“The widely recited rhetoric that Canada must continue its de facto energy strategy of liquidating its remaining non-renewable resources as fast as possible to maintain the economy has no credibility.”
David Hughes, researcher and geologist, in a recent report “Can Canada Expand Oil and Gas Production, Build Pipelines and Keep Its Climate Change Commitments?”
“The fall in discovered volumes for conventional oil outside North America [to just 2.8 billion barrels, the lowest level since 1952] has been steady and dramatic during the last few years. We’ve seen four consecutive years of declining oil volumes, which has never happened before. The bottom has completely fallen out for conventional exploration, and the result portends a supply gap in the future that is going to be challenging to overcome. In the current cost-cutting environment, the outlook for 2016 discovery volumes is not likely to be better, either.”
Leta Smith, director, IHS Energy, upstream industry future service
“I’ve been coming to Singapore once a year for the last 15 years, and flying in I have never seen the waters so full of idle tankers,’ said a senior European oil trader a day after arriving in the city-state.”
Keith Wallis and Roslan Khasawneh, for Reuters
“At the moment, a number of objective factors exclude the possibility for any cartels to dictate their will to the market. … As for OPEC, it has practically stopped existing as a united organization.”
Igor Sechin, head of Russia’s biggest oil firm Rosneft
“It’s clear that electric vehicles are the future. A move from petrol and diesel to low-emission transport is a natural evolution, and it is our aim to encourage that switch sooner, rather than later.”
Simon Bridges, New Zealand’s Energy and Transport Minister
“Oil prices simply aren’t going to rise fast enough to keep oil and energy companies from defaulting. Then there is a real contagion risk to financial companies and from there to the rest of the economy.”
Jason Schenker, president and chief economist at Prestige Economics
“Put bluntly, the standard claim that the world has proved conventional oil reserves of nearly 1.7 trillion barrels is overstated by about 875 billion barrels. Thus, despite the fall in crude oil prices from a new peak in June 2014, after that of July 2008, the ‘peak oil’ issue remains with us.”
Professor Michael Jefferson of the ESCP Europe Business School, a former chief economist at oil major Royal Dutch/Shell Group, former Deputy Secretary-General of the World Energy Council
“What we are experiencing today is far beyond headwinds; it is unsustainable. My definition of an unsustainable market is one where all service companies are losing money in North America, which is where we are now.”
Jeff Miller, President of oil services company Halliburton
“Wells Fargo’s foray into oil shows how Wall Street misjudged the risks hidden in an esoteric type of energy financing long thought to be bulletproof.”
Asjylyn Loder, Bloomberg News
“Generally, it takes 18 months before the world has a decent picture of supply and demand. This is little consolation to those trying to do real time analysis on the direction of prices. That is why I can say categorically “the fix is in”. In other words, fields are declining, meaning investment is far below levels required just to replace production. The only thing that will change the vector of these declines is more spending, lots more spending, and the only thing will spur lots more spending is higher prices. Significantly higher than $40/bbl.”
Brad Beago, Oilprice.com, in Fortune magazine
“Most of the fields in Argentina are mature, and they are declining in production. A lot of investment [$20 billion per year] is needed to sustain production. This is having an impact on production curve now [with the rig count down from 112 in 2014 to 64 in February].”
Alejandro Gagliano, a partner at Giga Consulting in Buenos Aires
