Posted on 06/11/2004 11:41:07 AM PDT by RussianConservative
Russian oil major LUKoil announced reserves in Russia's sector of the Caspian Sea may compose total 33 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
LUKoil vice president Anatoly Novikov said the company had discovered five offshore fields in the sector of the Caspian Sea in recent years and planned to start producing by 2008.
LUKoil, which has the world's second biggest oil reserves among private oil majors after U.S. major ExxonMobil, has in the past delivered conflicting estimates of its Caspian fields.
The firm has said the majority of fields contained gas, which is very difficult to ship out from the land-locked sea due to limited market interest in neighboring states except Turkey.
Russia remains one of the few places in the world where oil majors can still book huge reserves, but investors usually focus on Siberia, rather than the Caspian Sea.
The Russian sector of the Caspian Sea is considered to be less explored than Azerbaijan's or Kazakhstan's because LUKoil only began working on it at the end of the 1990s.
Ochen Xorosha BUMP
Holy cow. That's big.
so how does compares to the Saudi's and Iraq oil reserves?
33 Billion just in the Russian sector? That's something...
It is significant, but only 10% of the original speculative estimates. In other words, Caspian oil did not prove out.
Sign a treaty with the Russian, dump the Saudis, develop Siberia and Go!
I think the estimates of 200-300 included the whole Caspian.
Perhaps shaded towards the optimistic, but Caspian oil has already been factored into the Peak Oil theory. As mentioned on the C2C Roundtable last night, when Peak Oil reaches the market analysts, and it has already reached the major news media, there will be disruption of the market. The Roundtable expects oil to be $100 a barrel fairly soon, and that is not the high estimate from the Berlin conference.
At that price level, it may become profitable to produce whale oil once again.
It'll never hit $100. At $60-$70 all sorts of coal gassification techniques will come on line, as will vast amounts of oil reserves that are not currently economical to produce.
At those prices, corn squeezings become effective, and nuclear energy becomes an option for electrical production.
Are you a proponent of Peak Oil theory? Where do you stand on the fossil fuel vs. abiotic generation debate?
Just curious. Not trying to start a fight. This is not my field.
That would presume coal gassification plants, of which there are effectively none.
I just heard of Peak Oil a couple of months ago. It is interesting.
It takes oil to get whale oil. The whales are safe. Some whales are safer than others.
When the price gets up to $40/bbl, oil just squirts out everywhere.
As far as the debate, it seems to be following the same general lines as a couple of other FR debates. It's not all that interesting once the few basic positions have been stated.
Yes, but at the higher price. When it gets to $100, windmills will be more popular, but the price is still high. Those towns where everything is trucked in will be $krewed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.