October
29, 2004
Energy
world industry is moving towards Venezuelan
hydrocarbons
(The Economist) - "Leading
oilmen gathered this week in London for
the "Oil & Money" conference,
an annual expense-account jamboree often
preoccupied with the industry's woes.
This year, though, the tone was cheerful.
Jeroen van der Veer, head of Royal Dutch/Shell,
reassured his audience that Americans
are 'still driving their SUVs to Wal-Mart.'
Lord Browne, the boss of BP, gave a sunny
speech insisting that without petroleum
'the world would be a dark, cold and miserable
place.' (…)
So oil's well, then? Not
quite. Despite their current profitability,
the majors face big trouble in three
areas: rapidly declining reserves; soaring
costs; and lack of access to cheap new
reserves. Tom Wallin, head of the Energy
Intelligence Group, an industry publisher,
argues their future 'is more in doubt
than at any time since the nationalisations
of the 1970s.' (…)
Look, however, at
the ways the big companies are spending
money in areas other than conventional
oil, and it becomes clear that they
are slowly transforming themselves into
energy firms. One shift is into "unconventional"
hydrocarbons, such as the mucky tar
sands of Canada and the shale of Venezuela
(…). Exxon's boss Lee Raymond recently
vowed to produce technological breakthroughs
that would make 'unconventional oil
conventional' (...)."
