Demand For Crude Oil Research Articles

Experimental Optimization of Catalytic Process In Situ for Heavy-Oil and Bitumen Upgrading

Summary The worldwide conventional crude-oil demand is on the rise, and because of the rising prices, unconventional oils are becoming more economically attractive to extract and refine. However, technological innovation is needed if heavier oil supplies are to be exploited further. Toe-to-heel air injection (THAI) and its catalytic add-on processes (CAPRI) combine in-situ combustion with catalytic upgrading using an annular catalyst packed around the horizontal producer well. These techniques offer potentially higher recovery levels and lower environmental impact than alternative technologies (e.g., steam-based techniques). An experimental study is reported concerning the optimization of catalyst type and operating conditions for use in the THAI-CAPRI process. The feed oil was supplied from the Whitesands THAI-pilot trial. Experiments were carried out using microreactors containing 10 g of catalyst, with oil flow of 1 mL/min and gas flow of 0.5 L/min, under different temperatures, pressures, and gas environments. Catalysts tested included alumina-supported CoMo, NiMo, and ZnO/CuO. It was found that there was a trade-off in operation temperature between upgrading performance and catalyst lifetime. At a pressure of 20 bar, operation at 500°C led to an average of 6.1°API upgrading of THAI oil to 18.9°API, but catalyst lifetime was limited to 1.5 hours. Operation at 420°C was found to be a suitable compromise, with upgrading by an average of 1.6°API, and sometimes up to 3°API, with catalyst lifetime extended to 77.5 hours. Coke deposition occurred within the first few hours of the reaction, such that the catalyst pore space became blocked. However, upgrading continued, suggesting that thermal reactions or reactions catalysed by hydrogen transfer from the coke itself play a part in the upgrading reaction mechanism. The CAPRI process was relatively insensitive to changes in reaction-gas medium, gas-flow rate, and pressure, suggesting that the dissolution of hydrogen or methane from the gas phase does not play a key role in the upgrading reactions. By careful control of the temperature and oil-flow rate in the in-situ CAPRI process, additional upgrading compared with the THAI process alone may be effected, resulting in a more-valuable produced oil, which is easier to transport.

Post Copenhagen Summit Scenario: Attainment of Sustainable Energy Regime in India by Jatropha Biodiesel

India has set a GDP growth target of 8–9% in order to transform itself from a developing into a developed world. This level of growth will most likely lead to an increased demand on crude oil imports. It is expected that India will need to increase its imports from 80% to around 90% by 2020 to meet its targeted growth objectives. High crude oil imports make Indian economy vulnerable to volatility in crude oil prices. Another key concern associated with increased crude oil demand is the increase in the green house gases (GHGs) emissions and its negative impact on the climate. At the Copenhagen Summit, participating nations have failed to reach a legally binding agreement. However, India has declared that even with its social and economic development it will not allow per capita GHGs emissions to be more than that of the developed countries (most probably Annex I non-economies in transition countries representing industrialized nations). Jatropha biodiesel is an alternative fuel that can be a potential source of energy for rural and remote areas in India. It can also be viable replacement for diesel, the largest consumed fossil fuel in India. India's National Biofuel Policy targets 20% blending of Jatropha based biodiesel with fossil-fuel based diesel by 2017. There are other significant benefits of Jatropha afforestation apart from the reduction of GHGs such as employment generation, waste land reclamation and additional earnings under clean development mechanism (CDM). Major constraints in meeting National Biofuel Policy targets are land availability without threatening food security and its cost competitiveness as compared to the fossil fuels. The objective of this study is to draw attention on the possible use of Jatropha biodiesel for attaining a sustainable energy regime in post Copenhagen Summit scenario.

The World Financial Crisis & its Reflections on Arab Gulf Countries: Future Vision

The new world financial crisis has taken place in a form of liquidity crisis in mortgage estate market, because of the lenders stopping to pay their loans as well as its interest rates. The causes led to bankruptcy of grand bank institutions. The Arab Gulf Countries will face great economic losses resulting from the current world financial crisis whether that are concerned with supported securities by real-estate, or that by funds contributions that are devoted to help people suffering from the crisis, or resulting from the decrease of economic growth due to reductions of crude oil demands, or oil prices deterioration, or decrease of dollar's exchange rate. According to what is mentioned above, we reveal that we are in a bad need to establish financial institutions governed by principles & morals, develop simple and justice investment tools, promoting the awareness of investors, and redirecting the Arab Gulf monetary investments towards actual investments opportunities in both Arab & Islamic sphere. There are intellectual results coming from this crisis. It supported the economic philosophy that leads to much role of state interference in the financial markets, bank system and economic activities in general. The lessons coming from this crisis will change too much of the thoughts & economic policies. No doubt, the role of USA will be changed in the contemporary world system.

Analysis of Iran's crude oil export future capacity

The paper analyzes Iran's oil export capacity and the factors affecting it. First, the local energy demand is reviewed and crude oil, with 5.7% annual growth rate, is introduced as a major source to respond to the increasing domestic energy demand. Then, the national plans for controlling the local demand and replacing oil with other types of energy carriers are reviewed to create a view over the future of local demand for crude oil in Iran. In the next step, crude oil production and exploration situation in Iran are investigated and the required increase in production to maintain the present level of export is calculated. By estimating the average capital expenditures for adding each barrel of new capacity to Iran's daily oil production, the necessary annual investment to compensate the production drop and domestic consumption growth for maintaining the export is introduced. Then, the future of oil export in Iran is predicted in three optimistic, reference, and pessimistic scenarios on the basis of the country's ability in managing the financial resources in upstream oil industry. Finally, domestic and foreign investment and the history of buyback contracts and their undeniable role in development of Iranian oil and gas projects are discussed.

Price and income elasticities of crude oil import demand in South Africa: A cointegration analysis

This paper examines the demand for imported crude oil in South Africa as a function of real income and the price of crude oil over the period 1980–2006. We carried out the Johansen co integration multivariate analysis to determine the long-run income and price elasticities. A unique long-run cointegration relationship exists between crude oil imports and the explanatory variables. The short-run dynamics are estimated by specifying a general error correction model. The estimated long-run price and income elasticities of −0.147 and 0.429 suggest that import demand for crude oil is price and income inelastic. There is also evidence of unidirectional long-run causality running from real GDP to crude oil imports.

Conversations: The Pond in Which We Live

President's column The balance between the global supply and demand for crude oil is becoming progressively tighter. Recent projections show that the gap between the oil supply and demand will grow dramatically, to perhaps as much as 20 million B/D by 2030, even with painful conservation measures in place. To keep up with the increasing demand, the petroleum industry is facing a variety of challenges, including development of an adequate supply of a skilled workforce, collaboration on the development and rapid deployment of leading-edge technologies needed to access unconventional resources, and communication to the public at large about our role as an industry and the noble causes that we pursue. As we face these global and complex challenges, we must increasingly incorporate the concept of sustainability in our operational framework. At first glance, the term sustainability may seem intimidating to some. However, our industry has been focusing on the concept or its components for a long time, but under different descriptive terms—optimizing production, maximizing reserves, reducing cost, cutting waste, increasing efficiency, optimizing processes, minimizing footprint, maximizing safety, reducing environmental impact, and increasing corporate social responsibility. We have spent considerable efforts—heavy investments of time and capital or human resources—in achieving these goals. Thus, for our industry, the gap between what we have been doing and what we need to do is much narrower than what it is perceived to be. The notion of “sustainability” was more clearly defined through the work of the United Nations’ Brundtland Commission, whose report on sustainable development “Our Common Future” was published in 1987.1 Sustainability was summarized as “Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Sustainability is an essential ingredient of our industry’s activities, a diverse concept of many elements that are embedded into the fabric of our daily operation. We practice it, and we create value by integrating sustainability into our strategies and business models. In pursuing better performance, we master sustainability. Yet, we may not have been too mindful of its true meaning in the past. It is only in recent years that the concept of sustainability has moved from the background into the limelight. Sustainability has become the cornerstone of our operation from the upstream to downstream. Many companies have developed measures and key performance indicators to satisfy their corporate social responsibility, and to ensure that they remain sustainable in many aspects of their operation. While these are important, taken individually, such undertakings are too fragmented; a more collective approach will need to become the subject of discussion in more global conferences and technical meetings, and topics for best-practices workshops. SPE can play a significant role by facilitating such opportunities.

Forecasting World Crude Oil Production Using Multicyclic Hubbert Model

The year 2008 has witnessed unprecedented fluctuations in the oil prices. During the first three-quarters, the oil price abruptly increased to $140/bbl, a level that has never been reached before; then because of the global economic crisis, the price dramatically plunged to less than $50/bbl by the end of the year losing more than 64% of the maximum price in less than three months period. The supply of crude oil to the international market oscillated to follow suite according to the law of supply and demand. This behavior affected oil production in all exporting countries. Nonetheless, the demand for crude oil in some developing countries, such as China and India, has increased in the past few years because of the rapid growth in the transportation sector in addition to the absence of viable economic alternatives for fossil fuel. The rapid growth in fuel demand has forced the policy makers worldwide to include uninterrupted crude oil supply as a vital priority in their economic and strategic planning.Even...

Current state and perspectives of producing biodiesel‐like compounds by biotechnology

SummaryThe global demand for crude oil is expected to continue to rise in future while simultaneously oil production is currently reaching its peak. Subsequently, rising oil prices and their negative impacts on economy, together with an increased environmental awareness of our society, directed the focus also on the biotechnological production of fuels. Although a wide variety of such fuels has been suggested, only the production of ethanol and biodiesel has reached a certain economic feasibility and volume, yet. This review focuses on the current state and perspectives of biotechnological production of biodiesel‐like compounds. At present by far most of the produced biodiesel is obtained by chemical transesterification reactions, which cannot meet the demands of a totally ‘green’ fuel production. Therefore, also several biotechnological biodiesel production processes are currently being developed. Biotechnological production can be achieved by purified enzymes in the soluble state, which requires cost‐intensive protein preparation. Alternatively, enzymes could be immobilized on an appropriate matrix, enabling a reuse of the enzyme, although the formation of by‐products may provide difficulties to maintain the enzyme activity. Processes in presence of organic solvents like t‐butanol have been developed, which enhance by‐product solubility and therefore prevent loss of enzyme activity. As another approach the application of whole‐cell catalysis for the production of fatty acid ethyl esters, which is also referred to as ‘microdiesel’, by recombinant microorganisms has recently been suggested.

Examining the Linkage between Energy Consumption and Economic Growth in India

The paper examines whether energy use drives economic growth or vice versa in the Indian context during 1970–71 to 2004–05. Utilizing Granger causality test, the study suggests that it is the economic growth that fuels more demand for both crude oil and electricity consumption and it is the only growth of coal consumption that drives economic growth. When influence of different components of energy on major two components of economic growth is investigated with the same causality test, none of the energy components found to be significantly influencing the two components of economic growth viz. private consumption and investment. In contrast, the variance decomposition analysis of Vector Autoregression (VAR) suggests that there could be a bidirectional influence between electricity consumption and economic growth, other results remaining unchanged. Therefore, the study yields mixed and contradictory result compared to the previous studies in the Indian context. However, on the basis of application of two econometric tools, the study with little more conviction suggests for reducing crude oil and natural gas consumption at least in the consumption sectors, which don’t directly contribute to production or add to capital formation of the economy, for achieving higher rate of growth in the economy.

油価高騰がもたらしたもの

The year 2008 was the historical and memorable year from the view of crude oil prices. Skyrocketing oil prices resulted from the following reasons. The first reason is the rapid economic growth in BRICs such as China and India. The second reason is rebirth of nationalism in major oil producing countries. The third reason is financial capitalism of crude oil future market. Now, the major players in NYMEX (New York Mercantile Exchange) are financial institutions, hedge funds and commodity index funds. The movement of crude oil prices depends on sentimental factors such as crude oil stock level and nuclear weapon development in Iran. On July 11 2008, crude oil prices reached recorded 147.27 dollars per barrel. And then, crude oil prices fell rapidly to 30 dollars per barrel after the bankrupt of the famous investment bank. I think neither 150 dollars per barrel nor 30 dollars per barrel are adequate prices which reflected the fundamental of world demand and supply of crude oil. The excessive fluctuation of crude oil prices gives the great damage to all consumers and companies. The future of world economy depends upon the success of green new deal policy of the United States.

Import demand of crude oil and economic growth: Evidence from India

This study establishes a long-run equilibrium relationship among quantity of crude oil import, income and price of the imported crude in India for the time span 1970–1971 to 2005–2006 using autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach of cointegration. Empirical results show that the long-term income elasticity of imported crude in India is 1.97 and there exists a unidirectional long-run causality running from economic growth to crude oil import. So reduction of crude oil import will not affect the future economic growth in India in the long-run. India should take various energy efficiency and demand side management measures in transport sector along with other measures like expanding and strengthening indigenous resource-base, substituting imported fuels by domestic fuels and de-controlling the price of petroleum products to reduce its import dependence.

Osama's Oil

Osama Bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, the organization widely held responsible for September 11,2001 attacks on World Trade Center, said in a 1998 interview that he believed that Oil Prices, then trading at around $11 a barrel should ideally trade at around $144 a barrel. Oil touched around $144 a barrel in June 2008. At this price, the world would be paying around $3 trillion more for oil than at more reasonable prices of around $25 a barrel. What this means is that many nations with dubious links to militant religious ideologies, could be earning $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion more than their requirements. Assuming that oil lasts for 40 years, this would mean that Oil Exporting Nations would have around $60 trillion that they could invest in Oil Importing countries that they would essentially got from these nations themselves. And that could mean almost entire loss of financial sovereignity, if not political sovereignity. The author had written a paper proposing formation of Organisation of Petroleum Importing Countries (OPIC) in 2002. This idea becomes much more imminent in these desperate times of Oil Crisis. OPIC would be positioned against OPEC - Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries. OPIC would attempt to reduce demand of crude oil to 15 billion barrels or almost half the present consumption. This would be achieved by public transportation, car pooling, motorcycle usage, video conferencing, reducing transportation demand and conservation of fuel. OPIC would also encourage and evangelize on Vegetarianism. Unless the world becomes vegetarian, substantially land for biofuels would not be available. OPIC would attempt to convert the world to vegetarianism so that 200 million hectares of land is available for Biofuels. OPIC would also explore other fuel alternatives such as Hydrogen and Solar.

Oil price dynamics (2002–2006)

Oil price dynamics during 2002–2006 have been characterized by high volatility, high intensity jumps, and strong upward drift, and were concomitant with underlying fundamentals of oil markets and world economy; namely, pressure on oil prices resulting from rigid crude oil supply and expanding world demand for crude oil. A change in the oil price process parameters would require a change in underlying fundamentals. Market expectations, extracted from call and put option prices, anticipated no change in underlying fundamentals in the short term. Markets expected oil prices to remain volatile and jumpy, and with higher probabilities, to rise, rather than fall, above the expected mean.

Biofuel market and carbon modeling to analyse French biofuel policy

In order to comply with European Union objectives, France has set up an ambitious biofuel plan. This plan is evaluated on the basis of two criteria: tax exemption on fossil fuels and greenhouse gases (GHG) emission savings. An economic marginal analysis and a life cycle assessment (LCA) are provided using a coupling procedure between a partial agro-industrial equilibrium model and an oil refining optimization model. Thus, we determine the minimum tax exemption needed to place on the market a targeted quantity of biofuel by deducting the biofuel long-run marginal revenue of refiners from the agro-industrial marginal cost of biofuel production. With a clear view of the refiner's economic choices, total pollutant emissions along the biofuel production chains are quantified and used to feed an LCA. The French biofuel plan is evaluated for 2008, 2010 and 2012 using prospective scenarios. Results suggest that biofuel competitiveness depends on crude oil prices and demand for petroleum products and consequently these parameters should be taken into account by authorities to modulate biofuel tax exemption. LCA results show that biofuel production and use, from “seed to wheel”, would facilitate the French Government's compliance with its “Plan Climat” objectives by reducing up to 5% GHG emissions in the French road transport sector by 2010.

Semi-nonparametric estimates of interfuel substitution in U.S. energy demand

This paper focuses on the demand for crude oil, natural gas, and coal in the United States in the context of two globally flexible functional forms – the Fourier and the Asymptotically Ideal Model (AIM) – estimated subject to full regularity, using methods suggested over 20 years ago by Gallant and Golub [Gallant, A. Ronald and Golub, Gene H. Imposing Curvature Restrictions on Flexible Functional Forms. Journal of Econometrics 26 (1984), 295–321] and recently used by Serletis and Shahmoradi [Serletis, A., Shahmoradi, A., 2005. Semi-nonparametric estimates of the demand for money in the United States. Macroeconomic Dynamics 9, 542–559] in the monetary demand systems literature. We provide a comparison in terms of a full set of elasticities and also a policy perspective, using (for the first time) parameter estimates that are consistent with global regularity.

Short-run and long-run elasticities of import demand for crude oil in Turkey

The aim of this study is to attempt to estimate the short-run and the long-run elasticities of demand for crude oil in Turkey by the recent autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach to cointegration. As a developing country, Turkey meets its growing demand for oil principally by foreign suppliers. Thus, the study focuses on modelling the demand for imported crude oil using annual data covering the period 1980–2005. The bounds test results reveal that a long-run cointegration relationship exists between the crude oil import and the explanatory variables: nominal price and income, but not in the model that includes real price in domestic currency. The long-run parameters are estimated through a long-run static solution of the estimated ARDL model, and then the short-run dynamics are estimated by the error correction model. The estimated models pass the diagnostic tests successfully. The findings reveal that the income and price elasticities of import demand for crude oil are inelastic both in the short run and in the long run.

Market Definition in Crude Oil: Estimating the Effects of the BP/ARCO Merger

On March 31, 1999 Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) agreed to be acquired by British Petroleum (BP) for $27 billion. The merger raised a number of antitrust concerns, including whether the merged company would raise the price of crude oil produced on the Alaskan North Slope (ANS). The combined output of the firms exceeded 70% of total production of ANS crude oil, suggesting that if ANS crude oil were a distinct market the merged firm would possess power over price. We estimate a model of demand for ANS crude oil based on a simple theoretic model of pricing arbitrage to identify the relevant market in which ANS crude oil trades. The dramatic decline in production of ANS crude oil during the 1990s, as the North Slope passed its peak production, provides an excellent natural experiment to assess the effects on prices of declining output. We find no evidence that ANS is a distinct market and argue it is highly unlikely the merged company could have raised the price of ANS.

Innovation Learning at BP

Recent concerns about energy resource sustainability and security of supply have raised awareness that oil and gas production faces significant challenges that can only be met through highly innovative technology. Crude oil and gas customers demand sustained low-cost supply. This drives the international oil companies (IOCs) continually to reinvent their businesses in order to sustain them in response to competitive pressures on access to resources, operating cost and capital efficiency. BP is one of the largest IOCs and has been in the vanguard of the industry's transformation from relatively simple geological structures on-shore, to continental shelf off-shore development, to arctic and deep water developments, involving highly complex geological systems and new, massively complex, computer controlled, mechanical structures and equipment. The technology underpinning this transformation includes innovation in drilling, seismic acquisition and interpretation, numerical simulation of reservoir performance, engineering materials for extreme temperatures and pressures, deep water robotic vehicles, and many others. Together, these advances have transformed the industry within the last 30 years, and the pace of change is accelerating. As with other industries, BP's oil and gas production business segment strives to sustain and improve its competitiveness through innovation, both to improve its existing operations and to create new opportunities. As part of this, the Engineering and Production Technology group (EPT) introduced an innovation process in 2000 that is ongoing into 2007. Given that industry innovation initiatives often fail to persist more that 2 or 3 years, it is instructive to inquire into what underpins the endurance of the EPT process and what has been learned from it. In this article, we summarize how we manage the innovation process and share what we have learned as a series of lessons. Establishing the In order to prosecute this agenda, an Innovation Board was formed and tasked with delivering innovative results in the areas of: 1) business transformation, 2) top-line revenue growth, 2) cost reductions, and 3) health, safety and environment. The started as a result of top management challenging the company for internal, organic growth. The technology group recognized they possessed many technologies which, if developed and utilized, could be valuable in all the areas listed above. The EPT vice president set up a fund to provide the methods, funding and-most critically-allocate time to develop those ideas into growth. The methods and funding to provide individuals the opportunity to innovate is called creating space. Innovators can now bill their time to the for approved projects so they can justify their time spent on innovation. The continues to report to EPT senior management and is allocated funding in order to support the internal costs and associated external expenditure. The seeks innovative ideas from any member of EPT and then provides support to develop the project to the point where it represents enough value for development by the formal RD these have proved to be a key factor in the durability of the process, namely: * Membership is by personal invitation of the EPT vice president (under appropriate advisement). This ensures that membership is recognized as a significant opportunity within overall career development. * Membership rotates, such that new members cycle onto the and retire as their career circumstances evolve. This leads to a continuous refreshing of membership, and hence, personal energy and ideas. * Membership is managed to ensure representation of the geographical spread of EPT, the mix of technical disciplines and mix of cultural background, gender and experience. …

System dynamics model of Hubbert Peak for China's oil

American geophysicist M. King Hubbert in 1956 first introduced a logistic equation to estimate the peak and lifetime production for oil of USA. Since then, a fierce debate ensued on the so-called Hubbert Peak, including also its methodology. This paper proposes to use the generic STELLA model to simulate Hubbert Peak, particularly for the Chinese oil production. This model is demonstrated as being robust. We used three scenarios to estimate the Chinese oil peak: according to scenario 1 of this model, the Hubbert Peak for China's crude oil production appears to be in 2019 with a value of 199.5 million tonnes, which is about 1.1 times the 2005 output. Before the peak comes, Chinese oil output will grow by about 1–2% annually, after the peak, however, the output will fall. By 2040, the annual production of Chinese crude oil would be equivalent to the level of 1990. During the coming 20 years, the crude oil demand of China will probably grow at the rate of 2–3% annually, and the gap between domestic supply and total demand may be more than half of this demand.

Q&A with Clarence P. Cazalot Jr., President and CEO, Marathon Oil Corp.

As Chairperson of the 2006 SPE Annual Technical Conference and Exhibition, can you give us some highlights of this year's event? One of the areas of focus that has become very important to the industry is unconventional hydrocarbons. That is becoming a dominant theme in the business today and is rejuvenating North America, whether it is Canadian oil sands, which have gone from being considered marginal just a couple of years ago to a very significant opportunity, or all the tight gas and fractured shales. Our company is moving more and more in that direction as well. Another important topic that certainly will generate a lot of discussion at the conference concerns the issues about people and the technical skills critically needed by this industry, both now and in the long term. There also will be a panel on reserves classification, which has been a high-profile issue as well. And, of course, the focus on technology—what new technologies are needed and the advances that are being made today. The conference's opening general session and panel sessions do focus on those critical issues: heavy oil's part in meeting future demand, reserves classification, and the role of young professionals. Do you think the challenges facing the industry now are greater than they have been in the past? I believe they are. Some may disagree with me and say that the industry has always faced challenges and that this is not an easy business. But I do believe that today's challenges are potentially game-changers in terms of how and where we conduct our business. For me, it begins with the high commodity prices we are seeing. High prices certainly spur increased activity and provide economic incentives that are creating both current and future problems. The current problems you can see in the competition for people resources and for new opportunities and assets. They are driving up the very cost of doing business—from wages and salaries to seismic costs to drilling costs to land costs. For the long term, the big question is, "To what extent and how will demand for crude oil, natural gas, and refined products all be impacted by these high prices that have risen so dramatically in such a short period of time?" High prices also have attracted a lot of new competitors into the business, not just publicly traded companies but private equity, and caused the emergence of national oil companies much more rapidly than we otherwise would have seen. In summary, I believe these challenges—access to resources, people, and rising costs—would have arisen anyway, but they have been exacerbated by the high-price environment. I think these are pretty fundamental challenges for the business that are bigger, and perhaps could have a greater impact, than the challenges that we have faced in the past.