The CERA oil day that wasn't

ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva gave a lunch keynote in which he referred to the US' growing reserves of natural gas as "The Gift." (It was sort of a play on the fact that Daniel Yergin, chairman of CERA, is the author of the oil industry classic history, "The Prize.") Andy Inglis, chief executive of exploration and production for BP, also talked about shale gas several times during his presentation as part of the Oil Plenary. A panel on US Energy Policy also kept coming back to the shale gas issue. The evening's dinner speaker, Eni CEO Paolo Scaroni, said in the first five minutes of his address, "Natural gas is going to be an increasing part of our energy future....the world is awash in gas."

The CERA meeting is otherwise just way too big and covers too many topics for it to be summed up with a sort-of "theme of the day." But the repeated "intrusion" of gas into oil day made this year's meeting an exception.

So to sum up more than 12 hours of dozens and dozens of speakers, on a few dozen panels, here are a few other things Platts noted:

--The market for refineries is miserable....unless you're trying to buy one. Valero CEO Bill Klesse, who is trying to sell refineries in Delaware City, Del. and Paulsboro, NJ -- and appears set to complete the deal for at least the first one -- said he's seen no unexpected buyers step forward as a potential buyer. In the past, when refineries were on the block, there often seemed to be a buyer that nobody really anticipated. Klesse said that isn't happening this time.

--The weakness in refining might have been best exhibited in a small discussion in conjunction with a press conference held by Jose Sergio Gabrielli, the CEO of Petrobras. The president of Petrobras America, Orlando Azevedo, was at the press conference, and he answered questions in response to comments made by Gabrielli about a project at Petrobras' US refinery at Pasadena, Texas. It's a plan to take the 100,000 b/d refinery and retrofit it so it can run the heavier crudes expected to come out of Brazil in the coming years, as that country's output climbs. What was notable is that the plan doesn't include adding even one barrel of crude distillation capacity. Not that long ago, there were a slew of announcements by companies adding refining capacity at existing facilities. One of the biggest was at Marathon's Garyville, La. refinery; that project has recently been completed, growing the plant from 256,000 b/d to 436,000 b/d . But at Petrobras, the company will spend many millions, and at the end of it, still have a 100,000 b/d refinery. Definitely a sign of the times.

--There's a pretty robust market for upstream assets. More than $10 billion worth of upstream assets are rumored for sale worldwide in addition to the assets already announced in large divestitures by ConocoPhillips and Devon Energy, as upstream M&A gains steam for 2010. "Buyers have more confidence in crude prices and natural gas long term," said Chris Sheehan, director of M&A research for IHS Herold, said during the M&A panel discussion at the conference. Sheehan told Platts on the sideline of the conference that there may be some $40 billion to $50 billion in assets up for grabs.

--The incumbent Secretary of Energy is often invited to speak. This meant that Spencer Abraham, a weak public speaker, gave a speech several times while holding that office, and said almost nothing. (I've never believed it is a public speaker's obligation to give a reporter a gift-wrapped piece of news to lead a story with, but Abraham took that to new extremes.) Steven Chu, the current holder of that office, spoke this year. And while he gave much of the usual boilerplates -- we need new sources of energy, the US imports too much, we need to be concerned about the climate --  he has a significant difference from other speakers. He's a Nobel prize winner in physics, so he can talk about things like the half-life of certain types of carbon. THAT wowed 'em.