Author: ASPO-USA

With a growing population and improving diets there is a need to double our food supply by 2050. Identify three measures you would take to meet this demand. Identify one of your measures from your list and post your solution into the discussion – be prepared to defend your choice! That is a big question to throw in a climate change course. I am presently doing an online course – Climate Change: Challenges and solutions – offered by the University of Exeter (UK). So please indulge me as I also use this blog for some climate course work. This article is for week 6, section 6.5 of the course on ‘Tackling food security’. Food security is one helluva big area to try and come to terms with. Earth’s population is just over 7 billion people. It is projected by the United Nations in a June 2013 report on global […]

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drought map There is sound science that says there is likely to be big trouble, even in supplying Austin’s current population with enough water. Federal officials have designated portions of 11 drought-ridden Western and Central states as primary natural disaster areas. Map from UDSA.gov. Image from NBCDFW.com. First of three . I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear: `My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’ Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that […]

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Page added on February 22, 2014 Peak oil is the ever approaching, if not already passed point in which the world’s crude oil production rate reaches its maximum output, and then falls into decline. 86 million barrels of crude oil are produced everyday, however as a planet, we are using around 88 million barrels a day (Transition Culture 2007), showing an uneven consumption rate which will aid the decline of available oil. The International Energy Agency stated that there could be as much as 20,000 billion barrels (Transition Culture 2007) of oil under the planet’s surface but that much of it will remain undiscovered. Additionally, a considerable percentage of oil has been found under protected sites such as reindeer sanctuaries in Alaska and the newly found oil in the Arctic; the question is whether the value of this oil is worth the destruction of these ecosystems and environments as […]

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It is unfortunate, however, that we cannot look at the real problem. Unless we can understand the problem as it really is, it is impossible to find solutions that might actually be helpful. [1]   MIXED MESSAGES   The message behind messages like that one aren’t usually anyone’s first choice for contemplation, planning, or doing. Happier yarns about energy abundance are certainly more appealing. Reality being what it is, however, we continue to ignore that to our longer-term detriment. “Appealing” has a limited lifespan, and when the misleading half-truths are what most citizens hear most of the time, that timer will wind down sooner than we’re prepared for. That is definitely not a good message…. The bottom line is: If we want oil, we are going to need high prices. That’s what peak oil is all about –  progressively higher prices that are […]

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Page added on February 19, 2014 The idea that global oil production was nearing its peak , only to plateau and then decline was a common view in the energy world for many years. The geophysicist M. King Hubbard predicted in the 1950’s that US oil production would peak in the 1970’s, a forecast that held true until technology allowed companies to economically extract oil and gas from tight geologic formations like shale. The recent surge in US liquids output – crude plus natural gas liquids (NGLs) – quieted the peak oil community. A well-known, largely peak oil-focused website – The Oil Drum – shut down in 2013, an event some considered the death knell of the peak oil theory. But not so fast says Steven Kopits from energy business analysis firm Douglas-Westwood. Total global oil supply growth since 2005 – 5.8 million barrels per day – came from […]

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For the first time since the industrial revolution the world is moving into an era without a dominant energy source. That’s the assertion of global oil giant BP, which is also offering a reality check on the notion of peak oil. The company’s general manager of global energy markets and US economics, Mark Finley, is adamant that natural gas, coal and oil will all scrap for the top spot over the next two decades. The assertion comes on the back of a January release of BP’s latest 2035 energy market outlook, which highlighted a convergence of the fuels at the top of the energy tree in 20 years’ time. BP’s peak oil rejection Source: BP Energy Market Outlook 2035. “We’ve never seen this before,” Finley explains of the fight for the top spot during a recent speech at Columbia University in New York. “Personally, I think it poses some […]

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For the first time since the industrial revolution the world is moving into an era without a dominant energy source. That’s the assertion of global oil giant BP, which is also offering a reality check on the notion of peak oil. The company’s general manager of global energy markets and US economics, Mark Finley, is adamant that natural gas, coal and oil will all scrap for the top spot over the next two decades. The assertion comes on the back of a January release of BP’s latest 2035 energy market outlook, which highlighted a convergence of the fuels at the top of the energy tree in 20 years’ time. BP’s peak oil rejection Source: BP Energy Market Outlook 2035. “We’ve never seen this before,” Finley explains of the fight for the top spot during a recent speech at Columbia University in New York. “Personally, I think it poses some […]

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It is ironic that, just as we are finally saying goodnight and farewell to Peak Oil theory, scientists are poised to bring unlimited quantities of the finest sweet crude oil to market, courtesy of algae and sunlight. Moreover, the algae route to creating oil is said to generate 95% fewer greenhouse gasses than the conventional route of drilling for oil , so, even if climate change activists would rather that we stopped using oil altogether, “green oil” goes a long way towards meeting most of their objections. The technology is not new. Research has been going on for at least the last 30 years, but for much of that time, scientists found that they were having to put more energy into the process to grow the algae and extract the oil, than was contained in the oil – not exactly a winning proposition. […]

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Figure 1 A recent post at Peak Oil Barrel by Jean Laherrere suggested an ultimate recoverable resource(URR) for the North Dakota Bakken/Three Forks of about 2.5 Gb based on Hubbert Linearization.  This conflicts with a recent (April 2013) USGS mean (F50) estimate of 8.4 Gb.  I decided to update my scenarios based on the range of USGS estimates from F95=6 Gb to F5=11.3 Gb for the North Dakota(ND) Bakken/ Three Forks.  Note that at year end 2011 there were 2.6 Gb of crude proven reserves in ND and at the end of 2007 about 0.5 Gb, I will assume all of this reserve increase came from the Bakken/ Three Forks, so 2.1 Gb of proven reserves added to 0.35 Gb of oil produced from the Bakken/ Three Forks gives us 2.45 Gb for a minimum URR.  The Hubbert Linearization points to about 0.05 Gb of undiscovered oil whereas the USGS […]

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Page added on February 8, 2014   “To me at least the connection is clear and statistically certain… far more certain than anything I ever see in the stock market or the economy.” That’s Jeremy Grantham, the highly-regarded co-founder of the $117 billion investment fund GMO, who predicted both the dot com crash of the late 1990s and the subprime meltdown a few years later. Above is an accompanying chart included in his  latest investment letter . Rather than pushing an investment idea here, he’s convinced there’s a causal link between a surge in earthquakes measuring above 3 on the richter scale in the US and the boom in  hydraulic fracturing  (“fracking”), the controversial drilling technique used to extract oil and gas from shale rock. His overall skepticism about fracking informs Grantham’s broader, bearish thesis about oil prices. In the investment letter he questions whether “this year’s $650 billion spent looking […]

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Page added on February 8, 2014 Climate change is the reality we are living in. It is not going away; it has been clearly established as a fact, IOMCO — or immediately obvious to the most casual observer. The weather is simply becoming more extreme. More tornados, more flooding, more drought, stronger hurricanes and other extreme weather events are only the tip of the iceberg. Climate change is not something that you can change overnight. It has taken a few hundred years for man to have the negative impact that it has on the climate; even if we stopped burning all fossil fuels tomorrow, it would take hundreds more to reverse the trend. We hit the big time lottery when we discovered oil and gas. It was like we stumbled upon a treasure chest with millions of years of stored energy and just like some lottery winners, we became […]

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Jeremy Grantham, whose GMO LLC investment firm manages $117 billion in assets, says the Great American Shale Boom is a dangerous waste of time and money. Grantham, who started his career as an economist at Shell, recently contemplated attending an anti-Keystone Pipeline demonstration in front of the White House.  In his new letter to clients , Grantham explains why any country, from the U.S. to China, still going down the path of developing fossil fuels is walking into a trap.  First, he argues we are overstating the benefits of switching to natural gas: “Fracking gas,” like all natural gas, is basically methane. Methane unfortunately is an even more potent greenhouse gas than CO2: at an interval of 100 years it is now estimated to be 32 times as bad, and at 20 years to be 72 times worse! If it leaks from well head to […]

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Page added on February 6, 2014 How long can economic growth continue in a finite world? This is the question the 1972 book The Limits to Growth by Donella Meadows and others sought to answer. The computer models that the team of researchers produced strongly suggested that the world economy would collapse sometime in the first half of the 21st century. I have been researching what the real situation is with respect to resource limits since 2005. The conclusion I am reaching is that the team of 1972 researchers were indeed correct. In fact, the promised collapse is practically right around the corner, beginning in the next year or two. In fact, many aspects of the collapse appear already to be taking place, such as the 2008-2009 Great Recession and the collapse of the economies of many smaller countries such as Greece and Spain. How could collapse be so […]

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Gasoline-like fuels can be made from cellulosic materials such as farm and forestry waste using a new process invented by chemists at the University of California, Davis. The process could open up new markets for plant-based fuels, beyond existing diesel substitutes. “What’s exciting is that there are lots of processes to make linear hydrocarbons, but until now nobody has been able to make branched hydrocarbons with volatility in the gasoline range,” said Mark Mascal, professor of chemistry at UC Davis and lead author on the paper published Jan. 29 in the journal  Angewandte Chemie . Traditional diesel fuel is made up of long, straight chains of carbon atoms, while the molecules that make up gasoline are shorter and branched. That means gasoline and diesel evaporate at different temperatures and pressures, reflected in the different design of diesel and gasoline engines. Biodiesel, refined from plant-based oils, is already commercially available […]

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At the risk of starting a cat fight where truth may too quickly become a casualty, why don’t we more forcefully challenge those who deny peak oil (and global warming) and who do so for reasons that generally ignore reality in favor of narrowly-defined interests? Those motivations will ultimately do nothing but promote more eventual harm by denying the truths to those who clearly need them the most…. Of course, we run the risk of getting bogged down in he said/she-said arguments that quickly devolve into the lowest forms of ‘debate’, but why let those types of offerings go unchallenged? They feed on themselves, and it is tiresome and time-consuming to have to rebut all the nonsense. But if we don’t, uninformed readers and listeners have no reason to at least consider the possibility that there may indeed be other facts out there […]

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In order to understand what solutions to our energy predicament will or won’t work, it is necessary to understand the true nature of our energy predicament. Most solutions fail because analysts assume that the nature of our energy problem is quite different from what it really is. Analysts assume that our problem is a slowly developing long-term problem, when in fact, it is a problem that is at our door step right now. The point that most analysts miss is that our energy problem behaves very much like a near-term financial problem . We will discuss why this happens. This near-term financial problem is bound to work itself out in a way that leads to huge job losses and governmental changes in the near term. Our mitigation strategies need to be considered […]

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Despite the arguments that once raged and the considerable volumes written to advocate certain viewpoints and disparage others, interest in peak oil is at an all time low. Indeed some commentators have confidently declared that peak oil is dead and that the theory has turned out to be nonsense . But this attitude stems largely from the explosion of tight or shale oil production in the US. This oil, trapped in shale rock formations in the same way as shale gas, and similarly extracted by fracking, was almost unheard of just over five years ago. Yet recent projections suggest production of it could exceed 7m barrels per day by 2035 . Despite this, some analysts maintain that tight oil has no bearing on peak oil, and others claim that it is a point we have already passed . So we are in the strange position where both sides of […]

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My anomalous position as a writer and speaker on the future of industrial society who holds down a day job as an archdruid has its share of drawbacks, no question, but it also has significant advantages.  One of the most important of those is that I don’t have to worry about maintaining a reputation as a serious public figure. That may not sound like an advantage, but believe me, it is one. Most of the other leading figures in the peak oil scene have at least some claim to respectability, and that pins them down in subtle and no-so-subtle ways. Like it or not, they have to know that being right about peak oil means that they might just pick up the phone one of these days and field an invitation to testify before a Senate subcommittee or a worried panel of long-range […]

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Citizens of the U.S. and world are heading into a future that few have prepared.  It will also turn out to be much worse than most realize as it will be unlike anything we have witnessed in the past. Part of the reason we are in such a bad fix has to do with the compartmentalization and specialization of our modern educational and economic system.  There are many intelligent people in the market doing smart things, however they have no clue on what the hell is going on in other industries or professions. For example, there are many precious metal analysts that I have much respect for, but who fail to understand the energy industry.  Now, I would imagine there are a few analysts in the precious metal Biz that do understand the ramifications of Peak Oil, but it’s more rewarding for them […]

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Something has bothered me of late: why is the price of crude oil still elevated? Other commodities have taken a battering since 2011. Gold, copper and iron ore – all are way down off their peaks. But oil has seemingly defied gravity. And that’s despite increased supply from shale oil in the U.S., still soft demand particularly in the developed world and declining rates of inflation growth across the globe. What gives? Well, shale oil proponents will say falling oil prices are just a matter of time. And that the boom in shale oil will reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil, leading to cheaper local oil, which will free up household budgets and spur consumption as well as the broader economy. Perhaps … though I’d have thought all of that would already be reflected in prices. On the other side, you have "peak oil" supporters who suggest high oil […]

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Image via The Prime Minster’s Office/flickr. Creative Commons 2.0 license.   Three things you shouldn’t miss this week Commentary: America’s Feel-Good Oil Bonanza -What the EIA says matters—regardless of its veracity or substantiation. In this light, let’s take a look at what the EIA is now saying in AEO 2014. Commentary: 6 reasons why there’s no community in fracking – Fracking is too capital intensive to allow communities to set up and run their own wells, even if they wanted to…Income such as is being proposed is only one small part of the bigger picture of thinking about what a resilient community needs. Commentary : In brief: The EU’s new 2030 climate and energy package – The European Commission today announced new energy and climate targets for the EU. The UK is to go all out for shale gas and David Cameron is asking British people to get on […]

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Several months ago, I discussed the issue of “Capex compression.” When decreasing oil industry revenues cannot keep up with the increasing exploration and production costs of unconventional resources such as deep-water and shale fields, investments decline. Not exactly rocket science….   GETTING LESS = HAVING LESS   As I noted in that post, and as common sense suggests, when they invest less, we wind up with less. We now live in a world where demand is forecasted to increase [see this ] and conventional crude oil  production continues to decline by 3-4 million barrels per day—depending on which source is referenced. Lower investments and thus lower supply from resources harder to find, extract, and produce to begin with, means that we’re confronted with some legitimate supply and demand issues most fifth-graders would understand: Less supply and higher demand = a problem. Of course, prices at the pump could increase […]

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The supermajor sees energy landscape shifting as demand growth slows and new fuels emerge to challenge oil’s supremacy. Helen Robertson reports   Click here to view charts  UK SUPERMAJOR BP has claimed the concept of global energy supply peaking amid rapidly rising consumption is no longer valid as new fuels emerge and energy demand growth slows.   "The theory of peak oil has peaked," BP chief executive Bob Dudley said as he unveiled the company’s new energy outlook to 2035 . The outlook, which forecasts global energy supply and demand trends between 2012 and 2035, estimates total global energy consumption will rise by 41% between 2012 to 2035. This is compared to a rise of 55% over the last 23 years and 30% over the past decade.  Global energy demand will grow at around 2% per year between now and 2020 then falling to a rate of 1.2% per […]

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All signs of desperation, Albert. The party’s about to end and the most greedy people are getting as bladdered as they can, and stashing away their own private supplies before the booze runs out. Sad, and also childish. 2014 – This documentary and the other documentaries on this channel are very informative, interesting, and even fun. You will see documentaries on important times and figures in history, science, technology, nature, archaeology, and education, as well as some more fringe topics like conspiracy theories and government corruption. The topics of these video documentaries vary greatly and cover ancient history and civilizations like Rome, Greece, Egypt, science, technology, nature, planet earth and other planets, the solar system, the universe, World wars, battles, military and combat technology, current events, teaching and education, biographies, television, movies and cinema, the arts, popular music worldwide, archaeology, the Illuminati, Area 51, serial killers, paranormal and supernatural […]

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Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said he viewed the increase in U.S. oil production as a new source of supply that will help stabilize oil markets. Oil from shale is providing a buffer against an unsteady Middle East market, but it’s not too early to consider what happens to markets after the revolution. Skip to next paragraph Recent posts Naimi said during a meeting in Riyadh with U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz the increase in U.S. oil production was adding a level of stability to an international oil market unsettled by problems in the Middle East and North Africa. "It is necessary to continue consultations between our two countries to expand the horizons of cooperation, including joint investments, and working with oil producing and consuming countries for the stability of […]

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Peak oil has been predicted since the 1950s to occur by various near-future dates, originally as early as 1965. The prediction that US oil production would peak in the 1970s was, in fact, accurate, but new discoveries – including North American sources involving fracking and tar sands – keep pushing the timeline outward. Some say we will always find new oil sources, though economic theory states they will also get inexorably more expensive. Recent discussions have revived the peak oil debate. A Business Insider articl e last spring claimed “it is probably safe to say we have slayed "peak oil" once and for all, thanks to the combination new shale oil and gas production techniques and declining fuel use.” It was counterpointed here . But I basically don’t care. All the talk of peak oil, that we are running out of fossil fuels and therefore need […]

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Page added on January 15, 2014 We have all heard of peak oil, but peak grains? A study released by the Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln suggests we may be heading in that direction — if we’re not already there. The UNL study indicates that about 30% of major global cereal crops — including rice, wheat and corn — may have already reached their maximum yields. In fact, yields of these crops seem to have already hit a plateau and some are already decreasing, especially in eastern Asia, Europe and the United States. “We found widespread deceleration in the relative rate of increase of average yields of the major cereal crops during the 1990-2010 period in countries with greatest production of these crops,” says an article based on the study in Nature Communications . The article notes that there was a noticeable plateau […]

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Page added on January 16, 2014 OPEC spare capacity set to reach levels last seen in the depths of the financial crisis in 2009, analysts say One piece of the jigsaw puzzle is missing to complete the deflation landscape across the West: a slide in oil prices. This is becoming more likely each month. Turmoil across the Middle East and parts of Africa has choked supply over the past two years, keeping Brent crude near $110 a barrel despite a broader commodity slump. Cotton and corn prices have halved, as has the UBS (Xetra: UB0BL6 – news ) index of industrial metals. Such anomalies rarely last. “We estimate that crude oil is now the mostly richly priced commodity in the world,” says Deutsche Bank (Xetra: DBK.DE – news ) in a fresh report. Michael Lewis, the bank’s commodity strategist, said markets face an “new oil supply glut” as three […]

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Why EIA, IEA, and Randers’ 2052 Energy Forecasts are Wrong Page added on January 14, 2014 What is correct way to model the future course of energy and the economy? There are clearly huge amounts of oil, coal, and natural gas in the ground.  With different approaches, researchers can obtain vastly different indications. I will show that the real issue is most researchers are modeling the wrong limit . Most researchers assume that the limit that they should be concerned with is the amount of oil, coal, and natural gas in the ground. This is the wrong limit . While in theory we will eventually hit this limit, because of the way fossil fuels are integrated into the rest of the economy, we hit financial limits much earlier . These financial limits include lack of investment capital, inability of governments to collect enough taxes to fund their programs, and […]

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The fear that we have reached peak oil seems to have abated in recent years as the US and other countries began extraction of shale oil. But that doesn’t mean we should think that this problem has gone away. According to UPI.com , new research published by the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions A suggests that the shale gas reserves are just a false dawn and that oil production has reached a terminal tailspin, as supply increasingly struggles to keep up with demand. Oil rig with gas flare: we’ve already passed peak oil according to new research The impact of this will be felt by economies all around the world, resulting to exploiting ever-more difficult to extract oil supplies in an attempt to prop up supply. Former BP Geologist and co-author of the new research paper, Dr Richard G Miller told students at the University College London that data from […]

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The Romans named the first month of the year after the double-headed god Janus, the symbol of thresholds and transitions. He reminds us how life often involves choices between opposites. Janus stands at January’s doorway looking at both 2013 and the New Year. One Janus-like debate in the energy sector revolves around the world’s oil and gas supply. Views are always vacillating between “there’s not enough” and “there’s more than enough”. This point would be trivial were it not for a recent dramatic shift towards the first view. Until the middle of the last decade, the popular view was that production of “non-renewable” energy resources was peaking. In a sense, […]

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The following interview with Richard Heinberg was originally published in Flemish at the Belgian website De Wereld Morgen . The interview was given in conjunction with the release of the Dutch translation of Richard’s Book Snake Oil: How Fracking’s False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future . The Dutch title is Schaliegas, piekolie & onze toekomst . Selma Franssen: Considering the shale gas and oil reserves in Europe, is there any sense in fracking here, all other objections aside? Richard Heinberg: Until test wells are drilled, it’s very difficult to know what the actual shale gas and oil production potential is for Europe. All sorts of numbers have been cited, but they are simply guesses. Back in 2011, the US Energy Information Administration estimated that Poland’s shale gas reserves were 187 trillion cubic feet, but a little on-the-ground exploration led the Polish Geological Institute to downgrade that figure to […]

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Page added on January 9, 2014 Selma Franssen: Considering the shale gas and oil reserves in Europe, is there any sense in fracking here, all other objections aside? Richard Heinberg: Until test wells are drilled, it’s very difficult to know what the actual shale gas and oil production potential is for Europe. All sorts of numbers have been cited, but they are simply guesses. Back in 2011, the US Energy Information Administration estimated that Poland’s shale gas reserves were 187 trillion cubic feet, but a little on-the-ground exploration led the Polish Geological Institute to downgrade that figure to a mere 27 TCF—a number that may still be overly optimistic. My institute’s research suggests that US future production of shale oil and gas has been wildly over-estimated too. So, without attempting to put a specific number to it, I think it would be wise to assume that Europe’s actual reserves […]

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For many years, the most compelling issue driving sustainability efforts among businesses, consumers, governments and activists has been climate change. We are all becoming increasingly concerned with the impacts of rising temperatures and extreme weather events on our supply chains, cities, transportation networks, agricultural industries, and lives. We have become increasingly alarmed about the results of burning too much coal, oil and gas; the consequences of excessive emissions resulting from some of the most useful substances humanity has ever harnessed. We have identified our most important struggle – to maintain economic growth while reducing carbon emissions. Because our concern has been first and foremost the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, we have designed and sporadically implemented economic incentives to reduce carbon emissions. We issue carbon credits to companies that emit less carbon. We offer cash to countries who don’t cut down […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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