[In Venezuela] “Production is collapsing in a way rarely seen in the absence of a war. The country is also suffering the worst economic depression ever recorded in Latin America.”
Francisco Monaldi, a fellow in Latin American Energy at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University (3/17)
“Yes, the amount of US tight oil being extracted could continue to grow for a while longer — as long as investors keep ponying up money, or as long as the ‘sweet spots’ last, or if oil prices rise significantly. But then production will fall and the country will gradually (or perhaps quickly) return to dependence on declining conventional oil production. As all this has been happening, the idea of a near-term peak in world oil supplies has become discredited. So discredited that even when multiple news organizations reported that the rate of new oil discoveries has plummeted to a level not seen since the 1940s, no one dared even mumble the words ‘peak oil.’”
Richard Heinberg, journalist, and educator
“Eight to 10 million tourists a year come down to Charleston. They don’t want to come to see oil drilling off the coast. Ain’t gonna happen. Not on my watch!”
Rep. Nancy Mace (R), a new state representative for S. Carolina, responding to new offshore drilling proposal by the Trump administration
“For shale gas to be commercially produced [in the U.K.], extensive work must be carried out to better understand the potential resource base, the social…will for which remains sour. We remain highly skeptical over the longer-term viability of shale gas in the UK.”
BMI Research oil and gas analysts (2/17)
“I am resolved that not a single drop from Trump’s new oil plan ever makes landfall in California.”
Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, chair of the State Lands Commission
and a Democratic candidate for governor (2/8)
“Humanity has failed to make sufficient progress in generally solving foreseen environmental challenges, and alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse. Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory.”
A communique from 15,000 scientists from 184 countries assessing the world’s latest responses to various environmental threats (11/14)
“There isn’t a viable alternative to fossil fuels on the horizon. We’re not buying into the long-term demand destruction for oil.”
Alasdair McKinnon, portfolio manager at Scottish Investment Trust
“Vehicles of the future will no longer be driven by humans because in 15 to 20 years — at the latest — human-driven vehicles will be legislated off the highways. The tipping point will come when 20 to 30 percent of vehicles are fully autonomous. Countries will look at the accident statistics and figure out that human drivers are causing 99.9 percent of the accidents.”
Bob Lutz, former executive with major auto company
“There’s a complacency that shale is going to continue to produce at the kind of volumes that we had in the past…If the world keeps believing we’ve got surplus oil as far as the eye can see—which I don’t believe—then the reality is going to smack everybody in the face. And it will be hard to catch up.”
Jim Brilliant, portfolio manager for Century Management
“There’s going to be a lot of excitement around batteries in the next five years. And I would say that the country will get blanketed with [battery] projects.”
Spencer Hanes, Duke Energy business development managing director
“In today’s low-price energy environment, providing the offshore industry access to the maximum amount of opportunities possible is part of our strategy to spur local and regional economic dynamism and job creation and a pillar of President Trump’s plan to make the United States energy dominant.”
Ryan Zinke, US Secretary of the Interior, after announcing a record 77 million acres for lease in the Gulf of Mexico
“Deepwater is going to be playing a much-reduced role on the global oil-supply stage relative to what the industry expected as recently as three years ago.”
Thomas Curran, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets in New York.
“I think the question, a little bit in the longer term is – is this the last big rise in US production?… If you look at the economics on most of the big Permian players, not many of them make a lot of money.”
Ian Taylor, chief executive at Vitol, which trades more than 7 percent of global oil.
“The solar PV story is a Chinese story. China has been for a long time the leader in manufacturing. What’s new is the share in the market. This year, it was equivalent to the total installed capacity of PV in Germany.”
Paolo Frankl, head of the IEA’s renewable energy division
“The Permian Basin is America’s super basin in terms of its oil and gas production history, and for operators, it presents a significant variety of stacked targets that are profitable at today’s oil prices.”
Prithiraj Chungkham, director of unconventional resources for IHS
After the most recent missile launch and after the UN imposed fuel supply sanctions on North Korea: “We’ve been kicking the can down the road, and we’re out of road.”
H.R. McMaster, White House national security adviser
[In commenting on India forcing ExxonMobil to renegotiate LNG prices] “This trend is overall a negative for sellers, as they are forced to provide more flexibility to buyers’ needs to maintain their markets. The risk of price renegotiations will become more acute over the next couple years as spot LNG prices remain depressed, even if oil-linked prices rise. The elephant in the room will be how negotiations play out with traditional markets in Japan and Korea, and especially the Chinese national oil companies.”
Saul Kavonic, analyst with Wood Mackenzie
“…The US is deluding itself when it comes to energy abundance (generally) and oil (specifically). Yet that’s not what we hear from the cheerleaders in the industry or in our media. From them, we hear a silver-tongued narrative of coming riches — a narrative that contains some truth, some myth, and a lot of fantasy. It’s those last two parts — the myths and fantasies — that are going to seriously hurt many investors, as well cause a lot of extremely poor policy and investment decisions.”
Chris Martenson, commentator at www.peakprosperity.com, former investments manager
“Any changes that disrupt energy trade across our North American borders, reduce investment protection or revert to high tariffs and trade barriers that preceded NAFTA could put at risk tens of millions of jobs.”
From top oil and gas trade groups from the US, Canada. and Mexico, in a joint position paper released last month prior to new NAFTA-related talks.
“It will likely be years before the oil and gas industry can start drilling off the Atlantic coast, even in the best-case scenario. But even then, it is unclear if there will be any interest. The Atlantic has not been explored very much, and as a result, the exact nature of the oil and gas reserves in place is unknown. That likely means that development costs will be high. If oil prices fail to rise much from current levels, it is not at all clear that the Atlantic will be very competitive.”
Nick Cunningham, Oilprice.com
“When interest rates fall, this tends to allow oil prices to rise, and thus allows increased production. This postpones the Peak Oil crisis, but makes the ultimate crisis worse…Falling interest rates between 1981 and 2014 are one of the things that allowed Peak Oil to be postponed for many years…. Peak Economy is likely not very far away. We do not need to encourage it, by raising interest rates and selling securities held by the Federal Reserve. We badly need more people to understand the connection between interest rates and oil prices, and how important it is that interest rates not rise.”
Gail Tverberg, actuary and commentator (8/16)
[After two nuclear plants in South Carolina were cancelled:] “We continue to believe that the problem with new nuclear (small modular units excepted) power plants is not that they generate electricity with nuclear fission. The difficulty is economic. The nuclear units are expensive, base load generating units in a world where production of electricity is becoming less expensive and increasingly decentralized. Base load power plants (and especially nuclear ones) are, in general, must-run, inflexible price takers. Going forward there will be less need for those facilities regardless of how they are fueled. Furthermore, the builder of a nuclear plant must bet an enormous sum on the need for electricity a decade hence, when the plant is completed. Given the uncertainty in power demand and prices, that is a gamble uncompensated in the regulatory process.
By Leonard Hyman and William Tilles for Oilprice.com
“Even if the UK, France and the Western world, in general, will all go to 100 percent electric vehicles, that would be great, but that wouldn’t be enough…We still have less advanced economic economies that cannot do that switch.”
Ben van Beurden, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell (7/28)
“The fact is, oil at $50 a barrel makes Arctic oil uncompetitive. In terms of what’s going to happen down the road, I saw a World Bank report placed the oil in nominal dollars at $80 a barrel in 2030. That’s still way below break the price for Arctic oil.”
Stephen M. Carmel, senior vice president of Maritime Services at Maersk Line Ltd. (7/21)
“What oil companies and car companies are saying [about future sales of plug-in vehicles] is diverging. This is a trillion-dollar question, and someone is going to be wrong.”
Colin McKerracher, head of advanced transport analysis for Bloomberg New Energy Finance
“Here’s a little economics lesson, supply and demand: You put the supply [more coal] out there and the demand will follow that.”
US Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who was criticised by economists who point out that, typically, supply follows demand
“We will be dominant. We will export American energy all over the world, all around the globe. These energy exports will create countless jobs for our people, and provide true energy security to our friends, partners, and allies across the globe.”
U.S. President Donald Trump, in a speech [Ed. Note: possible hyperbole?]
