Category: quotes

“A ballot measure requiring greater setbacks could have a dramatic effect on drilling in Colorado. In Weld County, Colorado, where much of the drilling in Colorado’s DJ Basin takes place, the greater setback distances would put roughly 78 percent of the surface land off limits to drilling. ‘That is effectively a ban on the industry,” Dan Haley, president of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association, told Bloomberg in a July interview. “You’d basically have no new wells drilled in Colorado.’”

Nick Cunningham, Oilprice.com

“Weekly data had shown a strong 324,000 b/d output rise [in US oil production] from March to May. The revised data shows that this rise was a mirage: output actually fell 19,000 b/d over the period. It is time to deal with the statistical gorilla on the oil trading floor. We think US crude oil production has not reached the 11 million b/d shown in recent weeks in the Energy Information Administration weekly data, and that it is significantly below 11mb/d, with growth slowing.”

Paul Horsnell, head of commodities research at Standard Chartered

“The economic collapse I predict will occur because the world’s petroleum industry lacks the capacity needed to supply additional low-sulfur fuel to the shipping industry [in 2020] while meeting the requirements of existing customers such as farmers, truckers, railroads, and heavy equipment operators.”

Phillip Verleger, oil industry economist, and analyst

“Climate change is a fact of life, as is not contested by Defendants. But the serious problems caused thereby are not for the judiciary to ameliorate. Global warming and solutions thereto must be addressed by the two other branches of government.”

US District Judge John Keenan in Manhattan, in dismissing a lawsuit by New York City against major oil companies

“Our goal is to increase pressure on the Iranian regime by reducing to zero its revenue from crude oil sales.”

Brian Hook, US State Dept, director of policy planning

[About climate-related class action lawsuits against Big Oil:] “It’s sort of bizarre that the users of our [petroleum] products say: ‘Well actually we didn’t want your product. So why did you force it on us?’ I don’t think also that in the end it will solve anything other than maybe redistributing wealth to a certain class of the economy.”

Ben van Beurden, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell [Environmentalists counter that this resembles the reaction of Big Tobacco to class action lawsuits decades ago.]

“So, the peak oil theorists got lucky in that the industry experienced a large number of supply disruptions that raised prices, which seemed to confirm their arguments—just as the Iranian Oil Crisis of 1979 incorrectly convinced many that ever-higher crude prices were unavoidable and resource optimists naive. But by understanding that supply disruptions in Iraq, Libya, Venezuela and so on were responsible for higher prices, it is possible to recognize that political trends in oil exporting countries will determine prices, not resource scarcity. Recognizing the former means coping with cyclical prices, believing in the latter means getting blindsided by every major price decline.”

Michael Lynch, energy economist, from Forbes magazine article—“Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?”

“To the extent that developing countries aspire to reach motorization levels comparable to those in developed countries, the number of vehicles will likely continue to climb rapidly. We in the developed countries cannot successfully argue that the mobility afforded to us by personal vehicles is something to be curtailed in the developing countries for the benefit of us all. As a consequence, the required raw materials and energy will challenge our resources, and the resulting vehicle emissions will strain our ecological systems.”

Michael Sivak, former director of Sustainable Worldwide Transportation at the University of Michigan (6/12)

“Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods.”

Pope Francis, who will meet with Big Oil execs the week of June 11, from a 2015 statement

“Since the beginning of the shale revolution a decade ago, the world has discovered 110 billion barrels of oil. Meanwhile, consumption has totaled 360 billion barrels. This 250 billion barrel deficit between discoveries and consumption seems sure to grow in the years ahead, given recent oil discovery trends.
“It is understandable why people would be complacent about this scenario. After all, didn’t the world face similar risks a decade ago, only to have shale oil save the day? But it isn’t clear that there is another ‘shale oil miracle’ that is ready to save the day. There are indeed more high-cost oil resources out there that can be developed, but these projects take a long time to complete. That’s why we can look out two to three years and see an impending supply crunch. The longer investments in the industry remain depressed, the more unavoidable this scenario becomes.”

Robert Rapier, a chemical engineer and industry commentator (3/23/18, in Forbes magazine)