Diskussionsforum der stw-boerse: Auslandswerte: Gas & Öl Aktien: Archivierte Beiträge bis 19. November 2004
mib - Montag, 23. August 2004 - 09:36
ihr WOLLT das nicht verstehen, ne?

- die gesicherten Reserven sind niedriger als angesetzt;
- die "demnaechst zu findenden" grossen Lagerstaetten existieren nicht;
- solange es billiger ist, ein O&G Unternehmen mit seiner Produktion und seinen Vorraeten zu kaufen anstatt selbst das kapitalintensive Risiko der Prospektion und Exploration einzugehen, wird nicht verstaerkt gebohrt;
- es gibt kaum noch wirklich gute und grosse Gebiete, auf denen sich Prospektion und Exploration lohnt;
- der Bedarf steigt stetig!

50$ fuer ein barrel Oel sind ein Spekulationspreis, - klar! - aber wenn der Preis faellt und damit die Kurse der O&G Unternehmen fallen, dann werden die eben noch schneller von Big Oil aufgekauft, da es immer unrentabler wird, selbst zu explorieren! ...womit sich das Dilemma immer mehr verschlimmert!

seid bloss vorsichtig, wenn ihr GEGEN einen hohen Oelpreis spekulieren wollt!

Gruss - Mib

j_r_ewing - Montag, 23. August 2004 - 16:59
"ihr WOLLT das nicht verstehen, ne?"
Mib, ich glaub, SO schlimm isses nich - nicht mal bei mir! ;-)

Im Einzelnen:

" - die gesicherten Reserven sind niedriger als angesetzt"

Das mag wohl sein. Aber wenn ich dafür mal 20% Beschißquote ansetze, quer durch die ganze Ölwelt (und das kommt mir ziemlich großzügig vor, denn daß nun die GANZE Ölwelt auf Beschiß aus ist (bei Angabe der Reserven - ansonsten möchte ich mich da nicht aus dem Fenster hängen), kommt mir unplausibel vor - warum sollte sie?), dann hab ich bei der gesicherten (!) Reserve statt für 50 Jahre eben nur 40 Jahre Vorrat. (Nach den Zahlen von 2002; also zieh meinetwegen deshalb noch mal 5 Jahre ab.) Soll man deshalb schlaflose Nächte kriegen?

Zumal ich nicht glaube, daß in den nächsten 40 Jahren (oder 35) nicht mehr nach Öl gebohrt werden wird. (Da tut sich schon derzeit was; siehe z.B. das verstärkte Interesse für Afrika.)
Und was in dieser Zeit gefunden wird, verlängert die Reichweite wieder.

Außerdem: mit steigenden Preisen verschiebt sich auch die die Grenze zwischen "rentabel abbaubar" und "nicht rentabel abbaubar". Das bringt mehr konventionelle Reserven, ohne daß eine einzige Bohrerdrehung gemacht werden muß.

Auch heißt "abgegrast" nicht "abgegrast": Lager werden derzeit im Durchschnitt angeblich nur zu ca. 35% geleert; dann abgehakt. Bei höheren Preisen dürfte hier der Ehrgeiz wachsen. Außerdem kommt dann der Zeitpunkt, wo alte, verlassene Bohrlöcher wieder aufgemacht werden.

Zudem werden die Gewinnungsmethoden weiterentwickelt. Beispiel Ölsande: was vor Jahren noch as unwirtschaftlich galt, geht mittlerweile zu Kosten von unter 10 $ pro barrel.

Und die Technologie schreitet überall voran - warum sollte sie es ausgerechnet bei den Prospektionsmethoden NICHT ?

Natürlich wird vieles davon mit (stetig!!) steigenden Kosten verbunden sein. Das sollte sich auch im Ölpreis niederschlagen. Aber was hat das mit der Manie dieser Tage zu tun ?


"- die "demnaechst zu findenden" grossen Lagerstaetten existieren nicht":
um das sagen zu können, müßte man alles gründlich abgesucht haben.

Aber auch ohne deine knackige Formulierung (die du wohl auch nicht wortwörtlich verstanden haben wollen wirst, denke ich): na gut; Kleinvieh macht auch Mist - Mittelvieh erst recht ! :-) Also auch wenn sich das Wachstumstempo verlangsamt: das ist deshalb noch lange nicht das Ende der Fahnenstange.


"- solange es billiger ist, ein O&G Unternehmen mit seiner Produktion und seinen Vorraeten zu kaufen anstatt selbst das kapitalintensive Risiko der Prospektion und Exploration einzugehen, wird nicht verstaerkt gebohrt":

Mit deinem Hinweis auf die derzeitigen Aufkäufe hast du wohl recht.
Aber wie du schon schreibst: "SOLANGE..."! Jede neue Übernahme treibt den Preis der Restlichen höher (zumal ja keine neuen dazukommen können, wenn nicht gebohrt wird). Was also, wenn die Verkaufspreise so hoch gestiegen sind, daß der Kostenvorteil dahin ist?
Diese Erscheinung verzehrt sich selbst.

Und wenn die kleinen "Billig-Gesellschaften" aufgekauft sind bzw. preislich nicht mehr interessant sind: was dann...? Haben die Großoen die Kleinen gekauft, um deren Öl dann in der Erde liegen zu lassen ? Jede verstärkte Nachfrage (mit begleitendem höherem Preis) stellt in einem Markt einen Anreiz dar, diese Situation durch höheren Verkauf (zu den erhöhten Preisen) zu NUTZEN. Warum sollten die Großen auf diesen möglichen Mehrverdienst verzichten ?
Zumal auf der anderen Seite der (Un-)Gleichung ein Bohren auf gesichertem Standort durch das stark verringerte Risiko sogar um so billiger wird!

Und wenn man mal annimmt, daß eventuell jahrelang nicht mehr gesucht wird: das würde erst jucken, wenn die bisherigen Reserven zu Ende gehen - d.h. in Jahrzehnten.


"- es gibt kaum noch wirklich gute und grosse Gebiete, auf denen sich Prospektion und Exploration lohnt":
(siehe oben.)


"- der Bedarf steigt stetig!"
FULL ACK!! (Auf Jahre hinaus.) Mit Unterstreichen von "stetig" !!! ;-))


Gut, daß du wieder im Lande bist. Dürfte der Klärung dienen!

Gruß
JR

j_r_ewing - Montag, 23. August 2004 - 17:13
[Ach ja - den Afrika-Artikel noch:]

http://www.dw-world.de/german/0,3367,1503_A_1164917_1_A,00.html
[Deutsche Welle]

14.04.2004

Der Fluch des Öls

Die USA nehmen Afrika als Erdöllieferanten immer mehr ins Visier. Für einige Länder dort ist das Öl mehr Fluch als Segen. Korruptionsgelder westlicher Erdölfirmen heizen die Machtkämpfe zusätzlich an.

Während die Weltöffentlichkeit des zehnten Jahrestages des Genozids in Ruanda gedenkt, findet nach Ansicht der Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker (GfbV) an anderer Stelle Afrikas ein neuer Völkermord statt. "Eine Million Menschen drohen im Sudan zu verhungern, weil die sudanesische Regierung humanitäres Völkerrecht missachtet und Hunger als Waffe einsetzt", heißt es in einer Stellungnahme des Generalsekretärs der Organisation, Tilman Zülch. Die GfbV wirft arabischen Milizen - die das arabische Regime in Khartum angeblich unterstützen - Massentötungen und -vergewaltigungen in der westlichen Region Darfur vor. Kinder seien entführt, Vieh getötet und Dörfer geplündert worden. Sorgen bereitet der Konflikt auch den USA: Sie haben Personal in die Region gesandt, um die Verteilung von Hilfsgütern zu organisieren.

Die "humanitäre Hilfe" ist jedoch nicht ganz selbstlos. Die US- Regierung ist an einer stabilen Lage im Sudan interessiert. Schließlich stehen amerikanische Öl-Interessen auf dem Spiel. Und die sind längst nicht auf den Sudan beschränkt. "Die USA haben ein vitales und - ein durchaus steigendes - nationales Interesse in West- und Zentralafrika". Zu diesem Schluss kommt eine aktuelle Untersuchung des Washingtoner Think-Tanks CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies). Afrika sei eine Schlüsselregion, um die "Diversifizierung der Energieversorgung" des Landes künftig abzusichern. Die Abhängigkeit von Öllieferungen aus dem krisengeschüttelten Mittleren und Nahen Osten, in dem die Ölvorräte sich dem Ende zuneigen [Quatsch: gerade DIE Vorräte sind pro Förderung die langlebigsten!!], soll verringert werden.

Westafrika wieder für USA interessant

In Afrika sieht die Erdölindustrie ein enormes Potential. "Viele der Ölreserven dort sind noch gar nicht erschlossen", sagt Antonie Nord, Leiterin der Afrika-Abteilung bei der Heinrich- Böll-Stiftung [oha: die Grünen im Öl-Business ?? :-))]. Bis 2010 sollen ein Viertel der Ölimporte der USA aus Afrika stammen. Besonders viel versprechen sich amerikanische Erdölfirmen wie Exxon Mobile von den Vorkommen in Westafrika. Sie liegen meist vor der Küste, sind damit sicher vor Bürgerkriegen und besonders leicht und schnell in die USA per Schiff zu transportieren. "In westafrikanischen Staaten investieren die Amerikaner massiv, auch die Zahl der diplomatischen Vertretungen hat sich dort in den vergangenen zwei Jahren erhöht", sagt die Afrika-Expertin Nord zu DW- WORLD.

Besonders geschätzt ist beispielsweise Äquatorialguinea. Erst kürzlich wurden hier Ölvorräte entdeckt, die in der Branche Begeisterung auslösten. "Jede zweite Bohrung ist ein Treffer", schwärmte ein Mitarbeiter einer Erdöl-Erkundungsfirma im Interview mit einer deutschen Tageszeitung. Die Öl-Ressourcen bergen eigentlich auch für die Ländern enorme Entwicklungspotentiale. "Die Vergangenheit hat aber gezeigt, dass gerade ressourcenreiche Länder in Afrika am meisten unter Bürgerkriegen und korrupten Regierung leiden", sagt Nord. "Nur eine kleine privilegierte Schicht profitiert vom Ölreichtum, die Bevölkerung leidet, da alle anderen Wirtschaftsbereiche vernachlässigt werden". In Nigeria stammen rund 70 Prozent der Einnahmen aus dem Ölgeschäft. Über zwei Drittel der Bevölkerung lebt in Armut.

Mit Transparenz gegen Instabilität

Westliche Ölfirmen sichern sich dabei ihre Geschäft häufig über hohe Bestechungsgelder und fördern damit die Korruption. Nach einem Bericht des Internationalen Währungsfonds (IWF) sollen in Angola zwischen 1997 und 2002 jedes Jahr 700 Millionen US-Dollar auf dem Wege zwischen Ölfirmen und Zentralbank versickert sein. Die Aussicht, vom flüssigen Gold derart zu profitieren, fördert die Instabilität ressourcenreicher Staaten. Die Rebellen, die sich im vergangenen Jahr im ölreichen Inselstaat Sao Tomé, an die Macht putschten, nannten das Erdölgeschäft als eine ihrer Motivationen für den Coup.

"Die Ölgeschäfte müssen transparenter werden", sagt Nord. Der "Fluch des Erdöls" könne gebannt werden. "Alle Ölkonzerne sollten die 'Publish what you pay'-Initiative unterstützen", sagt Nord. Danach würden sich Ölkonzerne selbst verpflichten, ihre Zahlungen offenzulegen. Die Kampagne war 2002 von US- Milliardär George Soros und dessen Open-Society-Institute initiiert worden. In die gleiche Richtung weist die "Extractive Industries Transparency"- Initiative, die vom britischen Premierminister Tony Blair im gleichen Jahr auf dem Weltgipfel in Johannesburg gestartet worden war. Sie sieht vor, dass auch die Regierungen und staatliche Ölfirmen über ihr Ölgeschäft mehr informieren. "Die Ideen fanden international großen Anklang. Shell und BP waren auch bereit mitzumachen". Dagegen erteilte der amerikanische Konzern Exxon Mobile eine klare Absage.

Steffen Leidel

mib - Montag, 23. August 2004 - 17:23
"Aber wenn ich dafür mal 20% Beschißquote ansetze, quer durch die ganze Ölwelt (und das kommt mir ziemlich großzügig vor, denn daß nun die GANZE Ölwelt auf Beschiß aus ist (bei Angabe der Reserven - ansonsten möchte ich mich da nicht aus dem Fenster hängen), kommt mir unplausibel vor - warum sollte sie?), dann hab ich bei der gesicherten (!) Reserve statt für 50 Jahre eben nur 40 Jahre Vorrat. (Nach den Zahlen von 2002; also zieh meinetwegen dafür noch mal 5 Jahre ab.) Soll man deshalb schlaflose Nächte kriegen?"

Der Beschiss liegt in erster Linie bei der OPEC (vor allem Saudi Arabien), - nicht so sehr bei den Multis!

aber ich mach's mir jetzt mal einfach:

lies mal folgendes Buch:
http://www.amazon.de/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691116253/qid%3D1093274400/028-3342643-8034925

ausserdem:
...ueber bubbles red ich ja nicht... Oel steht zur Zeit bei fast 50 U$ pro barrel... aber die Kurse der E&P companies sehen aus als wenn Oel nur die Haelfte kosten wuerde!

Gruss - Mib

trick17 - Montag, 23. August 2004 - 18:03
Wenn der Ölpreis bei 30$ ist,
dann verdienen Royal Dutch, BP und Exxon
immer noch fett. Auch bei 25$ wird noch
gutes Cash in die Kassen gespült.
D.H. der Ölpreis könnte sich halbieren und
die Ölkonzerne hätten noch ein KGv von 12-15.
In den derzeitigen Gewinnschätzungen
werden nämlich Ölpreise von unter 30$ angenommen.
Ich verstehe nicht, warum die großen Ölcompanys
nicht jetzt Reserven einkaufen.
Als Chef von RoyalDutch würde ich mal gucken,
ob ich nicht RepsolYPF übernehme.

Wenn ein großer Ölfeld langsam dem ende entgegen
geht, dann müssen dafür 100 kleine wieder erschlossen werden. Große neue Ölfelder gibt es
praktisch nicht.

trick17

j_r_ewing - Montag, 23. August 2004 - 18:23
Sorry, auch noch Bücher zu lesen ist illusorisch - ich beiß mich jetzt schon öfters in den A..., was ich da wieder für Zeit auf einen Roman hier aufgewendet hab.

Aber für den Fall, daß dein Argument auf Hubberts Peak beruhen sollte, hier kurz eine Anwort dazu:

Das ist auch eine der Säulen MEINER Argumentation!

Denn:

(Daß der Ansatz mit einer Glockenkurve sinnvoll ist, darüber brauchen wir wohl nicht zu diskutieren, oder? Zumal bis 1973 der Verlqauf ja auch glänzend übereinstimmt. [Datei "wissenswertes-oel.pdf"])

Die von Hubbert vorausgesagte Weltproduktion wäre hochgelaufen bis 1995 auf eine Gipfelhöhe von 40 Gb.

REAL ist der Trend aber 1973 auf halber Höhe schlagartig abgebrochen ("Ölpreisschock" von damals) und eiert seitdem leicht steigend ungefähr in dieser Höhe herum; zuletzt bei ca. 23.
(Demgegenüber sollte die Produktion laut Hubbert noch heute bei 35...36 liegen - die Hälfte höher!!)
Für die Fortschreibung in die Zukunft soll die Kurve das derzeitige Niveau ca. 2014 schneiden; meinetwegen auch schon 2012, wenn man mehr Zunahme voraussetzt. Das macht den Kohl nicht fett.

Wichtig ist:
Die Fläche zwischen den Kurven entspricht der Ölmenge, die "normalerweise" gefördert worden wäre, auf deren Förderung aber VERZICHTET wurde.

Dieses Öl muß ja irgendwo geblieben sein. Frage: Wo? Antwort: In den Lagerstätten!

Und man muß nicht integrieren können, sondern kann schon mit bloßem Auge sehen :
DIESE MENGE BETRÄGT ganz grob DIE HÄLFTE ALLEN SCHON JEMALS GEFÖRDETEN ÖLS !

Und wenn Hubberts Kurve die vorausgesagte Produktion angibt, dann liegt die Kurve der MÖGLICHEN Produktion noch DARÜBER - mit der Folge NOCH höherer ungeförderter förderbarer Ölmengen !

- Dies noch eben zu Hubberts Peak.

Gruß
JR

mib - Dienstag, 24. August 2004 - 09:27
nicht vergessen, dass der original "Hubbert's Peak" ausschliesslich Nordamerika betrifft!!! ...und da war der gute Hubbert "right on"!

...ausserdem kann man keine Lagerstaette voellig leerpumpen... das geht gar nicht.

...ausserdem darfst du nicht vergessen, dass die angenommenenen Reserven in der alten SU und in fast allen arabischen Staaten nicht nachpruefbar waren und sind.

Trick17 hat schon richtig gesagt:
"Wenn ein großer Ölfeld langsam dem ende entgegen
geht, dann müssen dafür 100 kleine wieder erschlossen werden. Große neue Ölfelder gibt es
praktisch nicht."
...und just diese 100 neuen kleineren Felder werden aben nicht erschlossen.

...ausserdem sollten wir nicht den/meinen Ausgangspunkt der Oel & Gas Diskussion/Investition vergessen. Der war naemlich Erdgas in Nordamerika! Und da sieht es eben NICHT gut aus und ein Preis von 8 U$ sollten im Winter drin sein.

...und wieder kann ich Trick17 nur zustimmen:
bei Oel 25 U$ und Gas 5 U$ verdienen sich die O&G companies dumm und dusselig. Schau dir doch mal an, wie die alle ihre Schulden reduziert haben! die balance sheets sind unglaublich viel besser als vor 2 Jahren, die Gewinne und besonders der cash flow sind viel besser... aber die PEs duempeln dahin... deshalb wandeln sich z.B. ja viele kleinere Unternhemen in Royalty Trusts um (letztes Beispiel ist Tusk, TKE.TO, aus dem Auslandsdepot).

Mib

trick17 - Dienstag, 24. August 2004 - 10:58
Cash-Flow für Schuldenreduzierung, Aktienrückkauf (Royal Dutch) und Dividenden.
Dann noch ein bisschen organisches Wachstum.
Da tut kein Riese dem anderen weh, weil er
extrem expandiert. Für die Ölbuden ein super
Umfeld.

trick17

mib - Freitag, 10. September 2004 - 14:16
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5945678/

schoener Artikel der u.a. eine Tabelle mit der inflationsbereinigten Entwicklung des Oelpreises hat.

Mib

chinaman - Sonntag, 26. September 2004 - 09:43
hat jemand das gelesen ? Was ist Eure Meinung dazu ?

http://dynalinks.dyndns.org/dynalinks/userspace/Shag/nwo/TheOilAgeIsOver.pdf

Gruß
Chinaman

mib - Dienstag, 28. September 2004 - 09:35
schaut euch nochmal folgende Titel an:
...TMXN.OB (pt = $5)
...TRGL (pt = $20)
...TGA (pt = $7)

...wobei pt fuer mein "personal target" steht...

ebenfalls spannend koennten sein:
IIIN
TOPT

Gruss - mib

mib - Dienstag, 5. Oktober 2004 - 09:11
lang aber ziemlich gut:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?041011fa_fact


PUMP DREAMS
..................................by JOHN CASSIDY

Is energy independence an impossible goal?

The New Yorker
Issue of 2004-10-11
Posted 2004-10-04

In the predawn hours of October 6, 1973, on Yom Kippur, Egyptian and Syrian forces launched a surprise attack on Israeli positions in the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. Two weeks later, after the Pentagon had started airlifting matériel to Israel, to counter Soviet shipments to Egypt and Syria, King Faisal, of Saudi Arabia, cut off his country’s oil exports to the United States. Other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which had been founded in Baghdad thirteen years earlier, followed Faisal’s lead. Almost overnight, the price of crude oil doubled. Gasoline prices rose sharply, shortages developed, and a new phrase entered the American lexicon: “gas lines.” On November 7th, President Nixon, already under pressure from Watergate, addressed an anxious country, saying, “Let us set as our national goal, in the spirit of Apollo, with the determination of the Manhattan Project, that by the end of this decade we will have developed the potential to meet our own energy needs without depending on any foreign energy source.”


More than thirty years later, Nixon, Leonid Brezhnev, Anwar Sadat, Hafez al-Assad, and Golda Meir are all dead—and so is King Faisal, who was assassinated by his nephew in 1975—but energy independence has returned as a major issue. The price of crude recently touched fifty dollars a barrel, drivers in many parts of the country are paying more than two dollars a gallon for gasoline, and both Presidential candidates have been sounding uncannily like Nixon. “I want an America that relies on its own ingenuity and innovation—not on the Saudi royal family,” Senator John Kerry said in his speech at the Democratic Convention, in July. “And our energy plan for a stronger America will invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and the cars of the future—so that no young American in uniform will ever be held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East.” President Bush has countered by pushing his own energy agenda, which includes a controversial proposal to begin drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an idea that Congress has so far rejected. “We will make our country less dependent on foreign sources of energy,” Bush told the Republican Convention.


Although the Democratic and Republican energy plans differ widely, their underlying rationale is the same. In 2003, the United States consumed some twenty million barrels of oil a day, of which slightly more than half was imported from abroad, much of it from the Persian Gulf. By 2020, according to the Department of Energy, domestic oil producers will be meeting less than a third of United States needs, and the Gulf countries will be supplying up to two-thirds of the world’s oil. “This imbalance, if allowed to continue, will inevitably undermine our economy, our standard of living, and our national security,” the Bush Administration’s National Energy Policy Development Group warned in a May, 2001, report. “But it is not beyond our power to correct. America leads the world in scientific achievement, technical skill, and entrepreneurial drive. Within our country are abundant natural resources, unrivaled technology, and unlimited human creativity. With forward-looking leadership and sensible policies, we can meet our future energy demands and promote energy conservation, and do so in environmentally responsible ways that set a standard for the world.”


When energy independence is presented in this way, it is hard to object—who would advocate energy dependence?—but optimism and an appeal to American patriotism don’t add up to a coherent policy. Moving beyond rhetoric and actually trying to make America less reliant on foreign oil involves confronting powerful commercial interests, solving difficult technological problems, and convincing the American public that cheap fuel is not a birthright.




The two hundred and ninety million people who live in the United States make up just five per cent of the world’s population, but they consume a quarter of the world’s oil supply. For much of the twentieth century, the United States was the world’s largest oil producer, and its profligacy wasn’t a pressing problem. Today, however, we are only the third-largest producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. In terms of proven reserves—oil deposits that are known to exist and are believed to be accessible at reasonable cost—we have slipped to tenth place in the international rankings, as reservoirs in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma have started to dry up.


According to the oil company BP’s “Statistical Review of World Energy,” a recognized authority on these matters, at the end of 2003 the United States possessed thirty-one billion barrels of proven reserves, more than China and less than Nigeria. These figures have a straightforward implication: if the United States were forced to rely on its own resources, it would run out of oil in four years and three months. This calculation takes into account the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which President Ford created in 1975, and which is stored at a number of sites in Texas and Louisiana. At full capacity, the reserve contains about seven hundred million barrels of oil—enough to keep the economy going for a few months during an emergency, such as the outbreak of a war that would cut the supply lines to the Middle East, but not nearly enough to keep gasoline prices low for a more extended period, which is what some politicians have suggested. “The purpose of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, from its inception, was never to bring down the price of oil,” Larry Goldstein, the president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, told me. “It was to minimize the economic dislocation during supply disruptions, unforeseen shocks to the market.”


The Bush Administration, which has proposed expanded tax breaks for drilling and exploration, apparently believes that there is plenty of oil yet to be discovered beneath the North American continent, a view not shared by the oil industry, which has cut back sharply on domestic drilling. Not so long ago, the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico were considered a fertile exploration area. Lately, after much costly and frustrating drilling, it has proved something of a disappointment. Lee Raymond, the chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil, was recently moved to comment that the company would have done better financially if it had given up after sinking a single well there.


The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, on Alaska’s North Slope, is the new hope. The Prudhoe Bay oil field, one of the world’s biggest reservoirs, is just sixty miles west of the refuge. Surveys carried out by the U.S. Geological Survey suggest that anwr may contain about ten billion barrels of recoverable oil. If this estimate turns out to be reliable, and if exploration starts next year, in 2025 anwr could be generating about a million barrels of oil a day. This is a lot of fuel, but it dwindles next to our energy requirements. By 2025, according to the Department of Energy, Americans will be consuming almost thirty million barrels a day. With luck, an anwr oil field operating at full capacity could satisfy perhaps three or four per cent of that total, meaning that most of the oil we use would still have to be imported.




Senator Kerry’s ambitious energy plan, which doesn’t include drilling in the Arctic preserve, comes in two parts. The less publicized piece involves promoting natural gas and coal, two hydrocarbons that already meet about half of America’s energy needs, mostly in the form of fuel for power stations. Kerry says that he will build a gas pipeline from Alaska, where there are large deposits of natural gas, and invest ten billion dollars in modernizing antiquated coal plants.


These ideas have merit—global stocks of natural gas and coal are huge—but they don’t represent a panacea. As natural gas has come to be used more widely in the United States, we have started to import large quantities of it from foreign producers. America possesses just three per cent of the world’s known reserves; Iran, Russia, and Qatar together possess more than fifty per cent. There can be no guarantee that a future government in Tehran, Moscow, or Doha won’t seek to exercise its market power in the same way that opec did in the nineteen-seventies.


Coal is less subject to political uncertainty, and Nazi Germany demonstrated that it can fairly easily be converted to gasoline. It is still abundant in the United States and in many other countries that are short of oil, such as China and India and some European countries. Modern coal-fired power plants don’t emit nearly as much nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide, the two main sources of acid rain, as older plants do. However, burning coal inevitably generates carbon dioxide, the gas primarily responsible for global warming, which even the Bush Administration has now admitted is a genuine phenomenon. It is feasible to sequester the carbon dioxide, but scientists are divided about whether it will prove possible to store it someplace where it won’t get released into the atmosphere. Since 1996, Statoil, a Norwegian company, has been injecting about a million metric tons of carbon dioxide a year into an aquifer under the North Sea. “People like myself have a lot of confidence that this will work,” Bob Williams, a physicist at the Princeton Environmental Institute, told me. “But we can’t say it with certainty until we do a lot more experiments. Nobody is going to be convinced by one demonstration project in the North Sea. You don’t want CO2 to come up into your basement from an underground storage area.”


Many environmentalists see any attempt to prolong our dependence on hydrocarbons as dubious. The Apollo Alliance, an influential umbrella organization of Greens and trade unionists, is calling for the development of power derived from the sun, the oceans, and crops, which it says will enable the country to achieve energy independence within a generation. Senator Kerry has adopted some of the Apollo Alliance’s rhetoric, calling energy independence “the great project of our generation.” The second half of his plan, the conservation and alternative-energy part, includes a pledge to make sure that twenty per cent of America’s electricity comes from renewable energy sources by 2020. Since about ten per cent of the power supply already comes from alternative-energy plants—hydroelectric plants, mainly—this doesn’t sound like an overambitious target, and it hardly amounts to energy independence.


Yet, even getting to twenty per cent represents a big challenge. Power generated from waves, windmills, and solar panels is weak, intermittent, and expensive—at least twice the cost of electricity produced from coal or gas. When it is cold or dark, solar panels don’t produce energy; when it is calm, wind turbines don’t turn. To insure continuity of supply, renewable power plants have to budget for large amounts of overcapacity, a problem that isn’t going to disappear. And, although alternative energy is getting cheaper as technology improves, the same is true of energy generated from hydrocarbons. “He”—Kerry—“is asking for an awful lot without telling us how he’s going to get there and at what cost,” Robert Ebel, a veteran oil-industry executive who once worked for the C.I.A. and now heads the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington, said. “Where is the twenty per cent going to come from?”


There is another, more basic problem with Kerry’s proposals. Switching to renewable energy wouldn’t reduce oil imports much, because most power stations don’t run on oil, which is largely used for road and air transport. Developing a transport fuel that can compete with oil is an enormous challenge. For this reason, among others, many analysts regard the candidates’ endorsement of energy independence as a political diversion. “It makes absolutely no sense to talk about energy independence,” Ebel told me. “We cannot produce our way to energy independence, and we cannot use efficiency or conservation to achieve energy independence. It’s just not going to happen, at least in my lifetime.”




If the skeptics are right, what can be done? Some experts, such as Edward L. Morse, who worked in the State Department on energy issues during the Carter and Reagan Administrations, believe that new discoveries in Russia, Central Asia, and West Africa will eventually allow the United States to diversify its sources of petroleum. “The most recent giant field that was discovered was Kashagan, in Kazakhstan,” Morse told me. “That field probably has more oil in place than the total remaining known reserves of the United States. The exploitable resources in the former Soviet Union are probably on the same order of magnitude as those in Saudi Arabia and Iraq.”


Unfortunately, nobody knows for sure how much crude is buried in the Caspian region and Siberia, or how much it will cost to extract those reserves and transport them to world markets. Taking the planet as a whole, the rate at which oil is being discovered has slowed down since the nineteen-sixties, and some geologists believe that global production is about to start falling. Colin Campbell, a British geologist who used to work for major oil companies, has popularized this argument. “Understanding depletion is simple,” Campbell says on the Web site of the organization he founded, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas. “Think of an Irish pub. The glass starts full and ends empty. There are only so many more drinks to closing time. It’s the same with oil.”


The geological debate is difficult for an outsider to judge. All we know for sure is that proven reserves are concentrated in the Persian Gulf: Saudi Arabia (262.7 billion barrels), Iran (130.7 billion), Iraq (115 billion), the United Arab Emirates (97.8 billion), and Kuwait (96.5 billion). The only country in the Western Hemisphere that has reserves of comparable magnitude is Venezuela (78 billion barrels), which is also a member of opec and boasts a populist, left-leaning President, Hugo Chávez, who frequently rails against United States imperialism. opec oil, for all its geopolitical drawbacks, is cheap, easy to transport, and relatively clean if used efficiently.


One of the key strategic issues facing the United States is how to insure continued access to opec oil when other countries are also importing more fuel. During the past ten years, global demand for oil has risen by almost a fifth, with the greatest increases coming from India and China, which recently passed Japan to become the world’s second-largest consumer of crude oil.


The decision to invade Iraq represented one way to deal with the oil-dependency dilemma: direct American intervention. President Bush, a former Texas wildcatter, and Vice-President Cheney, the former chief executive of Halliburton, the world’s biggest oil-services company, both have an acute understanding of energy issues. In 1999, when Cheney was still at Halliburton, he gave a speech at London’s Institute of Petroleum in which he pointed out that by 2010 the world would probably need another fifty million barrels of oil a day. “So where is the oil going to come from?” Cheney asked. “While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.”


As Vice-President, Cheney was put in charge of the National Energy Policy Development Group, which, in its May, 2001, report, pointed out that the Persian Gulf region would “remain vital to U.S. interests.” The Bush Administration hadn’t publicly raised the possibility of invading Iraq, but in August, 2002, seven months before the war started, Cheney warned that Saddam would be able to seize control of the world’s economic lifeline if he acquired weapons of mass destruction: “Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop ten per cent of the world’s oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world’s energy supplies, directly threaten America’s friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.”


Cheney has since been criticized for exaggerating the threat that Saddam represented, but the geostrategic thinking that underpinned the energy portions of his speech was not new. It dated back to January 23, 1980, when President Jimmy Carter declared, in his State of the Union address, “Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”


Prior to the Carter Doctrine, the United States had exercised its influence in the Middle East through friendly governments in Saudi Arabia and Iran: the so-called “twin pillars” of American policy. But in January, 1979, a popular revolt toppled the Shah, and the new regime in Tehran tilted toward Moscow. Then, in December, 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Following Carter’s speech, the Pentagon embarked on a lengthy military buildup in the Gulf, beginning with the creation of a Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, which could be dispatched to the Middle East on short notice. In 1983, President Reagan went a step further, establishing a U.S. Central Command, based in Tampa, and charging it with defending U.S. interests in East Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia.


When Communism collapsed, the U.S. military didn’t withdraw from the Persian Gulf. After the Gulf War of 1991, it stationed its forces in Saudi Arabia, the Muslim holy land, and built up its presence in Qatar and Turkey. Saddam, after surviving one American-led invasion, eventually fell victim to Washington’s willingness to project its power militarily, a point that Michael T. Klare, a professor at Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts, stresses in his new book, “Blood and Oil.” “From the vantage of officers and enlisted personnel in the U.S. Central Command, the invasion of Iraq is only the latest in a series of military engagements in the Gulf proceeding from the Carter Doctrine,” Klare writes. “This history helps to explain why the very first military objective of Operation Iraqi Freedom was to secure control over the oil fields and refineries of southern Iraq.”




The policy of direct intervention hasn’t worked as planned. In April, 2003, just weeks after the invasion of Iraq, Vice-President Cheney predicted that by the end of the year Iraq would be able to raise its oil output as much as fifty per cent over prewar levels. Before the war, the Iraqi National Oil Company was pumping about two and a half million barrels a day. Now, with the help of money, personnel, and equipment provided by the American government, it is pumping about 1.8 million barrels a day—at least, on those days when insurgent attacks on pipelines and storage facilities don’t force a cut in production. Early hopes of a surge in foreign investment that would enable Iraq to double or triple production in the next few years have turned out to be fanciful. Western oil companies are understandably reluctant to invest in a country that seems to be slipping toward civil war. “Iraq has great potential, but it also has great problems,” Robert Ebel said. “I would give them perhaps four, or four and a half, million barrels of production a day by the end of the decade—certainly not the six million barrels the Iraqis are talking about.”


To energy traders, what is happening outside Iraq’s borders is at least as important as what is happening inside the country. The Bush Administration’s decision to take military action has destabilized the rest of the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, and this has severely rattled the oil market. “People who trade oil futures in New York and London read ten articles saying that the Saudi regime is going to collapse, then they bid up the price of oil,” Robert Mabro, the chairman of the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies and an internationally renowned expert on oil, told me last week. “The fears may be exaggerated, but they are having a big effect on the oil price.”


Contrary to popular belief, the opec cartel, led by Saudi Arabia, no longer controls the price of oil, and hasn’t done so since 1986, when the price collapsed. The price is determined by the forces of supply and demand, operating through the futures markets in New York and London, where oil is traded like any other commodity. During the past couple of years, opec’s eleven members have raised their daily production by almost three million barrels to meet rising demand, and they don’t have much spare capacity left. Futures traders believe that another interruption in supply could lead to a crisis in the market. This has led them to bid up the current price by about fifteen dollars a barrel since the start of the year, an increase that is sometimes referred to in the markets as a security premium. “The recent terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia and the continuing attacks on oil infrastructure in Iraq are largely responsible for the extant security premium in crude-oil prices,” John Kilduff, an energy analyst at the brokerage firm Fimat USA, said in recent testimony before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. “Historically, Saudi Arabia has been the stalwart in terms of being able to fill production gaps when they have occurred. The mere idea that the kingdom may be the source of a supply disruption has caused available crude to become even more valuable in the face of such an uncertainty.”


By invading Iraq, the Bush Administration has unwittingly helped to create what its National Energy Policy was designed to avoid: rising oil prices that threaten to derail the economic recovery. When the price of fuel goes up, it acts like a tax on the economy, reducing consumers’ purchasing power and raising firms’ costs. After the oil-price shocks of both 1973 and 1979, the economy went into a recession. So far this year, the economy has continued to grow, but the rate of expansion has fallen, a development that Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, has largely blamed on rising oil prices.


In light of what is happening in the oil market and in the Middle East, many analysts believe it is time to reassess the Carter Doctrine and its Bush-Cheney variant. “I think we are pretty much at the end of the line,” Jeffrey Sachs, the director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, who also serves as a special adviser to Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary-General, told me. “Saudi Arabia is pretty rapidly destabilizing. Iraq I don’t think we are ever going to get under control this way. And our relationship with Iran is poor and deteriorating. The idea that we are going to be the dominant military power of the Persian Gulf is an extremely unrealistic way to manage our affairs. I don’t have an automatic solution. I just think that this one—where we keep building up the military commitment because it keeps failing—is a loser.” A less provocative United States policy stance would involve reducing the American military presence in the Gulf while retaining a veto over what happens there. (American disengagement, which Senator Kerry sometimes seems to advocate, is neither realistic nor desirable.) “The only sensible policy in the Middle East for a superpower is one of benign protection,” Robert Mabro said. “‘Don’t misbehave, boys! If you start misbehaving, we might intervene.’ But we aren’t going to be there all the time.”


From an economic vantage point, a strategy based on Realpolitik makes sense. To meet the rising demand for oil in the coming decades, the Gulf states need to spend tens of billions of dollars on expanding their capacity, an enormous capital investment that is unlikely to materialize in a hostile environment. Some opec members already favor keeping the supply tight so that prices will stay high. As in the past, the West will have to rely on the Saudi government to be the voice of moderation. “If you are sitting on a very large reserve base, as Saudi Arabia is, you don’t want somebody coming along and saying, ‘We are really going to make a push to develop an alternative to the internal-combustion engine,’” Robert Ebel said. “You have a division of opinion within opec, but Saudi Arabia is big enough to call the shots.”




For decades, energy policy has been subject to a simple political divide: Republicans tend to favor increasing supply; Democrats tend to favor reducing demand. If this split ever made sense, it doesn’t any longer—something that Senator Kerry, to his credit, has grasped, despite his lack of candor about Middle East oil. “There is no single thing out there that is going to solve the problem,” Larry Goldstein said. “You have to focus on the supply side as well as the demand side.” Amy Myers Jaffe, a senior fellow at Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, who heads a joint task force on the future of energy with the Council on Foreign Relations, concurs. “A coherent policy has to be a combination of everything,” she said.


Considering Americans’ voracious demand for fuel, the first step is conservation. The measures that Bush and Kerry have proposed, such as providing tax breaks to people who buy gas-electricity hybrids and cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells, are halfhearted. (American carmakers have just started to market these vehicles, in very limited numbers.) A quicker and less costly way to conserve fuel would be to tighten up the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency standards, which President Ford introduced. The fuel-efficiency requirements—27.5 miles per gallon for cars; 21 miles per gallon for light trucks—have hardly been raised since 1986. Moreover, many S.U.V.s are officially classed as light trucks, which means they are subject to less stringent requirements. If this loophole was closed, at least according to some estimates, demand for gasoline would drop by a million barrels a day—two-thirds of what we import from Saudi Arabia. Yet neither candidate has been willing to face down the auto industry and come out in favor of making the change.


Getting serious about conservation would be a lot more practical than talking about the “hydrogen economy.” In January, 2002, the Bush Administration launched its FreedomCAR Initiative, which was intended to produce an affordable hydrogen-powered automobile within ten or fifteen years. Not to be outdone, Senator Kerry has called for the establishment of a taxpayer-funded Hydrogen Institute, which, his campaign says, would “unite scientists and researchers to create a New Energy Economy by 2020.” These grandiose plans are unlikely to be realized. In his new book, “The Hype About Hydrogen,” Joseph Romm, a former Assistant Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Administration, points out that as far back as 1923 the British scientist John Haldane described an energy economy based on liquefied hydrogen stored in underground tanks. Since Haldane’s day, a great deal of scientific effort has been expended on hydrogen fuel cells, but hydrogen-powered cars are still underpowered, unreliable, and costly. Hydrogen itself is also expensive, because it rarely exists in pure form. The cheapest way to obtain it is to burn coal or natural gas, which produces hydrogen and carbon dioxide.


For this reason, if no other, many experts say that increasing the supply of fossil fuels is essential. “It can’t be our policy that we will never drill for energy in the United States, that we will never have any new import terminals for liquid natural gas, or that we don’t mine coalfields,” Jaffe said. Many people seem to be confused about where the power to light their homes comes from, she went on. “You have movements of canoeists that want to shut down every hydroelectric plant in the country. You have people who believe we shouldn’t renew the leases for nuclear plants. Nobody wants a liquid-natural-gas terminal near their home. They don’t want any drilling for natural gas or oil. The public is really not up to speed on energy issues.”


Many Americans also appear to believe that they are entitled to cheap fuel, regardless of how much they consume. When gasoline hits two dollars a gallon, they look for somebody to blame—this despite the fact that gasoline is still cheaper than it was in the nineteen-seventies, after adjusting for inflation, and that it costs a lot less than it does abroad. In the United Kingdom, for example, a gallon of gasoline costs more than five dollars.


No prominent politician will say it publicly, but from an energy perspective an extended period of higher fuel prices might well be just what the country needs. Many of the problems we now face can be traced to the nineteen-nineties, when oil prices collapsed. Between 1976 and 1985, when gasoline prices were high, drivers switched to smaller, less wasteful cars, and oil consumption fell by ten per cent. Once oil prices slipped back, Americans returned to their beloved gas-guzzlers. Between 1985 and 2000, the demand for oil rose by almost twenty-five per cent.


Higher energy prices would have many beneficial effects. Besides encouraging gasoline conservation, they would help the renewable-energy sector, which can’t compete at today’s prices, and they also would make it economical to start exploiting nonconventional supplies of oil, such as oil shale in the Rockies, tar sands in Alberta, Canada, and heavy oil in Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt. “Under any reasonable economic scenario, in twenty-five or thirty years we will be using more alternative fuels,” Jeffrey Sachs said. “We will be gasifying coal and we will be liquefying tar sands, and doing a lot of things that mean opec’s bargaining power will be reduced.”


The most straightforward way to keep energy prices up, and the one that most developed countries adopt, is to tax hydrocarbons—a policy proposal long regarded as political suicide in the United States. The federal tax on gasoline hasn’t gone up since 1993, when President Clinton raised it a paltry four cents a gallon. Americans prefer lower prices at the pump even if they have to pay hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes to support a U.S. military presence in the Middle East. Amy Myers Jaffe has calculated that the cost to taxpayers of oil-related military activities is equivalent to about ten cents per gallon of gasoline. “We are being taxed on energy in this country,” she said. “It’s just hidden.”


Given the public’s ignorance about energy issues, and the entrenched interests that dominate the industry, many analysts are skeptical about the prospects for change. Jaffe believes that it will take a repeat of what happened in the seventies to force meaningful reforms. Joseph Romm said, “If people cared about oil imports they would buy different cars. In response to 9/11, people started putting flags on their S.U.V.s and buying Hummers. That tells you something.”


Before any progress can be made, the political debate will have to move beyond the myth of energy independence. “Sooner or later, we are going to have a lot of hybrid cars, electric cars, and, perhaps, at some time in the future, we are going to have a hydrogen economy,” Robert Mabro told me. “But, until we get there, to talk about energy independence is foolish. The two candidates, with due respect, are lying to the people, or they don’t know what they are talking about.”

chinaman - Sonntag, 31. Oktober 2004 - 19:07
Die Welt braucht mehr Energie
IEA erwartet Anstieg des Verbrauchs bis 2030 um 59 Prozent - Hohe Abhängigkeit von Öl und Gas

Berlin - Vor einem weltweit dramatisch ansteigenden Energieverbrauch und einer immer größeren Abhängigkeit von den Ölproduzenten hat die Internationale Energie-Agentur (IEA) gewarnt. Laut "Welt-Energie-Ausblick 2004" benötigen Unternehmen und Privathaushalte bis zum Jahr 2030 im Vergleich zu heute voraussichtlich 59 Prozent mehr Energie. Dies belastet die Umwelt. Sollte es nicht eine deutliche Abkehr von fossilen Brennstoffen geben, werde auch in der fernen Zukunft Energie zu 85 Prozent aus Kohle, Öl und Gas gewonnen, sagte IEA-Chefökonom Fatih Birol.


Zwei Drittel des prognostizierten Zuwachses werden Entwicklungsländer - besonders China und Indien - verbrauchen, hieß es. Um den Energiehunger zu befriedigen, müßten in den nächsten 30 Jahren rund 16 Billionen Dollar zu heutigen Preisen investiert werden. Gebraucht werden vor allem neue Kraftwerke zur Stromerzeugung.


Die große Abhängigkeit der Welt von fossilen Energieträgern sei wegen der steigenden Umweltbelastung äußerst besorgniserregend, sagte IEA-Direktor Claude Mandil. Zudem habe die Ölpreisentwicklung starke Auswirkungen auf das Weltwirtschaftswachstum. Ein Anstieg um zehn Dollar pro Faß koste etwa 0,5 Prozent Wachstum.


Allerdings habe ein höherer Ölpreis auch positive Wirkungen, denn er führe zu größeren Sparanstrengungen der Industrienationen, was wiederum den Ausstoß des klimaschädlichen Kohlendioxids senke.


Einen Mangel an fossilen Brennstoffen werde es in den nächsten dreißig Jahren nicht geben, prognostizierte der IEA-Chef. Doch die Abhängigkeit von den Erdöl produzierenden Ländern wird wachsen. Mehr und mehr Öl werde von immer weniger Ländern geliefert. Dazu gehören die Opec-Mitglieder im Nahen Osten sowie Rußland.


Die Anfälligkeit für einen durch Lieferengpässe verursachten Preisschock werde zunehmen. Die Gefahr, daß infolge von Terror oder Unfällen Ölquellen oder Pipelines geschlossen und Öltanker an der Weiterfahrt gehindert werden. Die Risiken für Versorgungssicherheit der OECD-Staten stiegen. Weltweit wird die Erdöl-Nachfrage nach Schätzungen der OECD-Energieexperten um jährlich 1,6 Prozent zunehmen. Der tägliche Verbrauch würde damit bis 2030 auf 121 Mio. Faß von derzeit 82 Mio. Faß steigen. Ihren Projektionen legt die IEA einen Ölpreis von 25 Dollar zu Grunde.


In einem Szenario mit einem relativ hohen Preis von im Schnitt 35 Dollar bis 2030 erwartet die IEA einen Rückgang der Öl-Nachfrage um 15 Prozent, was dem gesamten derzeitigen Öl-Verbrauch der USA entspricht. Da bei einem solchen Preisniveau die Ausbeutung neuer Lagerstätten - etwa in der Tiefsee - attraktiver werde, würde der Marktanteil der bisherigen in der Opec zusammengeschlossenen Exporteure zurückgehen. Die Opec-Einnahmen würden dann zwischen 2003 und 2030 um 750 Mrd. Dollar niedriger ausfallen.


Der Gasverbrauch werde sich bis 2030 verdoppeln und Kohle werde weiterhin 20 Prozent des Energiebedarfs decken. Der Anteil erneuerbarer Energien wie Wind- oder Wasserkraft werde zwar wachsen, aber ein Niveau von weltweit zwei Prozent nicht übersteigen. Vor allem die Verwendung von Biodiesel und Wasserstoff könnten im Transportgewerbe herkömmliche Treibstoffe ersetzen.


Der Anteil der Atomenergie wird wegen des Ausstiegs einiger EU-Staaten zurückgehen. Die IEA schätzt, daß aber vor allem Länder in Asien die Kernkraft intensiver nutzen werden. eag.


Artikel erschienen am Mi, 27. Oktober 2004
Die Welt

mib - Montag, 1. November 2004 - 08:19
warte mal ab...
wenn wir in 2030 zurueckschauen, dann werden wir sehen, dass der durchschnittliche Oelpreis bei ueber $50 liegt!

Mib

mib - Freitag, 5. November 2004 - 13:42
$80 Oil, Here We Come!!!
by Bill Powers, Editor
Canadian Energy Viewpoint
November 4, 2004


In January of this year, I put together an article that appeared in
the February issue that laid out the case for and against $50 oil.
While the arguments against $50 oil have been thoroughly discredited,
most market observers still do not understand that the price of oil
will continue to head much higher. In this issue, I will examine
several of the reasons why the price of oil will not significantly
pull back from today's levels and is likely to reach the $80 mark
within the next 24 months.

At the foundation of many oil analysts' argument for lower oil prices
is the belief that OPEC can control the price of oil and use its
spare capacity to keep the price within acceptable limits. There is
one main reason this line of thinking is not valid -- OPEC has no
spare capacity whatsoever. OPEC, or more specifically Saudi Arabia,
has given several indications over the past two years that it will
increase production to keep oil prices at palatable levels, yet we
continue to see oil prices reach new highs.

I believe OPEC's ability to increase prices is a geological
impossibility since Saudi Arabia's Ghawar field is dying. Ghawar, the
world's largest oil field, produces approximately 4.5 million barrels
of oil per day and has been on production since 1951. Due to the
outstanding work of Matt Simmons, the world has become increasingly
aware of the high water cuts at Ghawar and several other large fields
in Saudi Arabia. According to Mr. Simmons, the use extensive of water
injection wells has provided an illusion of stable production at
Ghawar and elsewhere. Water injection wells are designed to push the
oil column to the producing well bores and keep reservoir pressure
high. However, as the amount of water produced along with oil
increases, production often heads into a steep decline. High water
cuts at Ghawar (7 million barrels of water a day according to
Simmons) are a clear indication that the world's largest field is
about to head into a steep and irreversible decline.

Without spare capacity and with several members experiencing steep
production declines, OPEC is no longer a cartel. It has morphed into
an extremely exclusive social club. Many market observers are about
to wake up to the reality that making pronouncements of more supply
coming online at some future date will no longer push oil prices
down, even temporarily.

In past years, when there was excess production capacity both inside
and outside of OPEC, high prices always brought additional supply
onto the market. Times have changed and many analysts have failed to
recognize it. Now that the world has reached the apex of Hubbert's
Peak (the thesis that once half of a petroleum producing region's
reserves have been extracted, that region's oil production will peak
and decline along a bell shaped curve), the world's supply of oil
will go down irrespective of price. This is an extremely bullish
situation for the price of oil.

The reaching of Hubbert's Peak is not an economic event but rather a
geological event. Oil, unlike many other commodities such corn and
wheat, was not created during a growing season but rather over
millions of years. For all intents and purposes, the world contains a
finite amount of oil and there is strong evidence to suggest that
there is a limit to what can be produced at any given time.

Some of the industry's most informed participants believe there is
little that can be done to increase worldwide oil production. Earlier
this year, British Petroleum announced that it will be returning to
shareholders all cash flow it receives in excess of $25US per barrel.
For every dollar the company receives in excess of $25US per barrel,
BP will adjust its dividend or increase its share buyback program to
return the cash flow to shareholders. BP has essentially given up its
efforts to increase production or even keep production flat. Instead,
the company has chosen to give shareholders back their capital with
interest.

The analyst community and many economists could not have been more
wrong about oil production in Iraq. It was only 18 months ago that
many market observers were calling for the price of oil to fall
precipitously once the US took control of the country. I have always
been skeptical of this scenario for a number of reasons that are now
quite obvious. The political situation in Iraq has gone from bad to
worse and the country's oil industry continues to spiral downward.
While there is little doubt that Iraq has one of the world's largest
endowments of oil, it will take years and tens of billions of dollars
to restore Iraqi production to 2.5 million barrels of oil per day.

Another reason the price of oil is headed higher is that OPEC's
reserve base is vastly overstated. One of the world's leading experts
on petroleum supply, Dr. Colin Campbell, contends that OPEC has been
vastly overstating its reserves for years. Campbell offers
substantial evidence that OPEC reserve estimates are politically
motivated. Kuwait is an excellent example of what is wrong with the
way OPEC countries report reserves. The country reported a gradual
decline in its reserve base from 1980 to 1984. This should be
expected from a mature producing country. However, in 1985 the
country reported a 50% increase in reserves with no corresponding
discovery. The Kuwaiti government increased its reserve estimate
following the implementation of an OPEC production quota system that
set country production levels based on country reserves. Kuwait was
not alone in increasing its reserves for political reasons. In 1988,
Abu Dubai, Dubai, Iran and Iraq all significantly increased their
reported reserves for political reasons. Even OPEC heavyweight Saudi
Arabia followed suit and reported a massive increase in reserves in
1990.

OPEC is not alone in its overstatement of reserves. In January 2004,
Royal Dutch/Shell announced a huge write down of reserves. The
company wrote off 20% of its reserves or 2.4 billion barrels of
equivalent (boe). To be fair, most oil and gas companies do not
overstate reserves but rather understate them. Due to the strict
regulations set forth by the SEC about reserve estimates, a company
that makes a new discovery may grossly underestimate the recoverable
oil that is likely to be produced. As a result, conservative reserve
reporting has created a distorted view of how much oil is being
discovered each year.

While OPEC members have grossly overstated reserves and, on balance,
most Western oil companies have understated their reserves, where
does that leave us? Since OPEC member countries own 62.3% of world
oil reserves (See the following URL for more information:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iea2002/table81.xls), OPEC
reserve numbers more than offset any underreporting by Western oil
companies. Therefore I believe world oil reserves are grossly
overstated.

Lack of new discoveries in both OPEC countries and non-OPEC countries
has led to the current situation in which the world consumes far more
oil each year than it discovers. According to Dr. Campbell, the world
consumes four barrels of oil for every one it discovers. Clearly this
situation cannot continue indefinitely since discovery and
consumption must mirror each other.

Another pillar of many analysts' belief that oil prices will drop is
the notion that high oil prices will choke off economic growth which
in turn will lead to lower prices. In a wonderfully researched white
paper published in 2003 entitled "Price Signals or Cheap Oil Noise?"
economist Andrew McKillop provided substantial evidence to suggest
that high oil prices and economic growth are not mutually exclusive.
Below is an excerpt from his white paper:

"The US economy achieved its highest ever postwar growth of real GDP,
achieving today what would be the unthinkable and impossible growth
rate of 7.5%, in the Reagan re-election year of 1984. At the time, in
dollars of 2003 corrected for inflation and purchasing power parity,
the oil price range for daily traded volume crudes was $57-65/barrel.
Despite this fact of economic history, Cheap Oil is still regarded by
uninformed sectarian opinion as a passport to economic growth." -
Andrew McKillop, "Price Signals or Cheap Oil Noise", 2003

Despite record high oil prices in the third quarter of 2004, the
entire developed world achieved economic growth. Part of the reason
for this growth is that oil prices are still not high enough to
substantially alter spending habits. Spending on gasoline and home
heating oil remains a small percentage of many consumers' disposable
income. To put today's oil price in perspective, let's compare the
price of oil to the cost of housing.

In 1981, the cost of a barrel of oil domestically produced was $31.77
(Source: US Department of Energy) and the average cost of a new home
in the US was $83,000 (Source: National Association of Home
Builders). In 2003, the average price of a new home was $246,300
(Source: ibid) and the average cost for a barrel of domestically
produced crude was $27.56 (Source: ibid). Over the course of 22
years, the average price of a home has tripled while the price of a
barrel of domestically produced oil went down in price. With the
exception of weakness in select markets in the late 1980's and early
1990's, the price of housing has gone straight up for nearly a
quarter of a century. Even with today's low interest rates, spending
on housing consumes a larger percentage of household income than at
anytime in history. If the price of oil kept up with the price of
housing, domestically produced oil would cost $95.31 a barrel today.

The last reason that I believe we will see $80 oil within the next 24
months is that worldwide oil supply is dropping and prices have not
yet reached levels high enough to choke off demand. Despite record
gasoline prices in the US last summer, we saw demand increase 4% over
2003 levels. While Western economies will see modest demand growth
due to the slow-growth nature of their economies, the developing
world will see explosive demand growth for the foreseeable future. In
2004, China became the number two consumer of oil and the number two
importer of oil behind the US. With Chinese oil imports up 30% from
2003 levels (despite today's record prices), it is quite clear that
oil prices would have to achieve much higher levels before Chinese
demand recedes.

What does $80 oil mean for investors? Quite a lot. It is difficult to
overstate the impact that $80 oil will have on every unhedged
publicly traded oil and gas producer. While most companies in North
America are extremely profitable at $35 oil, $80 oil will generate
earnings that will dwarf the so-called "windfall profits" of the
1970s. While many Wall Street and Bay Street analysts continue to use
$35 oil in their assumptions for 2005, savvy investors should realize
that the average price for oil will be far higher and should adjust
their portfolios accordingly.

chinaman - Samstag, 6. November 2004 - 09:21
Zu obigem Posting von mib noch mal ein Link.

Gruß
Chinaman


http://www.safehaven.com/article-2165.htm

chinaman - Donnerstag, 11. November 2004 - 13:03
Instabile Balance


Auf dem Weltölmarkt sind Prognosen kaum möglich


H.-J. SCHÜRMANN, DÜSSELDORF HANDELSBLATT, 11.11.2004 Die Weltölmärkte sind in einer gefährlichen Unordnung. Ölpreisprognosen erweisen sich als ein riskantes Spiel. Die Treffergenauigkeit war schon immer gering. Doch ist die Fehlerquote 2004 besonders krass. Ende 2003 rechnete die Mehrzahl der Experten mit einem Rohölpreis von etwa 25 Dollar je Barrel (159 Liter) im Durchschnitt des laufenden Jahres. Tatsächlich lagen die Notierungen aber phasenweise mehr als doppelt so hoch.

Als großes Rätsel hat sich die Nachfrageentwicklung erwiesen. Der stürmische Absatzaufschwung in Asien, vor allem in China und Indien, ist in allen Hochrechnungen nicht antizipiert worden. Das statistische Material, besonders aus den Schwellenländern, ist einfach zu fehlerhaft. Hinzu kommt, dass die preisbedingten Verbrauchseffekte weltweit kaum abgeschätzt werden können. Die Ölpreiselastizität ist zwar kurzfristig gering; doch gibt es Reaktionen mit einem Jahr Verzögerung. Dies zeigte sich zumindest während der Entwicklung nach der ersten Ölpreiskrise 1973/74. Die Rekordmarken in diesem Jahr könnten daher Bremseffekte beim Ölkonsum auslösen. Sollte Chinas Boom ins Stocken geraten dürfte das Wachstum der Weltölnachfrage nur noch 1,0 bis 1,5 Prozent im nächsten Jahr ausmachen. 2004 waren es fast 3,5 Prozent.

Eine offene Flanke stellt auch die Kapazitätsentwicklung dar. Sicher ist, dass die Produktionspotenziale wachsen, ungewiss bleibt die Größenordnung. Damit steht nicht fest, ob die extrem niedrigen freien Kapazitätsreserven nachhaltig erhöht werden. Der freie Produktionspuffer von 1,0 bis 1,5 Mill. Barrel pro Tag - bei einem Weltölverbrauch von mehr als 82 Mill. Barrel - muss mindestens verdreifacht werden, um überraschende Entwicklungen abfedern zu können. Erst dann wird die Spekulationsprämie von zehn bis 15 Dollar je Barrel dauerhaft abgebaut.

Ein weiteres Ungleichgewicht entsteht dadurch, dass die Raffineriekapazitäten vor allem im wichtigsten Verbraucherland USA auf Messers Schneide stehen. Trotz eines stetig wachsenden Ölkonsums liegt der letzte Raffinerieneubau 28 Jahre zurück. Die Raffinerien werden mit den global schwankenden Qualitäten der Rohölsorten auf der einen Seite und mit den fast von Bundesstaat zu Bundesstaat unterschiedlichen Mineralölprodukt- Spezifikationen auf der anderen Seite kaum fertig. Es hilft daher nur wenig, wenn Saudi-Arabien seine Produktion an schweren schwefelreichen Rohölsorten erhöht, in den USA aber daraus nicht die gewünschten Produkte kostengünstig erstellt werden können.

Vor diesem Hintergrund der vielen Unbekannten kommt es nicht überraschend, dass Ölfirmen trotz der Rekordpreise verhalten investieren wollen. Die Planungen basieren im Schnitt lediglich auf Erdölpreisen im Bereich von 20 Dollar. Prognosen gleichen damit einer Gratwanderung: Bleibt die Nachfrage doch überraschend hoch, sind Ölnotierungen zwischen 40 und 60 Dollar zu erwarten. Schwächt sich Nachfrage aber ab und beruhigt sich die geopolitische Lage im Nahen Osten, ist ein Preisrückgang auf Werte um die 30-Dollar-Marke in Sicht. Dies setzt aber schon voraus, dass die Opec-Staaten dann rechtzeitig ihr Angebot koordiniert drosseln; sonst droht sogar ein Preiskollaps.

Angesichts der instabilen Balance - echte Mangellagen hat es bisher nicht gegeben - sind robuste Preisprognosen kaum möglich. Es kann ein plausibler Preiskorridor zwischen 20 und 60 Dollar je Barrel begründet werden - eine fatale Lage für Investoren und Spekulanten. Eine 35- bis 40-Dollar-Orientierungsgröße erscheint allerdings für eine Wette verdaubar.

mib - Dienstag, 16. November 2004 - 08:40
unten in Kopie mal einen (wie ich finde) klugen Kommentar eines posters im CWEI Yahoo-board, der die aktuelle Lage sehr schoen beschreibt.

Gruss - Mib

"
Stressed out
by: denintex 11/15/04 11:42 am
Msg: 65190 of 65286

W/W production is now so high that it has essentially eliminated
OPEC surplus production, yet it is not showing up in crude or
product inventories, with US crude supply about par with last year,
but 7.1mmb less than 14 weeks ago, and fuel stocks at significant
y/y lows (17mmb) for distillates, (10mmb) for HO (21% below last
year). These deficits, combined with a 7% increase in y/y distillate
demand, will require far greater amounts of crude for refining
purposes than last year. In Germany, HO inventory is at the lowest
level in 20 years. A report from China today indicates that with oil
imports up 36% y/y, demand is still surging, refining capacity has
nearly topped, and there is still not enough electricity output to
meet surging demand. 98% of w/w crude capacity is now being used in
a system in which 95% capacity is considered "stressed." In
transport, the CEO of a tanker firm stated last week: "This is the
first time in 31 years that we've had close to 100 percent
utilization of the world's tanker fleet. Also, tankers are out of
the market longer due to the long voyages from OPEC producing
nations, such as SA and Nigeria."

A few weeks ago I posted a message entitled, "Phantom crude,"
postulating that the industry was trying to play "inventory catch
up" by relying on: 1) "phantom producers," needed but not present,
to supply millions of barrels of additional "sweet crude" ;
2) "phantom tankers," needed but not present, to transport crushing,
historic volumes of oil; and, 3) "phantom refineries," needed but
not present, to refine those historic volumes. With winter, an
additional 1-2mmbd of cold weather demand enters the system. If the
existing system of production, transport and refining is stretched
so thin that it couldn't rebuild shoulder season inventory, how will
it rebuild inventory in winter with demand 1-2mmbd greater?
Breakdown is needed by only one component -- production, transport
or refining -- for things to worsen, yet every component appears on
the edge of breakdown. Looking ahead, things worsen, for in `05 even
greater crude volumes will be needed: 4mmbd of new production to
offset depletion from existing wells; 2mmbd more to cover w/w
growth. Phantom suppliers will again be asked to produce, transport
and refine these greater volumes, for the existing system, unable to
handle today's smaller loads, will not be able to handle tomorrow's
heavier ones. To the extent that prices fall, added demand will
simply intensify, adding additional supply burdens to an already
stretched thin industry.

Nor is a fix anywhere in sight. The industry is not in a responsive
mode, but is in a delay mode, tied down by the billions of dollars
and decades it failed to invest to increase production and build new
tankers and refineries. Like a deer frozen in headlights, the
industry remains frozen in place, years behind schedule. Yet the
decline of an annual 4mmbd+ depletion rate is not in a delay mode,
but in an accelerating mode, as is the Asian thirst for oil. This
quarter's estimated 500,000bd surplus production, down from 6mmbd
two years ago, is a portent of a trend that will not only continue,
but intensify, as the collision course of inexorable growth and
acceleration in depletion and demand is met by an industry
infrastructure unable to respond because of an antiquated
infrastructure, that through lack of foresight, remains stuck in a
bygone energy era that no longer exists, the bygone era of: flush
production and refining capacity, elephant discovery, OPEC control
and a slumbering Asian giant. Those who exit this sector because of
a weekly EIA stat, a ng storage number, or a CNBC commentary fail to
see or understand the hugely bullish dynamics of the new oil era we
now live in -- of a world demanding far more and an industry barely
capable of supplying the same, for years to come. JMHO.
"

chinaman - Freitag, 19. November 2004 - 09:09
Anleger wenden sich von Öl-Aktien ab
Zweifel an Fortsetzung der Hausse im Energiesektor - Analysten sehen nur noch bei einzelnen Werten Potential
von Daniel Eckert

Berlin - An der Börse soll man gehen, wenn es am schönsten ist. Dieser Devise folgen Anleger und Analysten derzeit mit Blick auf Ölaktien. Denn obwohl die meisten Fördergesellschaften in den vergangenen Wochen Rekordergebnisse vermelden konnten, mag sich kaum noch ein Branchenexperte zu einer Kaufempfehlung für die Titel durchringen. Auch die Börsianer zeigen BP, Exxon-Mobil & Co. zunehmend die kalte Schulter. So konnten die Dividendenpapiere des Ölsektors den weltweiten Aktienmarkt seit Jahressicht zwar um zehn Prozent hinter sich lassen. Doch Ende Oktober hat sich der Wind eindeutig gedreht.


"Wir beobachten seit etwa vier Wochen, daß Energiewerte gegenüber den breiten Indizes zurückfallen", sagt Jason Kenney von ING Financial Markets in Edinburgh. Als Grund dafür hat der Analyst den Stimmungswandel an den Kapitalmärkten ausgemacht: "Es ist nicht so, daß die Geschäftsaussichten der Förderkonzerne schlecht wären, doch wenn es an den Börsen zum Jahresende hin wirklich abgeht, ist die eher defensiv Ölbranche nicht unbedingt das Segment, das am besten läuft." Dies gelte um so mehr, als auch die Phantasie aus dem Rohölpreis vorerst raus sei. Zwar konnten sich die Notierungen des "Schwarzen Goldes" am Donnerstag leicht erholen. Doch mit rund 41 Dollar je Faß notierte Brent-Öl aber immer noch ein Fünftel unter seinem Jahreshoch vom 26. Oktober. Selbst wenn sich die Notierungen bald wieder erholen und nächstes Jahr, wie von Kenney prognostiziert, 36 Dollar je Barrel Brent erreichen sollten, ist die Gewinndynamik woanders ausgeprägter: "Bullisch eingestellte Anleger sind in dieser Marktphase besser mit Banken- und Telekom-Titeln bedient."


Auch für JJ Traynor, Analyst bei der Deutschen Bank in Edinburgh, haben die Ölwerte viel von ihrer Attraktivität eingebüßt: "Im historischen Vergleich und auch im Vergleich mit anderen Branchen sind Ölaktien nicht mehr billig", so sein Verdikt. Für Shell, Royal Dutch und BP konnte sich Traynor zuletzt nur noch zu Halten-Empfehlungen durchringen. Andere Experten weisen darauf hin, daß in der Ölbranche in den kommenden Jahren große Investitionen anstehen dürften, was die Aussichten auf Aktienrückkaufprogramme und kräftige Dividendenerhöhungen dämpfe. Hinzu kommt die Dollar-Schwäche, die die Gewinne belastet. "Insgesamt kann man sagen, daß dies nicht die Zeit ist, groß in Ölwerte zu gehen", meint Kevin Gardener, Stratege bei HSBC in London. Die Schwenk zu anderen Sektoren fällt vielen Anlegern um so leichter, als sie mit Öltiteln bereits stattliche Kursgewinne verbuchen konnten: Selbst mit relativ "langweiligen" Standardwerten wie BP, Exxon-Mobil, Statoil oder ENI ließ sich seit Jahresanfang eine Performance zwischen 20 und 30 Prozent erzielen. Wer etwas mehr Mut aufbrachte und auf "exotische" Energieriesen wie Lukoil, CNOOC oder Burlington Resources setzte, konnte sogar bis zu 50 Prozent einfahren.


Doch so einfach wird es nach übereinstimmender Einschätzung der Experten künftig nicht mehr sein, mit Ölaktien Geld zu verdienen. "Der Sektor, wie er sich jetzt präsentiert, ist ein ausgesprochener Stockpicker-Markt", sagt Traynor. Chancen sieht der Experte vor allem noch bei der französischen Total, die mit einem KGV von zwölf immer noch vernünftig bewertet sei und gegenüber anderen Branchentiteln Nachholbedarf habe. Auch Kenney kann sich für die Franzosen erwärmen, findet aber auch Gefallen an der italienischen ENI. "Beide Gesellschaften weisen im Vergleich mit ihren Konkurrenten die attraktivste Kombination von Produktionswachstum, Profitabilität und freien Mitteln auf."


Viele Strategen betrachten ihre Zurückhaltung gegenüber Ölaktien derweil nur als vorübergehend: "Auf Sicht von drei bis fünf Jahren ist die Energiestory intakt", gibt Kenney sich überzeugt. Auch hierzulande raten manche Profis, eventuelle Schwächen bei den Branchentiteln zum Aufbau von Positionen zu nutzen. "Ölaktien bleiben für Investoren, die eine kontinuierlich hohe Ausschüttung suchen, eine gute Wahl", sagt Joachim Paech von Prime Asset Management in Frankfurt. Tatsächlich verzeichnen Werte wie Marathon, Statoil, BP, Chevron-Texaco, Shell Transport, Royal Dutch und ENI Dividendenrenditen von drei Prozent und mehr.


Artikel erschienen am Fr, 19. November 2004
Die Welt

mib - Freitag, 19. November 2004 - 20:45
soso...
das ist ja schoen...
die "Fachwelt" rät zum Ausstieg...
dann kann man ja beruhigt investiert bleiben...
:-)
Mib
(der privat vorgestern EGSR.OB gekauft hat)

Diskussionsforum der stw-boerse: Auslandswerte: Gas & Öl Aktien: Archivierte Beiträge bis 19. November 2004