Gulf of Mexico Oil Production to Likely Never Reach Pre-Katrina Levels.

[Speck Tater]

NEW YORK, Aug 29, 2008 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- CIBC (CM: TSX; NYSE) - With Tropical Storm Gustav bearing down on the Gulf of Mexico and most weather agencies calling for an active hurricane season, American motorists should brace for gasoline to spike to $5 per gallon as storms threaten to shut down oil production in the region, predicts a new report from CIBC World Markets.
The report notes that oil production in the rig-dotted Gulf, which has been seen as America's best hope for greater energy self-sufficiency, will be increasingly threatened by severe storms that continue to grow in frequency and strength in the region.

<snip>

While Mr. Rubin acknowledges that the supply disruptions, and attendant price hikes, will be temporary, he sees lasting impacts from hurricane damage on future supply growth. "Protracted multi-year delays to marquee projects like BP's Thunder Horse have meant that new production has grown at a fraction of earlier projections for the region and has lagged well behind rapid double-digit depletion rates that are characteristic of offshore fields.

"The net result has been a multi-year, and now likely irreversible, decline in oil production from the region. Already down some 300,000 barrels per day from its pre-Katrina peak, Gulf of Mexico production is likely to lose another 200,000 barrels over the next five years. Instead of ramping up production to over 2 million barrels per day as once dreamed by the Departments of the Interior and Energy, Gulf of Mexico production is likely to fall to a low of a million barrels per day by 2013 - almost a third lower than the region's production prior to the 2005 storm season."

more at THIS LINK

[DJ13]

1. Curtailing production to maintain high prices

....is as old as Jesus.

[tama]

4. Yup, it's "them"

There would be infinite supply of cheap oil without "them".

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. Self-Serving claptrap.

You believe clowns like Rubin at your peril. If there is money to be made, the oil field trash will go after it. In that, they are reliable.

[freespirit5]

3. We're at "peak" oil....... we will never reach previous production levels....

We need an emergency push into alternatives.

[lfairban]

8. It would be faster to address consumption.

I ran across this article and then found that it had been discussed in this thread.

A day later, I flew back to Denmark. After appointments here in Copenhagen, I was riding in a car back to my hotel at the 6 p.m. rush hour. And boy, you knew it was rush hour because 50 percent of the traffic in every intersection was bicycles. That is roughly the percentage of Danes who use two-wheelers to go to and from work or school every day here. If I lived in a city that had dedicated bike lanes everywhere, including one to the airport, I’d go to work that way, too. It means less traffic, less pollution and less obesity.

"No." It just forced them to innovate more - like the way Danes recycle waste heat from their coal-fired power plants and use it for home heating and hot water, or the way they incinerate their trash in central stations to provide home heating.

It looks like the Danes have been doing what we should have started 30 years ago.

[The Croquist]

10. Are you talking about the US or the world?

[Terry in Austin]

11. Peak production worldwide

Global oil production has been essentially flat since 2004 and in decline since 2006, according to EIA stats. Discovery peaked about forty years ago, new fields are smaller and smaller, and consumption outpaces new discoveries by about 5 to 1.

The world uses about 85 million barrels per day, or 31 billion barrels per year. Compare that figure with, say, the recent "Jack" discovery in the Gulf of Mexico -- an estimated 3 to 15 billion barrels ultimately recoverable there.

[sam sarrha]

5. that is why they want more than the already 3,500 platforms in the south gulf coast.. to rig

fuel prices every time it rains

this is a hot story.. "holds between 3 billion and 15 billion barrels of crude".they are already drilling the hell out of the gulf.. non-subject
http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/magazine/15-09/mf_jackrig
Siegele has reason to be giddy. He works for Chevron, and his team is sitting on several new record-breaking discoveries in the Gulf, a region that many geologists believe may have more untapped oil reserves than any other part of the world. On this trip, the 48-year-old vice president for deepwater exploration has come to a rig called the Cajun Express to oversee final preparations before drilling begins on the company's 30-square-mile Tahiti field. snip.
snip..

Even better, a recent discovery by Chevron has signaled that soon there may be vastly more oil gushing out of the ultradeep seabeds — more than even the optimists were predicting four years ago. In 2004, the company penetrated a 60 million-year-old geological stratum known as the "lower tertiary trend" containing a monster oil patch that holds between 3 billion and 15 billion barrels of crude. Dubbed Jack, the field lies beneath waters nearly twice as deep as those covering Tahiti, and many in the industry dismissed the discovery as too remote to exploit. But last September, Chevron used the Cajun Express to probe the Jack field, proving that petroleum could flow from the lower tertiary at hearty commercial rates — fast enough to bring billions of dollars of crude to market. It was hailed as the largest publicly reported discovery in the past decade, opening up a region that is perhaps big enough to boost national oil reserves by 50 percent. A mad rush followed, and oil companies plowed more than $5 billion into this part of the Gulf

http://www.rodnreel.com/gps/semisub.asp

[kristopher]

6. Bush announced that supply disruptions will trigger release from Strategic Petroleum Reserves. nt

[GliderGuider]

7. Good, so long as the refineries stay up.

If the refineries take hits as well, the shortfall in refined product will have to be made up from Europe. I would expect all operating refineries in the USA to go to maximum output, but the track projections are showing significant hits on Gulf Coast refineries at this point.

The USA apparently has only 60 hours of gasoline consumption over the "Minimum Operating Level" The MOL is the gasoline that is "trapped" in transit in pipelines, tankers, barges etc. and can't be accessed for immediate use. That 60 hour limit makes the continued operation of refineries critical in a situation like this. You need to be able to refine the crude released from the SPR.

[Strelnikov_]

9. Yep