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On oil-water nexus

In addition to the conventional energy market issues, mainly oil, related to price and production, the industry seems to be gearing for a new worry — how to handle the oil-water nexus. A recent UN Water Day has a very simple message to deliver: Water needs energy and energy needs water. The interdependencies between the two is strengthened and consolidated by the day. After all some 90 percent of power generation is water-intensive. Using various parameters to look into the crystal ball, the world seems to be heading toward increasing its energy consumption by more than a third in only two decades. Such increase requires an additional increase of 85 percent of water consumption according the consumers’ watch dog, the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA). With such increase comes completion for supplies as the world population will top 9 billion people, who need an additional 50 percent in agricultural […]

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Here Comes $75 Oil

The long-term outlook for global oil prices is lower, perhaps much lower, giving a strong boost to the U.S. economy while potentially crippling the economy of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Vast new discoveries of oil and natural gas in the U.S. and around the globe could drive the oil price to as low as $75 a barrel over the next five years from a current $100. The demand side, too, will put pressure on the supremacy of petroleum. For the first time in its 150-year history, the internal combustion engine can be run efficiently on alternative fuels from a number of sources, including natural gas. As these alternatives are increasingly introduced, global consumption of oil will slow its growth and flatten out. Barron’s Graphics Citigroup’s head of global commodity research, Edward Morse, believes the combination of flattening consumption and rising production should mean that "the $90-a-barrel floor on the world […]

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Peak Oil: No Easy Solutions

Alternative energy depends heavily on engineered equipment and infrastructure for capture or conversion. However, the full supply chain for alternative energy, from raw materials to manufacturing, is still very dependent on fossil fuel energy. [In the end, how can you get rid of fossil fuels when you need them to construct alternative energy resources?]…. The discussion is further complicated by political biases, ignorance of basic science, and a lack of appreciation of the magnitude of the problem facing societies accustomed to inexpensive fossil energy as the era of abundance concludes. [1] I’ve consistently and repeatedly urged a greater awareness of the challenges diminishing supplies of oil and gas will impose upon all is. Political affiliations and stamp-your-feet-and-hold-your-breath resistance to the realities of finite, ever-harder to find and extract fossil fuel resources won’t help anyone. Coupled with that awareness (dependent in no small part on a lot more honesty and […]

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Peak Oil: Great Question. The Answer Is _ ?

The real question for the United States is not about optimal trade policy or economic theory, but whether we want to extract the last drops of our oil endowment as quickly as possible by enabling the debt-fueled land rush that has brought us a gratifying, but temporary, bump in production, or whether we want to make it last as long as possible, knowing that two or three decades from now the world will be absolutely desperate for the stuff, with scarce exports and unimaginably high prices. [1] So what will it be? But before the question can be answered meaningfully, information about what’s at stake; where we stand now; what the future energy supplies prospects hold; together with an assortment of related but just as important considerations need to be fully disclosed. And there’s the rub. There are two strong camps with just as strong opinions about energy supplies […]

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James Schlesinger on peak oil

In August 2012, I interviewed James Schlesinger over the phone as part of research for my upcoming book, The Oracle of Oil , the first biography of maverick geologist M. King Hubbert. Schlesinger and Hubbert shared a deep interest and concern in the issue of peak oil —specifically, the question of when world oil production might reach an all-time high, and then begin to decline, marking a turning point between an era of plenty to an era of scarcity. During Schlesinger’s time in office as the United States’ first Secretary of Energy—a post President Jimmy Carter created specifically for Schlesinger —he’d spoken about this issue of peak oil. He saw that such a peak of world oil production would have profound effects on the U.S. and the world. (Before becoming Secretary of Energy, Schlesinger had held various positions in the Nixon and Ford Administrations, including Director of Central Intelligence […]

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Revisiting the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2013

I was going over the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2013 and noticed a few things you might find interesting. Exactly what is their opinion on Peak Oil? Here, cut and pasted from the report. Got that? The URR is great enough to delay any peak until after 2035. Here is one of their graphs that indicate how much they think is left, coal, gas and oil. Okay 54 years of proven reserves. That puts the peak out to well past mid century. Likely well past 2100 if you count those remaining recoverable resources. And just who has all this oil? 2.2 trillion barrels of conventional crude oil resources. However only 1.7 trillion barrels of that has a 90% probability of being recoverable. Of this the Middle East has the lions share, 971 billion barrels of resources with a 90% probability of recovering 813 billion barrels of that.   The […]

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Climate Change and Human Extinction – A Personal Perspective

Just one source, methane from the arctic…leads us [by 2030] to…a temperature beyond which humans have never existed on the planet.” Guy McPherson, professor emeritus of University of Arizona in Environmental Studies, shares highlights from his compilation of recent reports on climate change effects. Their number and extent have grown exponentially since he began five years ago. In this interview, he shares his personal journey through despair and deep grief to recent acceptance. “I suspect we get to see the end of this movie… Nobody else in human history [has]… We get to see how humans act in the face of their own demise.” Episode 262. [guymcpherson.com] Watch Guy’s Climate Change presentation February 2014

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Peak Oil: Laherrère, Real Curves, and Official Curves

The thin blue line at the top right is Laherrère’s prediction of the grand totals, differing considerably from the others. He explains: “The confidential technical data on [mean values of proven + probable reserves] is only available from expensive and very large scout databases. . . . There is a huge difference between the political/financial proved reserves [so-called], and the confidential technical [proven + probable] reserves. . . . Most economists . . . rely only on the proved reserves coming from [the Oil and Gas Journal, the US Energy Information Administration], BP and OPEC data, which are wrong; they have no access to the confidential technical data.” The difference between his figures and the various government figures is enormous. It reminds me of the 1950s, when M.K. Hubbert and others were saying one thing, and the government was saying quite the opposite. A few years ago I met […]

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Why peak oil signals the world's end, or at least the one we know

While global financial markets are still levitating somewhere between the stratosphere and the Kingdom of Asgard, by 60°24′31″ North and 172°43′12″ West, in the middle of nowhere, an isolated island of 137.857 sq-mi holds the key of three major economic developments and risks: November 2013, Lawrence Summers raised the question whether the “secular stagnation” and the impossibility for the US and other major economies to grow without the help of recurring bubbles was not doomed to become the “new normal”. March 2014, the Conference Board released a study (figure 1) showing the falling trend in global total factor productivity, i.e. in the share of output not explained by the “accumulation of factors” (more on this economic jargon below). March 2014 again, the NASA published a research paper answering to “widespread concerns that current trends in resource-used are unsustainable, but possibilities of overshoot/collapse remain controversial”. This study tells us that, […]

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Why peak oil signals the world’s end, or at least the one we know

While global financial markets are still levitating somewhere between the stratosphere and the Kingdom of Asgard, by 60°24′31″ North and 172°43′12″ West, in the middle of nowhere, an isolated island of 137.857 sq-mi holds the key of three major economic developments and risks: November 2013, Lawrence Summers raised the question whether the “secular stagnation” and the impossibility for the US and other major economies to grow without the help of recurring bubbles was not doomed to become the “new normal”. March 2014, the Conference Board released a study (figure 1) showing the falling trend in global total factor productivity, i.e. in the share of output not explained by the “accumulation of factors” (more on this economic jargon below). March 2014 again, the NASA published a research paper answering to “widespread concerns that current trends in resource-used are unsustainable, but possibilities of overshoot/collapse remain controversial”. This study tells us that, […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA