The Oil Drum

70 comments on ANWR, and a midweek open thread

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

peakearl on November 3, 2005 - 5:28pm

Anyone else noticing the ongoing SPR draw-down? This is interesting, because I'm not seeing any further discussion or announcements of this. THe EIA numbers yesterday showed a drop of 1.9 million bls from the SPR while at the same time crude stocks are at a record level and increased a total of 2.7 million bls (mos of which I suppose came from the SPR). I can only guess they're quietly trying to work the price down.

Other interesting stats: The EIA shows average daily world oil production for the first 8 mos of 2005 to be only 1.2 million bls/day more than 2004. OPEC increased by 1.0 million bls, meaning the rest of the world only added 0.2. This is essentially before Katrina came ashore (on Aug 29) and doesn't reflect hurricane losses. OPEC increases are mainly from opening up existing supply, not new supply. It looks like the last quarter numbers for world supply outside OPEC will probably show a significant decline from 2004. I'll wait and see.

Given high price and demand I find these numbers remarkable.

Comments can no longer be added to this story.

Slippery Slope on November 3, 2005 - 7:52pm

So the SPR drawdown of about 5 million barrels (and also Europe and Japan SPR drawdowns) will create a new future demand to refill them. I wonder how soon that will happen. This summer the US Congress authorized the filling of the US SPR from its then current maximum of 700 million barrels to a new maximum of one billion barrels - a 300 million barrel increase!

Suppose that conventional crude oil has peaked this year. Then the 300+ million barrels will have to effectively come from deepwater, and so forth.