Nền kinh tế và tài chánh ở Âu châu đang bước vào giai đoạn hiểm nghèo, các nước Ý, Bồ đào Nha và Hy Lạp bên bờ vỡ nợ. Chính phủ mỗi nước mắc nợ từ 400-1200 tỉ đô la.
Kinh tế của Mỹ thì đang còn suy thoái, mức thất nghiệp trên 9% (trên 408 000 người nộp đơn lãnh tiền thất nghiệp tuần trước). Chứng khoán Dow Jones sụt 2000 điểm chỉ trong 3 tuần qua và chỉ còn quanh quẩn mức 10 800 điểm.
Chế độ độc tài ở Lybia vẫn chưa sụp đổ. Gadhafi vẫn chưa bị bắt.
Vàng 24 (37,5 gram = 1,2 Oz) đã lên gần mức 49 triệu 1 lượng (vài ngày trước giá vàng 24 khoảng 46-47 triệu đồng VN)
1 lượng vàng anh (30,48 grams = 1 Oz) giá 1870 đô
21 000 đồng VN = 1 đô la
Đồng đô la sẽ lên giá và tiền đồng VN sẽ hạ giá do giới cầm quyền Hà Nội buộc lòng phải tung tiền VN ra mua đô la. Lý do:
+Số lượng tiền do Việt kiều gởi về VN giảm sút 15-20%.
+xuất cảng các mặt của Việt Nam giảm
+ xuất cảng dầu thô của VN giảm. Giá dầu thô giao hàng của thế giới vào tháng 9-2011 là 82 đô/ 1 thùng, giảm nhiều so với giá hơn 93 đô vào các tháng trước.
+nguồn vốn FDI của ngoại quốc giảm 6 tháng đầu năm nay là gần 30% so với năm 2010.
+Doanh nghiệp chỉ vay đô la mà không vay tiền đồng VN “Từ đầu năm 2011 đến nay doanh nghiệp toàn vay USD vì lãi suất (LS) chỉ dao động 6-7%. Trong khi đó nếu vay bằng VND phải trả LS trên 20%/năm…với khoản vay 200.000 USD (tương đương 4,12 tỉ đồng), mỗi tháng chỉ phải trả lãi gần 27,2 triệu đồng. Còn nếu vay bằng VND với LS 21%, mỗi tháng phải trả lãi hơn 72 triệu đồng.”…
Giá dầu thô giao hàng vào tháng 9-2011 là 82 đô/ 1 thùng.
*Dầu xuống vì chiến tranh ở Lybia và chế độ của đại tá Moammar Gadhafi’s gần sụp đổ. Phiến quân đã chiếm phần lớn thủ đô hôm 21-8-2011, con trai của đại tá Gadhafi vẫn còn chỉ huy các đạo quân trung thành chống lại các nhóm quân nổi dậy. Ông ta nói rằng phương Tây vận dụng tin tức và computer để phao tin là Lybia sụp đổ, chứ trên thực tế vào ngày 22-8 thì quân đội trung thành với nhà độc tài vẫn còn chống lại các nhóm nổi dậy.
(Lybia bán dầu hỏa cho nhiều nước Âu châu (và gạ bán cho Mỹ lúc gần đây)
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Nguồn cơn Trung Quốc gia tăng đánh đập và bắt ngư dân VN từ 2006-2011, xâm nhập lãnh vải Biển Đông và gây hấn manh nha từ khi VN loan tin khám phá dầu ở Vịnh Bắc bộ vào năm 2004
*Bài báo dưới đây từ tháng 2-2005 cho thấy Trung Quốc đã không vui khi Việt Nam tìm kiếm dầu trong vùng biển phía Bắc (vùng Vịnh Bắc Bộ) , đặc biệt khi Petrovietnam thông báo đã khám phá dầu ở giếng Dầu Yên Tử vào tháng 10-2004. Giếng Yên tử ở 70 km phía Đông của tỉnh Hải Phòng có trử lượng khoảng 700-800 triệu thùng dầu, và 2 đối tác của VN tại vùng mỏ dầu nầy là Malaysia và Singapore.
VN được đánh giá có trữ lượng dầu từ 6,5-8,5 tỉ thùng dầu. Và trữ lượng ga vào khoảng 75-100 ngàn tỉ cm khối ga. (khoảng 75-100 triêu mét khối ga).
Năm 2004, VN bán ra 130 triệu thùng dầu và 200 tỉ cm-khối ga theo bài báo dưới đây.
(VN bán ra chừng 400 000 thùng dầu mỗi ngày.)
*Chính phủ của 46 quốc giá xuất cảng dầu qui định giá xăng bán ra cho dân chúng mua dùng chỉ bằng 1/2 hoặc 1/4 giá xăng bán tại Mỹ. Họ cho rằng dầu hỏa và ga là tài nguyên của đất nước nên khi khai thác được thì phải chia lại cho dân chúng dùng với giá rẻ. Cụ thể giá 1 lít xăng ở 46 quốc gia xuất cảng dầu hiện nay vào khoảng 2500 đồng-5000 đồng VN/1 lít. ( chính xác là giá 50 xu hay 1 đô la/1 gallon xăng (1 gallon gần bằng 4 lít)
*Tuy VN đã khai thác dầu hỏa và ga suốt hơn 20 năm qua, nhưng dân chúng VN chưa từng được hưởng tài nguyên dầu hỏa như chính phủ của 46 nước xuất cảng dầu trên thế giới đã làm cho dân của họ.
Petrovietnam cho biết số tiền bán dầu và ga hàng năm tính ra là trên 30 tỉ đô la vào năm 2010. Ngoài việc nôp cho Hà Nội 2,5 tỉ gọi là tiền lời, số tiền còn lại một phần là chi phí và phần khác chui vào túi của ai thì bạn đọc tự hiểu.]
[Các bạn vào bing.com hay google.com và viết chữ revenue of Petrovietnam Corporation vào hộp search, sẽ thấy các bài báo nói về số tiền lời của công ty Petrovietnam hàng năm.]
Bài báo dưới cùng là nói về Venezuela. Nước sản suất dầu hỏa 3,2 triệu thùng mỗi ngày.
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Từ đầu năm nay đến tháng 7-2011, Trung Quốc đầu tư vào Việt Nam hơn 3 tỉ đô la với 805 dự án
Theo nguồn tin của báo Vietnambusiness.asia, từ đầu năm 2011 đến tháng 7 năm nay, Trung Quốc đã đầu tư hơn 805 dự án (F.D.I) vào Việt Nam, trị giá tổng cộng 3 tỉ đô la.
Trong năm 2010, Việt Nam nhập cảng 20 tỉ đô la các sản phẩm kỹ nghệ của Trung Quốc, và xuất cảng 7 tỉ đô la nguyên liệu và nông sản sang Trung Quốc. Thương mại song phương gia đạt tổng cộng là 27 tỉ đô la và tăng 30% so với năm 2009.
Chỉ riêng 7 tháng đầu năm nay, Việt Nam đã nhập cảng 13 tỉ đô la hàng hóa từ TQ và xuất cảng 5,5 tỉ đô la hàng hóa qua TQ.
Nguồn Vietnambusiness.asia.
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Vietnam Finds Oil in the Basement
By DAVID BROWN
EXPLORER Correspondent
source
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Vietnam rarely makes headlines for petroleum development.
But consider:
Vietnam ranks third in oil production among Association of South East Asian Nations countries, trailing only Indonesia and Malaysia.
If its current rate of development continues, Vietnam will become the world’s 30th largest oil-producing nation.
And perhaps the most startling aspect about Vietnam — most of its production comes from offshore basement reservoirs.
Attractive Reserves
To date, Vietnam has produced almost a billion barrels of crude oil and 300 billion cubic feet of natural gas, according to Viet Anh Nguyen, new ventures coordinator for national oil company PetroVietnam.
Nguyen estimated 2004 total output at 130 million barrels of oil and 200 Bcf of gas.
The country’s estimated resources, both onshore and offshore, now stand at 6.5-8.5 billion barrels of oil and 75-100 trillion cubic feet of gas, he said.
Current oil and gas production comes from fields in the Cuu Long, Nam Con Son and Malay-Tho Chu basins, with gas also produced in the Song Hong Basin.
Click to enlarge.
PetroVietnam began 2005 in the middle of a licensing round for nine blocks in the Phu Khanh Basin, offshore the south-central coast of Vietnam. The offered blocks average 7,000 square kilometers in size.
Water depths in Phu Khanh range from 50 to 2,500 meters, and sediment thickness extends up to 8,000 meters, the company said.
Additional, frontier exploration areas include parts of the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa group of basins.
Because of challenging conditions, exploration in those areas may be limited to small, prospective acreages of interest, Nguyen said.
Geological Setting
A system of Cenozoic sedimentary basins defines the 1 million-square-kilometer Vietnamese continental shelf area, according to descriptions from PetroVietnam.
These rift basins lie within a transitional zone from the continental crust of the Indochina Craton to the suboceanic crust of the eastern deepwater area.
Most of the main structural elements occurred during a Late Eocene-Oligocene rifting phase, with extension and transtensional deformation.
Local uplift, rotation and erosion began in the mid-Oligocene, followed by regional subsidence. Compression dominated the area, later subject to diverse, low- to moderate-amplitude tectonic activity.
Oligocene-Early Miocene lacustrine shales and deltaic coals and coaly claystones constitute the main source rocks, showing potential for both oil and gas generation.
Clastics — delta plain, fluvial channel, submarine slope fan and turbidite sandstones — make up the most common reservoirs. However, exploration has found fractured granite basement to be an important oil-bearing reservoir type.
PetroVietnam now has an extensive history of working with foreign companies in exploration and development ventures.
In October the company signed a contract with Idemitsu Kosan Co., Nippon Oil Corp. and Teikoku Corp. for exploration on two blocks in the Nam Con Son Basin.
According to PetroVietnam, that was the 48th petroleum contract signed with foreign companies since the Vietnam Foreign Investment Law took effect in 1987.
Roaring Young Lions
Click to enlarge
Oilfields in the Cuu Long Basin offshore southeastern Vietnam typify the country’s fractured basement reservoirs.
Bach Ho (White Tiger), Vietnam’s largest oilfield, produces almost 280,000 barrels of oil per day from granitoid basement.
Recently, a basement-reservoir play extension in the nearby Su Tu or “lion” fields generated wide industry interest.
The Su Tu Den (Black Lion) field currently produces about 80,000 barrels per day, but PetroVietnam expects to increase output to 200,000 barrels per day within three years.
In September, PetroVietnam announced that up to $300 million dollars will be spent on production enhancement in Cuu Long Block 15-1, where Su Tu Den is located.
Neighboring fields Su Tu Vang (Golden Lion) and Su Tu Trang (White Lion) also show promise for production increases, it said.
Wallace G. Dow, an AAPG member and consultant in The Woodlands, Texas, calls the Cuu Long oil “paraffinic, classic lacustrine crude” expelled into fractured basement from lower source rock.
“The oils in the basement are virtually identical to the oils in the sandstone sitting around the basement,” Dow said.
“This is the key — they migrate updip through faults into the basement, in horst blocks,” he said.
Dow emphasized that the oil’s components indicate a lacustrine organic facies with lipid-rich, land-plant debris and fresh-water algal material, refuting theories of abiogenic origin in this area.
Exploration Challenge
Discoveries on basement highs in Cuu Long can encounter thousands of feet of oil column.
“When you open up a 1,000-foot section, you don’t need more than 2 or 3 percent porosity. The oil migrated recently, so it’s still all there. You can produce a lot of oil,” Dow said.
Cuu Long’s challenge is predicting where to drill, according to Dow, and “a lot of companies have lost their shirts trying to drill these darn things.
“The whole problem is, how do you do these plays?” he asked. “Some companies want to believe there are plays away from these horst blocks. I’m sure there are, but are they economic?”
A joint venture, Cuu Long Joint Operating Co., conducts oil and gas development on Cuu Long Block 15-1, including the Su Tu fields.
Partners are:
- PetroVietnam, 50 percent.
- ConocoPhillips, 23.25 percent.
- Korean National Oil Corp., 14.25 percent.
- South Korean oil refiner SK Corp., 9 percent.
- French company Geopetrol, 3.5 percent.
Operating in Vietnam is “like operating just about anywhere else,” said Georg Storaker, ConocoPhillips country manager of Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City.
Storaker said the venture’s general manager is seconded in from PetroVietnam and the deputy general manager from ConocoPhillips, with other companies providing representation.
By agreement, partners make operating decisions jointly, under voting rights specified in the working contract.
“It works. It’s functional to do it this way,” Storaker observed. “But it tends to become very bureaucratic to operate in this fashion.”
He said Vietnam may return to the partner-operated approach used in earlier government-sponsored ventures, providing more direct operator control.
Build-As-You-Go
Having no refining capacity of its own, Vietnam exports all of its crude production and imports processed fuels and petrochemical products.
“All oil markets are out of the country,” Storaker said. “All gas production is going into domestic markets, primarily for power generation.”
With minimal petroleum infrastructure in place, development can be a build-as-you-go effort. Much of the support manufacturing takes place in Vietnam, according to Storaker.
“The simple wellhead structures, the jackets and topsides, we build here in Vung Tau, the harbor city just outside of Ho Chi Minh City,” he said.
The Cuu Long venture had no problem identifying prospects on Block 15-1, said Bill Schmidt, ConocoPhillips general manager for Vietnam.
“The first well that was drilled was a successful discovery,” Schmidt said. “It was targeting the basement. The block was picked up based upon the success of the Bach Ho field.”
Basement reservoirs at Bach Ho and the Block 15-2 Rang Dong field, where ConocoPhillips has a 36 percent interest, indicated the play concept could be extended.
“For that reason, there was a lot of interest in what was considered this ‘golden block,’ Block 15-1. Basically, it came in as expected in Su Tu Den and Su Tu Vang,” Schmidt said.
“They were the two nicest structures on the block,” he added.
Riding a Horst
The company’s ongoing development plan is typical of local operating style: Find a horse, or horst, and ride it.
“Block 15-1 is the one that has the longest life, that we’re tying most of our future on,” Storaker said. “The Rang Dong field that got us started has a life expectancy of 2017.
“We are now moving into the preliminary engineering phase of Su Tu Vang,” he continued, “and if everything goes the way we hope, we would like to sanction it in 2005 for first production in 2007.”
The third discovery, Su Tu Trang, is in evaluation. It initially tested at 70 million cubic feet of gas and 8,500 barrels of condensate production per day, Storaker said.
“We have been shooting a lot of seismic work on that structure in the past year,” he added, and an appraisal well is slated for 2005.
“We are also likely to go out and drill an exploratory well on another prospect we see out on the block,” Storaker said.
At Rang Dong, where water injection began in 2004, ConocoPhillips plans to add one production platform and one new liquids handling platform this year.
ConocoPhillips also holds an equity interest in the 242-mile Nam Con Son pipeline system, linking gas supplies from the offshore basin to gas markets in southern Vietnam.
For the period 2005-10, PetroVietnam plans to triple gas production and add 7-to-10 new oil and gas fields, Nguyen said.
Vietnam also will focus on infrastructure construction to develop its domestic natural gas market and reduce dependence on imported oil products.
Things in Motion
After a series of false starts and delays, including the loss of a Russian venture partner, PetroVietnam now plans to begin operating a $1.6 billion, in-country refining complex at Dung Quat by 2007.
Vietnam continues to develop rapidly, Storaker said, promising a stronger domestic market for transportation fuels and power-generation gas in the future.
“It’s growing quite fast — there is a growth rate of about 7 percent a year,” he said. “There’s a focused effort here on getting more high-tech industry into this area.
“There’s tons of things to be done to, for example, catch up with the speed of the neighbor to the north,” he added.
Continued exploration success in Vietnam presents the industry with an increasingly attractive place to work, to operate and to chase offshore plays.
“Things are in motion down here,” Storaker said.
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Northern Vietnam Offshore Discovery Sparks Potential Territorial Dispute
PetroVietnam announced the first discovery of oil offshore northern Vietnam in October 2004.
The find came in the area of Blocks 102 and 106 of Yen Tu field, about 70 kilometers east of Hai Phong, with an initial reserves estimate of 700-800 million barrels.
Venture partners include the company’s Petroleum Investment and Development Co., Malaysia’s Petronas and the Singapore Petroleum Co.
China quickly announced it was concerned and displeased by Vietnam’s exploration in the area.
Territorial rights in nearby parts of the South China Sea have been claimed by six countries — China, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Taiwan.
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Source brent crude oil
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For Venezuela, a Treasure in Oil Sludge
By JUAN FORERO
Published: June 1, 2006
PUERTO LA CRUZ, Venezuela — The sludge in the glass jar on David Nelson’s bookshelf here is thicker than molasses and was once thought worthless. But the Chevron Corporation, whose operations he runs in eastern Venezuela, has spent about $1 billion turning what was once called liquid coal into oil, helping transform a swath of scrub grass into a great frontier for oil production.
The region, the Orinoco Belt, is in fact so promising that President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela says it contains up to 235 billion barrels of recoverable oil; if true, the reserves would rival those of Saudi Arabia.
“We do know that the Orinoco is underdeveloped,” said Mr. Nelson, 49, a geologist from California with 27 years’ experience developing heavy-grade oil. “And the resources in the Middle East are at their midpoint.”
This great, largely untapped treasure is pitting a leftist government aiming to use oil revenue for social programs against multinational corporations like Chevron, which were invited here a decade ago to develop the Orinoco Belt, a 54-square-mile area some 120 miles south of here.
With demand rising, worldwide supplies threatening to decline and oil prices near record levels, the struggle in this country underscores the growing debate between governments and oil companies worldwide over profits from technologically challenging but potentially lucrative oil fields — whether in the Caspian Sea, the Arctic tundra or here in the Orinoco region.
Venezuela will be the host for an OPEC meeting on June 1, where Mr. Chávez can be expected to emphasize his country’s vast potential. It clearly has a lot to gain from the Orinoco, where daily oil production has slid to 2.6 million barrels, from 3.3 million barrels five years ago. To underline the region’s potential, President Chávez has asked oil companies from as far away as China and Russia to certify the size of the hefty reserves.
Saudi Arabia, still the giant among world oil suppliers and the leading force in OPEC consultations, scoffs at such boasts.
Yet, what is under the ground here in Venezuela, the Western Hemisphere’s largest oil-exporting nation, has become so valuable that companies throughout the world want to drill for more, and Mr. Chávez, who regards his government as revolutionary, wants it to have a larger slice of the earnings.
In Venezuela, foreign companies including Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, BP and Total of France could lose once-favorable terms and in essence be forced to transfer up to $8 billion in value to the government, just as some opportunities elsewhere are drying up.
The big oil companies are right to be rattled. In April, Mr. Chávez’s populist government took control of 32 mostly marginal oil fields across Venezuela that had been managed by foreign concerns. Then on May 16, the National Assembly raised royalties on the four heavy crude oil projects of the Orinoco to 33.3 percent, from 16.6 percent, and is planning to increase taxes to 50 percent, from 34 percent.
The government says it is preparing to capture a bigger stake in the Orinoco — turning control of projects that produce 600,000 barrels a day over to Venezuela’s state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela. Energy officials say the government could take up to 60 percent control of the so-called strategic associations, as the projects are called. No timetable has been laid out, but leaders in the National Assembly, which is controlled by Mr. Chávez’s forces, say it is only a matter of time.
“With the high price of petroleum on the market, we are going to share in the excess earnings of the strategic associations,” Mario Isea, president of the assembly’s hydrocarbons commission, which is allied with Mr. Chávez, said in an interview. “They have gone years without paying royalties and effectively paying commercial taxes instead of petroleum taxes.”
In the mid-1990′s, President Rafael Caldera’s government, eager to develop oil discovered in the 1930′s, opened the region to foreign investment because the state oil company had neither the capital nor the technology to develop the Orinoco’s semisolid sludge. Oil prices were low, world supplies easily met demand and Venezuela had on its hands a crude oil so heavy, so filled with impurities, that it was not even known as oil, but rather bitumen.
But then, given a virtual tax holiday intended to stimulate investment — the royalty rate was 1 percent — the multinationals embarked on a process of drilling and, more recently, upgrades that permit refining Orinoco crude oil into a lighter, marketable product.
In the Hamaca field, an area the size of Houston that produces oil for Chevron, ConocoPhillips and the Venezuelan state company, oil now slurps through an octopus-like system of horizontal wells that reach out as far as 8,000 feet.
The drill bits are equipped with sensors that emit seismic signals measuring what they are passing through — whether rock, sandstone, fine shale, sand or clay.
“Obviously, we’d love to find deposits with sweet light crude in shallow fields,” said Mr. Nelson, who carefully explains the complex challenges his company faces. “That’s not where energy resources are, so we have to adapt.”
Back in a control room near his office in this Caribbean port, geologists and engineers monitor wall-size screens and make quick decisions whether the drill needs to bore ahead, or move up or down.
The idea is to have the drill moving fast, at hundreds of feet an hour, into blue-shaded patches, which signal porous material that would contain crude oil.
“Our goal is to first find sand and once we find it, stay in it,” said Mike Waite, a senior geophysicist who leads the team monitoring the drilling.
Just west of here, gunk from the Orinoco is turned into oil at the Jose Industrial Complex, a virtual city of pipes, water-treatment lagoons, smokestacks, pits and storage tanks. Since the first shipment of Hamaca oil left aboard the tanker Overseas Sophie two years ago, the project has produced an average of 180,000 barrels a day.
Mr. Nelson said the project, among the most intricate in the world, is worth it, “but you have to put some elbow grease into it.”
“These projects are big,” he said. “They’re complicated. They have a lot of moving parts. You have a lot of complicated negotiations with governments. It’s not a business of instant gratification.”
All told, according to a recent Deutsche Bank report on the Orinoco projects, $17 billion has been invested, about $3.5 billion in the Hamaca project alone. Big energy companies, including some from Brazil and China, would like nothing more than free rein to ramp up investments and produce more.
Ali Moshiri, Chevron’s Latin America exploration and production group chief, said in April that Venezuela needed $200 billion to develop the heavy oil reserves.
“There’s a sense of urgency, not a sense of luxury,” said Mr. Moshiri, who predicted that 90 percent of Venezuela’s production would come from the Orinoco in the years ahead.
The government, to be sure, talks of increasing production to 5.8 million barrels a day by 2012, from 2.6 million barrels now. But Venezuela, which as a leading voice in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries has advocated a particularly tough form of oil nationalism, wants to achieve this on its own terms.
Its energy minister, Rafael Ramírez, who is also the president of Petróleos de Venezuela, said in an interview that the deals that multinational companies signed with the government in the 1990′s were “absurd,” giving Venezuela little in return.
“They are beholden to their stockholders, and we are beholden to our country,” Mr. Ramírez said.
Venezuelan officials contend that exploration and production in the Orinoco has become easy, even risk-free, with a barrel of oil costing less than $1 to produce, down from $2 in 1995.
Energy officials here assert that the multinationals exaggerated the technical challenges and costs, swindling the state.
They also argue that the companies have made extraordinary profits — and will continue to do so even with higher taxes and royalties.
“They have made a fortune,” said Mr. Isea, the president of the hydrocarbons commission. “This remains an excellent business. I do not think anyone will leave.”
Venezuelan officials say their measures are enshrined in a 2001 law that says the state oil company must have a 51 percent stake in projects; they sidestep questions about previous contracts being grandfathered in.
Mr. Ramírez and lawmakers also say that a 1945 hydrocarbons law permits the government to raise royalties when the price of oil goes up.
The foreign companies, trying to avoid controversy, do not publicly dispute the Venezuelan government’s statements. But Larry Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, an industry-supported analysis group in New York, said: “In Venezuela today, I don’t believe contracts have meaning. And it affects the production, no matter what the Venezuelans say.”
The game of oil brinkmanship continues, with Mr. Ramírez saying that the companies have few options.
“It’s no secret for anyone that the big deposits, the giant ones, are finished,” he said. “There are no new oil regions that compare to the Orinoco Belt.”
The recent Deutsche Bank report agreed, saying that “few are likely to quickly turn their backs on reserves of the order seen in Venezuela.”
“They may not like Chávez,” the report added. “They may not like his regime. But they also know that he has probably done as much to support high oil prices through his rhetoric and posturing as any individual. This president is no fool. And at the end of the day, you go where the oil is.”
AFP PHOTO/HOANG DINH Nam
