Author: ASPO-USA

The United States is awash in shale oil. Iran, once OPEC’s second-largest producer, is slowly ramping up output. Oil consumption growth in the Western world has been somewhere between negative and flat since the 2008 financial crisis. The “peak oil” theory has pretty much vanished, along with The Oil Drum, the bible of peak oil believers. Rest in peace. TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline. Or turn in your grave, for the oil price charts tell a different story. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, crude oil futures are up 13 per cent over one year. Since 2009, they have climbed every year except 2012. In Europe, the Brent crude futures are flat over the year after rising three years on the trot. Brent, the de facto global benchmark, trades at about $108 (U.S.) a barrel; West Texas Intermediate, the North American benchmark, is at $97. For the sake of […]

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Page added on December 12, 2013 The term “peak oil” has been around for decades, referring to when domestic oil production in America would peak. The jury is still out on peak oil, though the latest term to go around is “peak car”, with some studies indicating that the American car market is over saturated, and shrinking. But on a global scale, we’re not even close to reaching peak car. From 2006 to 2011, miles driven by Americans fell in three-quarters of urbanized areas where recent data was available. That’s quite specific, and also includes four of the five toughest economic years since the Great Depression. This data definitely screams out “selection bias!” to me, as high unemployment and stagnant wages means less reasons and less money for, you know, driving. While the study claims the economy has little to no impact on driving, again, by focusing only on […]

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Page added on December 11, 2013 It’s bad enough that most middle-class people still have to struggle to keep their jobs and homes in today’s Second Great Depression. But if you’re even a little bit awake, then you also have to worry about longer-term threats: climate change, Fukushima, peak oil and the impending collapse of industrial civilization. There’s plenty of reason for anyone to be depressed these days. Yet, somehow, some people still manage to keep calm and carry on. So, for the ordinary person who thinks that happiness is for dopes and who needs a little help finding their way to the bottom, therapist Cloe Madanes offers “14 Habits of Highly Miserable People.” Here, for those who are energy- and climate-aware, I offer my own adaptation of Madanes’s six top points to succeed at self-sabotage: Be afraid, be very afraid, of economic loss. If you know that fiat […]

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Page added on December 11, 2013 Were they crying “Wolf”? Concerns about “peak oil” have recurred repeatedly since the resource was first developed, but they reached an unprecedented height in 2007 just prior to the global economic recession. Since then public concern has diminished, partly as a result of shale oil production in the United States. Yet, despite these developments and globally rising reserves, oil prices have almost doubled since 2010 and have tripled in a decade. The ‘peak oil’ debate has not gone away – oil remains critically important, adequate substitutes have yet to be found and concerns about depletion persist. This volume presents the best scientific evidence on why a decline in oil supply may, or may not, be in sight. It considers the production and resources of conventional oil and the potential for developing alternative liquid fuels from tar sands, shales, biomass, coal and gas. It […]

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On December 9th, the day before the Nobel Prizes are handled out in Stockholm, there is a “Nobel Week Dialogue” in Gothenburg. This year’s theme is “Exploring the Future of Energy” and participating Nobel Laureates are presented by the organizers. My contribution to the dialogue is now published by Svenska Dagbladet on “Brännpunkt” under the heading “Now we need new energy systems” ( Read the article in Swedish on Brännpunkt ). An English translation of the debate article can be found below. Now the world needs new energy systems Kjell Aleklett, Professor University of Texas at Austin and Uppsala University, Global Energy Systems NASA has just released a new image showing lights on the Earth’s surface at night. If one zooms in on Texas in the image it is easy to identify the cities of Austin, San Antonio and Houston. South of San […]

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Many energy observers believe that the global Petroleum Engineering Industry had successfully managed deactivating the famous Peak Oil theory through developing new advanced technologies that resulted in significant additional reserves as a result of the exponential increase in the Research and Development (R&D) investment in the last decade as compared to the last century. The Peak Oil theory attracted media headlines at the beginning of this century through the book “Twilight in the Desert: Shock Saudi Oil and the Global Economy”  written by the famous banker Matthew Simon, who died few years ago. The exponential increase in the R&D investment by national, international and service oil companies generated several new advanced technologies that helped the oil industry discover more oil and gas fields and increase the recovery factor from existing and new discovered fields to reach a level that was never thought of in the past. Indeed, it was […]

Click here to view full article at www.saudigazette.com.sa

Many energy observers believe that the global Petroleum Engineering Industry had successfully managed deactivating the famous Peak Oil theory through developing new advanced technologies that resulted in significant additional reserves as a result of the exponential increase in the Research and Development (R&D) investment in the last decade as compared to the last century. The Peak Oil theory attracted media headlines at the beginning of this century through the book “Twilight in the Desert: Shock Saudi Oil and the Global Economy”  written by the famous banker Matthew Simon, who died few years ago. The exponential increase in the R&D investment by national, international and service oil companies generated several new advanced technologies that helped the oil industry discover more oil and gas fields and increase the recovery factor from existing and new discovered fields to reach a level that was never thought of in the past. Indeed, it was […]

Click here to view full article at www.saudigazette.com.sa

Page added on December 6, 2013 A consensus appears to have been reached that the world’s production of conventional oil peaked in recent years. And to many observers, it means that from this time forward the supply of oil and natural gas, along with peaking coal and uranium, will decrease toward zero, leaving global Industrial Culture without the precious energy that made that culture possible. With such a precipitous future awaiting the Industrial Tribe, it is curious that one does not hear much about declining energy supplies in the mainstream media. Instead, we are bombarded daily with the “Industrial Progressive Narrative” (Princen et al , 2013), a comforting meme that portrays society as having ever-more energy resources that will drive never-ending growth into the future: “This month Continental Resources told investors that the [Bakken Formation] contains enough recoverable oil to double the official count of U.S. reserves and enough […]

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