Net profit declined 20% to R$7.73 billion ($4.16 billion), down from R$9.72 billion in the second quarter of 2008. The company posted an EBITDA of R$17.51 billion compared to R$18.63 billion the year-ago period. However, oil and gas production in Brazil was up 6% year over year and 1% sequentially. This was due to new oil projects, including the Frade field, which is being developed with Chevron Corp. (CVX).

Total debt reached $35 billion, up 16% from the previous quarter, as Petrobras increased leverage to develop the massive offshore sub-salt fields. Debt is expected to rise further as the company plans to invest $174 billion in the underexplored Santos Basin, including the massive Tupi field, through 2013.

The fall in oil prices creates an extremely tough environment for the oil industry as a whole and for Petrobras in particular. Lower crude oil prices significantly reduced the company’s profitability and ability to fund expenses from its own resources in the near future. With drastic changes in the international economic environment, commodity producers like Petrobras were among the worst affected as their business is cyclical in nature.

Despite the current economic environment, we believe that the continuous increase in demand in Brazil coupled with the company’s new investments and acquisitions will fuel its earnings in the medium term.

This from Rude Awakening:

The IEA estimates that the oil industry will have to invest over $350 billion per year to counter the steep rates of decline in output. And even that will not be sufficient to maintain levels of output for traditional forms of crude oil. Thus, much of the future investment will have to go toward extracting other kinds of hydrocarbon substances. And these “other kinds” tend…

For an erudite debate over the Paulson doctrine, we turn to our friends at The Onion this morning:

The Money Hole.

It’s not any more complicated than that, is it?

Indeed, Paulson and company announced a TARP switcheroo yesterday. Now the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Recovery Program (TARP) is suffering a serious case of the STD “mission creep.”

Instead of purchasing troubled assets from banks, the Treasury, as of this morning,…

This from Today’s Financial News:

If you think the situation is bleak here in the United States, you would wet your pants if you took an in-depth look at Russia’s economy.

Its stock market seems to be closed more than it is open. Its currency is plunging. And its government is running out of options and money to fix the situation. Russia makes America look like we are sitting atop a booming economy.

Putin’s downturn could lead to some easy profit…

In one story, the Journal covers a recently released annual report from the International Energy Agency. According to the Journal, the IAE paints a gloomy picture of energy shortages and escalating costs of discovery and recovery.

The IAE says that current low oil prices are an anomaly linked to the economic crisis embracing the world. Eventually, when the economy regains its health, oil prices will continue to…

This from Today’s Financial News:

This cannot be good for the oil industry. There is a very left-leaning Democrat packing his bags and heading to Washington. The high-profit, we’ve-got-them-bent-over-a-table oil industry must be pinching itself hoping this is nothing more than a bad dream.

Unfortunately, it is real. Democrats now control the White House, the Senate, the House, the courts, our schools, and a large chunk of our nation’s banks. All that is left for us pro-business voters to do…

More from Penny Sleuth:

News that Shell is to halt development of its vast Canadian tar sands project is a sign of changing times in the oil industry – and one that will not be well received at the AIM-listed provider of data to the oil industry, GETECH (LON:GTC). This is a pity because…

The biggest change in the American economy over the last few decades has been the transition from making things to making loans. We Americans abandoned the manufacturing industries that once powered our economy and devoted ourselves to…

"The Kazakh government is ready to step in,'' Kazakhstan's Prime Minister Karim Masimov said this morning in a telephone interview with Bloomberg "The Kazakh banking system with the support of the government and central bank will fulfill all obligations to international investors.....We have our own specific plan to survive without any external support....I don't think we need support from the International Monetary Fund or overseas.''

Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world by size, it is also the world's largest landlocked country, with a territory of some 2,727,300 km² (which is greater than the whole of Western Europe). It is bordered by Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and China. On the other hand, and despite its enormous size, Kazakhstan has a comparatively small population. No one actually has an exact idea of the actual size of the Kazakhstan population (not to mention the thorny issue of just how many foreign migrants live and work there), but the US Census Bureau International Database list the current population of Kazakhstan as 16.763 million, while sources drawing their data from the United Nations (like the IMF which I have relied on for the chart below) give a 2008 estimate of 15.135 million. In any event the current population level, after falling in the early 1990s as ethnic Russians left, has now stabilised, and is virtually stationary. This virtually stagnant population constitutes, as we will see, a significant problem for a country with such a massive resource base, and such enormous economic and development potential as Kazakhstan would seem to have.

Record Oil Revenue Boom

Kazakhstan is the biggest energy producer in Central Asia and the country's $100 billion economy has in fact grown at an average of 10 percent a year rate since 2000 (see chart below), in particular as the price of oil has surged. This rapid GDP growth produced a rapid increase in per capita income as well as national creditworthiness, and these in turn sparked in their wake a substantial construction boom. Indeed it has precisely been the bursting of this boom in the autumn of 2007 - on the back of the seize-up in global wholesale money markets which followed August's financial turmoil in the USA - which lies at the heart of Kazakhstan's current growth slowdown. Kazakhstan's economy expanded at a 'mere' 5.3 percent rate in the first quarter of 2008, half the pace achieved in the same period a year earlier, following a dramatic curtailment in bank lending, and if Kazakhstan is still able, despite all the problems we will see below, to maintain some sort of growth momentum at this point it is undoubtedly the result of the oil and other commodity resources which the country has at its disposal, and indeed as part of its initial response to the present crisis the country increased crude production by an annual 6.3 percent in the first four months of the year, according to official government data.




Now one of the most curious details about the present slowdown in Kazakhstan, has been the fact that at the very same time as the economy started to lose velocity the central bank found itself busy struggling to curb an inflation rate which was steadily shooting onwards and upwards towards the outer stratosphere, as revenue from record oil prices pushed up domestic demand, and the resulting construction and consumption boom drove up wages far beyond normal "productivity-gain" rates of increase (remember, there are not THAT many people in the country, and much of the population is rural and unskilled in relation to the needs of a modern technological and services economy). In fact inflation hit year-on-year rates of increase approaching 20% in the autumn of last year (see chart below), although it had dropped by to an annual 18.2% by September.




So, as well as containing the property bust, the Kazakh authorities have also had to conduct an inflation fight (more details below). So far from lowering rates like the US Federal Reserve has been able to do, Karakhstan's central bank was forced to raise the key interest rate to 11 percent in December 2007, at a time when annual inflation was riding at almost 19 percent, the highest for the country in over eight years. The refinancing rate was then maintained at the 11% level until it was finally lowered to 10.5% at the last central bank meeting in July.



Not Just Energy - Vast Resource Potential

The fact that Kazakhstan's industrial output growth has lost a lot of momentum in 2008 as the slowdown in the building industry provoked a slump in cement and other materials production should not take our minds too far away from the fact that the underlying potential in Kazakhstan is enormous. In fact while industrial output growth was reduced to an annual 3.8 percent growth rate in the January-June period, it was at least still growing.

The low point seems to have been hit back in January, when cement production which, not surprisingly, was among the hardest hit sectors, was down 26 percent year on year, the sharpest January fall in five years, as growth in the construction industry stalled, brought to a halt by the fact that the Kazakh banks, who had been struggling to borrow from abroad following the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market, virtually stopped lending to homebuyers and builders.

Copper and rolled-iron output also declined an annual 13 percent in January while output from oil refineries and manufacturing industry decreased an annual 2.9 percent as the problems rolled in. Thus there is evidence of a very sharp shock initially hitting the local economy. On the other hand, since the country is resource rich and the given that first half of 2008 saw a very significant global commodities boom, there were other economic sectors to fall back on, and mining production was up 6 percent from a year earlier in the first quarter, bolstered by an increase in natural gas and coal output, which climbed 15 percent and 11 percent respectively. At the same time crude oil production went up by an annual 5.4 percent.

Apart from oil and gas Kazakhstan has a huge array of potential resource reserves just waiting to be tapped. Among these there is copper. London-listed Kazakhmys accounts for the bulk of Kazakh copper output - and this was down 17.5 percent year-on-year in January-April. Industrial output in Karaganda region, home to Kazakhmys and Arcelor Mittal mines and smelters, declined 5.5 percent year-on-year in January-April.

Kazakhmys reported that their first-quarter output fell 9.9 percent on "severe winter weather'' and repairs at its Balkhash smelter. Production of finished copper plates, or cathodes, from the company's ore fell to 75,500 metric tons, from 83,800 tons a year earlier. These drops in output are, of course not entirely associated with the credit crunch, but they do give an idea of the challenging and volatile environment in which the mining and extraction industries work in Kazakhstan. Realistically speaking it seems quite likely that output in these sectors will return to more normal levels during the second-half of 2008, having alreadt rebounding significantly from the low point reached in the first-quarter.

On the other hand industrial output in capital Astana and commercial hub Almaty, where most construction activities are based, was down 13.2 percent and 8.6 percent, respectively, in January-April, and this activity may well take much longer to recover.

Kazakhstan has also had to cut its 2008 oil production forecast to 67.6 million tonnes (1.35 million barrels per day) from a previous estimate of 70 million tonnes citing maintenance works and transport bottlenecks. The country is able to produce a lot of oil, but it does have a large problem getting that oil to the places where people want it. Three major pipeline routes - the Atyrau-Samara and Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) links to Russia, and the Atasu-Alashankou pipeline to China - carry Kazakh crude off towards its end destinations, but none of these are proving sufficient to the demands on them.

"It is impossible to transport crude out of Kazakhstan without some difficulties," Senior Associate Klara Nurgaziyeva from law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf told an oil and gas conference last week in the Kazakh financial capital Almaty.

In a smoke-filled bar in the Kazakh financial capital Almaty, the laughter of Scottish ex-pats is loud and boisterous. More than three thousand miles (5,491 km) separate the Scottish Highlands and the Central Asian steppe, but a mutual interest in oil and gas has created a surprising alliance. Residents estimate that around 400 Scots live in ex-Soviet Kazakhstan, a resource-rich country roughly the size of western Europe.

Most come from Aberdeen, Britain's northeastern oil hub, and they bring with them their technical expertise."We're going to try attract Kazakhs to Aberdeen over the next few years and look at initiatives, and create further investment in Scotland from Kazakhstan," Lord Provost Peter Stephen of the Aberdeen City Council told an energy conference last week in Almaty. He said over 100 companies from in and around Aberdeen are active in Kazakhstan, and the Scottish oil town even has a Kazakh consulate to serve the hundreds of Kazakhs who go to Scotland to train up for the oil business. The Kazakh-British technical university, set up by a group of Scottish universities seven years ago, occupies a grandiose columned building in the centre of leafy Almaty, which housed parliament before the capital was moved to Astana.

Prices for residential property soared 30.2 percent in 2007, reaching a record average mid-year high of 161,300 tenge ($1,338) per square meter, up from 123,900 tenge in 2006, according to the Astana-based state statistics agency. In the financial capital, Almaty, the average price was 345,200 tenge.

The drop in prices from these peaks and the sudden drying up of credit has caused numerous problems for would.be buyers, and Bank TuranAlem, Kazakhstan's second-biggest bank by assets, received $81.2 million last December from the state emergency investment program simply to finance the completion of unfinished construction projects.

The most recent government bailout of the construction sector was announced during the summer - just two weeks before the celebrations of Nazarbayev's 68th birthday and the 10th anniversary of the founding of the new capital Astana on July 6 - following the announcement by a group representing people who had purchased apartments in the unfinished buildings that they were planning a protest march to be held in Astana bang in the middle of the official festivities.

The Industry and Trade Ministry have said that there were 939 residential buildings, with 45,130 apartments pre-paid by homebuyers, under construction as of last January. Minister Edil Mamytbekov said in July that the cases of 4,558 homebuyers in 18 buildings "remain problematic'' because of conduct for which the builders in question had been "charged with crimes.'' The Kazakh Prosecutor General's Office said 123 construction companies that received 104 billion tenge ($865 million) in pre-payments from homebuyers were behind schedule or haven't even begun work on new apartment buildings.

Assets of "careless construction companies,'' including buildings and vehicles, have been seized to compensate lost investments of homebuyers and the government, according to the Prosecutor General's Office. Criminal investigations have been opened into eight companies. A total of 285 companies are building 407 residential projects in Kazakhstan and have received 231 billion tenge in pre-payments from more than 50,000 individuals and companies, prosecutors said. Of 200 ``problem'' projects delayed by at least six months, 110 are located in the capital Astana and 42 in Almaty.

The July rumpus was provoked by the fact that at the start of the summer the Kazakh government had spent only 51 billion tenge to complete stalled residential projects, a fraction of the bailouts promised by Prime Minister Karim Masimov in the autumn of 2007, according to data made public by the Ministry of Industry and Trade on June 23. The government had said on Nov. 14 2007 that it would spend $1 billion by the end of 2007 and another $3 billion in 2008 to "provide economic stability and growth'' by supporting the real estate market and small and medium-sized businesses. Following publication of this data, and some international press coverage, Masimov said that his original emergency investment program was in the process of being expanded, and his government announced plans to spend 17.2 billion tenge to complete residential projects in Astana.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev instructed the state to step in and finish projects, ``which have no source of financing,'' to ``help to reduce social tension,'' according to Edil Mamytbekov, a deputy minister of industry and trade, on June 20. President Nursultan Nazarbayev also said it was necessary to take ``tough measures against careless builders". As a result the Almaty mayors office announced on July 26 that another 46.4 billion tenge had been allocated to support residential projects in Almaty. The state had already invested 22.4 billion tenge and was going to spend the remaining 24 billion tenge by year's end, according to the announcement.

In April, however, the government had announced that the state development holding Kazyna would distribute 59 billion tenge to commercial banks during 2007 to finish 131 buildings in Almaty. Sergei Kuyanov, spokesman for Almaty Mayor Akhmetzhan Yesimov, declined to comment on the discrepancy between the numbers when question by journalists in July.

Whatever the complications of the present situation and the ins-and-outs of putting the construction and banking problems straight, we should not lose sight of the fact that Kazakhstan has, large financial resources which will surely help it weather the current situation. Official foreign currency assets totaled $46 billion in early June, comprising NBK reserves of $21 billion and oil fund (NFRK) assets of $25 billion. Commercial banks also have foreign assets of which about $3.5 billion are thought to be liquid. Total foreign assets broadly match foreign liabilities when the intracompany debt of the oil sector is excluded, while liquid foreign currency assets comfortably cover potential short-term foreign currency drains.


Favourable Demographics But Migrants Needed, And With Them Modern Citizenship Rights


The chart you will find below is known as a “heat chart”. It depicts the ongoing changes in Kazakhstan's age structure. Each dot represents the number of people in any given age group at any given point in time. A dark red dot represents the largest concentration of people, by age, in a particular year while deep blue dots show the lowest concentrations. A single dark red dot is the equivalent of almost 406,000 people while each deep blue dot represents nearly 23,000 people.


In the upper left-hand corner of the chart the bright reds and yellow areas depicts the population boom that started in the mid 1970s and lasted until the late 1990s. The remnants of that boom extend downward from left to right across the chart. The band also narrows as this population segment ages. This is simply a reflection of the reduction in the total numbers in the population bulge cohorts as out-migration has taken its toll.

Many ethnic Germans and Russians, for example, left Kazakhstan during the years following the end of the Cold War. In the lower left-hand side of the chart there is a preponderance of dark blue dots, indicating a relatively small number of people over the age of 60 years. Over time these dark blue dots are replaced by light blues and greens, a pattern reflecting a gradual but steady increase in the number of elderly people.

The strong budget position in Kazakhstan has provided scope for the government to use fiscal policy to support the economy as growth has slowed. We believe that the increase in spending in the recent supplementary budget is appropriate, and that the automatic fiscal stabilizers should be allowed to work, with any revenue shortfalls due to a weakening economy being accommodated in the near future rather than offset with expenditure cuts to meet budget targets. Going forward, the government's recently announced three-year budget plan maps out a transparent path for fiscal policy over the medium-term. We believe, however, that it is important that the government not commit to further large increases in public sector wages and pensions in future years given uncertainties about budget revenues—particularly from the oil sector—and the stage of the macroeconomic cycle in two or three years time.

Kazakhstan has large financial resources to help it weather the current situation, and medium-term economic prospects remain favorable. Official foreign currency assets, comprising central bank (NBK) reserves and oil fund (NFRK) assets, reached $48 billion at end-September, well above the mid-2007 level. The current account balance has strengthened significantly this year, and oil production is set to increase substantially in the years ahead.

As at the time of the Article IV consultation discussions in April, we believe that in the short-term policies should remain focused on managing risks to the outlook and setting the stage for the resumption of strong and sustained growth. Since our last visit, the authorities have continued to skillfully handle the difficulties the economy has faced, and we welcome the policy steps that are being taken in the monetary, fiscal, and supervisory areas to strengthen the resilience of the Kazakhstani economy. Nevertheless, considerable challenges remain, and these have been heightened by the renewed bout of global financial market volatility.

There are great wealth-creating opportunities in today’s miserable markets, says Andrew Snyder. Take oil, for example. The black goo is on a slippery slope towards $50 a barrel, and no OPEC production cuts are going to stop this in the short term. Andrew says the UltraShort Oil and Gas ProShares ETF (AMEX:DUG) is the best way to profit from the oil industry’s downturn.

More from Today’s Financial News:

Our good friends at OPEC are up to their same old tricks. Oil prices are dropping so the cartel is meeting later this week to discuss a cut to pumping quotas. It is a last-ditch effort to try to keep crude prices from plummeting all the way to $40.

The cartel is expected to reduce production…

This from The Daily Reckoning’s Desidooru Saloon blog:

Remember when speculators were getting blamed for high oil prices?  Remember how I thought it was bogus?  Now oil is down more than 50% from its summer highs.  And this time, I think it’s safe to say speculators have a hand in it.

It looks as if the…

But Smart Commodities UK editor Garry White says a number of nuclear power projects are already underway in other parts of the world. India plans to build between 18 to 20 new nuclear plants over the next 15 years. Even the Middle East is shifting to the atom for its future energy needs.

Nuclear plants are also proven to be effective at water desalination. This will be vital in emerging markets, where populations are rising rapidly.

This is from Fleet Street Daily:

He [Bodman] made the comments on the same day as the US senate signed off the nuclear co-operation deal with India. It was also a few days after Russia agreed to help Hugo Chavez with a nuclear programme. But if you want to feel assured about the prospect for nuclear power, just have a look at what is going on in the Middle East. A place awash with petrodollars.

There are two main reasons for the rush to nuclear power in Iran and Saudi Arabia. And neither of them is the pursuit of nuclear weapons.

The first of these is the fact that they don’t have as much oil as everybody thinks. The second is water.

Let’s take a look at Iran’s reserve situation.

The simple fact is that Iran HAS to develop nuclear power because the country is running out of oil. Iran’s “massive” oil reserves are a big, fat lie.

One of the people who made that reality crystal clear to Iran's leaders a few years ago was Dr Ali Morteza Samsam Bakhtiari.

Dr Bakhtiari started working for the National Iranian Oil Company back when the Shah was in power. For 36 years he worked for the company in a variety of senior positions until he retired.

This is what he told President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

"As for Iran, the usually accepted official 132 billion barrels is almost 100 billion barrels over any realistic assay."

The current estimate of Iran's reserves is 136 billion barrels. That's the second highest oil reserves in the Middle East after Saudi Arabia. Dr Bakhtiari thinks this should be closer to 36 billion barrels.

I believe that Ahmadinejad needs to go nuclear because his country's oil industry is struggling to keep its oil production at close to 4 million barrels per day. And it’s only going to get worse.

That’s why Iran needs nuclear – and that’s why Ahmadinejad will never give up his nuclear programme.

The second reason is water.

The population in the Middle East is set to soar in the next 15 years. In Saudi Arabia, almost 40% of the population is under the age of 14. It has a fertility rate of 5 children per woman. The country is set for a massive population explosion at a time when its infrastructure is creaking.

The Kingdom is already the world's largest producer of desalinated water. It currently has 27 desalination plants which provide 70% of its drinking water requirement. But it will need more. Much more.

That’s where nuclear power comes in.

Desalination is an extremely energy-intensive process, but nuclear plants can be used for the duel purpose of producing electricity and desalinating water.

Nuclear desalination is a proven technology. Kazakhstan produced water by nuclear desalination for almost 30 years until its reactor was decommissioned in 1999.

The country’s BN-350 fast reactor at Aktau successfully produced up to 135 MW of electricity and 80,000 m3/day of potable water over 27 years. Around 60% of its power was used for desalination.

Then there’s Japan...

It has ten desalination facilities linked to pressurised water reactors operating for electricity production. They have yielded 1000-3000 m3/day each of potable water.

India has also got in on the act. In 2002 it set up a demonstration plant coupled to twin 170 MWe nuclear power reactors at its Madras Atomic Power Station.

So, Mr Bodman needs to be a little less US-centric when talking about the future of nuclear power. The world’s going nuclear whether the US does or not. There’s plenty of money in the Middle East, in Venezuela, in India and in China.

Source: Iran Needs Nuclear because it’s Running Out of Oil

This from Today's Financial News:

Oil stocks like Exxon (NYSE:XOM) and Chevron (NYSE:CVX) have been all over the place lately. Is the commodity boom finally over?

If you are an energy-industry investor, it is a good bet that you have quite a headache. With a free market getting artificial influence from nearly every direction, it is no wonder oil prices have been all over the place.

So what does this whipsaw action mean for investors? Well, for fast-acting investors it could lead to big profits. Pay attention to the news and invest accordingly.

Unfortunately, the big gains that were once possible from sudden crude price movements are much harder to find. Shares in big-name companies like Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) and Chevron (NYSE:CVX) tend to move in much slower, more calculated fashion these days.

Your best bet is to do your homework and search out the smaller companies that are impacted by oil-industry news. Or even better, stray away from the oil industry and concentrate on the countless other companies trading at unbelievably low prices thanks to the recent market shakedown.

There are all sorts of fantastic buying opportunities out there that will not give you headaches from their wild, unpredictable gyrations. The oil and energy sectors are just one area to find big profits. Do not forget about the rest of the market.

Source: Crude prices slip: Commodity investors turn and run

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The OCS is estimated to contain substantial resources of crude oil and natural gas; however, some areas of the OCS are subject to drilling restrictions. With energy prices rising over the past several years, there has been increased interest in the development of more domestic oil and natural gas supply, including OCS resources. In the past, Federal efforts to encourage exploration and development activities in the deep waters of the OCS have been limited primarily to regulations that would reduce royalty payments by lease holders. More recently, the States of Alaska and Virginia have asked the Federal Government to consider leasing in areas off their coastlines that are off limits as a result of actions by the President or Congress. In response, the Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the U.S. Department of the Interior has included in its proposed 5-year leasing plan for 2007-2012 sales of one lease in the Mid-Atlantic area off the coastline of Virginia and two leases in the North Aleutian Basin area of Alaska. Development in both areas still would require lifting of the current ban on drilling.

For AEO2007, an OCS access case was prepared to examine the potential impacts of the lifting of Federal restrictions on access to the OCS in the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Currently, except for a relatively small tract in the eastern Gulf, resources in those areas are legally off limits to exploration and development. Mean estimates from the MMS indicate that technically recoverable resources currently off limits in the lower 48 OCS total 18 billion barrels of crude oil and 77 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (Table 10).

Although existing moratoria on leasing in the OCS will expire in 2012, the AEO2007 reference case assumes that they will be reinstated, as they have in the past. Current restrictions are therefore assumed to prevail for the remainder of the projection period, with no exploration or development allowed in areas currently unavailable to leasing. The OCS access case assumes that the current moratoria will not be reinstated, and that exploration and development of resources in those areas will begin in 2012.

Assumptions about exploration, development, and production of economical fields (drilling schedules, costs, platform selection, reserves-to-production ratios, etc.) in the OCS access case are based on data for fields in the western Gulf of Mexico that are of similar water depth and size. Exploration and development on the OCS in the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the eastern Gulf are assumed to proceed at rates similar to those seen in the early development of the Gulf region. In addition, it is assumed that local infrastructure issues and other potential non-Federal impediments will be resolved after Federal access restrictions have been lifted. With these assumptions, technically recoverable undiscovered resources in the lower 48 OCS increase to 59 billion barrels of oil and 288 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, as compared with the reference case levels of 41 billion barrels and 210 trillion cubic feet.

The projections in the OCS access case indicate that access to the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf regions would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030. Leasing would begin no sooner than 2012, and production would not be expected to start before 2017. Total domestic production of crude oil from 2012 through 2030 in the OCS access case is projected to be 1.6 percent higher than in the reference case, and 3 percent higher in 2030 alone, at 5.6 million barrels per day. For the lower 48 OCS, annual crude oil production in 2030 is projected to be 7 percent higher -- 2.4 million barrels per day in the OCS access case compared with 2.2 million barrels per day in the reference case (Figure 20). Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.

Similarly, lower 48 natural gas production is not projected to increase substantially by 2030 as a result of increased access to the OCS. Cumulatively, lower 48 natural gas production from 2012 through 2030 is projected to be 1.8 percent higher in the OCS access case than in the reference case. Production levels in the OCS access case are projected at 19.0 trillion cubic feet in 2030, a 3-percent increase over the reference case projection of 18.4 trillion cubic feet. However, natural gas production from the lower 48 offshore in 2030 is projected to be 18 percent (590 billion cubic feet) higher in the OCS access case (Figure 21). In 2030, the OCS access case projects a decrease of $0.13 in the average wellhead price of natural gas (2005 dollars per thousand cubic feet), a decrease of 250 billion cubic feet in imports of liquefied natural gas, and an increase of 360 billion cubic feet in natural gas consumption relative to the reference case projections. In addition, despite the increase in production from previously restricted areas after 2012, total natural gas production from the lower 48 OCS is projected generally to decline after 2020.

Although a significant volume of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and natural gas resources is added in the OCS access case, conversion of those resources to production would require both time and money. In addition, the average field size in the Pacific and Atlantic regions tends to be smaller than the average in the Gulf of Mexico, implying that a significant portion of the additional resource would not be economically attractive to develop at the reference case prices. [Emphasis added -- mdc]

Here is Figure 20 from the report, showing the impact on lower-48 production in the baseline and the alternative.

What exactly is "insignificant"? One can get an idea by doing a back of an envelope calculation. The 3% increase by 2030 cited by the 2007 Annual Energy Outlook analysis works out to 0.163 millon barrels per day (mbpd) incremental production. Projected world output of conventional oil in 2030 is 99.30 mbpd. This means access to the OCS would result in a 0.164% increase in output.

Let's appeal to a supply-demand framework, assuming log-linearity:

Where q is log quantity, p is log price, X and Z are other shift variables, assumed to be exogenously determined. a_i and b_i are parameters, a₂ > 0 and b₂ < 0. Z could be income, for instance.

Solving the simultaneous system of equations for the equilibrium price leads to:

Taking the total differential and holding constant the shift variables X and Z leads to the following expression:

Substituting in some parameter values, taking Δa₁ as the percentage increase in supply, namely 0.164% (0.00164), and setting the price elasticity of demand equal to -0.4, and and price elasticity of supply to 0.3 (Perloff and Whaples has cited these figures; plausible alternative parameter values would not alter the results in a qualitative fashion) yields the following: The resulting change from baseline in 2030 is -0.00234 (-0.23%). Taking the AEO 2008 baseline estimate of 70.45 2006$/barrel in 2030, the implied reduction in price is 0.165 2006$.

Now let's conduct some sensitivity analyses/robustness checks.

Intertemporal Considerations

There have been some assertions that driving down prices in the future will have an impact today. Since petroleum is durable, there is no doubt that this must be true; the question, as always, revolves around the quantitative magnitudes. Take the 2030 impact on today; one can calculate the present value of the innovation: (1+r)²². Take r = .027 (which is the average ten year constant maturity yield minus the lagged one year inflation rate over the 1976-2008 period), one finds that the 0.165 2006$ decline in 2030 results in a 0.106 2006$ decrease today.

Alternative Estimates of Reserves

As pointed out in several venues [1], there is some debate over the amount of technically recoverable oil in the OCS that currently not accessible; the CS Monitor editorial argues that there's been a big revision in estimation technologies. That may be, but here is a quote from the February 2006 report to Congress from the MMS of the Department of Interior (page xii):

Many proponents of domestic energy security consider gaining increased access to Federal resources to be one of the biggest challenges. Part or all of nine OCS planning areas, which include waters off 20 coastal states, have been subject to longstanding leasing moratoria enacted annually as part of the Interior and related agencies appropriations legislation, or are withdrawn from leasing until after June 30, 2012, as the result of presidential withdrawal (under section 12 of the OCSLA). Some of these areas contain large amounts of technically recoverable oil and natural gas resources. The MMS estimates that conventional oil and gas resources (i.e., UTRR) in OCS areas currently off limits to leasing and development total 19.1 Bbo and 83.9 Tcfg (mean estimates). There remains today, considerable uncertainty concerning the resource potential of many of these OCS areas. The availability of additional modern G&G data could reduce this uncertainty. It is instructive to note that perceptions concerning the resource potential of the Central, Western and portions of the Eastern GOM, areas experiencing robust levels of exploration and production effort, have continued to evolve for the better over the years. Critical to the changing perception is the fact that the MMS has acquired approximately 1.75 million line-miles of two-dimensional (2-D) common depth point (CDP) seismic data and nearly 300,000 square miles of 3-D seismic data. However, the additional G&G data and information that become available to assessors between assessments is frequently mixed in terms of having a positive or negative effect on the perception of the overall hydrocarbon potential of the OCS.

This implies that the EIA's base assumptions do not appear unreasonable, on the face of it.

Alternative Elasticities

The calculations rely upon long run elasticities, and a constant elasticity along the curves (Note: linear demand and supply curves do not exhibit constant elasticities.) If the supply curve in log-price/log-quantity space was still backward L-shaped, and the supply enhancement occurred with demand intersecting along the near-vertical portion, then the price change would be larger.

What about short run effects (in 2030 say)? When new suppy comes on line, the resulting deviation in price from baseline will be commensurately larger in the short run. But by definition, over the longer horizon, prices will gravitate toward those indicated by the long run analysis.

Alternative timing

The calculations I presented focus on 2030. One could examine the effcts earlier. But as shown in Figure 20 (reproduced above), production does not even begin until 2017 assuming leasing begins in 2012 (less than four years from now!). Even assuming the 2030 effect is achieved in 2020, that would mean the resulting change in today's prices would only be 0.12 2006$ per barrel.

Strategic Interactions

Reader Anon (in commments to this post) argues against my critique of offshore drilling arguments using a game-theoretic framework:

You are wrong. Opening up more acreage to exploration will affect psychology and markets. let me explain.

A credible threat of increased supply - even ten years away - certainly does have immediate impact to the ruminations of energy policy makers from Russia to Saudi to Mexico.

If you have a large control over marginal supply (Mideast/Russia/Mexico could all do a lot more if they choose to) and you see the glimmer of another North Sea or another ANS then you rightly might adjust your policies. Strategically speaking, if you dominate global oil supply then at some price point you rightly begin to fear Competitive Entrants.

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In the case of Oil (by no means a free market), governments control access to resources (sell it like real estate and demand whatever they like or in many cases simply make everything off limits to private capital). However, if you push oil importing nation governments too far with overly high prices then you just might trigger competition.

I hope this makes it clear that the main reason we pay such high oil prices today is the government RESTRICTED ACCESS to reserves (a global phenomenon) that has tended to dominate the oil industry landscape for so long. The secure knowledge that the US Government is EXTREMELY UNLIKELY to open up new reserves for exploitation is enough to keep exporting nations confident that they can safely continue to extract higher rent for their commodity.

So just the credible threat of a surge in new competition (a la Bush statement) may be enough to open the taps a bit more or cause a flurry of counter-competitive increased supply activity to quickly try to KILL the new threat or frighten off competitive capital investment in new supply..

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Think Strategically. BTW - I condemn Bush for many things and I sympathize with your attitude towards this administration, however, for once, Bush is actually right this time!

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Anon admonishes me to read Barry Nalebuff's book Thinking Strategically (actually it's Dixit and Nalebuff); I confess I have not yet done so. But having endured some amount of game theory over the years, I'm going to wade ahead nonetheless.

First, consider this exchange from April 2004, where Nalebuff suggests investing $5 billion to enable Iraq's oil industry to export a million extra barrels of oil a day, thereby negating OPEC's monopoly power. One interesting aspect of Nalebuff's argument is that he doesn't propose something like exploiting US offshore reserves. I think the reason is quite simple, and is rooted in game theory -- Iraq in principle can be a low cost producer (after security is established). Supply from offshore sources in the US would be (and is known to be) a relatively high cost (per unit production) venture relative to, say, Saudi oil production. Hence, it's not clear increasing US production can have the strategic effect often suggested. (Example, see: [2])

I do agree with Anon that a lot of world production is undertaken by state owned enterprises, which lack proper incentives for responding to price signals. But I'm unconvinced that foreign state owned enterprises would be privatized simply because the US removed its moratorium on OCS exploitation.

So, opening up production in the currently inaccessible areas of the OCS might have substantial effects (perhaps on trade balance, or oil company profitability, Federal leasing revenue), but in my view is unlikely to have a substantial impact on oil prices (just as in the case of opening up ANWR).

As an aside, John McCain is still supporting a gasoline tax holiday [3], so on this count, I remain puzzled.

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