Islands of Sanity

Even though the PeakOil message board/forum contains a fair share of lunatic ramblings and threads that either don't go anywhere or circle back on themselves, a couple of posters make it worthwhile.

Frequent poster Smiley does quite a bit of digging and frequently provides good analyses. The linked post describes the interesting words coming out of Mexico and the high probability that the big Gulf of Mexico oil rigs have reached a peak. Smiley's thread maintains interest too in that he attracts some other sane commenters:

SD Scott in response to Smiley: One of their crude oil pump stations burned down recently. I'm not sure if it was pumping out of the Canterell field. Pemex is hard on equipment, to say the least.

I was designing the electrical/control systems for a new pipeline project for Pemex in the Villahermosa area. The pipeline capacity is 1.2 million BPD. That project has been put on hold, due to "lack of project definition". It may have something to do with Pemex recently downgrading the proven reserves in some deepwater field. Not sure on that one though.

I'm also somewhat involved in redesigning the Pemex pump station that burned down. It won't be commissioned until late this year. I've heard there are other pump stations that have "issues".

I just finished a gas compression project for a platform in the north sea. The piping and valve arrangement had me curious. They have it so the wellhead can be routed directly to the station discharge or it can be switched to flow through any compression stage. When I first looked at the drawing, I asked why, and the guy said that as the well depletes, they will need to add compression to it. That's probably not an uncommon setup, but it made me think to ask this guy what the north sea situation is like. He made it sound like the whole place was pretty old and depleted.

Look for veteran poster Pops too. This thread describes the Unplanner getting the shaft and the royal ignore at a local planning meeting.