Article

2006-07-04 Caribbean-Latin America

BP blames Chavez for oil production shortfall

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Posted by lotp 2006-07-04 08:17|| || Front Page|| [11131 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 Venezuela's oil fields are mostly quite old, and take a lot of effort and investment to wring out the incremental barrels. The easy stuff has already been produced. If Chavez won't or can't make that re-investment himself, and discourages the international oil companies from doing so, then production is guarenteed to decline pretty quickly. A lot of government oil companies have slowly learned that over the years.

Posted by Glenmore">Glenmore 2006-07-04 08:59|| 2006-07-04 08:59|| Front Page Top

#2 I'm sure there are some old Iraqi Baathis with 'experience' in watching old oil infrastructures decline available for Venezuela government jobs. They at least understand Hugos priorities. Theyve already worked for one tyrant.

Posted by Slomoper Jolumble7671 2006-07-04 09:09|| 2006-07-04 09:09|| Front Page Top

#3 Suck em' dry and skate. Leave Hugo with a ruined oil industry. Even known reserves take years, and tens of millions to get producing.

Posted by bigjim-ky 2006-07-04 11:47|| 2006-07-04 11:47|| Front Page Top

#4 Hugo. Brilliant. Following the Pemex example 50 years later. Same outcome.

Posted by SOP35/Rat 2006-07-04 12:25|| 2006-07-04 12:25|| Front Page Top

#5 Suck em' dry and skate. Leave Hugo with a ruined oil industry. Even known reserves take years, and tens of millions to get producing.

Bigjim, believe it or not, that appears to be Hugo's plans for Venezuela: wreck its production capacity and skate, leaving Venezuela (and its primary customer, the United States) to suffer the consequences.

And due to the peculiarities of Venezuela's oilfield reservoirs, I think he's already there. Part of the reason oil is so high right now is because Venezuelan oil production is so much lower than it used to be. Especially since OPEC and Chavez are dissembling about what the actual production figures are (which is a lot lower than they say). The Venezuelan shortfall is letting OPEC pretend they're making quota when they're not.

You understand if I don't want to go into any more details, right? It's hard to type on a human keyboard when the keys are so much smaller than your fingers, and the speech recognition software keeps telling you to stop grunting.

Posted by Abdominal Snowman 2006-07-04 12:42|| 2006-07-04 12:42|| Front Page Top

#6 What ever happened to all the oil in the Rocky Mountain states that was all the news a few months, maybe a year ago? Has anyone heard the good word on that? Wasn't it supposed to be possibly the largest ever found? Trapped in shale or something?

Posted by Shereting Phaper6577 2006-07-04 16:33|| 2006-07-04 16:33|| Front Page Top

#7 Shereting:
There's LOTS of oil in the Rockies, in oil shale. It's been known about for a long, long time. But it is hard to get out - environmentally very messy, consumes lots of scarce water, and is capital-intensive. Canadian oil sands are generally preferred at this time, and the Alberta oil patch is booming.
I also heard about a big conventional oil strike - maybe in Nevada - but the stories seemed a bit speculative, and 'too good to be true.'

Posted by Glenmore">Glenmore 2006-07-04 19:43|| 2006-07-04 19:43|| Front Page Top

#8 There was also a story here about "vast" new finds in the Gulf - about 1-2 months ago...

Posted by Wheager Unutch9131 2006-07-04 19:53|| 2006-07-04 19:53|| Front Page Top

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