Africa In Peril

This is a special post by Ron Patterson. Please limit all comments to the subject matter of this post.

Era of ‘Biological Annihilation’ Is Underway, Scientists Warn

From the common barn swallow to the exotic giraffe, thousands of animal species are in precipitous decline, a sign that an irreversible era of mass extinction is underway, new research finds.

The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, calls the current decline in animal populations a “global epidemic” and part of the “ongoing sixth mass extinction” caused in large measure by human destruction of animal habitats. The previous five extinctions were caused by natural phenomena.

The wildlife decline in most of the world is terrible, but in Africa it is catastrophic. By 2100 there will be no megafauna whatsoever in Africa. All elephants, giraffes, rhinoceroses, lions, gorillas, chimpanzees, and even zebras and wildebeest will be totally extinct. And the culprit in this huge animal extinction is Africa’s massive overpopulation problem. It is terrible today but is about to get a whole lot worse.

The population of Africa, in 2016, was 1.22 billion. The UN estimates that in 2100 the population of Africa will be about 4.45 billion. Notice that is an increase of about 300 million from their estimate just five years ago. But their 2100 population estimate has doubled since theit 1998 estimate.

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GULF OF MEXICO DISCOVERIES, RESERVES AND PRODUCTION

A Guest Post by George Kaplan

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Part I Discoveries and Reserves

The following are a few charts and observations concerning the US Gulf of Mexico production, with data mostly taken from BOEM for the OCS and a bit from EIA. The BOEM data site has been updated and makes it easy to get the raw data, but not in a very easily discerned way. This post is intended to make it a bit easier to follow and come to your own conclusions concerning the likely future of GoM production.

I’m sure I’ve made a few mistakes in getting and downloading the data, but the relative trends are probably more informative than absolute values so there will need to be follow up revisions as new data is available and hopefully any issues will get smoothed out. Reserve data is available for 2015. New data for 2016 is likely not available until the end of the year, but when it is it will be interesting to see what changes there are. The main focus here is on oil but gas data is also presented. Production data is issued twice monthly but some, such as for BP, is up to six months late so I’ve just assumed daily flow stays constant to fill in any gaps. Read More

Texas Update- June 2017

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Dean Fantazzini has provided me with updates to Texas Oil and Natural Gas estimates, the data shifted about a year ago so I use the most recent 13 months of Texas RRC data along with the “all vintage” data estimate which uses all data from Jan 2014 to April 2017 for oil and April 2014 to April 2017 for condensate. The most recent EIA estimate is shown for comparison. In April 2017 the EIA estimate is 3345 kb/d, the 13 month corrected estimate is 3443 kb/d, and the all vintage estimate is 3572 kb/d. Read More

MEXICO Oil Reserves and Production

This is a Guest Post by George Kaplan

In dollar terms, since mid 2015 Mexico has been a net importer of hydrocarbons (oil, natural gas, petroleum products and petrochemicals combined). To date it has been a relatively small and fairly constant amount, but with their oil production declining, and oil prices apparently continuing to fall while natural gas prices may be on the rise, the net cost could now start to increase.

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