The Oil Drum

Looking at the ASPO Blog, I read these statements by some prominent members of the peak oil community.

[Robert] Hirsch doubts that the world can keep increasing oil flows for much longer. "CERA sees a long plateau ahead," he said. "But I can't find a plateau in the data I'm looking at." The downturn, when it comes, could take the world by surprise. "Peaking could come with little warning and sharp declines," he said....

"We have 1,500 days until peak and tomorrow we'll have one day less," Chris Skrebowski, the editor of Petroleum Review, told the ASPO-5 crowd today. Skrebowski's projections, which focus on oil flows instead of reserves, has the world peaking at between 92 and 94 million barrels per day. Unfortunately, he said, "collectively we're still in denial."

Hirsch is the principal author of the now famous Hirsch Report (large pdf). Skrebowski maintains the Megaprojects Database of future oil production. These quotes got me thinking about the shape of the peak in world oil production which Skrebowski projects as occurring in the fall of 2010.

Finding it easier to add new reserves on Wall Street than from E&P in the ground, Anadarko bought both Kerr-McGee and Western Gas on Friday, June 23rd in a $21 Billion Deal in the Oil Patch -- from the Houston Chronicle.

In an unexpectedly bold move Friday, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. announced it would purchase not one but two oil and gas companies for a combined $21.2 billion, in a ringing endorsement of U.S. energy exploration....

It's buying Kerr-McGee, a storied energy company out of Oklahoma City that is heavily entrenched in the Gulf of Mexico's deep waters and the Rocky Mountains, and the smaller Western Gas Resources of Denver, which also has significant reserves in the Rockies.

The double deal had some analysts doing a double take.

This analyst was also a bit stunned and a little investigation turned up a number of interesting things. Let's check this deal out.