Turkish installed electricity generation capacity reached 50004 MW according to TEİAŞ. It is also noted that peak demand at the system concurred on the Feb 1st, 2011 at 1740 hours with 32675MW. Top daily demand has exceeded 670 GWh on the same day. As of Feb 23rd, 2011, the breakdown of installed capacity is as follows (check official sources to make sure)

• Natural Gas: 18361.75 MW (including mixed fuels)
• Hydro: 16159.1 MW
• Lignite: 8139.6 MW
• Exported Coal: 3281 MW
• Fuel Oil : 1448.78 MW
• Wind : 1357.95 MW
• Other: 826.7 MW
• Hard Coal(domestic production): 335 MW
• Geothermal: 94.2 MW

Source: TEİAŞ

According to concluding statement of "Extraordinary IEF Ministerial Meeting" (Feb 22,2010), my favourite oil database will include natural gas data as well as capacity additions.(IEF : International Energy Forum)

Jodidb.org is a website publishing oil statistics for both exporting and importing countries'.

Starting from the final word, the dialogue forum aims to:

• Mitigate energy market volatility and future uncertainty
• Better data transparency-Internationally coordinated regulation
• a better common understanding of energy market trends and energy outlooks

Concluding statement has a summary of three different discussions:

1. Physical and financial markets’ linkages and energy markets regulation : no censensus

• 1st group "underlined the role of excessive financial speculation in the surge in prices and volatility"
• 2nd group "especially those involved in price reporting, felt that spot markets set their own prices, independently of any influence from financial markets"
• 3rd group "it is difficult to construct theoretically and test empirically ... whether market drives the physical or the other way around. "

2. Shared analysis of energy market trends and outlook

Aim: improve clarity and understanding of the various outlooks. (there are comparisons between IEA and OPEC's forecasts)

• both the IEA and OPEC’s projections were similar in terms of supply/demand growth figures for 2011
• uncertainities : future demand, economic growth and technological change.

3.Jodi Database (most importantly)The extension of JODI to cover monthly natural gas data is now well under way, The extension of JODI to annual data on upstream and downstream capacities and expansion plans will start with oil and is currently under way, with first results expected at the earliest in 2012.

Ref:
http://www.ief.org/whatsnew/Documents/EMM%20Joint%20Concluding%20Statement.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Energy_Forum
http://www.ief.org/whatsnew/Pages/ExtraordinaryIEFMinisterialMeeting,22February2011,Riyadh.aspx
http://www.jodidb.org/TableViewer/tableView.aspx

There is plenty of discussion about the spread between WTI-Brent. There are numerous articles on this. What I want to show you is the spread between WTI and others. Econbrowser has a nice graph of this. Textbook says "if there is price differences between two or more markets, arbitrage opportunities exits". (Check this)

Now there are reasons for this price differentials. Paper oil ( "buy WTI futures and sell Brent futures" ) is one of them, but speculators are not as active as in 2007. But website suggests a few solutions:

• Running the Seaway pipeline, which is currently delivering oil from the (Freeport, Texas) Gulf of Mexico to Oklahoma, in reverse. ConocoPhilips is not interested in this idea because of a fear for political criticsm and most importantly on economical grounds ("As an integrated refiner and producer, it can take its profits either as refinery margin or producer-seller.") . “A reversal would send up to 350,000 barrels a day of crude from Cushing directly to Houston, significantly releasing pressure on the Cushing complex,” said JBC Energy GmbH, a Vienna-based researcher. "
• "It ... costs $6 to ship a barrel from Cushing to the Gulf of Mexico by rail or $10 by truck"

Ref: Econbrowser
http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2011/02/brentwti_spread.html

• Libya's oil production (crude+NGL): 1.69 million b/d (Jan 2011)
• 1.49 mb/d is exported. Domestic consumption 270 kb/d
• 1.2 mb/d is exported to IEA countries.
• 150 kb/d is exported to China
• East Libya exports 684-958 kb/d (is there a mistake on page 2?)
• West Libya exports 199-270 kb/d
• Biggest importer for Libyan Jet Kerosene and Residual Fuel Oil is Italy, where Turkey, Spain, Germany, Greece and France has minute shares. (page 3, bottom)


• Libya exports natural gas to Italy(via Greenstream underwater pipeline) and LNG to Spain. Italy imports 26 mcm/d. Spain imports 1.5 mcm/d

On Feb. 2nd 2011 :

A trio of events - loss of supply, higher demand and maintenance outages - led to Wednesday's emergency rolling blackouts across Texas and spiking power prices as the grid operator for most of the state struggled to accommodate a brutal winter storm.

Here is my collection of events from various links...
In 2008, Texas has been on the edge of a rolling blackout.

"On February 26, 2008, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) called for an Emergency Electric Curtailment Plan (EECP) at 18:41 due to a worsening imbalance between generation and load which led to a decline in system frequency"

Read here (http://www1.eere.energy.gov/windandhydro/pdfs/43373.pdf)

In 2011, (Feb 2 & Feb 3) Texas has suffered from blackouts. The Oil Drum has a nice summary of the events : ( http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7449 )
A summary of events is available from this site : (http://www.oncor.com/news/newsrel/detail.aspx?prid=1297)

"Wednesday’s peak demand is currently projected to be more than 54,000 MW between 8-9 p.m. , and more than 58,000 – which would be a new winter record – between 7-8 a.m. on Thursday. The current winter peak demand record is 56,334 MW which occurred Feb. 2, between 7 and 8 p.m.
The grid continues to have about 2,700 MW of generation capacity unavailable because of unplanned or forced outages."

These 2700 MW of generating capacity are probably these two plants:

Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said the Luminant-owned 1,640 MW Oak Grove plant east of Temple and the 1,137 MW Sandow plant near Rockdale were among the plants knocked offline by the storm. Oak Grove suffered a broken pipe and Sandow was hampered by a frozen pipe. Allan Koenig, communications director for Luminant, said its Oak Grove and Sandow power plants "accounted for just a small percentage of the 50 units and 7,000 megawatts."

So it was cold weather, pipes and low pressure on natural gas lines:

Wednesday. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said this is something that “should not happen.” Dewhurst said he was told that water pipes at two plants, Oak Grove and Sand Hill, forced them to cut electricity production. Natural gas power plants that should have provided back up had difficulty starting due to low pressure in the supply lines, also caused by the cold weather.

I am not quite sure about this:

But, Fraser said, some power cuts affected some stations for compressing natural gas — so without power they couldn't pump gas, causing some gas power plants to go offline

The complaints followed :

"The blackouts left many people angry and frustrated. Cuellar said Oncor’s call center has been overwhelmed with about 60,000 calls an hour."

Also a family blamed these outages for causing their son's death

So the market worked and prices soared to 3000$/ MWh

As a result of the outages and demand, real-time power prices peaked around $3,000/MWh during some intervals Wednesday afternoon.

Average prices at this time of year normally would be less than $100/MWh, Doggett said.

Emergency measures started:

In addition to the default Energy Emergency Alert 0, or normal operations, there are four EEA levels: EEA Level 1, EEA Level 2A, EEA Level 2B and EEA Level 3, which is the most extreme.

ERCOT first contacted market participants at 4:45 am CST on Wednesday to warn the companies of inclement weather. ERCOT declared EEA Level 2A at 5:17 am

Less than a half-hour later, ERCOT declared EEA Level 3 at 5:43 am, at which point the grid operator asked distributors to shed firm load of 1,000 MW, said ERCOT spokeswoman Dottie Roark.

A timeline and detailed discussion is available from here:

More information about Texas home heating is available here

As a final reading, I offer "Normal Accident Theory" from NASA:

Failure in one part (material, human, or organization) may
coincide with the failure of an entirely different part. This
unforeseeable combination can cause cascading failures of
other parts.
In complex systems these possible combinations are practically
limitless.

IEA has published its new research on Chinese oil companies. The report is full of interesting facts. Also if you follow the sources for graphs you can find valuable reports and presentations such as "Facts Global Energy". My personal feeling is, it is another politically motivated report. Since you can not decouple Chinese Government relations with African countries from Chinese oil companies investments in these countries. However report claims, Chinese oil companies are not the puppets of the government.

IEA facts on China and oil

• In the next five years, almost half of global oil demand growth will come from China.
• In 2010, China imported 4.8 million barrels per day of crude oil, up 17.5 % from 2009.
• By late 2010, Chinese NOCs operated in 31 countries and had equity oil in 20 of these countries.
• In 2010, China’s NOCs invested nearly USD 16 billion in acquiring assets, such as refineries, in Latin America.
• 77% of China’s crude oil imports pass through the Strait of Malacca. By 2015, it is estimated that crude oil passing through the Strait to China will rise to 3.5 million barrels per day. In 2009, 3.1 million barrels per day went through the Strait

Links:
http://www.fgenergy.com/?page=article_type&action=read&id=17
http://www.iea.org/papers/2011/overseas_china.pdf

A graph from the IEA's report WEO 2010 reveals that IEA believes that the world crude oil production (not including NGL or others) has peaked in 2006 or nearby:

Previously, I asked Mr. Fatih Birol, chief economist of IEA in a conference(in 2008) at METU Alumni Association, whether world will see 100 million b/d (current production of crude+ngl+other is hovering around 85-89 mb/d). He briefly described the nuances between crude oil, crude oil+NGL or other associates of crude oil. Then he stated "I don't think so"(for crude oil only). World Energy Outlook 2010 steps further and addresses a peak in crude oil only production as I marked on the graph.
Wikileaks reveal some interesting documents regarding Saudi Production. Sadad Al Husseini retired head of exploration and production for Saudi Aramco, states that Saudi Production can hardly hit 12.5 million b/d and according to documents :

" as he believes that Aramco’s reserves are overstated by as much as 300 billion bbls of “speculative resources.”
the former Aramco board member does believe that a global output plateau will be
reached in the next 5 to 10 years and will last some 15 years, until world oil
production begins to decline." (Wikileaks)

The cable is from December 10, 2007. But there is nothing to confidential about it. Sadad Al Husseini said these things before. He previously to energy bulletin he writes :

"Therefore my answer is: under the current circumstances and outlook, oil is likely to peak at a 95 mmbd plateau by 2015 and can then be sustained well beyond 2020 at increasing real oil prices."(Energy Bulletin)

So are we peaked or are we on the plateou of world oil production? We should better be careful claiming answers to such questions. But it is easier to say that, oil production will suffer from delayed investment. To get a better understanding of oil prices, we should check the storage levels and price trends during the May -driving season-. My personal belief is we are entering another high price cycle unless another economic slowdown happens. It is a risk to write those things openly on the net, since net has a memory. Prices may calm down? I am desperate to see that...

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/9498
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7102
http://www.wikileaks.ch/cable/2007/12/07RIYADH2441.html

IEA has two very interesting pieces to read. As the Egyptian crisis still continues, its impact on energy prices keeps the consumers anxious.

IEA Egypt Fact Sheet is here . Check the southbound and northbound traffic. The data shows clear signals that we should think more in terms of natural gas safety than oil safety.

Also the article regarding oil disruptions is also a compilation of recent disruptions.

Chinks in the chain: What causes disruptions to the supply of oil?
Egypt fact sheet by IEA (http://www.iea.org/files/facts_egypt.pdf)