Oil & Natural Gas: News & Discussion - VI

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Neshant
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Post by Neshant »

Siberian oil for India

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/arti ... 900088.cms

NEW DELHI: India's Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, on a three-day visit to Russia to boost cooperation in the energy sector, has mooted an alternative pipeline route to the Mediterranean to enable India to source Siberian oil.

"I expressed India's keenness to directly source Russian crude and suggested an alternative pipeline route from Nakhodka in Russia to the Caspian Sea on to the Black Sea and finally to the Red Sea," Aiyar told the media here Tuesday during a teleconference.

While India may not be able to bring across its share of oil and gas from Sakhalin-I, Aiyar said he has made known gas infrastructure major GAIL (India) Ltd's interest to help with the laying of a pipeline to Japan in the event of exploration block operator Exxon Mobil deciding to do so
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Post by putnanja »

India seeks strategic energy alliance with Russia
"What I am talking about [is] the strategic alliance with Russia in energy security, which is becoming for India at least as important as our national security."

...
He reached an agreement on using Russian technology for large underground coal gasification (UCG). The technology, developed by Russia's Skochinsky Institute of Mining, will enable India to extract gas from its vast unminable coal reserves, which will compensate for the shortage of natural gas.

...
India is also interested in the Caspian oil. Mr. Aiyar offered India's help to build a seabed oil pipeline in the Black Sea parallel to the existing Bluestream gas pipe from Russia to Turkey. The underwater oil pipe would take Caspian oil to the Mediterranean and further on to the Red Sea, where India will pick it up.

...
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Post by Sohum »

Guha: the question is when does Clean Coal become economically viable? Tar-sand upgrading is viable at $10/bbl of crude, Natural Gas to Liquid conversion is viable at $20/bbl. So, if we believe that crude will stabilize in the $30 range in the next 20 years, then Clean Coal is not only economically viable, but necessary
Knowing this much, KSA and OPEC realizes it is in their interest to keep oil prices well below $50 per barrel. They are in as much of a bind as we are.
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Post by Neshant »

As predicted. they are testing India's resolve as the Intelligence Online article suggest.

---

Fossil Fuel Lobby Behind India's Spat With U.S.?

Ranjit Devraj


NEW DELHI, Oct 26 (IPS) - India is irked over allegations by Washington that its scientists have passed on nuclear technology to Iran and leaders, as well as experts here, are inclined to believe that the charges are a ploy to restrict plans to develop genuine nuclear power programmes that could reduce the country's dependency on oil imports.

In their claims made last month, Washington named two top Indian scientists Y.S.R. Prasad and C. Surendar -- both former heads of the state-run Nuclear Power Corporation -- as being involved in the deal with Iran.

The scientists are now barred from visiting the U.S. or dealing with U.S.-based companies.

The Indians were among 14 ''entities'', including seven from China and one each from Belarus, North Korea, Russia, Spain and Ukraine to face the sanctions.

''A rapidly developing country like India needs cheap and clean energy sources that do not burn up fossil fuels and, indeed, so do similar countries like Iran and Brazil,'' Jasjit Singh, one of India's most respected strategic analysts told IPS in an interview.

India imports 70 percent of its petroleum and officials estimate that India's oil import bill could rise by 50 percent to 27 billion U.S. dollars during the current fiscal year as against the 18 billion dollars in fiscal 2003-04 on account of spiraling international prices.

Singh, former director of the prestigious Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), and editor of the forthcoming publication 'Nuclear Power and Non-proliferation' said following the recent hike in petroleum prices, nuclear energy had become vital for India's socio-economic progress.

''Powerful international oil and energy lobbies naturally have a big stake in India's energy needs,'' he said.

India has denied the nuclear proliferation charges and, last week, officials at the Ministry of External Affairs said they had formally countered Washington's demand for proof that the two men are innocent by asking the Bush administration to prove its own charges.

Curiously enough the charges and counter-charges come at a time when India and the United States have begun sweeping aside decades of mutual suspicion on dual-use technology issues through what is officially called the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP).

In mid- September, the Bush administration announced the partial lifting of sanctions on equipment and know-how for India's space and nuclear programmes imposed after the country tested a nuclear weapon in 1974 with the backing of the former Soviet Union.

Since then U.S. officials have said they are considering the imposition of curbs on some Indian 'entities' suspected of having aided Tehran's alleged nuclear weapons programme. For its part, Iran has insisted that its nuclear programme was peaceful and had no weapons component.

Only last Saturday Prime Minister Manmohan Singh reiterated India's own long-held position at its nuclear facilities in southern Tamil Nadu state where a 2,000 megawatt nuclear power station is being built. He said that this country ''will not be the source of proliferation of sensitive technologies.''

India has steadfastly refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) on the grounds that it was discriminatory and has gone ahead to build up its nuclear and space programmes indigenously while insisting that it was against proliferation.

In 1998 India again demonstrated its capability by testing nuclear weapons and its successful launch by 2001 of Geo-Stationary Launch Vehicles (GSLV)s showed New Delhi's mastery over cryogenic engine technology that is used in inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBM)s.

In the present imbroglio, it does not help that India and Iran chalked up last January a 'New Declaration' of cooperation that set forth a ''vision of strategic partnership for a more stable, secure and prosperous region.''

While India has taken no official position on Iran's current predicament, in which it is being threatened with international sanctions, Manmohan Singh indicated on Saturday that he disapproved of U.S. policy that denied technology to countries.

''Technology denial and closing the avenues for international cooperation in some more important fields is tantamount to denial of development benefits to millions of people,'' Manmohan Singh said at the nuclear facility in Tamil Nadu where he laid the foundation stone for a new fast-breeder power plant using locally available thorium as nuclear fuel.

U.S. led sanctions prevent the export of uranium to India but this country happens to have the world's largest known reserves of thorium and its nuclear power proramme is centered around the alternative radio-active material.

''We are determined to utilise its (nuclear technology's) full potential for the national good. It can also be a much needed cushion against fluctuations in oil prices,'' added the premier.

India is currently embarked on a programme to generate 20,000 megawatts (MW) of nuclear power by 2020 and by 2008 it would be generating 4000 MW of nuclear energy including 2,000 MW coming from the Russian-built reactors at Koodankumankulam.

Leading nuclear scientists from several Third World countries meeting in the Italian port city of Trieste on Oct 4 and 5, raised the issue of U.S. sanctions crippling technologies vital for their rapid development by labeling them 'dual-use' or having both civilian and military application.

''They are mixing the legitimate use of frontline technology for genuine development with military applications,'' said the physicist M.H. A. Hassan, while attending that 40th anniversary celebrations of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) at Trieste.

Hassan said nuclear and space technology had too many peaceful applications that could not be ignored by developing countries and his views were shared by top ranking scientific delegates from countries as far as Brazil and Bangladesh. (END/2004)
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Post by Neshant »

note the clever linking of 'environmental concerns' with the denial of clean nuclear technology.

---

France refuses help on nuclear energy

New Delhi, Oct 29. (UNI): France on Wednesday ruled out cooperation with India on civilian use of nuclear technology saying the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) rules foreclosed any such option.

"There are a number of rules under the NPT that prevent such cooperation," visiting French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier told senior Indian editors.

At the first 'Meet the Editors' interaction with a visiting dignitary by the Editors' Guild of India, Mr Barnier said though his country understood the nuclear energy needs of the country in the backdrop of the rising oil prices, the NPT regime prevented any possibility of cooperation.

France fulfills 80 per cent of its energy demands from nuclear energy while the India is dependent on oil imports.

"France will go on highlighting the specific position of India as an emerging power in the world," Mr Barnier said. India will, however, have to engage NPT signatories in debates and dicussions on the nuclear issue, he added. (yea right)

He said the strategic dialogue between France and India should include international issues and environmental concerns should be put high on the agenda.

On the global situation, he said though the break-up of the erstwhile Soviet Union ended the era of two super powers, now the world is left with "one major power and disorder in the rest of the world".

The French Minister also criticised US President George W Bush's comment two days ago that the world was safer today after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We need a fair world. The world would be more safe if it is more fair."

The interaction was attended by Editors' Guild of India president M J Akbar, columnist S Nihal Singh, political analysts Inder Malhotra and Deputy Editor of 'The Hindu' Sidhartha Varadharajan.
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Post by Liao Daoshen »

Germany might be a better bet for nuke tech. I mean, they tried to sell us (PRC) a reactor until their own internal handwringing botched it.
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Post by SSridhar »

Reliance on the lookout for oil & gas blocks overseas
Reliance Industries, country's largest private sector oil firm, has bid for acquiring an oil and gas block in Gulf of Oman and is looking for oil assets in Qatar, industry sources said
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Post by SSridhar »

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Post by SSridhar »

IOC Clinches USD 3 Billion deal to develop Iran's South Pars gas fields
The Indian company will have 40 per cent stake in the upstream development with the remaining being with Petropars. In the liquefaction plant, IOC would have 60 per cent stake and the marketing rights to sell the entire 9 million tonnes of LNG.
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Post by pintoo_kumar »

kazak oil for india

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5922 ... 000092.htm

in my view iran gas and kazak oil have the ability to change energy dynamics of our country.also shows the sucess of our oil diplomacy. :)
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Post by SSridhar »

Those with pipelines call the tune

And, true to his nature, he says
and the prolonged, self-defeating stand-off with Islamabad, which meant a pipeline traversing Pakistani territory was considered taboo.

The race is on for Kazakh oil - India misses the bus
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Post by SaiK »

why not tap off from the chinese pipelines, with an agreement with china!? :wink: hell with routing throu TSP.

The Chinese are speedily laying 1,300 km of pipeline from Atasu in eastern Kazakhstan to Alashanku in China's western Xinjiang province.


if we can deal with nature.
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Post by SSridhar »

krsna,

The Xinjiang-Tibet-India route will be difficult and long. Will push up the cost enormously.
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Post by SSridhar »

Aiyar favours oil diplomacy

It is a good move to have a foreign-service officer in the Petroleum ministry but it needs close co-ordination with the FM all the time.
"I have always said that Petroleum Ministry should be the 'B' team of Ministry of External Affairs," Aiyar told reporters.

He said he has asked the Ministry of External Affairs to depute an Indian Foreign Service officer in the rank of Additional Secretary to help the oil ministry and public sector oil firms in their efforts to acquire oil and gas projects abroad.

Aiyar has also appointed a Standing Committee on Oil Diplomacy For Energy Security with former diplomats Arjun Sengupta and M Hamid Ansari as chairman and convenor.
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Post by SaiK »

SSridhar wrote:krsna,

The Xinjiang-Tibet-India route will be difficult and long. Will push up the cost enormously.
sure.. i think it would be worth it, if you consider the following factors:

1. anything thru pakistan is unstable, security risk, and 100% possibility of getting blown up.
2. cost of repairing blown up pipes.
3. strategic cost, that indirectly help pakistan to hold india by the collar and instigate violence to blow up pipes.
4. social un-rest, and further economic problems slowing down the growth.
...

I still feel, get the best technology, sign up with the more reliable chinese than this well known idiots and terrorist nation of the world. It is more a workable solution. We can learn much, with india stepping into super engineering structures and pipeline / tunnel building etc. It is also another growth oppty, tech transfer and localization of the technology, job growth, etc.
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Post by SSridhar »

krsna,
sure.. i think it would be worth it, if you consider the following factors:
What I said does not translate into support for a pipeline thro' TSP. :shock: Far from it. I am one of the most ardent opponents of the landline thro' TSPland.
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Post by SaiK »

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/kazaexpo.html

Recently, progress has reportedly been made on a Trans-Asian oil export pipeline linking Kazakhstan and India. The preferred route would bypass the volatile countries of Pakistan and Afghanistan, although this would make the project more expensive. The pipeline apparently would pass through the city of Kashi in northwestern China and then across the Siachen Glacier into Indian Kashmir.
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Post by SSridhar »

Instead of such a route, the Turkmenistan-Iran route should be preferable. Of course, it may rise the transshipment fee but it is safer and much less difficult to lay, monitor and maintain. Already, Turkmenistan & Iran have a pipeline in place. With the Chabahar port being developed by India, the outlet is already much closer.
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Post by SSridhar »

RIL's plans for KG gas production
"we have targeted to bring gas to shore by 2007".
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Post by SSridhar »

Poll in Indian Express

"Should India proceed with the Iranian gas project that involves laying a pipeline through Pakistan ?"

Current Results

Yes 29%
No 66%
Can't Say 5 %
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Post by Gerard »

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/deepimpact-04r.html
Shiva: Another K-T Impact?

Shiva, a large, underwater crater off the coast of India...measures 600 by 400 kilometers, and was made by an enormous meteorite measuring 40 kilometers across.
...
In addition, Chatterjee says there is an underwater mountain as high as Mount Everest within the Shiva crater. He says this structure has been dated to be 65 million years old, and he thinks it could be the central peak that is often seen within large impact craters.
...
that oil companies and the Indian government control the site where Shiva is located, and access is extremely limited.
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Post by Sohum »

The pipeline apparently would pass through the city of Kashi in northwestern China and then across the Siachen Glacier into Indian Kashmir.
As if these places aren't hostile or volatile?
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Post by SSridhar »

Good to see India talking about energy security issues with the EU as part of its "strategic partnership" programme with them.

India to take forward strategic partnership with the EU
India has also agreed to an E.U. suggestion to set up an "energy panel" to guide joint working groups dealing with fossil fuels, renewable energy and nuclear energy.
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Post by arun »

Petronet floats tender for LNG ships :

................"PLL has floated global tenders for time-chartering three more LNG tankers as well as for engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contracts for the expansion of Dahej terminal to 10 million tonne and a greefield re-gasification terminal at Kochi," he said.

The company is expanding the capacity of Dahej LNG terminal from five million tonne to 10 million tonne per annum and is setting up another LNG receiving terminal at Kochi with an initial capacity of 2.5 million tonne, which can be scaled upto five million tonne per annum later....................
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Post by arun »

The Malaysians get into the LNG regassification act.

Petronas to set up regasification terminal in Kochi
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Post by putnanja »

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interesting

Post by pintoo_kumar »

Reliance expects up to 3 times more gas from KG basin


http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full ... 3222[quote]
While the company has established in-place gas reserves of 14 trillion cubic feet (TCF), it expects that the combined gas reserves from the KG blocks could be up to 42 TCF.
[/quote]

this along with expected gas find from gspcl from adjacent block could change indian gas scenario. perhaps india might be self suffiecient in gas
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Post by SSridhar »

GOI asks Petronet to complete Dabhol LNG plant
PETRONET LNG Ltd (PLL) may take over and complete Dabhol Power Company's (DPC) unfinished five-million-tonne liquefied natural gas import terminal to help make the project attractive to a new buyer.
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RIL KG-basin reserves

Post by SSridhar »

Reliance expects up to 3 times more gas from KG basin
pintoo_kumar,

GIIP (Gas Initially In Place) is the total amount of gas found initially in a reservoir when the reservoir is discovered. However, GIIP needs to be updated with additional information as a result of production and development activities. Reserve is that portion of the GIIP that can be produced from the reservoir under the present technical and economic conditions.
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Post by Guha »

42 TCF is probably Reliance's estimate of "possible" reserves.

Reserves are split into 3 (with decreasing probablity):
Proven
Probable
Possible

Note: the independent estimate of "proven" reserves is still 8.7 TCF, but Reliance keeps putting out the 14TCF figure.


India's annual gas consumption is ~1.5 TCF, U.S annual gas consumption is ~22 TCF. Just to put this in perspective
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Post by pintoo_kumar »

Guha wrote: Note: the independent estimate of "proven" reserves is still 8.7 TCF, but Reliance keeps putting out the 14TCF figure.


India's annual gas consumption is ~1.5 TCF, U.S annual gas consumption is ~22 TCF. Just to put this in perspective
i thought 8.7 tcf is reserves for the first 4 gas fields which were taken into accessment while 14tcf is reserves totaling all the 6 fields(including the 2 fileds which have not been accessed but have been included in reliance estimate). also one must remember that all the fields contained gas and only 15% of the total area has been covered :P . also ssridhar what are recovery rates for gas. for oil i guess it is only 5 to 25%. what is it for gas.
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Post by SSridhar »

pintoo kumar, recovery depends on several factors including geologic structures. However, as ROT > 50% of in-place reserve is recoverable. There are various enhanced recovery techniques that can yield more. Also, recovery is a combination of technology plus economics.
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Post by Guha »

The estimates are for different reservoirs (I think 3 different reservoirs) all in the Dirubhai field. All these reservoirs together total 8.7 TCF (proved + probable + possible) according to the independent consultant (my previous post was incorrect on this). Reliance claims reserves in these reservoirs is 14 TCF. Some of this claim may be justified as some wells were drilled after the evaluation was done. But the fact remains that the 14 TCF figure has not been independently certified.

There is a lot of stuff on this issue on the web, look it up.

PS: I have no idea about how this 42 TCF figure has emerged.
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Post by arun »

Sakhalin-1 launches oil pipeline construction :

Moscow, November 9 The international consortium led by US-based Exxon Mobil as operator, launched on Tuesday the construction of giant Sakhalin-1 project oil pipeline on the Sakhalin island. The consortium, which includes, besides Exxon Mobil, Japan’s SODECO, Russia’s Rosneft and India’s ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), expects to start commercial production in 2006.
The 221-km-long pipeline will transport hydrocarbon fuel produced at Chaivo oil field from island’s north to the port of De-Kastri in Khabarovsk territory. The pipeline is expected to ship 12 million tonnes of oil to De-Kastri annually.

The consortium, in which OVL owns a 20 pc stake, aims to supply the crude oil mainly to refineries in Japan, South Korea and China. The investment by OVL worth $1.7 bn is expected to yield about 2 to 4 million metric tonnes of oil per year and 5 to 8 million cubic metres of gas per day.
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Post by Neshant »

OIL ropes in foreign firms for Brahmaputra oil hunt

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1100956,0002.htm

Indo-Asian News Service
Guwahati, November 11

India is planning a massive hunt to strike crude oil in its north eastern region by engaging foreign experts to dig the bed of the main Brahmaputra river, officials said on Thursday.

Experts in the northeast have begun exploration in new areas as the existing oil fields have been showing "declining trends" with the passage of time.

"Production capability is very high in the new areas and so we are laying much emphasis on exploratory and drilling work in unexplored locations in the northeast," the OIL official said.
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Post by SaiK »

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Post by pintoo_kumar »

Niko Resources Q2 profits rise to $6.8M from $6.6M

Energy sales rose to $22.8 million from $21.2 million, while production rose 18 per cent to 47 million cubic feet of gas a day from its field off the east coast of India.
http://www.canada.com/businesscentre/st ... 8146216f12
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Post by member_6689 »

Russian Ultra-deep Oil drilling

In 1970 the Russians started drilling Kola SG-3, an exploration well which finally reached a staggering world record depth of 40,230 feet. Since then, Russian oil majors including Yukos have quietly drilled more than 310 successful super-deep oil wells, and put them into production. Last Year Russia overtook Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest single oil producer, and is now set to completely dominate global oil production and sales for the next century.

ImageImageImage

If the opening paragraph of this report started by claiming that completely unlimited crude oil reserves exist inside planet earth, readers might be tempted to regard the entire text as preposterous ghostwriting for a novelist like Frederick Forsyth. If the report then went on to claim that the Russians have exploited this stunning reality for nearly thirty years, right under the largely unwitting noses of western intelligence, readers could be excused for mistaking the author for a lunatic, or perhaps as a front for spy novelist John le Carré. The problem here is that unlimited oil reserves do exist inside planet earth, and the Russians long ago developed the advanced technology necessary to recover these unlimited oil reserves in an efficient and timely manner.

Profoundly disturbing hard intelligence like this does not sit well with the frantic cries of western academic shills and lobbyists, determined to convince you all that the end of the oil world is nigh, or, more accurately, that America faces an imminent catastrophe when global production capacity "Peaks", i.e. when world demand for crude oil finally exceeds the rate at which we can physically pump the required product out of the ground. The gist of these false claims are outlined in a speech given at the at the University of Clausthal, by lobbyist Doctor Colin Campbell during December 2000:

"In summary, these are the main points that we have to grasp: Conventional [Free flowing] oil provides most of the oil produced today, and is responsible for about 95% of all oil that has been produced so far. It will continue to dominate supply for a long time to come. It is what matters most. Its discovery peaked in the 1960s. We now find one barrel for every four we consume. Middle East share of production is set to rise. The rest of the world peaked in 1997, and is therefore in terminal decline. World peak comes within about five years" [circa 12/2005]

Campbell is just the tip of a giant iceberg of academic Peak Oil 'experts' who suddenly appeared en-masse to give you this frightening news, right after President Saddam Hussein suddenly started trading his oil in Euros rather than in US Dollars, a devastating switch with the easy capacity to destroy the US Dollar in less than five years if it was left unchallenged and unchecked.

So these shills [decoys] were carefully positioned to deflect your attention away from the obvious greed and incompetence of the United States Government and its Wall Street masters, and focus it elsewhere instead. Then, hopefully, a few years later down the track when prices start to bounce through the roof, and America has no Euros to buy crude oil, you will blame gasoline prices of $5.00+ per gallon at the pumps on an 'inevitable decline' in world oil production, rather than march furiously on Washington DC with locked and loaded firearms.

Though attacking Campbell and his ilk is not the purpose of this report, his idiot claims can be debunked readily enough. While it is true that nowadays we only officially find one barrel of oil for every four barrels we consume, this is primarily because we temporarily stopped the incredibly expensive process of looking for crude oil when we had already physically established more than two trillion barrels of reserves in known reservoir locations around the world. When those known reserves drop to [say] one trillion barrels we may be tempted to go and find more, but not until then. And while it is true that the production rate from each individual oil well ever drilled has slowly declined over the years, there is a perfectly valid technical reason for this predictable reduced flow rate, which will be explained later.

In order to understand how Russia has left the rest of the world standing in its wake, it is essential to know a little bit about where oil is located, and how it is extracted from the ground for refining and commercial use. It is an enormously complex subject, especially when considering the ultra-deep wells, which should really have a separate category all of their own. Many years ago I was personally involved at the sharp end of two ultra-deep drilling operations [one of them in direct liaison with Russian experts from the Moscow Drilling Institute], and will try to keep this drilling lesson as simple as I can. Thankfully perhaps, the underlying principle of how and where oil is recovered from is not difficult to comprehend, as illustrated by the diagram below.

Image

The theory underlying how oil is formed at such enormous depths in the mantle of the earth is not central to this report, because the Russians have already proved its point of origin in absolute drilling terms more than 300 times. Those interested in the exact process should research the archives, where there are more than two hundred Russian papers on the subject. Probably a good place to start would be "The Role of Methane in the Formation of Mineral Fuels", written by by A.D. Bondar in 1967. What is central to this report is the massive advantage that Russia's ultra-deep drilling discoveries and technical achievements give it over the western nations.

The first advantage I intend to explain is nowhere near as important in global terms as the second, because it is the second advantage that finally drove the Zionist Cabal to illegally invade sovereign Iraq, and thereby bring us all to the very brink of thermonuclear war. However, from where I sit, the first advantage is much more important in simple humanitarian terms, although "humanitarian" is not an acceptable trading process on Wall Street.

As we have already discovered, oil can be produced virtually anywhere on earth, provided the host country can afford the expensive [and sometimes classified] technology, and the massive cost of drilling a well to extreme depth through extremely hard rock formations. But just think what even 20 or 30 deep producing oil wells can mean for the people of a country that has no natural resources of its own, or worse still, for people who have been told by glib western lobbyists that they have no natural resources of their own. Anyone who can prove that the western nations were lying or simply wrong, will become a trusted friend forever. Vietnam is a classic example.

After more than 60 years of being enslaved, pillaged, and raped by the French and then by the Americans, the poor Vietnamese were told officially by American oil multinationals that their country was barren; that western 'cutting edge' technology had failed to find anything to help them recover financially from the mess left behind by American bombs, Agent Orange, and a host of other delightful gifts from Uncle Sam. This of course was exactly where America wanted the Vietnamese to be: desperately poor and unable to take action against their former invaders.

The Russians had other ideas and a very different approach. After telling the Vietnamese that the Americans had lied to them, oil experts were flown in from Moscow to prove this startling claim in a no-risk joint venture, meaning the Russians would provide all of the equipment and expertise free of charge, and only then take a percentage of the profits if oil was actually found and put into production. Vietnam had absolutely nothing to lose, and swiftly gave Russia the green light.

The Vietnamese White Tiger oil field was and is a raging success, currently producing high quality crude oil from basalt rock more than 17,000 feet below the surface of the earth, at 6,000 barrels per day per well. Through White Tiger, the Russians have assisted the Vietnamese to regain part of their self respect, while at the same time making them far less dependent on brutal western nations for food-aid handouts.

All of a sudden in a very small way, Vietnam has joined the exclusive club of oil producing nations, and a stream of cynical U.S. Senators and Congressmen have started making the long pilgrimage to Ho Chi Minh City in order to 'mend fences'. Predictably perhaps, the Vietnamese are very cool, and try hard to ignore their new American admirers.

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Welcome to the White Tiger oil field in Vietnam. Observe the truly amazing oil flares, in an area the Americans officially declared 'barren' of oil reserves !

It is truly amazing how quickly good news travels [outside of CNN], and in a very short space of time China was also engaged in a joint super deep venture with Russia. Nor did it end there. As I write this report, intelligence reports that the Russians have already moved three deep-drilling rigs into impoverished North Korea, where they intend to repeat the Vietnamese production cycle by drilling thought solid granite and basalt, with not a single trace of the 'decaying marine life' so essential to blinkered western geologists for the 'accepted' production of crude oil. It may take a while, but ultimately the North Koreans will be able to go about their sovereign business without the Zionist Cabal in New York being able to blackmail them over a few ship loads of food-aid rice. Yes indeed, Korea will eventually have an oil surplus of its own, allowing it to tell the latest in a long line of terminally insane "New World Orders" to go to hell.

The White Tiger project was the first outside Russia to openly exploit and showcase this ultra-deep technology and oil production from basalt rock to the world, though the original intent was to do so much earlier in India during 1983. During that year a large drilling rig in the Ganges Delta was scheduled to drill down to below 22,000 feet into basalt, and then dramatically flare "impossible" ultra deep oil. Oil well Bodra #3 was directly supervised by teams of experienced Russian drillers and scientists from the Moscow Institute of Drilling, with the author the only westerner on site, contracted to control one of the critical advanced systems needed to reach target depth smoothly and efficiently.
If Bodra #3 had been allowed to drill ahead unhindered, there is no doubt the resulting impact would have sent shock waves around the oil world, and gained enormous international prestige for the Russians. Even more importantly perhaps, the desperately poor people of West Bengal would have gained access to their own energy reserves. Unfortunately, Bodra #3 was not allowed to drill ahead unhindered. The Americans were determined to stop the project one way or the other, and played on New Delhi's obvious fear of the Communist State Government in West Bengal. After bribing a handful of corrupt central government officials, US intelligence sent in professional American saboteurs, who managed to wreck the drilling project while the author was away on a visit to Sydney in Australia.


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Before we continue to the second massive advantage derived from ultra deep oil, and thus the primary reason why Wall Street decided to illegally invade Iraq, it is essential to look briefly at the way in which America devours a massive portion of global oil supply. You see, the 'Peak Oil' scam is not really about the world running out of oil reserves or being incapable of producing sufficient quantities to provide for its various national users. Instead, Peak Oil was fabricated to disguise America's individual increasing greed for crude oil, and its imminent inability to pay hard cash for the product. Put simply, America is going broke fast, and Wall Street wishes to blame someone else before the angry Militias appear with their locked and loaded weapons.

This sorry situation is best summarized by Professor Victor Poleo of Venezuela's Central University, who told IPS in April that, "The mechanism by which global oil prices are set is intact, but the normal behaviour of supply and demand is not." According to Poleo, the root of the problem is that the United States ''is a terminal victim of its energetic metastasis. It has neither the oil nor the natural gas needed to feed its style of development. With just six percent of the world population, it consumes nearly 25 percent of the oil and gas produced worldwide.''

Professor Poleo went on to explain that there were expectations that demand for gasoline in the United States would stabilize at around 7.2 million barrels a day by the mid-1990s, ''but that didn't happen,'' he said. ''The United States' voracity for gasoline rose to nine million barrels by 2003, one of every two liters burnt in the world.'' And domestic demand for crude oil will continue to grow. The United States imports today six of every 10 barrels of oil and two of every 10 cubic meters of gas that it consumes, and by 2020 it will import eight of every 10 barrels of oil and four of every 10 cubic meters of gas, according to U.S. government reports.

Despite the fact that American intelligence already knew of Russia's achievements with ultra deep oil production from the mantle of the earth back in the early eighties, it was obvious that this slow and expensive method of adding to national oil reserves could never keep up with America's voracious appetite for gasoline. So ultimately when domestic demand grew too fast, or cash reserves were finally depleted, America would either be obliged to halve its own use of gasoline, or steal it from someone else by force. Halving gasoline usage was out of the question, so instead of building hundreds of ultra-deep drilling rigs, Wall Street squandered the cash building more aircraft carriers, with the desperate objective of attacking and permanently occupying the Middle East.

This is the point at which the second massive advantage derived from ultra-deep oil comes into play. Do you remember how puzzled the reservoir engineers were when they discovered that their existing reserves were being "topped up" from below? They later discovered that what they were really observing were naturally occurring ultra-deep oil wells, leaking vast quantities of oil from the mantle of the earth upwards through fractures into what we nowadays refer to as "sedimentary oilfields", located relatively close to the surface. As the production companies draw oil out of these known reservoirs through oil wells, field pressure is slightly reduced, thereby allowing more ultra-deep oil to migrate up from the mantle and restock the reservoir from below.

Russian studies of their own ultra-deep wells and those in the White Tiger field in Vietnam, indicate in very rough terms that migration from the mantle is probably 20-30% less than production at Middle East wellheads, meaning in turn that if the flow rates of existing Iraqi and Saudi wells are reduced by about 30%, oil supply and production can and will continue forever, constantly replenished by ultra-deep oil from the mantle itself. It goes almost without saying that even with production reduced by 30%, there is more than enough oil in the Middle East to provide for America's increasing usage for at least the next century. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why your sons and daughters have died and will continue to die in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

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In direct conflict with the 'Peak Oil' myth, the underreamer shown in these photos can restore an oil well's original production rate, using basically the same principle as changing the oil filter in your automobile engine

Now we come to the completely false [or deliberately misleading] claim by Peak Oil shills that production from existing oil wells is "slowing down", thereby proving that the oil fields are "running dry". This is so wrong that it is almost breathtaking. Think of this slowing down process in the same way you might think of the engine oil in your automobile. The longer you run the engine, the higher the level of contaminates that get into the oil. The higher the level of contaminates, the higher the level of friction. Sooner or later you have something closely akin to glue coating your piston rings, and the performance of your engine declines accordingly. This is an inevitable mechanical process well known to all automobile owners.
Henry Ford and others managed to slow down the rate of contamination in engine oils by inventing the oil filter, through which the oil has to circulate each time it passes around inside the engine. A high percentage of the contaminates stick to the filter element, thereby allowing extra miles between oil changes, though heaven help the careless motorist who thinks he can get away without ever changing his clogged oil filter when recommended.

When oil is extracted from a producing formation underground, it flows out through pores in the reservoir rock, and then into the open borehole, from where it is transported to surface by the production tubing string. So by the very nature of the beast, the bottom section of the well is "open hole" which allows the oil to flow out in the first place, but because it is comprised of exposed and sometimes unstable rock, this open hole section is also continually subject to all manner of turbulence and various contaminates. For example, tiny quantities of super fine silt may exit through the pores but not continue to the surface with the oil, tumbling around in the turbulence instead, until the silt very slowly starts to block off the oil-producing pore throats. Yes, of course there are a variety of liners that can be used to slow down the contamination, but there is no such thing as a Henry Ford oil filter 10,000 feet underground.

The inevitable result of this is that over time, the initial production rate of the well will slowly decline, a hard fact known to every exploration oilman in the business. However, this is certainly not an indication that the oil field itself is becoming depleted, proved thousands of times by offset wells drilled later into the same reservoir. Any new well comes on stream at the original production rate of its older cousins, because it has not yet had time to build up a thin layer of contaminates across the open hole. Though as we shall see it is possible to "do an oil change" on a producing well and bring it back to full production, this is extremely expensive, and rarely used in the west.

Look at a simple example: Say we have a small oil field in Iraq with ten wells that each started out in life producing 10,000 barrels of oil per day. Fine, for a known investment we are producing 100,000 barrels of oil per day from our small field, at least for a while. Five years later contamination may have slowed our overall production down by ten percent to 90,000 barrels per day. So we are now faced with a choice: either "do an oil change" on all ten existing wells at vast expense and down time, or simply drill one additional well into the same reservoir, thereby restoring our daily production to 100,000 barrels with the minimum of fuss. Take my word for it, ninety-nine percent of onshore producers will simply drill the extra well.

Naturally there are times and places where this simple process is not an option, for example on a huge and very expensive offshore platform, which may have only 24 drilling 'slots', all of which have been used up. To restore your overall production after five years you can either build another giant platform next door for two billion dollars, or "do an oil change" on each of your existing 24 wells, one at a time. Clearly this time you are forced to carry out the time consuming business of restoring the open hole section at the bottom of the well to its old pristine condition, before various contaminates started to slow down your production rate.

For this task you first pull the production tubing out of the hole, and then run back in with a drill string, to which is attached an underreamer as shown in the pictures above. When the reamer is directly opposite the top of the open hole producing section, the drill string is rotated to the right and the blades fly out under centrifugal force to a distance preset by you before lowering the tool into the hole. The objective is to cut away the contaminated face of the well to a depth you consider will once again expose pristine producing pores. As the spinning underreamer is slowly lowered, it enlarges the size of the hole, with the contaminated debris cut away and flushed back to surface by the drilling fluid. Hey presto, you have a new oil well, and it only cost one or two million dollars to restore…

Remember I said this process is rarely used in the west, which is true, but it is not true of Russia, where the objective for many years has been to dominate global oil supply by continual investment. With no shareholders holding out their grubby little hands for a wad of pocket money every month, the Russian oil industry managed to surge ahead, underreaming thousands of its older existing onshore wells in less than ten years. Then along came Wall Street asset Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who fraudulently got his hands on Yukos oil for a mere fraction of its value, and was on the point of selling the entire outfit to the American multinationals when Vladimir Putin had him hauled off his private jet somewhere in Siberia. So Wall Street was finally 'cheated' of its very own 'free' Russian oil, and poor old Mikhail had better get used to the taste of prison food.

To recap, 'Peak Oil' claims that because today we only find one barrel of oil for every four that we use, world oil reserves are running out. Completely misleading propaganda. as the Russians [and the CIA] know perfectly well, reserves of oil in the mantle of the earth are infinite. 'Peak Oil' also claims that we will shortly be unable to pump sufficient oil out of the ground to keep up with demand. Completely misleading propaganda again. We could drill more wells, but Wall Street cannot afford to pay for them, and never intended to, at least not while it still believed conquest and eternal occupation of the Middle East was a realistic possibility.

Professor Poleo makes it quite clear which direction the west needs to go in if it is to survive in the long term, and that is to follow Russia's example by sharply reducing domestic consumption. Back in 1990 America was using around 6 million barrels per day compared to Russia's 8.4 million, but how things have changed since then. Thirteen years later in 2003, American consumption was up to 9 million, while Russian consumption had been reduced to a mere 3.2 million. A few billion folk over there in America might like to walk around their houses and switch off any electrical appliances they don't actually need. Believe me, I can almost hear the oil surging through the pipelines in New York, and I live more than 12,000 miles away in Australia.

In closing I would like to pass on my greetings and thanks to the cheerful Russian drillers and scientists I had the pleasure of working with at Bodra #3 in West Bengal, without whose expertise we might all be dead today, as a direct consequence of repeated American sabotage attempts on the high pressure well. My thanks also to the Moscow Drilling Institute for the unrestricted flow of information and documents on ultra deep oil production technology, without which I could not have written this report.
Rishikx
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Muppalla
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