The Weekly Wrap: September 17, 2010

Macondo well to be "declared dead" this Sunday. Five months after a blow-out caused 4.9 million barrels of oil to spill into the Gulf of Mexico, the Macondo well is on track to be permanently sealed off by Sunday, according to National Incident Commander Thad Allen. On Thursday the relief well, which BP has been drilling since May 2, finally intersected with the blown-out well where it meets the oil reservoir some 2.5 miles below the Gulf’s surface. Cement and heavy drilling mud are now being pumped down the relief well to kill the Macondo well once and for all. As the well is sealed, BP expects to scale back its spill response, a sign that cheered investors and ratings agencies on Thursday. Meanwhile, embattled BP CEO Tony Hayward, who will be stepping down from the post on October 1, made his first public appearance in weeks on Wednesday when he testified before a U.K. parliamentary committee. One week after BP published a report on the causes of the Gulf oil spill, Hayward told the committee that the company had exhibited "a lack of rigor and a lack of oversight of contractors," admitting that there had been a level of industry "complacency" towards offshore drilling risks prior to the accident.

China’s coal and carbon conundrum. As Europe takes steps to scale back its coal usage, China remains as dependent as ever on black diamonds to fuel its rapid economic growth: The International Energy Agency has predicted that Chinese coal usage will more than double by 2050. After IEA executive director Nobuo Tanaka outlined this week that China’s adoption of carbon capture and sequestration technology would be crucial to combating climate change, Elisabeth Rosenthal at the New York Times Green blog describes the challenge of making this adoption happen. Carbon sequestration is still an expensive technology, and it’s not likely that China will be willing to embrace it on the massive scale needed to reduce its carbon emissions, unless it has outside investment. Beijing is already facing huge problems of meeting growth and energy efficiency goals at the same time, but given that it has poured $1.5 billion into green technologies, including $300 million for electric cars, attempts to mitigate the effects of its primary energy source may not be too far off.

A new use for those old oil wells. While the Interior Department on Wednesday ordered all non-producing oil wells in the Gulf to be permanently plugged, these wells might prove to be a new business opportunity for carbon capturing technology. BP and Shell may begin storing carbon dioxide by pumping the greenhouse gas into old oil wells in the North Sea, which could net them a sizeable profit as they work to extract the remaining oil in these wells. Though the costs of capturing, transporting, and pumping carbon dioxide into the wells remain high, turning older oilfields into CO2 storage sites could be a viable means of reducing carbon emissions.

As if the oil wasn’t enough… Khalid al-Falih, the head of Saudi Aramco, revealed this week that Saudi Arabia could hold massive reserves of unconventional gas, totaling in the trillions of cubic feet. This is good news for the kingdom, which has lately been pouring more money into gas development than into oil, in a bid to satisfy its rapidly growing domestic energy demand. Burning oil for power generation is expensive and polluting, and a shift to natural gas-fired power plants would free up more oil for export, where profit margins are higher. However, developing the unconventional gas reserves poses new challenges; "fracking," the procedure used to access shale gas in the United States, requires large amounts of water — clearly a problem for a country where water may be more valuable than oil. Aramco says it is working with the major oil companies to look at alternative extracting solutions.

The West’s geothermal boom. Clean, renewable, and reliable, geothermal energy seems to be the perfect green energy source, but it has usually been difficult to develop due to the costs of locating geothermal resources on a commercially viable scale. However, technological advancements and government funding are giving geothermal energy a boost in the American West. Geothermal producers have been using such methods as aerial mapping and reflection seismology — which uses man-made vibrations to map out geothermal resources underground — to reduce exploration and development costs. At the same time, millions of dollars in federal grants towards renewable energy development, as well as state renewable portfolio standards, are suddenly making geothermal energy an attractive alternative in the West, where the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that there could be 30,000 megawatts of untapped geothermal power. Having proved itself in Iceland, geothermal energy could soon become a major electricity source for Nevada, Utah, and California.

Oil slips on lagging economic indicators. After topping $77 earlier this week, oil prices began a long slide, closing the week at $73.66 on Friday in New York. Crude saw a 3.7 percent loss for the week, the biggest weekly decline since mid-August and reaching its lowest price so far this month. Earlier in the week, pipeline operator Enbridge Energy reopened a major pipeline from Canada to the U.S., releasing tension in the markets that had helped push prices up last week after a leak near Chicago forced the pipeline’s shutdown. Rising U.S. stocks and a falling dollar kept crude above $75 until Thursday, but continued high U.S. oil inventories and reports showing a drop in consumer confidence (indicating a negative economic outlook) contributed to a fall in prices towards the end of the week. Analysts continue to forecast oil in the $70 to $80 range, with Credit Suisse revising its estimates for 2011 prices down from $80 a barrel to $72.50.