The Oil Drum

The National Petroleum Council is due to report today on a study requested by US Energy Secretary Bodman. Here are some of my concerns about it.

National Petroleum Council scenario for net regional oil imports and exports in 2005 and 2030. Source: Figure ES-6 of NPC executive summary.

Update: Webcast of the presentation here, though it's badly edited. (E.g., one has to wait 15 minutes to hear Mr Raymond begin speaking). Executive summary here (very slow download right now) and the 422 page full report (BIG .pdf warning) here.

On Wednesday, I participated in a bloggers conference call sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute (API). The main topic was the National Petroleum Council's report "Facing the Hard Truths about Energy". Participating in the call were

• Rod Nelson - senior VP for technology and strategy, Schlumberger Limited (for NPC)
• Tom R. Eizember - senior planning advisor, ExxonMobil Corporation (for NPC)
• John Felmy - chief economist, API
• Ron Planting - statistics manager, API
• Byron King- The Daily Reckoning
• Ed Morrissey - Captain's Quarters, Heading Right, and Blog Talk Radio
• "McQ" - The QandO Blog
• Gail Tverberg - TheOilDrum

In this article, I will discuss the NPC's report, based both on a review of the report and what I learned in the call. The conference call also included discussion of API's June 30, 2007 statistics for the US oil industry, but I will not discuss these, since they are similar to EIA's (high crude oil inventory, low gasoline inventory, etc.).

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN1338954720070713?sp=...

"Peak oil" advocates blast U.S. industry study, by Chris Baltimore

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Proponents of "peak oil" -- the theory that global crude oil production has hit its zenith and is headed for a steep decline -- are steamed with a U.S. oil industry group's findings that the world has plenty of oil.