North American gas has peaked : Exxon Mobil CEO

After weak prices in the 1990s due to oversupply, natural gas production in North America will probably continue to decline unless there is another big discovery, Exxon Mobil Corp.'s chief executive said on Tuesday.

"Gas production has peaked in North America," Chief Executive Lee Raymond told reporters at the Reuters Energy Summit.

Asked whether production would continue to decline even if two huge arctic gas pipeline projects were built, Raymond said, "I think that's a fair statement, unless there's some huge find that nobody has any idea where it would be."

... while the number of U.S. rigs drilling for natural gas has climbed about 20 percent over the last year and prices are at record highs, producers have been struggling to raise output. Experts said easy onshore and shallow water basins have been mostly tapped or are off limits for environmental reasons, and new technologies like horizontal drilling have been draining wells in two or three years, a much faster rate than the five years or more during the 1990s.

(2005-06-23 22:32:09 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

Oil prices - The sky is the limit

peakoil.com -> guardian.co.uk :

... the underlying message is that higher oil prices are here to stay - and may rise to $100 a barrel, according to some forecasts. Even the normally bullish Lee Raymond, chief executive of ExxonMobil, the world's largest listed oil company, warned "it would take a few years to sort out where it'll all end". The US energy secretary also worries it will take many years for the sharp increases in demand, caused by growth in developing countries, to pass. Sadly, that is the optimistic scenario.

The pessimistic scenario is that the world is fast approaching "Hubbert's peak", the point at which the rate of global oil production begins to decline. In either case oil prices will keep rising ...

... Michael O'Leary, the ebullient head of Ryanair, hit one nail on the head when he told those concerned about climate change: "Sell your car and walk." That advice would have made Mr O'Leary a national villain in the United States, where the right to cheap gas is assumed to be a clause of the constitution. For one reason or another, the reign of oil must come to an end.

- reference links added in-line

(2005-06-23 22:25:54 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

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