Author: ASPO-USA

Printer-friendly by Gail Tverberg , originally published by Our Finite World  | TODAY The world is in a dangerous place now. A large share of oil sellers need the revenue from oil sales. They have to continue producing, regardless of how low oil prices go unless they are stopped by bankruptcy, revolution, or something else that gives them a very clear signal to stop. Producers of oil from US shale are in this category, as are most oil exporters, including many of the OPEC countries and Russia. Some large oil companies, such as Shell and ExxonMobil, decided even before the recent drop in prices that they couldn’t make money by developing available producible resources at then-available prices, likely around $100 barrel. See my post, Beginning of the End? Oil Companies Cut Back on Spending . These large companies are in the process of trying to sell off acreage, if […]

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The oil field which helped kick-start the North Sea oil boom in the 1970s now looks set to be approaching the end of its useful life.  Anglo-Dutch energy company, Royal Dutch Shell, has announced that it will close two of its three remaining platforms this weekend, while the third will be decommissioned in the near future. It raises questions as to the future for Britain’s energy dependencies and whether North Sea oil and gas are now things of the past. VoR’s Tim Walklate has more. The multi-national oil and gas company also said that the remaining platform, Brent Charlie, would follow suit “in the next few years.” In late 2011 another platform, Brent Delta, was the first to be decommissioned and this marked the beginning of the retirement of the giant oilfield. Shell said in a statement that “from a technically innovative installation phase through to a long period of […]

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4666 Votes By Drs. Robert & Sonia Vogl President and Vice President, Illinois Renewable Energy Association Our economy was built on cheap fossil fuels, which supported our economic and technological progress. As sources of conventional low-cost oil are depleted, we have turned to unconventional sources with higher extraction costs. With current oil prices around $80 to $85 per barrel, it has been estimated that new tar sands oil requires $95 per barrel to be extracted. If the oil is not extracted, prices could still rise, as competition for the existing oil would intensify. Energy economist Douglas Reynolds believes our economic malaise is a result of a decrease in energy supplies. He notes that the United States has a vast global military presence that we are unable to pay for, a decreasing standard of living, increased concentration of wealth, and a continuous energy crisis that began in 1973. He sees […]

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Peter Thiel last August Photo: Art Streiber for Fortune The famed investor says the fracking revolution, fuel efficiency standards, and slowing demand have only bought us time in the search for a true technological breakthrough Peter Thiel, whom we profiled in September in the cover story “ Peter Thiel Disagrees With You ,” is the founder of two billion-dollar companies (PayPal EBAY 0.46% and Palantir), a venture capitalist (his flagship Founders Fund now manages $2 billion in assets), a hedge fund manager, the first outside investor in Facebook FB -0.15% , and the author of the recently released book about launching startups, Zero to One . When his hedge fund, Clarium Capital, launched in 2002, Thiel followed a peak-oil thesis, which paid off splendidly as oil prices rose from about $40 to $140. But prices fell off a cliff in 2008, the fund got clobbered, and institutional investors fled. […]

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In public lectures that I give about global energy, I often note that since the writing of A Cubic Mile of Oil the global reserves of oil have increased, not decreased, despite the fact that in the intervening time (i.e., between 2007 and 2013) the world has consumed about 7.5 cmo. In this post I want to dig deeper and look at the changes that have brought about this paradox, and what it means for Peak Oil. As I explain in the book, reserves have a special meaning refer to those geologic accumulations that can be economically extracted with the current technology. With the development of technology and/or changes in the price of oil, geologic accumulations that were once only part of the larger resource base may get transferred to the reserves. Focusing only on the reservesis apt to give a wrong impression about the total availability of oil. […]

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So how’s peak oil working out? Crude prices have fallen about 20 percent since June. A gallon of gasoline is on average 20 cents cheaper than it was a month ago. The world is facing a glut of petroleum and, for the first time in 40 years, America is exporting oil. Obviously this is not the scenario of limits sketched out by some geologists, environmentalists and industry observers a few years ago. At the risk of oversimplifying, peak oil, which originated with petroleum geologist M. King Hubbert in the 1950s, generally stated that the planet would soon use up half of its available oil. The easy and inexpensive to reach and refine half. The theory was borne out when the continental U.S. hit peak around 1970. I wrote about peak oil as one of many disruptions headed our way. Nor was peak oil a tin-foil-hat coven on the margins. […]

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4591 Votes TreeHugger has a post on a rare mention of peak oil in the mainstream media – HSBC Economist Says Weve Got Just 50 Years of Oil Left. Now if youve even gotten a small bit of knowledge about the state of the worlds oil reserves and the concept of peak oil, the statement that weve got confidently just 50 years of oil left in the ground is hardly shocking–check out the video of HSBC senior economist Karen Ward delivering the lines below (around the 02:00 minute mark), h/t Climate Progress. But what is shocking to me is the calmness with which the line is delivered and how outside of specialist reporting such statements are seldom to be heard. Fifty years is within my lifetime as in within the lifetime of many TreeHugger readers, yet when President Obama recently talked about transitioning off foreign oil and developing future […]

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For decades there have been predictions of peak oil and the disastrous consequences it will have on society. As the theory goes, eventually the world’s oil reservoirs will run out of oil, driving us to more expensive reservoirs and higher oil prices until there’s not enough cheap oil to serve the world’s energy needs. Essentially, there will be a peak in cheap oil supply. Those who fear peak oil also often think there will be a cascade of economic disasters as a result of this peak in cheap oil supply. Today, there is emerging evidence that a peak is on the horizon — but it’s not a peak in supply, it’s a peak in demand. Energy efficiency is improving, alternatives are becoming viable, and oil just isn’t as attractive as it once was to consumers. The result could be a peak oil scenario that works in exactly the opposite […]

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By Chris Hamilton Production of crude oil has nearly stalled despite a near quadrupling in the price since ’01 and it seems likely the world has entered the Peak Oil phase and neither the governments nor central banks (try as they may) can paper this over. Without the growing supply of adequate cheap energy, there isn’t adequate GDP growth, and without the GDP growth, there is no way to outgrow, pay off, or service the huge debts incurred but by interest rate suppression. The dual occurrence of peak oil with ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) is a truly unfortunate state of affairs. But whether or not they happened in tandem, both were inevitable. Still, governments and central banks are attempting to maintain the pre-peak oil system and avoid the pain of free market corrections to supply, production, and price. It is in this light that the centralization and "intervention" […]

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4582 Votes In the last few days (written 14 October 2014) the headlines have focused on the increase in oil production from OPEC producers, now at its highest level since the summer of 2013 – In its monthly oil market report, OPEC said its oil production rose by 402,000 barrels a day in September 2014 to total 30.47 million barrels a day. Higher levels of supply from Iraq and Libya were the main drivers of the production increases. Oil production is also rising due in part to the shale oil boom in North America. Whereas demand has weakened as growth falls in the global economy, this saw a 20% fall in the spot price for Brent crude over 3½ months. From the oil industry’s point of view this all sounds very positive, growing production, a product where supply exceeds current demand. But we need to step back and look at the longer-term picture. Richard […]

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