Кое-что о ропе

[Matik 0]

Из Нью-Йорк Таймс:

Международный консорциум нефтяных компаний 25-го февраля достиг договорённости о $29-млрд проекте разработки Кашаганского нефтяного месторождения в Казахстане. Кашаган - крупнейшее открытие залежей нефти со времени Prudhoe Bay в Аляске, обнаруженного больше 30 лет назад. Добыча нефти начнётся не ранее 2008 года, на три года позже плана. За эту задержку консорциум заплатит правительству Казахстана неустойку, размер которой не разглашается. Запасы нефти теперь оцениваются в 13 млрд баррелей, на несколько млрд больше первоначальной оценки. К 2015 году планируется добыча на уровне 1 млн баррелей в день, около трети всей добычи нефти в Казахстане.

 

 

В консорциум входят ENI (Италия), Royal Dutch/Shell (Великобритания-Нидерланды), Exxon Mobil (США), Total (Франция), имеющие по 16.67% долевого участия, а также ConocoPhillips (США) и Inpex (Япония) - по 8.3%. British Gas выходит из проекта и продаст свою долю в 16.7% остальным партнёрам.

В то же время:

Некоторые эксперты высказывают опасения о состоянии нефтяных полей Саудовской Аравии. Saudi Aramco, государственная нефтекомпания СА, не разглашает детальные данные нефтедобычи. Однако появилась информация, что в 2011 году Saudi Aramco планирует добывать 10.15 млн баррелей в день, примерно тот же объём, что и сейчас. Однако, чтобы удовлетворить растущую потребность в нефти, СА должна была бы производить 13.6 млн баррелей в день к 2010 году, и 19.5 млн баррелей к 2020.

 

Запасы нефти в СА далеки от исчерпания: общий разведанный запас превышает 250 млрд баррелей, около четверти мирового запаса. Наиболее значительное месторождение - Ghawar, открытое в 1948. Этот 300-мильный участок побережья Персидского залива - крупнейшее месторождение нефти в мире. Из него СА добывает более половины нефти. Однако Mr. Price, бывший вице-президент Saudi Aramco, утверждает, что северная, наиболее ценная часть месторождения, эксплуатируется сверх меры.

 

Закачка морской воды для вытеснения нефти приводит к тому, что со временем доля воды в нефти возрастает, и в итоге производство становится экономически невыгодным. Mr. Price заявил, что чрезмерная концентрация на разработке North Ghawar приближает время неконтролируемого спада добычи. Неназванный представитель саудовского нефтяного бизнеса, подтвердил, что стоимость эксплуатации Ghawar возрастает из-за проблем с закачанной водой.

 

Сходные опасения высказывают представители иранской и американской нефтекомпаний, а также международного агенства I.E.A.

[Matik 0]

Источники:

February 26, 2004
Oil Majors Agree to Develop a Big Kazakh Field
By HEATHER TIMMONS

LONDON, Feb. 25 - A consortium of international oil companies formally agreed on Wednesday to proceed with a $29 billion development of the Kashagan oil field in Kazakhstan, the largest oil discovery since Prudhoe Bay in Alaska more than 30 years ago.

 

Under the terms of the deal, the group, led by ENI of Italy, would not extract oil from the site until 2008, three years later than originally planned. A group of oil majors agreed to develop the Kashagan field soon after its discovery in 2000, and the companies in the consortium will pay the Kazahk government an undisclosed amount for the delay.

 

Total oil reserves are now estimated to be 13 billion barrels, several billion barrels higher than original estimates. The companies in the consortium are ENI, Royal Dutch/Shell, Exxon Mobil, Total of France, ConocoPhillips and Inpex of Japan.

 

The announcement represents a major step forward for oil production in Kazakhstan. The former Soviet republic is considered one of the United States' most promising alternatives to the Middle East for oil supplies, but development has slowed in recent years as the Kazakh government sought to renegotiate contracts struck with foreign oil companies in the early 1990's.

 

"This deal is by all means an important breakthrough, both for Kazakhstan and for our Western partners," said Kazakhstan's former minister of foreign affairs, Erlan A. Idrissov, in a telephone interview. Mr. Idrissov is now the country's ambassador to Britain. By 2015, the field is expected to yield more than a million barrels a day, about a third of Kazakhstan's target for oil production, he said.

 

The oil companies involved in the Kashagan field have been haggling with the Kazakh government for several months over timing and methods of production, taxation and other contractual terms. One major production hurdle is the field's location under the Caspian Sea, which sometimes freezes over. Initial production is expected to be 75,000 barrels a day, Shell said in a statement. Mr. Idrissov said production was expected to rise to more than 400,000 barrels a day by 2013.

 

Other details of the contract were not disclosed, but analysts said that the project was expected to be taxed at a rate as high as 80 percent .

 

"The indications have been that this is not a relatively high-return project, but it is enormous," said Jonathan Waghorn, an oil industry analyst with Goldman, Sachs in London. "It will provide a stable stream of cash for the next 30 or 40 years, so it is certainly a good thing for companies that are able to absorb such a project into their portfolios."

 

Shell, which will hold about one-fifth of the project after a planned exit by British Gas, said on Wednesday that Kashagan was integral to its long-term strategy. The Caspian region and the 12 former Soviet republics that make up the Commonwealth of Independent States are "a future heartland for Shell," Walter van de Vijver, chief executive for exploration and production, said in a statement. The company has been under pressure to increase its reserves since it unexpectedly lowered its proven reserve estimates by 20 percent in January.

 

ENI, Shell, Exxon Mobil and Total each hold a 16.67 percent stake in the project; ConocoPhillips and Inpex have 8.3 percent each. A 16.7 percent stake held by British Gas will be sold to the remaining partners, except Inpex. Shell will raise its stake to 20.37 percent.

 

Some oil experts said that given the history of off-again-on-again deals in Kazakhstan, they would withhold judgment on the global impact of the deal until oil is being pumped from the Kashagan field.

 

The oil business in Kazakhstan has also been tarnished by allegations of corruption. James Giffen, an oil consultant, pleaded not guilty last April to charges of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying $78 million in bribes to Kazakh officials. A former Mobil executive, J. Bryan Williams, pleaded guilty last April to evading taxes on unreported income, including a $2 million kickback.

 

But if the deal goes through, it may encourage other investors to look at the region, said Katherine Hardin, an associate director of Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

 

"This is the flagship project in the north Caspian," Ms. Hardin said.

 

Reserves in the area are still dwarfed by those of Saudi Arabia, which produces 10.5 million barrels a day. Kazakhstan will never rival Saudi Arabia as a source for oil, but it is an important new production region, Ms. Hardin said.

February 24, 2004
Forecast of Rising Oil Demand Challenges Tired Saudi Fields
By JEFF GERTH

When visitors tour the headquarters of Saudi Arabia's oil empire — a sleek glass building rising from the desert in Dhahran near the Persian Gulf — they are reminded of its mission in a film projected on a giant screen. "We supply what the world demands every day," it declares.

 

For decades, that has largely been true. Ever since its rich reserves were discovered more than a half-century ago, Saudi Arabia has pumped the oil needed to keep pace with rising needs, becoming the mainstay of the global energy markets.

 

But the country's oil fields now are in decline, prompting industry and government officials to raise serious questions about whether the kingdom will be able to satisfy the world's thirst for oil in coming years.

 

Energy forecasts call for Saudi Arabia to almost double its output in the next decade and after. Oil executives and government officials in the United States and Saudi Arabia, however, say capacity will probably stall near current levels, potentially creating a significant gap in the global energy supply.

 

Outsiders have not had access to detailed production data from Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company, for more than 20 years. But interviews in recent months with experts on Saudi oil fields provided a rare look inside the business and suggested looming problems.

 

An internal Saudi Aramco plan, the experts said, estimates total production capacity in 2011 at 10.15 million barrels a day, about the current capacity. But to meet expected world demand, the United States Department of Energy's research arm says Saudi Arabia will need to produce 13.6 million barrels a day by 2010 and 19.5 million barrels a day by 2020.

 

"In the past, the world has counted on Saudi Arabia," one senior Saudi oil executive said. "Now I don't see how long it can be maintained."

 

Saudi Arabia, the leading exporter for three decades, is not running out of oil. Industry officials are finding, however, that it is becoming more difficult or expensive to extract it. Today, the country produces about eight million barrels a day, roughly one-tenth of the world's needs. It is the top foreign supplier to the United States, the world's leading energy consumer.

 

Fears of a future energy gap could, of course, turn out to be unfounded. Predictions of oil market behavior have often proved wrong.

 

But if Saudi production falls short, industry experts say the consequences could be significant. Other large producers, like Russia and Iraq, do not have Saudi Aramco's huge reserves or excess oil capacity to export, and promising new fields elsewhere are not expected to deliver enough oil to make up the difference.

 

As a result, supplies could tighten and oil prices could increase. The global economy could feel the ripples; previous spikes in oil prices have helped cause recessions, though high oil prices in the last year or so have not slowed strong growth.

 

Saudi Aramco says its dominance in world oil markets will grow because, "if required," it can expand its capacity to 12 million barrels a day or more by "making necessary investments," according to written responses to questions submitted by The New York Times.

 

But some experts are skeptical. Edward O. Price Jr., a former top Saudi Aramco and Chevron executive and a leading United States government adviser, says he believes that Saudi Arabia can pump up to 12 million barrels a day "for a few years." But "the world should not expect more from the Saudis," he said. He expects global oil markets to be in short supply by 2015.

 

Fatih Birol, the chief economist for the International Energy Agency, said the Saudis would not be able to increase production enough for future needs without large-scale foreign investment.

 

The I.E.A., an independent agency founded by energy-consuming nations, and Washington see investment in energy exploration and field maintenance as vital, but such proposals face strong opposition inside Saudi Arabia. Tensions with the West, particularly the United States, make such investment politically difficult for Saudi society. For example, an effort by Crown Prince Abdullah, the kingdom's de facto ruler, to encourage Western companies to invest $25 billion in his country's natural gas industry essentially collapsed last year.

 

"Access to Persian Gulf oil reserves, especially Saudi Arabia's, is the key question for the whole world," Dr. Birol said.

 

President Bush has said he wants to make the United States less reliant on oil-producing countries that "don't like America" by diversifying suppliers and financing research into hydrogen fuel cells, but achieving that remains far off.

 

His administration backs foreign investment initiatives in the gulf region, including Saudi Arabia, and his energy policies rely on Energy Department projections showing the world even more dependent on Arabian oil in 20 years. That may be enough time for governments to find alternatives, but oil field development requires years of planning and work.

 

Publicly, Saudi oil executives express optimism about the future of their industry. Some economists are equally optimistic that if oil prices rise high enough, advanced recovery techniques will be applied, averting supply problems.

 

But privately, some Saudi oil officials are less sanguine.

 

"We don't see us as the ones making sure the oil is there for the rest of the world," one senior executive said in an interview. A Saudi Aramco official cautioned that even the attempt to get up to 12 million barrels a day would "wreak havoc within a decade," by causing damage to the oil fields.

 

In an unusual public statement, Sadad al-Husseini, Saudi Aramco's second-ranking executive and its leading geologist, warned at an oil conference in Jakarta in 2002 that global "natural declines in existing capacity are real and must be replaced."

 

Dr. al-Husseini, one Western oil expert said, has been "the brains of Saudi Aramco's exploration and production." But he has told associates that he plans to resign soon, and his departure, government oil experts in the United States and Saudi Arabia say, could hinder Saudi efforts to bolster production or entice foreign investment.

 

Saudi Arabia's reported proven reserves, more than 250 billion barrels, are one-fourth of the world's total. The most significant is Ghawar. Discovered in 1948, the 300-mile-long sliver near the Persian Gulf is the world's largest oil field and accounts for more than half of the kingdom's production.

 

The company told The New York Times that its field production practices, including those at Ghawar, were "at optimum levels" and the risk of steep declines was negligible. But Mr. Price, the former vice president for exploration and production at Saudi Aramco, says that North Ghawar, the most valuable section of the field, was pushed too hard in the past.

 

"Instead of spreading the production to other fields or areas," Mr. Price said, the Saudis concentrated on North Ghawar. That "accelerated the depletion rate and the time to uncontrolled decline," or the point where the field's production drops dramatically, he said.

 

In Saudi Arabia, seawater is injected into the giant fields to help move the oil toward the top of the reservoir. But over time, the volume of water that is lifted along with the oil increases, and the volume of oil declines proportionally. Eventually, it becomes uneconomical to extract the oil. There is also a risk that the field can become unstable and collapse.

 

Ghawar is still far too productive to abandon. But because of increasing problems with managing the water, one Saudi oil executive said, "Ghawar is becoming very costly to maintain."

 

The average decline rate in Saudi Aramco's mature fields — Ghawar and a few others — "is in the range of 8 percent per year," without additional remediation, according to the company's statement. This means several hundred thousand barrels of daily oil production would have to be added every year just to make up for the diminished output.

 

Every oil field is unique, and experts cannot predict how long each might last. For its part, Saudi Aramco is counting on Ghawar for years to come.

 

The company projects that Ghawar will continue to produce more than half its oil. One internal company estimate from 2002 puts Ghawar's production at 5.25 million barrels a day in 2011, more than half the total expected crude oil capacity of 10.15 million, according to United States government officials and oil executives.

 

"The big risk in Saudi Arabia is that Ghawar's rate of decline increases to an alarming point," said Ali Morteza Samsam Bakhtiari, a senior official with the National Iranian Oil Company. "That will set bells ringing all over the oil world because Ghawar underpins Saudi output and Saudi undergirds worldwide production."

 

The I.E.A. warned in November that huge investments would be needed to offset the decline rates in mature Middle Eastern oil fields — it put the average at 5 percent — and the increasing costs of oil and gas production. The agency, based in Paris, forecasts that Saudi production will need to reach 20 million barrels a day by 2020. (I.E.A. and other research estimates say that more than 90 percent of that would be crude oil; the rest would be liquid products like natural gas liquids that result from the processing of crude oil.)

 

In his speech in Jakarta, Dr. al-Husseini noted the need for exploration, pointing out that colleagues at Exxon Mobil predict that more than 50 percent of oil and gas consumption in 2010 must come from new fields and reservoirs.

 

Harry A. Longwell, the executive vice president of Exxon Mobil, says finding new sources of oil is crucial. Mr. Longwell, in an interview, said that increasing demand and declining production were not new problems, but they were "much larger now because of the world's demand for energy and the magnitude of the numbers now are much larger."

 

To offset its declines, Saudi Aramco is bringing back into production one idle field, Qatif, and is enhancing production at a nearby offshore field, Abu Safah. The company says that with expert management, these fields will produce about 800,000 barrels a day.

 

But current and former Saudi Aramco executives question those expectations, contending that the goal of 500,000 barrels a day for Qatif is unrealistic and that development costs are higher than anticipated.

 

Qatif poses real difficulties. It is near housing for Saudi Arabia's minority Shiite population and contains high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide, a highly toxic gas. Its development is "particularly challenging," according to a technical paper by Saudi Aramco engineers presented last year in Bahrain, which said that 45 percent of potential drilling sites "were rejected due to safety concerns."

 

At Abu Safah, Saudi Aramco has experienced increasing water problems as it has turned to submersible pumps to extract oil. Experts, including American and Saudi government officials, say the technique is ill advised. Saudi Aramco, in its written response to questions, defended the use of the pumps at Abu Safah and its ability to manage the water after 37 years of production.

 

One United Sates government energy expert noted that "submersible pumps is what the Soviets went to on an indiscriminate basis in West Siberia and it went south." Samotlor, a huge field in Siberia, once produced more than three million barrels a day, but it declined sharply in the 1980's after the Soviets pushed it too hard. Today it produces only a few hundred thousand barrels a day.

February 25, 2004
Saudis Debate Expert in U.S. On Outlook For Their Oil
By JEFF GERTH

 

WASHINGTON, Feb. 24 - Saudi Arabian oil executives said Tuesday that they planned to maintain production capacity at the current rate of 10 million barrels a day for the rest of this decade but could increase maximum output by 20 percent to 50 percent in about 10 years.

 

But an energy expert based in Houston, warning that "the easy oil era in Saudi Arabia is either nearly over or over," called for large-scale research into new energy sources.

 

The debate about Saudi Arabia's oil future played out at a packed conference here sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research group.

 

Two executives from Saudi Aramco, the government-owned oil company, and Matthew R. Simmons, chairman of an energy investment bank in Houston, addressed the group. They agreed that Saudi Arabia's spare capacity - the cushion of two million barrels a day between what it produces and what it could produce - had long played a crucial, calming role in global oil markets. But they parted ways on what lies ahead.

 

Most forecasts by government oil experts and oil companies say Saudi capacity needs to roughly double by 2020 to meet growing demand. The Saudi Aramco executives emphasized the company's conservative approach to managing its aging fields and their belief that new oil recovery techniques could significantly increase their reserves, the largest in the world.

 

Nansen G. Saleri, a manager of reservoir management for Saudi Aramco, said the current company plan was to maintain capacity at 10 million barrels a day through 2009, but he also offered possibilities of maximum output of 12 million or 15 million barrels a day, beginning in a decade and continuing for 50 years.

 

But some current and former Saudi Aramco executives say those possible outcomes are unrealistic, as does Mr. Simmons, who has advised the United States secretary of energy and the 2000 Bush campaign.

 

The Saudi Aramco presentation reflects increased disclosure about its operations. Still, Mr. Simmons asked why the company did not report its field-by-field production data, as some oil producers do.

 

Dr. Saleri said the company could finance any production increase on its own. But Washington, and Crown Prince Abdullah, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, see a need for foreign investment in the kingdom's energy sector. Both backed an initiative to attract as much as $25 billion in foreign investment in the country's natural gas business. But the plan essentially collapsed last year amid disputes over the rates of return sought by American companies and the extent of Saudi gas reserves.

 

In one meeting with American diplomats in October 2002, the crown prince complained that the companies were too greedy in their negotiations, according to American and Saudi officials. The American ambassador, Robert W. Jordan, defended the companies then. "I had to stand up for American business," Mr. Jordan, who left his post last fall, said in a recent interview.

 

From the perspective of some of the Americans, the Saudis were not being forthright about their natural gas reserves. "We were concerned about some of the gas," one American oil executive said recently, "and our concern led us to say to Saudi Aramco, 'Give us geological data to prove the reserves or allow us an outside audit before we commit.' "

 

In the end, Saudi Arabia has proceeded with a much more modest project that involves no American companies, but some from Europe, Russia and China.

[lovermann 8]

С утра такие большие тексты на английском вообще не идут..

[Matik 0]

Потому я и перевёл ключевые тезисы, а источники положил отдельным сообщением. Мог бы просто дать ссылки, но они через пару дней перестанут работать: NYT требует $$$ за статьи более чем 7-дневной давности.

[Bet 71]

Нефть не пиво, когда-нибудь да закончится.

[GDV 9974]

Это высказывание Бет занесено в музеумные аналы ©.

[ajdar 1]

Не совсем о ропе (хотя, может быть, как раз о ней, вернее, о ее неисповедимых путях:-) :

 

Я подготовил фоторепортаж о своей поездке в Казахстан, в частности, в новостроящуюся столицу Астану. Кому интересно - велкам:-)

 

[Alica 0]

Ajdar, спасио за замечательный репортаж! Астана прямо-таки европейская столица

[ajdar 1]

Спасибо, Алиса! Астана пытается стать евразийской, а перед Европой они все еще зачем-то комплексуют:-)

[Bet 71]

Зачем Востоку становиться западным? ИМХО, он от этого теряет свою привлекательность и индивидуальность.

[ajdar 1]

КЗ - не восток и не запад в традиционных смыслах этого слова. Больше всего в нем было советского, но в последнее время там начинает проклевываться и нечто иное.

 

Приглашая посмотреть фоторепортаж, я думал, что большинство из вас вряд ли когда там побывает, поэтому увидеть, как живет бывшая неотъемлемая часть СССР кому-то может быть интересно.

[Rusin 0]

QUOTE (ajdar @ Mar 1 2004, 12:22) Не совсем о ропе (хотя, может быть, как раз о ней, вернее, о ее неисповедимых путях:-) :

 

Я подготовил фоторепортаж о своей поездке в Казахстан, в частности, в новостроящуюся столицу Астану. Кому интересно - велкам:-)

Получилось очень интересно. Спасибо за инвестированное в это время.

[allyouneed 1]

Я бы сказал: С любовью из Казахстана.
Но в данном случае - это не штамп на открытке, а очевидное чувство, с которым сей материал подготовлен. Айдар, спасибо.
Иногда я наблюдаю за собой такое, когда я становлюсь свидетелем чего-либо неординарного или же переживаю редкие эмоции и чувства.
Какая-то разновидность эксгибиционизма. Хочется показать то, что видел и чувствовал только ты. Чем ты был поражен и восхищен. О чем плакал и отчего мурашки бегали по спине. Передав это другим мы получаем возможность насладиться вновь тем ветерком, от пролетевшего вблизи кусочка счастья. Именно это, как мне кажется, я и увидел.

[ajdar 1]

Я очень рад быть вами правильно понятым. Спасибо за комментарии:-)

[GDV 9974]

Ну что тебе сказать, именинник - ты сделал своё чёрное дело. Захотелось в Казахстан.
.

 

Теперь вопрос. Вот твоя фотография. Так как автомойка по-казахски?..