chris Skrebowski arrived in Perth yesterday for a series of industry talks and meetings with state and federal politicians over the rising cost of fuel.
Mr Skrebowski predicts the price of unleaded petrol in Western Australia could reach $2 a litre by Christmas.
He believes oil production will not be able to match supply within the next five years.
Mr Skrebowski says although high fuel prices have many flow-on effects to the average consumer, the situation is forcing people to think outside the square.
"If you go to Japan where the fuel is even higher, a third of the market's now really tiny cars under 700cc," he said.
"So in that sense, putting the price up does start to change behaviour."
However, Mr Skrebowski concedes solutions that work in other countries may not be suitable to the vast distances travelled in Australia.
Mr Skrebowski is encouraging people to start planning for the future.
"We don't have a chance of doing that unless we get on with it, face up to it now and start getting on with it," he said.
"Any investment takes a number of years, any change-over in social behaviour or technical instruction always takes a lot of time and that's really what I'm here to say."


Maybe $2.5 is bit optimistic for kick-in of large-scale alternative fuels, but lets hope that transition will be smooth.
 
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