Author: ASPO-USA

Shocking Prediction: Part II – The ‘Second Phase’ Of The Oil Boom Could Eclipse The First Last week, I told you about how the "second phase" of the oil boom could make the first phase look like small potatoes (you can read the article here ). At the end of my article, I mentioned that if the price of oil drops below $70 per barrel, horizontal drilling plays could see their margins shrink considerably, along with investment returns. I know a lot of oil investors are worried about that potential outcome, so I wanted to write this follow-up to show you why I think high oil prices are here to stay, and why over time they’re likely to go higher. If you think we’ve escaped "peak oil" and oil prices are destined to fall… think again. Back in 2008, before the financial crisis […]

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

Well, it’s the end of the year 2013, and everyone and his or her brother is busy compiling a Top Ten Something-or-Other (take your pick: movies, songs, celebrity faux pas, football players, baseball players, basketball dunks, Miley Cyrus embarrassments, etc.)  list for 2013. Turns out I’m too lazy to compile my own Top Ten Energy Stories for 2013, because that would require going back through a year’s worth of stories and doing a bunch of time-consuming research.  I figured instead I’d compile my own list of Fearless Oil & Gas-Related Predictions for 2014, since I can just make those up off the top of my head, throw ‘em against the wall, and see which, if any of them, stick. So, here goes nothing: Prediction #1 :  Every day during 2014, an earthquake will take place somewhere on the face of the earth.  And every day, no […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Well, it’s the end of the year 2013, and everyone and his or her brother is busy compiling a Top Ten Something-or-Other (take your pick: movies, songs, celebrity faux pas, football players, baseball players, basketball dunks, Miley Cyrus embarrassments, etc.)  list for 2013. Turns out I’m too lazy to compile my own Top Ten Energy Stories for 2013, because that would require going back through a year’s worth of stories and doing a bunch of time-consuming research.  I figured instead I’d compile my own list of Fearless Oil & Gas-Related Predictions for 2014, since I can just make those up off the top of my head, throw ‘em against the wall, and see which, if any of them, stick. So, here goes nothing: Prediction #1 :  Every day during 2014, an earthquake will take place somewhere on the face of the earth.  And every day, no […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

General Ideas Lots of things that should have happened in 2013 did not. We were supposed to have long ago reached “peak oil” and an age of always-higher gas prices. Wind and solar power – and a reduced lifestyle – were our dismal future. But someone or something did not cooperate with gloomy government predictions. After all the failed subsidized green companies, the postponement of the Keystone Pipeline, the radical restrictions of new gas and oil leasing on federal lands, and the promises for radical climate-change legislation curtailing carbon energy use, the United States nevertheless seems awash in old energy. Gas prices have been going down. Oil and natural gas production is going up. America may soon be the largest coal exporter in the world. There is little worry over any more Middle East embargoes and cutoffs of oil. Energy-intensive industries talk of relocating from Asia and Europe to […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

If being wealthy were the same as pretending to be wealthy, then people who care about reality would have a little less to complain about. But pretending is a poor way for a society to negotiate its way through history. It makes for accumulating distortions which eventually undermine the society’s ability to function, especially when the pretending is about money, which is society’s operating system. The distortion that even simple people care about is that the gap between the rich and the poor is as plain, vast and grotesque as at any time in our history — except perhaps during slavery times in Dixieland, when many of the poor did not even own their existence. We’ve had plenty of reminders of that in pop culture the last couple of years, including Quentin Tarantino’s fiercely stupid movie “Django Unchained” and the more recent melodrama […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Mark Twain once said, "It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so." And, there are many, many things that the public and policymakers know for sure about energy that just ain’t so. That list is very long indeed and getting longer as the fossil fuel industry (which has little interest in intellectual honesty) continues its skillful manipulation of a gullible and sometimes careless media. Pinocchio in a parade http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1916MomusPinocchio.jpg Below I’ve listed seven whoppers that it would be charitable to call misleading. Longtime readers will recognize that I’ve addressed them before in various pieces. But I thought that it would be useful to review the worst of the worst of 2013 as the year ends. Here are seven things everyone knows about energy that just ain’t so: 1. Worldwide oil production has been growing by leaps […]

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

Mark Twain once said, "It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so." And, there are many, many things that the public and policymakers know for sure about energy that just ain’t so. That list is very long indeed and getting longer as the fossil fuel industry (which has little interest in intellectual honesty) continues its skillful manipulation of a gullible and sometimes careless media. Pinocchio in a parade http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1916MomusPinocchio.jpg Below I’ve listed seven whoppers that it would be charitable to call misleading. Longtime readers will recognize that I’ve addressed them before in various pieces. But I thought that it would be useful to review the worst of the worst of 2013 as the year ends. Here are seven things everyone knows about energy that just ain’t so: 1. Worldwide oil production has been growing by leaps […]

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

Speaking of “peak demand” about the present stasis in the world oil production is a little like the concept of “the sound of a single hand clapping” is an old Zen “koan.” This riddle has been solved by Bart Simpson in recent times. The concept of “ peak demand ” is gaining popularity in the discussion about peak oil. It is a good example of how a discussion can get lost in a no-man’s land of unsupported ideas and concepts. Peak demand, in a certain way, is a rebuttal of the idea that we have limits to what we can do on this limited planet. So, the implication  is that the present lack of growth in world oil production (which is a prelude to the peak) and the reduction of consumption in OECD countries has nothing to do with physical limits: it […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Shale Bubble Page added on December 23, 2013 We’re being told that – thanks to technological advances like hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling – the US is undergoing an energy revolution, leading us in a few short years to become once again the world’s biggest oil producer and an exporter of natural gas. According to the Oil & Gas Industry and their proponents, “fracking” will provide the US with energy security, low energy prices for the foreseeable future, more than a million jobs, and economic growth. “There’s no doubt that we’re seeing an industrial revolution… taking place because of the shale revolution.” –Ed Morse, Global Head of Commodities Research at Citigroup “We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly 100 years, and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy.” –President Barack Obama “[The Utica Shale is] the biggest thing economically […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Photo credit: bryanburke/flickr. Creative Commons 2.0 license .  Three things you shouldn’t miss this week Cost savings fear if greenhouse gas targets are scaled back  –  Watering down the UK’s efforts to tackle global warming would risk wiping out at least £100bn in cost savings even if shale gas production takes off.   New shale gas drilling areas to be revealed as communities promised £100,000 benefits for fracking  –  Large swathes of UK to be opened up for shale drilling, with communities where fracking takes place to receive £100,000, even if no gas is produced.   IEA projection of global all-liquids production to 2035.  The ‘New Policies’ scenario takes into account policy commitments and plans that have already been implemented, as well as those that have been announced. Source: IEA 2012 World Energy Outlook. Paris, France: International Energy Agency.   Weakening the UK’s Fourth Carbon Budget has no legal […]

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