APPEC 2010: YOU CANNOT AFFORD NOT TO BE THERE (AN UPDATE)

Just an update to highlight the companies that will be represented at APPEC 2010 to date. All these companies will either be involved in the conference, exhibition or the hosting of numerous hospitalities. If you are in the oil and gas industry, you should be here too......

Addax Asia
Advent Oil
Allegro Development
ANCAP
Argus Group
Asia Pacific Energy Group
Aspect Enterprise Solutions
AWE Limited
BGC Radix Energy
Bloomberg
Bloomberg L P
BORCO
BP Singapore
Bunkerworld
C1 Energy
Chem1 Consulting
China Offshore Oil
Concorde Energy
ConocoPhillips
CPC Corporation (Taiwan)
Dalian Fujia Dahua Petrochemical Co
Delta Petroleum
Deutsche Bank AG
Dow Jones Newswires
Dukkar Nord
Dukkar SA
Energy Asia
Energy Partnership
ENOC
Fortrec Chemicals & Petroleum
Galana Petroleum
Gazprom Neft Trading
Ginga Petroleum
GlobalView Software
Hart Energy
Hess Energy Trading
Hilditch Pty Ltd
Hin Leong
Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange
ICIS
Idemitsu International (Asia)
IEEJ Oil Information Centre
ISEAS
Jakes Africa Energy
JBC Energy GmBH
Keppel Corporation
Koch Refining
KOGAS
Kuo Oil
Kuwait Petroleum Corporation
Langsat Terminals
Lanka IOC
LBC Tank Terminals
LITASCO SA
Louis Dreyfuss Highbridge
Lukoil Asia Pacific
Lukoil Pan America
Mabanaft
Marubeni International
MAS Investments
MediaCorp
Medley Global Advisors
Ministry of Oil and Gas, Oman
Navitas Resources
Neumann Petroleum
Nippon Oil
Occidental Petroleum
Oil Outlooks and Opinions LLC
Oiltanking
Oman Refineries & Petrochemicals Co
Oman Trading
ONGC (India)
Petrobras
Petro-Diamond Singapore
Petroleum Development Oman
Petromedia Group
PetroRabigh
Platts
Prime Marine
Qatargas
Saigal Seatrade
Sakhalin Energy Investment
SASOL
Saudi Petroleum
SFF (South Africa)
SIAC
Singapore Base Oil Exchange
Singapore Exchange
Sinochem
SK Energy
SK Gas International
SOCAR Trading SA
SOCAR Trading Singapore
S-Oil Corporation
Star Petro
Sumato Energy
Swiss Singapore
Tasweeq
TOCOM
Total Trading Asia
Trafigura
Trayport
Valero Marketing & Supply
Vitol Asia
Vopak
Vopak Terminals Korea
Vopak Terminals Singapore
Winson Oil
Zhenron

ASIA PACIFIC ENERGY - A NEW INITIATIVE AT APPEC 2011

ASIA PACIFIC ENERGY
Supporting the region’s market development

Jointly developed and managed by Ace Conferences and Events and the Energy Partnership, Asia Pacific Energy is an open platform for developing and hosting multiple business initiatives that support the future development of Asia Pacific’s energy and climate markets.

Building on the respective business strengths of the partners, Asia Pacific Energy will convene and host debate and discussion on key market issues as well as proving independent comment and analysis.

Consequently the business initiatives associated with the platform will include:

• Seminars
• Workshops
• Forums
• Surveys
• Market research & analysis
• Market & management reports

The platform will also host the first awards programme dedicated to the Asia Pacific energy and environment market. Nominations for the inaugural awards programme will open in March 2011 with the awards presented in 2011 coinciding with APPEC week.

Further information on the awards will be made available prior to nominations opening. If additional information is required on the awards, or any of the other business initiatives to be provided by Asia Pacific Energy, the organizers can be contacted at:

Mr Jeremy Wilcox
Co-Founder, Asia Pacific Energy
Monterey Place, 398/181 Sukhumvit16, Klongtoey, Bangkok 10110, Thailand
T: +66 2 6631058 / M: +66 860 993375/ E: j.wilcox@me.com

Mr Patrick Soh
Co-Founder, Asia Pacific Energy
84, Genting Lane, #03-03, Singapore 349584
T: +65 67412595 / F: +65 67411578/ E: Patrick@ace-events.com.sg

APPEC 2010: YOU CANNOT AFFORD NOT TO BE THERE

Just an update to highlight the companies that will be represented at APPEC 2010 to date. All these companies will either be involved in the conference, exhibition or the hosting of numerous hospitalities. If you are in the oil and gas industry, you should be here too......

(Please refer to the updated list posted in October 2010).

RE: ADDITION OF ANOTHER GOLD SPONSOR

APPEC is glad to announce that Aspect Enterprise Solutions has come aboard as a Gold Sponsor for APPEC 2010.

APPEC look towards another fruitful year of collaboration with them.

APPEC 2010 - LEADING SPONSORS

APPEC 2010 (12 - 14 OCTOBER 2010,
Raffles City Convention Centre, Singapore)

APPEC is glad to announce that the following global organisations have come on board as leading sponsors for APPEC 2010:


PARTNER SPONSOR:

DIAMOND SPONSOR:



PLATINUM SPONSOR:

GOLD SPONSOR:

COST OF ENERGY

It is now approaching three months since the Deepwater Horizon accident and it could be another two months until BP succeeds in capping the well that has created an unprecedented environmental problem in the Gulf of Mexico.

The political response has arguably been more emotional than responsible. President Obama immediately called for a six month moratorium on deepwater oil exploration and then further reached out to the environmental lobby by describing the accident as an environmental 9/11, reasoning that the oil spill would provide the radical environmental legislation in the same was that foreign and domestic security policy was rushed out in the aftermath of the New York terrorist attacks.

A moratorium on deepwater exploration is a knee jerk reaction and causes more problems than it solves, with oil companies right to challenge the ban. And last week BP said it would not be swayed from its long-term oil development policy by confirming plans to proceed with drilling operations in environmentally sensitive areas such as Canada's tar sands and further deepwater exploration, despite pressure to stop from environmental groups and some investors.

Explaining the policy, a BP spokesman said: "When the leak is plugged and we return to normal we will be carrying out an assessment of where the new BP goes from here. We will – like the rest of the industry – be working out how we can do things differently in terms of safety but not where we do them. The position is the same now as it was at the strategy update earlier in the year. We are committed to three core areas of deepwater oil, unconventional gas and enhanced recovery on super-sized fields. The world needs oil to meet growing demand and total risk aversion would just drive up prices."

This is the right decision. Oil is too important a commodity, with last month’s International Energy Agency report on medium-term supply and demand underling the importance of more investment in exploration and production to ensure demand is met from 2015 onwards.

The key issue facing the oil industry, and regulators, is to learn from the deepwater accident and do things differently to reduce the risk of further accidents. And in this respect the oil industry can look to the nuclear industry for guidance.

Following the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl accident in 1986 there were widespread calls for an end to nuclear generation, with opponents arguing that the generation source was too dangerous and that the risks of environmental damage outweighed the rewards of the electricity provided. But instead of the incidents proving to be the demise of nuclear power they actually led to its resurgence. Lessons were learned, new safety checks and practices were put in place, and today nuclear is increasingly being seen as a vital component in the world’s low carbon energy future.

The oil industry and regulators have to act in a similarly responsible fashion. Much as the environmental lobby would like to see the deepwater accident leading to the end of oil, with the billions of investment in the industry diverted to renewable energy sources, such a move would be irresponsible. The world’s addiction to oil cannot simply be ended; it has to be slowly eased off oil over a period of time with some analysts estimating the timeframe for such a transition to be at least 30 to 40 years.

Much as Obama would like the US public to believe the deepwater accident to be America’s environmental 9/11 in reality it is the oil industry’s 9/11. The failure of the major economies to develop alternative fuel technologies over the past two decades as they were lulled by the security provided by oil is in part responsible for the accident in the Gulf of Mexico that was always going to happen one day as exploration risks increased. And now that it has the oil market has to look forward, not back.

Deepwater Horizon will not be the end of oil, but how the industry and regulators respond will determine the maturity of oil’s future.


Article contributed by:

Mr. Jeremy Wilcox, Managing Director, Energy Partnership

Peak Oil and the Low Carbon Transition

There have been a number of papers published recently on peak oil – the point at which oil production starts to decline. And while each paper has varying views on the timing of the peak some believe it could happen by the end of this decade. Not surprisingly, the environmental lobby has hijacked this analysis to promote the urgent need to transition from a fossil fuel to a renewable/low carbon-based economy. This is a self-defeating argument.

To try and draw a correlation between peak oil and the low carbon transition is disingenuous. It is broadly aimed at the oil majors that stand accused by the environmental lobby of delaying, or rejecting, the low carbon transition in order to service their oil business requirements, yet these oil majors are spending billions on alternative fuel development, and particularly renewable energies. Indeed with the world economy sluggishly recovering from a debilitating recession it is the oil majors that have the capital to invest in tomorrow’s low carbon economy, so it stands to reason that these corporations should extract the full value from the world’s declining oil reserves.

A key factor in realising this value is the price of oil. Earlier this month the price of WTI and Brent futures reached 18-month highs around $87/bbl, which the International Energy Agency rightly warned was unsustainable. There is a general consensus, endorsed by Opec, that the ‘ideal’ price range for oil is $70-80/bbl; the rationale being that this range is sufficiently high as to enable economic oil production and sufficiently low as to not endanger the economic recovery.

Writing in Britain’s Guardian newspaper last week [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/23/peak-oil-energy-recession], Greenpeace director John Sauvan asked: “Will the expense of bringing this oil to market mean that the sustained oil prices needed to produce the oil will also consistently drive the global economy back into recession?”

Sauven supplements his thinking by citing comments made by BP chief executive Tony Hayward last summer when he observed that as the oil price went over $90, consumers "began to change their behaviour" and that there was significant "elasticity of demand above $100 a barrel".

Hayward, together with other oil industry executives, believes that the low carbon transition policies put forward by some OECD governments are both overly optimistic and costly. He is right. And both the oil industry and the environmental lobby should heed his warning of elasticity of demand above $100/bbl.

The environmental lobby would like us to believe that the recession has triggered demand destruction, not demand suppression, with this phenomenon being used by the lobby as the trigger to shift investment from oil to renewable sources. It may be that some demand has been destroyed, but according to the latest demand forecast revisions by the IEA and Opec global oil demand remains healthy and is growing. And it is due to this renewed demand health that oil prices are moving higher.

The world has to move to a low carbon non fossil fuel-based economy for both climate and oil resource reasons, but this transition has to be progressive. And if this is to be achieved the oil industry and the environmental lobby has to work together. To its credit the oil industry is positively embracing environmental change; now the environmental lobby has to view the oil industry not as the villain but as an important partner in steering the global economy toward a new and sustainable low carbon future.

Article contributed by:

Mr. Jeremy Wilcox, Managing Director, Energy Partnership