OPEC Shows It Still Matters, and Right Now It’s Bearish for Oil

The last time OPEC met, its decision to leave output unchanged cast doubt on the group’s relevance.

That was a little premature.

From the ministers’ market-moving comments to the array of oil executives gathered in Vienna to court new ventures, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries showed no loss of stature in the run-up to Friday’s meeting, at which it again decided to maintain its current output target. While OPEC has ceded the role of adjusting supply to balance the market, its strategy of keeping up production is still driving prices lower now -- and possibly higher later on.

'What If' Technology Rapidly Simulates Offshore Oil Spills

New software developed by scientists in the US could prevent future hydrocarbon spills and accelerate the response to those that do occur. The team behind the technology explains more.

New software developed by scientists at the US Department of Energy's (DOE's) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in the US could help prevent future hydrocarbon leaks and is already providing a much better understanding of how leaks behave in different offshore scenarios, potentially speeding response times to spills if and when they do occur.

The Blowout and Spill Occurrence Model, or BLOSOM, is able to rapidly simulate offshore spills in hypothetical 'what if' scenarios, taking into account everything from ocean currents to the volume of the leak, and may also, when used in tandem with other DOE tools, be able to prevent incidents in the future by identifying trends and technology gaps that contribute to a higher risk of spills.

Elly Earls caught up with Kelly Rose, Lawrence Sim, Lucy Romeo, Joe Umhoefer and Jason Vielma, the NETL's Offshore Integrated Assessment Modelling (IAM) team and the brains behind the technology, to find out more about how BLOSOM works and the impact it could have on future spill prevention efforts.