By Barney Smith Like so many of the other big oil companies, including BP, Shell started the year in reasonable shape, with the share price at 2,290.50. As the various crises (not just the corona virus) hit the world of oil, Shell’s share price, like that of the other oil majors, followed the oil price [...]
By Barney Smith Many years ago, when the world was young, we managed Oilbarrel, a successful website and conference business. Oil and gas were flavour of the month and the world’s largest company by market cap was ExxonMobil. How times have changed. Now, according to the Economist and the Financial Times, Nextera, a renewables company based [...]
By Oliver Nelson-Dummett At the UN Climate Action Roundtable last month, Boris Johnson declared that he was a “complete evangelist” for the technology known as carbon capture and storage (CCS). The broad idea is to remove carbon dioxide emissions from large sources, such as power plants, and deposit it securely underground. CCS proponents claim that [...]
By Barney Smith The new Boss of BP, Bernard Looney, has announced a major change of direction for BP. The company will now deliver energy solutions for customers, rather than producing from its own resources, the traditional role of an oil and gas company. He has introduced some radical targets. They have major implications for [...]
By Barney Smith The last French local elections held a clear message: a large number of voters deserted their old allegiances and voted for the environmentalists. The "deserters" seem to have included former socialists and, to a lesser degree, former conservatives. This trend could also be seen to be the result of the local elections [...]
By Barney Smith Having commented recently on some climate change aspects of the Shell annual report (Greenbarrel May 5) it seemed on reflection only reasonable to do the same for BP’s annual report, which also came out last month. The BP annual report, entitled “Energy with Purpose” runs to over three hundred pages, and again [...]
When, on 2 November, the government announced a moratorium on fracking in England until proved safe, opponents felt their protests had been justified, while supporters either thought it was an election stunt or wondered why other countries did not have the same problem. Was it the ground underneath England or the people above it that [...]
This is a complex and intriguing book, which seemed to get better the more that I read. On one level, it blends a description of the main elements of fracking in the US with an account of the continuous and continuing physical problems suffered by Stacey Haney and her family and their neighbours , the [...]
Concerns about the viability of the US shale gas industry have surfaced regularly over the last few years. It is heavily indebted and loses money, critics say, and is going to come to a sticky end. But then it doesn’t, the critics are silenced and the industry continues as before. So when on 24 June [...]
In 2013 the US Energy Information Association estimated that China has the largest unproved but technically recoverable shale gas resources in the world, nearly double those of the USA. However, development has been slow and only really started with production from the Fuling gas field, southwest China, in 2014. In 2017 China’s total shale gas [...]