As already announced in July 2012, Sydney’s Caltex refinery (135 kb/d) has now closed, replaced by a fuel import terminal, holding approximately 45 to 60 days of inventory (Caltex Annual Report 2013,…
Sydney’s risky NorthConnex tunnel will not solve congestion problem
Fig 1: NorthConnex tunnel proposal http://northconnex.com.au/library.php The current congestion problem on Pennant Hills Rd is caused by 4 distinctive traffic flows overlapping in this narrow corridor: (a) trucks on the national highway,…
Scots lost out in UK oil and gas endgame
The future of UK’s oil and gas sector was a key issue in the independence campaign. Promises were made by Prime Minister Cameron to give more powers to Scotland. Would that include…
US shale oil growth covers up production drop in rest-of-world
We use the period starting with January 2010 when crude production had come back to 2005 levels after the exceptional year of 2009 Fig 1: US crude oil vs crude oil in…
Qantas growing passenger numbers don’t increase revenue
A lot has been written about Qantas’ FY 2014 losses of AU$2.8 bn but no analysis was done by the main stream media how the timeline of these losses are connected to…
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott pedalling in wrong direction
Fig 1: Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott (centre, yellow helmet) likes biking There are only a few Prime Ministers in this world who are pro-actively biking. Tony Abbott is one of them….
IEA report implies US crude production may start to peak 2016
The Medium Term Oil Market Report of the International Energy Agency (IEA, Paris), published in June 2014, contains a graph which implies that US crude production will start to peak in 2016….
The Ukraine conflict, peak cheap gas and the MH17 tragedy
For 8 years now there are problems with Russian gas flowing to and through Ukraine. Even Europe – where gas production peaked 10 years ago – has been affected. The fact is…
Sydney’s M2 toll road less busy than forecast in Transurban investor presentation of 2011
Fig 1: M2 at Murray Farm Rd – summer evening 2013/14 The Sydney Morning Herald quotes from Transurban’s latest June 2014 ADT data that traffic on the M2 increased by 13.8% y-o-y….
Energy Super Power Australia’s East Coast running low on affordable domestic gas
In July 2006 then Prime Minister Howard declared Australia an energy super power. 2 years earlier his energy white paper set the framework for unlimited gas exports while neglecting to set aside…