Author: ASPO-USA

Given that shale oil production is, in fact, currently doing the most to meet growing oil demand, any shale oil ‘bust’ is likely to have significant implications for an already-strained oil market. [1] While there’s some (strained) logic to the efforts of fossil fuel industry officials and their spokespeople to do nothing but offer the most optimistic scenarios and forecasts about future oil supply and production, it’s impossible to imagine that those in charge are not contemplating the very same facts we on the “other side” of the discussion regularly share. Facts are stubborn things. They refuse to go away, for one. Ideology and optimism may carry one today, but eventually there simply is nothing left to contend with except those often-inconvenient truths. It’s also understandable that foregoing today the accessible and still-economically-feasible extraction and production opportunities at hand in favor of transitioning their own efforts to efforts largely […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Peak oil theory predicts that oil production will soon start a terminal decline. Most authors imply that no adequate alternate resource and technology will be available to replace oil as the backbone resource of industrial society. This article uses historical cases from countries that have gone through a similar experience as the best available analytical strategy to understand what will happen if the predictions of peak oil theorists are right. The author is not committed to a particular version of peak oil theory, but deems the issue important enough to explore how various parts of the world should be expected to react. From the historical record he is able to identify predatory militarism, totalitarian retrenchment,and socioeconomic adaptation as three possible trajectories The Stone Age came to an end not for a shortage of stones. The Coal Age came to an end not for a shortage of coal. But, contra […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Robert Gordon has painted a dark picture of the world’s long-run economic growth prospects. But if the past is any guide, he will likely join the band of earlier distinguished economists who proved to be far too pessimistic about the human capacity to innovate. Dennis Robertson, the renowned Cambridge economist and a contemporary of John Maynard Keynes, famously remarked that economic fashion was like going to the greyhound races. If one stood still long enough, the dogs would come around one more time. This certainly seems to be the case with fashions in economic pessimism about the long-term economic growth prospects of the world’s advanced industrial economies. Each time these economies stumble, there is no shortage of economists who come out of the woodwork to advance plausible reasons as to why the limits of economic growth might have been reached. Yet each time, events seem to have proved these […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Until Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrère published their paper The End of Cheap Oil in 1998 (Campbell & Laherrére, 1998), the petroleum geologist Marion King Hubbert (1903 – 1989) was all but forgotten, including his correct forecast – back in 1956 – of the US’s peak of oil production in 1970 (Hubbert, 1956). In their paper Campbell and Laherrère warned that: “Barring a global recession, it seems most likely that world production of conventional oil will peak during the first decade of the 21st century.” It took another 12 years, but eventually the oil production optimist par excellence, the International Energy Agency (IEA, of the OECD countries), also had to admit the undeniable in their World Energy Outlook of 2010 (IEA, 2010): “Crude oil output reaches an undulating plateau of around 68–69 mb/d by 2020, but never regains its all‐time peak of 70 mb/d reached in 2006, […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Yes, we see 10 early warnings that Big Oil stocks are going to trigger an economic collapse by 2020, maybe 50% as gas prices go through your SUV’s sunroof. A contrarian view? Yes, pump prices already shot up 11% this year. Plus Big Oil cherishes its new role as exporter: Bloomberg’s even predicting the U.S. will “surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s top oil producer by 2015, and be close to energy self-sufficiency in the next two decades, amid booming output.” So why worry? Why contrarian? Because a decade ago the Bush Pentagon predicted that by 2020 “an ancient pattern of desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies would emerge” as global “warfare is defining human life.” But, that’s light years away in today’s twitter-brain world where today’s news is so bullish: “100% of economists think yields will rise within six months,” no recession in […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

With 2013 in the rearview mirror, peak oil is beginning to create big problems for big oil. Free cash flow is like the canary in the coal mine. Earnings can be massaged with accounting magic, but it is more difficult to massage free cash flow. Total (NYSE: TOT ), along with its fellow big oil brethren, has seen its free cash flow fall significantly in 2013. Now is the time to examine the fundamentals and see just what sort of unique risks and challenges big oil faces. Oil prices are stable, but free cash flow is falling TOT Free Cash Flow (TTM) data by YCharts Sometimes, falling free cash flow is a short-term issue. Such was the case after the 2008 oil crash. Oil prices fell, and as a result free cash flow fell as well. The current downturn is different. Oil prices have remained relatively stable and yet free […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Over the next decade and a half, 2.5 billion people in China, India and other developing countries will join the global middle class. They are going to need skyscrapers to live in and superstores to shop in. They are going to want smartphones, cars, flank steaks, air conditioning, pet clothing, Disneyland vacations, and probably some throw pillows. How is a planet already straining under the pressure of today’s 2 billion middle class consumers going to accommodate 2.5 billion additional ones? For many observers, this unprecedented economic growth foretells a Malthusian meltdown. In this scenario, skyrocketing demand for scarce natural resources will lead to unchecked carbon emissions, water wars, massive deforestation, $100 Big Macs for the rich and cricket-meat Bug Macs for everyone else. McKinsey director Matt Rogers and Stanford professor Stefan Heck have a more optimistic take on the future. In their compelling new book, Resource Revolution , they […]

Click here to view full article at www.huffingtonpost.com

Researchers from the University of Maryland and a leading university in Spain demonstrate in a new study which sectors could put the entire U.S. economy at risk when global oil production peaks (“Peak Oil”). This multi-disciplinary team recommends immediate action by government, private and commercial sectors to reduce the vulnerability of these sectors. While critics of Peak Oil studies declare that the world has more than enough oil to maintain current national and global standards, these UMD-led researchers say Peak Oil is imminent, if not already here—and is a real threat to national and global economies. Their study is among the first to outline a way of assessing the vulnerabilities of specific economic sectors to this threat, and to identify focal points for action that could strengthen the U.S. economy and make it less vulnerable to disasters. Their work, “Economic Vulnerability to Peak Oil,” appears in Global Environmental Change […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com