| Past, present Iraqi oil revenue management comes under fire - Oil & Gas Journal
Past and present management of Iraq's oil revenue continues to be questioned by international watchdog groups.
The International Advisory and Monitoring Board (IAMB), the United Nations-mandated agency charged with monitoring how the US spends Iraq's oil revenue, criticized the Coalition Provision Authority (CPA) Tuesday for not furnishing information in a timely manner to its independent auditor KPMG International.
The Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) uses petrodollars to fund rebuilding projects; CPA manages revenues, disbursements, and account balances in consultation with the Iraqi Governing Council, the Iraqi Minister of Finance, and the Governor of the Central Bank of Iraq.
"The IAMB regrets, despite its repeated requests, the delay in receiving reports on audits undertaken by various agencies on sole-sourced contracts funded by the DFI. In the light of these delays the IAMB decided to commission a special audit to determine the extent of sole-sourced contracts," the group said after meeting in Paris earlier this week.
"The IAMB was also informed by the CPA that contrary to earlier representations the award of metering contracts have been delayed and continues to urge the expeditious resolution of this critical issue."
IAMB also complained about the CPA dragging its feet on information needed to complete audits of the State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO).
KPMG expects to issue a final audit report by July 14. That's nearly 2 weeks after CPA formally transfers control to a US-endorsed interim government that will remain in place until elections are held, possibly next year. Some government agencies, most notably the oil ministry, have already been under Iraqi control for several weeks.
IAMB is tentatively scheduled to meet July 14-15 and again 2 months later, on Sept 7-8.
IAMB's comments come about a week after a human rights group Open Society Institute criticized how the US is spending oil revenues before the June 30 government transition date. OSI had specific worries about a DFI board approving nearly $2 billion in Iraqi funds for reconstruction projects this month.
"With so much money available for cash giveaways, and so little planning on how the process will work, it will be all but impossible to avoid corruption and waste" said Svetlana Tsalik, director of OSI's Revenue Watch.
Tsalik alleged that the money coming out of DFI is going to the same places the US Congress has already earmarked US taxpayer funds. For example, DFI allocated $500 million for Iraqi security forces, even though Congress allocated $3.2 billion for the same purpose; and $315 million for the electricity sector despite a $5.5 billion US appropriation for the same sector. OSI also has serious reservations about a $460 million disbursement toward oil projects that appears to mirror the $1.7 billion allocated by Congress for the same purpose.
As of presstime, CPA officials could not be reached for comment.
A June 8 UN Security Council resolution requires the new interim government to satisfy all outstanding obligations against the DFI made before June 30. But OSI said that leaves the new interim Iraqi government "with no choice but to honor the program review board's questionable expenditures."
Concerns by IAMB and others over the US's current oil revenue management come at a time the UN is coming under its own scrutiny for past involvement in the Oil-for-Food program. The UN established the relief effort in 1996 to allow former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government to use oil sales to pay for food, medicine, and infrastructure maintenance while international sanctions remained in place.
A recent General Accounting Office report said the program appeared to accomplish one of its main goals: to keep the population from starving. During 1996-2001, the average food intake increased to 2,300 cal/day from 1,300 cal/day. But during 1997-2002, the agency estimates that the former Iraqi regime acquired $10.1 billion in illegal revenues, including $5.7 billion from smuggled oil exports, and $4.4 billion from oil sale surcharges and other illicit commissions from suppliers selling goods to Iraq under the UN program.
The UN's Security Council, which includes the US, allowed the Iraq government to negotiate oil contracts directly with oil companies and traders but a UN office was responsible for examining the contracts for price and value. GAO said it remains unclear how that function was performed; UN external audits have found no evidence of program fraud.
Meanwhile other investigations continue. The US Attorney for the Southern District of New York is in the process of issuing subpoenas to companies that bought oil from the now defunct UN program. Companies have not been accused of wrongdoing but have been asked to supply documents related to those oil sales. About half of the oil sold under the UN program went to US refiners. There are also concerns that UN officials themselves participated in fraud but that as yet has been unproven. Companies who have already been issued subpoenas include ExxonMobil Corp., ChevronTexaco Corp., Valero Energy Corp., and Premcor Inc.
US lawmakers have also expressed an interest in holding hearings on the subject although no hearings have been scheduled for the summer.
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| A Terrorist Premium on Oil - National Review
Oil prices, at almost $38 a barrel, reflect a speculative premium for a potentially major supply interruption of $10 a barrel or more. What kind of interruption? A terrorist attack, for one.
Inventories typically dictate commodity prices. If inventory levels are low, prices are high; if inventories rise, prices fall. The correlation between movements in U.S. crude-oil inventories held by oil companies (which are reported by the Department of Energy weekly) and the price of oil is particularly strong. However, this relationship appears to have broken down beginning in January this year.
U.S. crude-oil inventories held by the industry have built by nearly 34 million barrels year to date, one of the largest increases ever for this time of year. In addition, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) has increased its holdings by 24.9 million barrels so far in 2004. Clearly, with inventories building — and building rapidly — oil supply exceeds demand. It may be hard to believe, but even with strong petroleum demand and oil prices at today’s high level, the world is actually oversupplied with oil.
Industry inventories of 303 million barrels, as of June 11, are consistent with oil prices of $24 to $28 a barrel. The difference between this price range and current prices represents a terrorist premium.
Although the risk that oil supplies may be interrupted by terrorist acts certainly appears higher today than in many years, overall the odds of a major prolonged stoppage of oil flows caused by terrorism are low — perhaps one in twenty. While oil output fluctuates daily and is influenced by political issues, labor strikes, war, and unrest in developing countries, there has not been a significant interruption in oil supplies owing to terrorism since before the September 11 attacks.
Major oil production and transportation facilities around the world are considered to be terrorist targets and, accordingly, are fortified. Although security at facilities might be penetrated, heavy fortification, at least so far, may have led terrorist groups to go after “softer” targets such as western workers in Muslim countries.
Recent terrorist acts in Saudi Arabia are especially concerning. Oil prices have risen with each report of a terrorist act within the kingdom and following reports of Saudi police action against terrorist suspects — despite the fact that not a single drop of oil production has been affected.
As for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, President Bush appears committed to building the SPR to its authorized capacity of 700 million barrels (currently the reserve holds about 661 million barrels). If the Bush administration will not use the SPR to manipulate oil prices and will only release oil in the event of a supply disruption, then there is little danger of the SPR “depressing” prices ahead of a terrorist event.
The key question is: What will take the terrorist premium out of oil prices? Even OPEC’s decision to relax quota restrictions has not pushed oil prices down as much as one might expect.
It is likely that the lack of an event will make oil prices fall. In another three months we could be awash in oil. Consider the following: If supply exceeds demand by 2 million barrels a day through September (current oversupply is closer to 3 million barrels a day, with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Nigeria, and the UAE having pledged to increase production in the next few months), and 25 percent of this comes to the U.S. (as would be typical), and the U.S. government continues to build the SPR at one million barrels per week, then industry stockpiles could reach 340 million barrels by the end of September. The last time inventories were this high was in March 1999, when oil prices were $11 a barrel.
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| Attacks on Iraqi oil infrastructure strike blow against OPEC - Financial Express - Bangladesh
Sabotage attacks in Iraq this week paralysed its oil exports and thwarted the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)'s decision to hike output, increasing the pressure on high crude prices at the expense of world economic growth.
World oil prices, which had eased after OPEC agreed to raise production on June 3 in Beirut, surged in London and New York.
In London, the price of benchmark Brent North Sea crude oil for August delivery rose by 33 cents to 36.54 dollars per barrel in early trading.
And New York's benchmark contract, light sweet crude for delivery in July, advanced 19 cents to 38.65 dollars per barrel in pre-opening electronic deals.
Prices already rose by more than one dollar on both sides of the Atlantic Thursday in the wake of twin suicide car bombings in Baghdad that killed 41 people and wounded more than 140 other.
The sabotage of the Iraqi pipelines raised fresh concerns about production capacity and the room for manoeuvre in case of a crisis amid firm global oil demand.
Iraq itself has lost more than 200 million dollars in vital revenues over the past seven months due to 130 attacks on its oil pipelines, prime minister Iyad Allawi said.
Aside from the damage to desperately needed reconstruction in the war-battered country, the oil market has been deprived of a substantial amount of crude.
But with demand rampant, OPEC members have less and less extra supply to make up for any loss of Iraqi output. They are already pumping close to full capacity in order to calm soaring oil prices.
For Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, however, the extra 50 billion dollars generated by the overheated price of crude, is a golden opportunity for their economies, analysts said.
In 2003, Manama netted a 6.8-per cent increase in oil production revenue to three billion dinars (8.1 billion dollars) compared to 7.6 billion dollars in 2002, Economy and Finance Minister Abdullah Hassan Seif said.
Meanwhile, the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was preparing to finalise a free trade accord with Syria, set to abolish customs duties for goods produced by the concerned countries, the GCC said.
The talks are part of efforts to rid inter-Arab trade, which forms only eight percent of Arab countries' commerce, of all customs tariffs from 2005 with the planned establishment of a free trade zone for the entire region.
Lebanon is also poised to invite tenders to explore for oil and gas, both onshore and offshore, Energy Minister Ayyoub Mhayyed said last week, as storm clouds gather over Beirut's colossal 34-billion-dollar debt.
Reuters from New York reports: World oil prices rose in cautious trade yesterday as dealers were skeptical over a planned partial resumption of Iraq's exports at the weekend, four days after sabotage attacks cut off supplies.
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An Oil Enigma: Production Falls Even as Reserves Rise - New York Times
For six consecutive years, ChevronTexaco has had good news for anyone worried that the world is running out of oil: the company has found more oil and natural gas than it has produced. Over that time, ChevronTexaco's proven oil and gas reserves have risen 14 percent, more than one billion barrels.
But near the bottom of ChevronTexaco's financial filings is a much less promising statistic. For each of those years, ChevronTexaco's wells have produced less oil and gas than the year before. Even as reserves have risen, the company's annual output has fallen by almost 15 percent, and the declines have continued recently despite a company promise to increase production in 2002.
ChevronTexaco is not the only big oil company whose production is falling despite rising reserves, though it has the largest gap. As consumers, economists and governments around the world wonder if oil supplies can keep pace with rising demand, production trends at the industry's publicly traded companies are not promising.
Collectively, they paint a picture of an industry that has depleted nearly all of the world's easily exploited reserves outside the Middle East and that is now struggling to sustain production, much less increase it. Fears about supply shortfalls and rising demand have already caused prices to climb about 20 percent this year, hovering around $40 a barrel. The four biggest companies own only about 4 percent of the world's reserves, which are mostly government-held, but they offer a unique glimpse of supply trends because they must disclose their reserves and production each year.
Historically, proven reserves and output have moved in tandem. Industry experts disagree why the relationship has broken down. Although the reserves are only estimates, federal rules require companies to calculate them conservatively.
Some analysts and the companies themselves take a relatively benign view of the production declines, promising that output will soon rise again as big new projects come online around the globe.
ChevronTexaco said its production had declined in part because of asset sales and production agreements that allocate it less oil when prices are high, as they are now, than when prices are low, as they were in 1998. The company says it expects production to stay flat through 2005, then begin rising in 2006 as output increases from fields in Chad, Kazakhstan, Venezuela and Angola.
But ChevronTexaco has promised to reverse its production declines before. In 2002 the company said that it expected its output to rise more than 20 percent by 2006, a forecast it has now dropped.
Royal Dutch/Shell, the world's third-largest oil company, admitted this year that it overstated its oil and gas reserves by 22 percent, the equivalent of 4.5 billion barrels of oil. Regulators and prosecutors in Europe and the United States are investigating Shell, which in March forced out Sir Philip Watts, its chairman.
Some analysts say that the debacle at Shell proves that companies sometimes bend the rules to satisfy Wall Street's intense hunger for new reserves.
In the 1990's, many public companies used aggressive accounting gimmicks — some legal, some not — to satisfy investors' demands that they report higher earnings. Oil companies face similar pressures to build reserves. And intentionally or not, some companies may have booked reserves that are not technically or economically viable, said Matt Simmons, a Houston investment banker who has warned of a potential supply crisis. Outsiders have essentially no way to know whether estimates of reserves are accurate, he said.
"We're going to have another Shell," Mr. Simmons said. "They're not the only company that got optimistic on proved reserves." Neither Mr. Simmons nor anyone else is asserting that ChevronTexaco did anything illegal.
Once a year, companies announce their "reserve replacement ratio," telling investors whether they have found enough new oil and gas during the year to make up for their production.
Energy investors scrutinize the reserve replacement ratio more closely than any other measure of corporate performance, said Fadel Gheit, senior energy analyst with Oppenheimer & Company. Every company aims to replace at least 100 percent of its production every year. And for the last decade, the industry's four giants, Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell and ChevronTexaco, have met that goal with remarkable consistency, at least until Shell's admission in January.
But outsiders cannot tell whether companies are properly estimating their reserves, Mr. Gheit said. The calculations are extremely complicated, and companies do not disclose the raw production and seismic data that would enable an outside analyst to check their estimates. Nor are the reserves subject to third-party audit.
"Reserves are very important but are extremely difficult to verify," Mr. Gheit said.
Oddly, Wall Street pays less attention to actual production, which is generally relegated to a few lines in quarterly and annual reports. But output data deserves more attention, because reserves can be manipulated more easily than production, said John H. Lichtblau, chief executive of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation in New York.
"Reserves are an estimate of what's in the ground; production is what you see coming out of the wells," Mr. Lichtblau said. "You don't have to take their production on faith."
The fall in production at the big oil companies does not portend an immediate crisis in the industry. The four so-called supermajors produce only a small fraction of the world's oil; together, they extracted 3.2 billion barrels last year, about 10 percent of production worldwide. (Some analysts classify Total, a French company slightly smaller than ChevronTexaco, as a fifth supermajor.)
The supermajors control an even smaller share of global reserves. Together, the four companies have about 40 billion barrels of oil, or 4 percent of the world's proven reserves. They also have about 150 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, enough to produce the energy of 25 billion barrels of oil.
No one really knows how much oil remains worldwide, or whether existing fields can be quickly squeezed should more oil suddenly be needed. Estimates range from just under one trillion barrels remaining worldwide, about 34 years at current production levels, to more than two trillion.
Saudi Arabia alone says it has proven reserves of 260 billion barrels of oil.
But these estimates are far from exact. For most countries, the details of reserves and output are closely guarded secrets. During the 1980's, the members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries sharply raised their reserve estimates, because OPEC's output quotas were based in part on national reserves.
"Countries want a higher allocation, so they tweak their numbers," Mr. Gheit said. "Everybody lies about the reserve, so you want to make sure that you lie even more than the guy next to you."
On the other hand, the Securities and Exchange Commission requires companies like ChevronTexaco to disclose detailed production data and reserve estimates to their investors each year.
The S.E.C. rules are deliberately conservative and intended to prevent companies from overstating their reserves. The mere existence of oil and gas does not make a proven reserve; companies are supposed to report reserves as proven only if they can be recovered with current technology and are economically viable.
Reserves classified as proven do not have to be producing at the time. But companies must usually have made a financial commitment to bring them into production before classifying them as proven.
New discoveries, lease extensions that give a company more time to exploit a field, or a more optimistic view of a field's potential are all cause to increase reserves. On the other hand, companies must cut reserves if they think that their initial estimates have been too high.
"The studies that I have seen show there have been upward and downward revisions, but over time, the revisions have been modestly upward," said Gene Gillespie, senior energy analyst at Howard Weil. "You're measuring something that's a couple miles under the surface of the earth that you can't see. It amazes me that over time they come as close as they do."
But in the long run, actual production is the most important proof that reserves exist. And the relationship between reserves and production is weakening.
At Exxon Mobil, oil reserves rose from 9.6 billion barrels at the beginning of 1994 to 12.1 billion barrels at the start of this year, a 26 percent increase. But Exxon Mobil's production fell 2 percent, from 909 million barrels in 1994 to 893 million last year.
At ChevronTexaco, oil reserves jumped from 6.9 billion barrels at the beginning of 1994 to 7.7 billion barrels in January 1998 to 8.6 billion barrels at the start of this year. But after surging from 644 million barrels in 1994 to 757 million in 1998, production plunged to 641 million barrels last year.
At BP, the data is considerably more confusing, because the company has had so many acquisitions and sales over the last several years. Still, BP's production at its wholly owned fields has plunged to 562 million last year from 672 million barrels in 1998, while its reserves have risen to 7.5 billion from 6.5 billion over that span.
(BP, ChevronTexaco and Exxon Mobil are all the products of mergers within the last decade; the reserves and production data reflect what the companies would have done if they had existed in their current form for the entire period.)
Shell has actually increased its production slightly since 1994, despite the embarrassment of its announcement in January that it had improperly classified billions of barrels of reserves as proven instead of probable or possible. Shell's admission shows just how muddied reserve data can be, analysts say; the reserves it reclassified are real, but they will not be developed for years because of technical and political problems, so they should not be called proven. In coming years, if those problems can be solved, Shell may be able to once again classify them as proven, said Jennifer Rowland, senior oil analyst at J. P. Morgan.
"It's not like all of a sudden those assets are gone," Ms. Rowland said.
Mr. Simmons, the Houston investment banker, said that the output declines suggested that the companies needed to disclose more information about the performance of individual fields so that outside analysts could judge the companies' reserves estimates.
"What we have now is meaningless data," Mr. Simmons said. Big oil companies once prided themselves on conservative reserve estimates. But today, to justify multibillion-dollar investments in politically or technologically risky fields, companies have become much more aggressive, he said.
Gerald Kepes, managing director for PFC Energy, a consulting firm based in Washington and Paris, said that the slowdown in production underlined the transition period that big publicly traded energy companies face.
"The areas that have been long producing are really starting to become very mature," Mr. Kepes said. "For the integrated oil companies, more of the remaining reserves and reserve potential are in areas where the risks are higher."
Combined with a survey from the International Energy Agency that shows rising demand, the drop in production at the supermajors offers more evidence that energy prices may stay high for the foreseeable future, said Steven Pfeifer, senior oil analyst at Merrill Lynch.
"The data is starting to say that underlying all this, the supply-demand balance is tighter than we thought," Mr. Pfeifer said. "The maturing geological base is starting to rear its ugly head."
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