Author: ASPO-USA

The Cornucopians are exuberant, they believe that collapsing of oil prices dealt the death knell for peak oil. An oil glut, they say, is what we have, not peak oil. But an oil glut is exactly what we would expect at the very peak. After all, that is what peak oil is, that is the the point in time when the world produces more oil than ever in history… and the most it ever will produce. I am of the firm conviction that the world is at the peak of world oil production right now, or was at that point three or four months ago. I think history will show that the 12 months of September 2014 through August 2015 will be the one year peak. Whether the calendar year peak is 2014 or 2015 is the only thing still in question, or that is my opinion anyway. The […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

The most attention-grabbing attempts to predict oil futures have come from geologists and environmental activists, who tend to look solely at production. An overlooked doctoral thesis by Christophe McGlade, Uncertainties in the outlook for oil and gas , in contrast, focuses on how both supply and demand might be constrained in the coming decades. Peak oil researchers should take note of McGlade’s thesis because he predicted, in November 2013, that oil prices would sink, and that they will stay low throughout the second half of this decade. I found this paper on Google Scholar and have no connection with the author, but I appreciate his careful consideration of peak oil arguments, and his ability to distance himself from the more narrow-minded aspects of both economic and geological thinking. Here’s a representative quote from the middle of the thesis, p. 216: The focus of much of the discussion of peak […]

Click here to view full article at oilprice.com

Longtime readers of the site and listeners to the show will know that the founder of Financial Sense, Jim Puplava, has been a regular proponent of peak oil since 2002, when oil prices were trading around $20/barrel. Now that oil has fallen in half from its $100+ range in place over the past few years, many have written us wondering if Jim has changed his views. That is, is peak oil now dead? In last Saturday’s Big Picture, Jim goes “on the record” by saying no, he doesn’t think peak oil is dead, though it has clearly been pushed out further with the massive increase in US shale production and deceleration of global economic growth. This, and the unwinding of massive long positions in the crude oil market, have likely exacerbated the downtrend and led to momentum selling. Though oil could move lower and possibly reach the low end […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

OPEC will not cut output even at $20 a barrel … OPEC will not cut oil production even if the price drops to $20 a barrel and it is unfair to expect the cartel to reduce output if non-members do not, Saudi Arabia said. “Whether it goes down to $20 a barrel, $40, $50, $60, it is irrelevant,” the kingdom’s Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said in an interview with the Middle East Economic Survey (MEES), an industry weekly. In unusually detailed comments, Naimi defended a decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, whose lead producer is Saudi Arabia, last month to maintain a production ceiling of 30 million barrels per day. – Daily Mail Dominant Social Theme: Nothing that is happening to oil is surprising. Free-Market Analysis: For years we had arguments with “peak oilers” who maintained that the world was running out of oil. Of course, they always […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi: We’ll never cut production despite plunging prices thumbnail The Saudi Arabian Minister of Petroleum and Mineral ResourcesAli al-Naimi has declared that the country will “never” cut oil production despite prices hitting five and a half year lows on over-supply and weak demand. Al-Naimi added in a CNN interview that Saudi Arabia was also “not conspiring” to target US and Russian oil producers by not cutting supply and that it was too late for non-Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) members to offer any cuts. Saudi Arabia will not cut prices, neither now nor ever in the future, he said. “These rumours or whoever generated them, is completely mistaken. I was the first minister to welcome the production and addition of shale oil in 2008 and 2009, in Washington, why? Because it would give better stability and assurance to the world that peak oil, is a theory now […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Global Systemic Financial Crisis 2015: Geopolitics, Oil and Currency Markets thumbnail For almost two years, by combining various points of view (speculative, geopolitical, technological, economic, strategic and monetary…), we have continued to anticipate a major crisis in the entire oil sector. Today, no one doubts the fact that we are actually at that point, and the GEAB must therefore anticipate the consequences of this veritable atomic bomb, which has begun to blow up all the old system’s pillars: everything which we have known, international currencies, financial markets, the US, the Western alliance, world governance, democracy, etc. Global systemic crisis: the end of the West we have known since 1945 Here, we would like to look back on a historic GEAB anticipation, that of Franck Biancheri in February 2006, which announced the beginning of the global systemic crisis under the title “the end of the West we have known since […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Even some Opec members are fixing their spot crude contract prices on the assumption that contango is already under way According to the International Energy Agency, growth in world demand for oil will next year again fall below the critical figure of 1m barrels per day, reaching 93.3m bpd in total Photo: Alamy Contango, or not contango? This is perhaps the most important question facing oil markets right now. In the space of a week, the global three top energy organisations have downgraded their forecasts for the amount of oil they think the world will need next year to fuel the economy. These revisions are significant in the context of understanding why the price of oil has fallen so dramatically in such a short period of time — down 45pc since June — and helping to predict accurately where it is likely to be heading in the future. One […]

Click here to view full article at www.telegraph.co.uk

A couple of years back, I attended a presentation by Tom Eizember, Exxon’s head of strategic planning.   During the presentation, Eizember asked how many in the audience believed in peak oil, and I raised my hand.  I believe I was the only one.  Exxon does not subscribe to peak oil And yet.  Exxon has issued its new Outlook (which is well worth a look).  One of the interesting features of this report is its view of conventional oil production, comprising traditional onshore and offshore / deepwater production.  In Exxon’s view, conventional production peaked around 2005 and is not projected to revisit this level until, at best, around 2040.  This is not particularly controversial, but it is interesting to see Exxon acknowledge it.  And it’s important for our understanding of the long term outlook for the oil supply and oil prices, which I consider in greater detail below. Exxon Global Oil Supply Outlook 2015 Source: Exxon […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Not long ago, I wrote Ten Reasons Why High Oil Prices are a Problem . If high oil prices can be a problem, how can low oil prices also be a problem? In particular, how can the steep drop in oil prices we have recently been experiencing also be a problem? Let me explain some of the issues: Issue 1. If the price of oil is too low, it will simply be left in the ground. The world badly needs oil for many purposes: to power its cars, to plant it fields, to operate its oil-powered irrigation pumps, and to act as a raw material for making many kinds of products, including medicines and fabrics. If the price of oil is too low, it will be left in the ground. With low oil prices, production may drop off rapidly. High price encourages more production and more substitutes; low price […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

On Feb. 1, 2011, oil prices rose above $100 a barrel. For the next three years, they largely stayed there, with few of the dramatic ups and downs that oil markets are famous for. So when prices began falling slowly in June of this year, most industry experts shrugged. Hundred-dollar oil was here to stay, right? That attitude has made the vicious plunge in oil prices over the past few months all the more shocking. U.S. oil production has been rising for several years; more recently, Libyan oil output has surged, too. Those increases collided with a weak global economy this summer to create a glut of oil. Late last month, members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) announced that they would not cut their own production to compensate and stabilize prices. Oil promptly fell below $70 a barrel, down 40 percent from its June peak. […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

How Low Can Oil Prices Go? thumbnail The price of oil in global markets has plunged by nearly 40 percent over the past six months. As a result, the price of a gallon of regular gasoline in the U.S. has dropped from an average of $3.68 in June to $2.74 this week. In June, the U.S. Energy Information Administration had projected that a gallon of gas would average $3.48 per gallon this month. What happened, and where might oil prices go in the next two to five years? What’s going on is that the world is awash in crude oil while the world economy is slowing down. Demand for crude has dropped, yet supplies are increasing; the predictable result is lower prices. A huge part of the glut in global production stems from the fracking boom in the United States that has seen domestic oil production rise from a […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

As everyone knows, oil prices have fallen sharply and “unexpectedly” over the last few months, though this is not really unexpected to anyone who believes in markets or technological progress. But confidence in markets and technology does rule out a lot of liberals and virtually all environmentalists. As such, it’s fun to recall his Krugmanness declaring four years ago that “peak oil” was here to stay. In “ Our Finite World ,” Krugman demonstrated that what’s finite is his intelligence and imagination: Oil is back above $90 a barrel. Copper and cotton have hit record highs. Wheat and corn prices are way up. Over all, world commodity prices have risen by a quarter in the past six months. So what’s the meaning of this surge? Is it speculation run amok? Is it the result of excessive money creation, a harbinger of runaway inflation just around the corner? No and […]

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

What caused the recent crash in the oil price from $110 (Brent) in July to $70 today and what is going to happen next? With the world producing 94 Mbpd (IEA total liquids) $1.4 trillion has just been wiped off annualized global GDP and the incomes of producing and exporting nations. Energy will get cheaper again, for a while at least. The immediate impact is a reduction in global GDP and deflationary pressure. There is a lot of information to review and summarize and so this week and next we will present the story in stages culminating we hope with an oil market forecast scenario. Global Oil Production Figure 1 Global oil production has been split into three geo-political categories: 1) USA and Canada, 2) OPEC and 3) the Rest of the World (RoW). RoW production bears the hallmarks of having peaked in the period 2005 to 2010 and […]

Click here to view full article at oilprice.com

Remember "Peak Oil?" The world  was running out of oil , we were told: Prices would soon skyrocket, and we had better find other fuels. Well, that argument didn’t work out so well for environmentalists, did it? As oil reserves and those of other carbon fuels became scarce and prices rose, the law of supply and demand kicked in. The industry invested the profits from those higher prices in new technologies, and the oil barons found even more destructive ways to extract oil and gas—by exploiting the muck from tar sands, inventing hydro-fracking, and despoiling sources in developing countries. So now, oil is cheaper than it’s been in years, about $66 a barrel. Regular unleaded gasoline can be had for well under $3 a gallon. One of the few things sustaining U.S. consumer purchasing power in the face of dismal wages is close to $100 billion saved in energy […]

Click here to view full article at prospect.org

“We don’t need to be flaring, and we can find an economic benefit to this natural gas.” These words were spoken by Mark Fox, chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes — a group of Native American tribes from the Dakotas that joined together during the late 19th century after suffering massive population loss due to disease. The group recently bought land in some areas of North Dakota, including places where oil drilling has been prolific. Transform $1,000 Into A $238,960 Windfall With This Tiny Oil Stock! Since 2006, companies in the Bakken have drilled over 11,000 oil wells. Almost 40,000 miles of drilled space spiderwebs beneath the ground in the state. According to the  New York Times , if these well bores were dismantled and placed one after the other, they would circle the planet one and a half times. But a problem with all of the oil drilling has […]

Click here to view full article at northdenvernews.com

Years ago, at an international conference on peak oil, I met I had no way to check Ruppert’s statement, but, on the whole, it made sense to me. The CIA, after all, is an “intelligence” agency and their main purpose is to collect data. So, the fact that some CIA people were attending a meeting on peak oil didn’t mean that it was because they thought we were dangerous subversives. They were simply doing their job: collecting data about peak oil; a dangerous economic and political problem (or maybe both things….. Who knows?) Over the years, I have occasionally wondered about what the Central Intelligence Agency may know about peak oil. They surely have lots of data on the world of oil, including data that for us – common citizens – are not available. In principle, they could do a much better job than the ragtag group of geologists […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

When an asset class takes a swan dive off the cliff, fortunes can be lost trying to call the bottom. It’s often impossible to tell whether the asset in question is on a suicide run or undergoing a short-term correction. And so it is with oil. Oil prices are down by a third since June and are less than half of their 2008 high of $147 (U.S.) a barrel. So time to buy? If I knew how to call bottoms, I would not be a miserable, ink-stained wretch; I would be filthy rich and living in a villa on the Amalfi Coast or Côte d’Azur, martini in each hand. But allow me to present four ideas of why the foundation for a compelling oil price bounce-back is being set even as prices tumble. I’m just not going to tell you when that might happen, because I have no clue. […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

When an asset class takes a swan dive off the cliff, fortunes can be lost trying to call the bottom. It’s often impossible to tell whether the asset in question is on a suicide run or undergoing a short-term correction. And so it is with oil. Oil prices are down by a third since June and are less than half of their 2008 high of $147 (U.S.) a barrel. So time to buy? If I knew how to call bottoms, I would not be a miserable, ink-stained wretch; I would be filthy rich and living in a villa on the Amalfi Coast or Côte d’Azur, martini in each hand. But allow me to present four ideas of why the foundation for a compelling oil price bounce-back is being set even as prices tumble. I’m just not going to tell you when that might happen, because I have no clue. […]

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

It is the year 2004. With record high prices at the gas pumps and what seemed like a largely oil-explored world, it was an occasion to do what engineers do best: identify technical problems and devise solutions. With what seemed like a real “peak oil” energy shortage looming ahead, the need for reduction of electric power use had a direct impact on electronic design, resulting in the emergence of low-power circuit design. Is that emphasis still required? While some decry the demise of the ecosphere due to the burning of hydrocarbon fuels, an equal problem is the anticipated inability to supply those fuels to meet the growing world demand. This article looks in retrospect at the problem, largely through comments from senior oil engineers inside the industry, and then surveys what happened. The Oil Conundrum We go back a decade, to 2004. Glenn Morton, a geophysicist who headed North […]

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

4728 Votes Getting in on the Water Rush Scramble for groundwater lures driller back into business Among critics of our society’s reliance on petrochemicals, there’s long been talk that we are nearing “peak oil” — the beginning of the end of oil reserves. Then came the fracking bonanza, and — bam! — U.S. oil supplies gained a new lease on life. The peak oil buzz died down. Maybe the critics should be talking about “peak water” in the San Joaquin Valley instead. Growers pumped out huge amounts this past summer to keep their productivity up amid drought, and they’re likely to do so again in 2015 — if they can afford it. Everybody paying attention to the situation senses that the game will be up for the Valley’s powerhouse agricultural machine if extreme drought continues, but few know it as clearly as Hanford resident Robert Carvalho. The wily 75-year-old businessman has worn a […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

THREE times in the last 35 years, Russian military forces have crossed international borders – in Afghanistan in 1979, Georgia in 2008 and the Crimea earlier this year. As Simon Derrick, the currency strategist at BNY Mellon points out, each occasion coincided with a peak in the oil price. And each incursion was followed by a very sharp fall in the price of crude (see chart). Now of course, one can’t say the Russian actions caused the oil price fall. However the oil price peaks, by boosting the economy, may have bolstered the confidence of Soviet/Russian leaders and thus encouraged the military action. The subsequent declines simply show that the Russian government has very bad timing.  Indeed the weakness of oil in the 1980s (and the sapping effect of the Afghan conflict on morale) played its part in the downfall of the Soviet empire; this time round, the Russian […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

4721 Votes The peak oil theater I am a little late for the talk at the peak oil conference. Fortunately, it seems that I didn’t lose much: the speaker must have started just a few minutes before I arrived and I only missed the introduction by the chairman. So, I relax in my seat as the speaker goes on with his presentation.(*) The first thing I note is his the way he is dressed; not the standard one in this conference. Most speakers, so far, have been physicists and they have a typical way of dressing: they look like physicists even when they wear a tie; and they usually don’t. This speaker, instead, not only wears a tie, but even wears a double breasted suit (or so it seems to me – even if it is not a double-breasted suit, he wears it as if it were one). And […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

4719 Votes [ This is a complex question, because the quality of the oil matters.  We’ve gotten the good stuff, the light, easy oil. Much of the remaining oil is deep, nasty-gunky stuff, in arctic and other remote areas, and will take a lot more energy to produce and refine ] Ron Patterson. July 14, 2014. World Crude Oil Production by Geographical Area . Peakoilbarrel.com Check out the graph “World Less North America” at Peak Oil Barrel which shows world oil production minus North American production is down by 2 million barrels.  Are we starting to see the petticoats of the net energy cliff?  As David Hughes wrote in Drilling Deeper. A reality check on U.S. government forecasts for a lasting tight oil & Shale gas boom , both peak tight (fracked) oil and gas are likely to happen before 2020 in North America.  Powers has also documented this […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

4711 Votes The International Energy Agency (IEA) is the energy watchdog of the industrial world. The developed nations of the world were caught off guard by the oil crisis of 1973. They then realized energy resources are so fundamental to all of civilization, and recognized how vulnerable we are to supply disruptions. Forty years ago in 1974, the International Energy Agency was formed, tasked with keeping an eye on these precious resources, and providing policy makers around the world with information to make better informed planning decisions. The primary deliverable from the IEA is the massive World Energy Outlook (WEO) report that is released annually in November. Concerned about peak oil, I began reading the Executive Summary to this report 10 years ago. Five years ago I wrote a summary of what the report has been telling us from 2005 – 2009, concerning issues related to peak oil: The […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Printer-friendly The International Energy Agency (IEA) is the energy watchdog of the industrial world. The developed nations of the world were caught off guard by the oil crisis of 1973. They then realized energy resources are so fundamental to all of civilization, and recognized how vulnerable we are to supply disruptions. Forty years ago in 1974, the International Energy Agency was formed, tasked with keeping an eye on these precious resources, and providing policy makers around the world with information to make better informed planning decisions. The primary deliverable from the IEA is the massive World Energy Outlook (WEO) report that is released annually in November. Concerned about peak oil, I began reading the Executive Summary to this report 10 years ago. Five years ago I wrote a summary of what the report has been telling us from 2005 – 2009, concerning issues related to peak oil: The IEA […]

Click here to view full article at www.resilience.org

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 […]

Click here to view full article at www.resilience.org

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 […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

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 […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

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. […]

Click here to view full article at fortune.com

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. […]

Click here to view full article at theenergycollective.com

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. […]

Click here to view full article at seattletimes.com

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 […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

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 […]

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

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" […]

Click here to view full article at seekingalpha.com

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 […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

As I previously predicted Uganda has now found a substantial reservoir of natural gas and the government will be looking at a development plan to fully utilise such a find.  Therefore It now seems a good time to return to the controversial issue of fracking. In the UK, the North Sea natural gas reserves are on a major decline and supplies are quickly running out, therefore the British government has submitted to the demands of the oil industry to start fracking on UK soil. So what is fracking and why is it causing so much discontent? The Earth is made up of a number of layers, after you drill past the water table you will eventually come to a type of rock called shale, which is sedimentary and fine grained in nature comprising of a mixture of clay flakes and other minerals such as calcite and quartz. Usually a […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Where is George Orwell when you need him? It is a supreme irony that cornucopian oil industry mouthpiece and consultant Daniel Yergin should receive America’s first medal for energy security named after James Schlesinger, the first U.S. energy secretary. For those not familiar with the late Dr. Schlesinger’s views, in a keynote speech he told attendees at a 2007 conference sponsored by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) the following: Conceptually, the battle is over. The peakists have won. I was sitting next to an oil executive in New Mexico just recently, and he said to the audience, "Of course, I’m a peakist. We’re all peakists. I just don’t know when the peak comes." But that represents part of a conceptual victory. And, therefore to the peakists I say, you can declare victory. You are no longer the beleaguered, small minority of voices crying in the […]

Click here to view full article at www.resilience.org

Russell Gold writes in the Wall Street Journal that perhaps the idea of peak oil is a myth. After all, technology keeps getting better and better, allowing us to extract more oil from old fields. Of course, it’s expensive to do business this way: When the oil industry overcomes an obstacle and boosts oil production, costs typically increase. That opens the door for a better and cheaper energy source that will eventually displace crude oil. So at some point, the cost of getting more and more oil likely will get so high that buyers can’t—or won’t—pay….Already, economics is bringing about some changes. Despite the abundance of oil that fracking has delivered, global oil prices remain high. This has kept the door wide open for alternative sources of energy and spending on energy efficiency. …."There will be peak oil, but it will be [because of] peak consumption," says Michael Shellenberger, […]

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

Due to the highest level of domestic crude oil production in 45 years, oil imports will make up less than a quarter of U.S. consumption next year, according to a forecast by the Energy Information Administration (EIA). In August, “total U.S. crude oil production averaged an estimated 8.6 million barrels per day,” which was “the highest monthly production since July 1986,” according to EIA’s “ Short Term Outlook ,” which was released September 9th. EIA expects domestic oil production to increase to an average 9.5 million barrels per day in 2015, which would be the highest level since before the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries’ (OPEC) oil embargo in 1973. At that time, the federal government placed a ban on exporting U.S.-produced oil abroad. “If achieved, the 2015 forecast would be the highest annual average crude oil production since 1970,” the EIA forecast stated. As a result, U.S. […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

The Greatest Peak Oil Novel Ever Written Herman Melville never mentioned “peak whale oil” in his “Moby Dick”, published in 1851. But the novel can be understood taking into account the fact that the American whaling industry was going through its production peak just during those years. We may consider “Moby Dick” as the greatest peak oil novel ever written. In 1970, the United States went through their production peak for crude oil. Production reached a maximum then started a decline that has been lasting up to a few years ago. The peak was an epochal event, it was the “ great U-turn ” of the American economy, which ushered in a new era of larger social inequality and diffuse poverty. But the reaction to the peak itself was a deafening silence. Earlier on, the peak had been discussed and extensively debated since the time when, in 1956, the […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

By | Sun, 07 September 2014 00:00 | Perhaps you’ve seen one of the recent barrage of articles claiming that fears of an imminent peak and decline in world oil production have either been dispelled (because we actually have plenty of oil) or are misplaced (because climate change is the only environmental problem we should be concerned with). I’m not buying either argument. Why? Let’s start with the common assertion that oil supplies are sufficiently abundant so that a peak in production is many years or decades away. Everyone agrees that planet Earth still holds plenty of petroleum or petroleum-like resources: that’s the kernel of truth at the heart of most attempted peak-oil debunkery. However, extracting and delivering those resources at an affordable price is becoming a bigger challenge year by year. For the oil industry, costs of production have rocketed; they’re currently soaring at a rate of about […]

Click here to view full article at oilprice.com

Peak oil and peak coal: When will we run out of resources [infographic] Many people are pointing to society reaching its peak point for mining resources, but when will we actually run out? One person on Reddit, known as CrazyHors3 , has done the math in this infographic.

Click here to view full article at www.miningaustralia.com.au