The cross-party committee, set up earlier this year to scrutinise the work of the new Department of Energy & Climate Change, has been hearing evidence on the country’s energy sector over recent months.

“The oil and gas industry operating on the UK continental shelf currently faces a quadruple whammy of high costs, low prices, lack of affordable credit and a global recession,” said the report by the Energy & Climate Change Select Committee published today. Up to 50,000 jobs could be at risk in the UK oil & gas sector next year if ministers do not set out a more “articulate” strategy on how to maintain production levels,

Read more: UK Parliament or Upstream Online

Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s chief executive, Jeroen Van Der Veer warned that the next spike in oil prices is already in the making as demand will continue to grow and the current oil and gas industry cannot supply all the additional needs. Jeroen spoke at the 14th Annual Asia Oil & Gas Conference on 7-9 June in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

There are going to be six to nine billion people by the year 2050 and it means more “energy use”, especially this part of the world, which means the world needs renewable energy and it takes four to five years to construct a refinery.

“So, we think it is a good philosophy to be a high investor (now) and benefit from the lower construction prices,” he said. "By the year 2050, 30 per cent energy demand will be renewable but a bulk or 70 per cent will still be fossil fuel"

“Therefore in the long term the energy will not be cheap,” said Jeroen, who is retiring on July 1 after being with the company for 38 years.

Read more: The Malaysian Insider

The world may have to get used to an average oil price settling closer to the $80 mark, once prices settle after the past year's wild fluctuations, UK-based consulting company Deloitte said today.

Just as oil at last year’s peak of $147 looked excessive, so oil at last year’s low of $34 looked unlikely to last, Deloitte chief economist Ian Stewart said in an internal company briefing. “Yet the factors which drove up the oil price last year are still in place. Supply is constrained by underinvestment and a shortage of skilled workers.”

Despite much higher oil prices the International Energy Agency reckons investment in the oil sector will fall by 15% to 20% this year...

Read more: Upstream Online

CERA Global Oil Group Managing Director Jim Burkhard spoke at a CSIS session on “Transforming the Transportation Sector: Energy Security, Climate Change and Transportation”.

During his presentation, Mr. Burkhard explained that in acknowledging that peak oil is here, CERA’s interpretation is that US gasoline demand peaked in 2008 and is expected to decline in future years. He also stated that CERA maintains its position that the reasons for US liquid fuel demand having peaked are economic and geopolitical in their nature, rather than in any way driven by geologic factors. He repeatedly came back to the notion that "peak oil is here".

It commonly claimed, often used in a somewhat derogatory way, peak oil is only about geology. We rather state that peak oil is the result of a complex series of forces which include economics and the physics of oil wells. Bardi has earlier discussed the four stages of an idea and how it diffuses into public knowledge.

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The head of Shell, Jeroen Van De Veer, highlighted the mounting challenges facing the oil and gas industry with particular emphasis on the sheer sums of money needed to be invested to keep energy flowing.

He said energy demand will double between now and 2030 and that the classical oil and gas industry cannot meet this rising demand. De Veer believes that the industry needs renewables and unconventional fuels added to the energy mix to meet rising demand.

“The energy mix in the world is not the role of companies, I think it is a role for governments as they have the tools to set the energy mix,” said De Veer.

Read more: Upstream Online

Russia warned today oil could soar to $150 a barrel if the global economic crisis continued to curb investment in capacity by top producers. Moscow's top energy policy official also warned output from Russia could be hit unless borrowing costs fell for its energy giants and called for a move away from trading oil only in US dollars. Russia, which is currently producing more oil than Saudi Arabia, has refused to cut production with Opec and wants higher prices for the lifeblood of its $1.7 trillion economy.

"If capital investments do not recover then the recent forecast of the Saudi oil minister, when he said in Rome that oil prices could be $150 (per barrel) in 2-3 years, could become reality," Reuters quoted Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin as telling the St Petersburg Economic Forum.

"I can tell what we think is needed for us - we need not less than $75," said Sechin, one of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's most trusted advisers.

Russia had enjoyed the longest economic boom in a generation during the presidency of Putin in 2000-2008 on the back of high oil prices.

Read more: Upstream Online

Oil rose to hit a six-month high above $63 a barrel today after Opec kingpin Saudi Arabia said the global economy had strengthened enough to cope with oil at $75 to $80 a barrel. Speaking ahead of Opec's meeting in Vienna on Thursday, Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi said oil prices would continue to rise, recovering from lows near $32 at the turn of the year.

"The price rise is a function of optimism better things are coming in the future," Naimi told reporters in Vienna.

Prices also shot above the key technical level of the 200-day moving average today, for the first time in more than eight months, adding to some analysts' convictions that oil has found a new price floor at $60 and may rise toward $65.

Read more: Upstream Online

EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs posted an interesting viewpoint in his blog recently. The post is called "Are we moving towards a new oil crisis?" and points out that the world seems to be moving towards a new set of high oil prices.

He concludes the following:
The current relatively low oil prices give a respite to prepare for the coming new oil crisis. We have to reduce our dependency in all those areas in which black gold is not indispensable, such as heating, or electricity production. For those areas which will have to continue to depend on it, like transport, we need to accelerate the research for alternatives, like biofuels, electric cars or hydrogen. And in all sectors, we have to accelerate our efficiency being aware that every barrel of oil that we are using is one of the last.

It is difficult to forecast when the next oil crisis is going to come. As Nobel Price Niels Bohr once put it “prediction is very difficult, particularly about the future”.

World oil demand this year will post the sharpest annual decline since 1981 as the global economy struggles to bounce back, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said.

Demand will contract by 2.56 million barrels per day in 2009, the agency, which advises 28 industrialised countries, said in a monthly report. It previously forecast demand would contract by 2.4 million bpd this year. The agency added a rise in oil prices, which topped $60 a barrel for the first time in six months this week, was due to sentiment and oil fundamentals remained weak.

Read more: Upstream Online