Category: Peak Oil

Since around 2005 many countries have increased their oil production but more have decreased. But the combined production of the United States and Russia have kept the world on a slight uptrend since that time. World oil production jumped in 2011, hardly moved at all in 2013 but it was up by more than 1.5 million barrels per day in 2014. And after such a huge gain everyone and their brother were singing “peak oil is dead’. But if you scroll down through the 37 major world oil producers it becomes obvious that a majority of nations have peaked and most of them are in steep decline. The above chart is EIA data; however, the next four charts below are JODI data with the last data point February 2015. The data on all charts is thousand barrels per day. In the last decade it has been two of the […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

The result, in my opinion, is as startling as it is world-changing: Global oil demand will peak within the next two decades. A less potent weapon The geopolitical and economic implications of peaking demand will be huge. The fall in the importance of Saudi Arabia is already palpable, with all the major powers from the U.S. to China more willing to accommodate Saudi archrival Iran. In addition, Russia’s ability to use oil as a weapon will wane, as will the economic leverage of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. As economic growth becomes increasingly disconnected from oil, world powers will likely shift their attention to other increasingly scarce resources that will be equally critical to economic well-being, such as food, water and minerals. A greater interest in Africa, for example, is already starting to emerge. For sure, peak demand is far from how the oil patch sees things. […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article called, Glut of Capital and Labor Challenge Policy Makers : Global oversupply extends beyond commodities, elevating deflation risk. To me, this is a very serious issue, quite likely signaling that we are reaching what has been called Limits to Growth , a situation modeled in 1972 in a book by that name. What happens is that economic growth eventually runs into limits. Many people have assumed that these limits would be marked by high prices and excessive demand for goods. In my view, the issue is precisely the opposite one: Limits to growth are instead marked by low prices and inadequate demand. Common workers can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that the economy produces, because of inadequate wage growth. The price of all commodities drops, because of lower demand by workers. Furthermore, investors can no longer find investments […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. private employers in April hired the fewest number of workers in more than a year, further diminishing hopes of a strong rebound in economic growth after the first-quarter slump. The tepid private job gains combined with other data on Wednesday showing a second straight quarterly decline in productivity make it less likely the U.S. Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in June as had been expected at the start of the year. "The data pile onto recent evidence suggesting increased odds that, by the time the June policy meeting rolls around, the hope of a great spring rebound in real growth will have faded," said Steve Blitz, chief economist at ITG Investment Research in New York. Private payrolls increased 169,000 last month, the smallest gain since January 2014, the ADP National Employment Report showed. That was well below economists’ expectations for an increase of 200,000 […]

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

Since around 2005 many countries have increased their oil production but more have decreased. But the combined production of the United States and Russia have kept the world on a slight uptrend since that time. World oil production jumped in 2011, hardly moved at all in 2013 but it was up by more than 1.5 million barrels per day in 2014. And after such a huge gain everyone and their brother were singing “peak oil is dead’. But if you scroll down through the 37 major world oil producers it becomes obvious that a majority of nations have peaked and most of them are in steep decline. The above chart is EIA data; however, the next four charts below are JODI data with the last data point February 2015. The data on all charts is thousand barrels per day. In the last decade it has been two of the […]

Click here to view full article at oilprice.com

Money manager David Einhorn’s doomsday outlook for shale oil drillers so far is failing to resonate with investors. A pessimistic assessment of the industry by the president of Greenlight Capital Inc. on Monday briefly shook the stock of the companies Einhorn targeted, dropping EOG Resources Inc. by as much as 2.8 percent after he spoke out and Concho Resources Inc. by as much as 3.5 percent. By the end of the day, though, both companies recorded gains, probably reflecting continued investor confidence that oil’s price plunge from more than $100 a barrel in 2014 is spurring cost cuts and new drilling strategies in an industry long known for its profligate spending. Crude prices have risen by 36 percent since March 17, eliminating much of the decline of the preceding nine-month oil-market rout. The oil price drop “sped up the ‘reset’ process,” said Andrew Cosgrove, an energy analyst for Bloomberg […]

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

Despite the exploitation of unconventional oil resources like high-cost tar sands (pictured in Canada) and shales, peak oil really is upon us. Photo: Gord McKenna via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND). The ‘death of peak oil’ has been much exaggerated, writes Paul Mobbs. Take out high-cost ‘unconventional’ oil and production peaked ten years ago, and even North America’s fracking and tar sands boom has failed to open up new resources both big enough to make good the shortfall, and cheap enough to reward investors. We really do need to be thinking ‘beyond petroleum’. This is the cleft stick within today’s global energy supply: too little ‘cheap energy’ to enable economic growth, too low a return on capital to allow investment in higher production. A few weeks ago tremors rocked the world of ‘fracking’ in the USA – though few heard them. The US Energy Information Agency (USEIA) had issued its latest […]

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

4 Comments on "Dmitry Orlov Peak Oil Lessons From The Soviet Union" Plantagenet on Mon, 4th May 2015 1:55 pm  The Soviet Union was never at peak oil. The problem in the USSR had to do with bad economic policies and genocide and repression carried out by a totalitarian red fascist police state. sugarseam on Mon, 4th May 2015 3:43 pm  As always, you don’t appear to know what you’re talking about, Plant. Your Red Scare is showing, as is the case with most narrow-minded cons. “Red fascist.” What a laughable bastardization of language. They showed us their underbelly after the Wall fell, and predatory capitalists went in and pilfered their country to the tune of hundreds of billions (Harvard Foundation, et al). The number of times that nation has offered an olive branch since Hiroshima only to have greedy Western fascists pull the rug out is hard to […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

There has been a lot of attention recently to the longer term viability of global fossil fuel reserves. Due to the fall in oil, natural gas and coal prices, the FT reports this week that all the oil majors have slipped into loss as a result of of the low oil and natural gas prices. Why Manufacturers Need to Ditch Purchase Price Variance That’s not the reason for the viability questions, though, that attention is due more as a result of future climate change legislation raising the cost of carbon-based fuels. Another article leads with comments made by Glencore Plc ’s chief executive, Ivan Glasenberg, in the company’s recent sustainability report. Glencore’s Bullish Reacting to investor concerns (not just at Glencore but at all energy companies) he is quoted as saying “Although climate change issues are part of the political, societal and regulatory landscape, we do not believe that […]

Click here to view full article at agmetalminer.com

Photo: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg News When it comes to oil demand, the conventional wisdom is clear: Population growth and a rising global middle class guarantee that demand—and prices—will rise over the coming decades. It is a story line that is almost universally accepted by investors, governments and industry alike. But like many such consensus views, it is one that should be treated with caution. The world’s economy is experiencing transformational changes that, I believe, will dramatically alter patterns of energy use over the next 20 years. Exponential gains in industrial productivity, software-assisted logistics, rapid urbanization, increased political turmoil in key regions of the developing world, and large bets on renewable energy are among the many factors that will combine to slow the previous breakneck growth for oil. The result, in my opinion, is as startling as it is world-changing: Global oil demand will peak within the next two decades. A […]

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

Since around 2005 many countries have increased their oil production but more have decreased. But the combined production of the United States and Russia have kept the world on a slight uptrend since that time. World since 2000 World oil production jumped in 2011, hardly moved at all in 2013 but it was up by more than  1.5 million barrels per day in 2014. And after such a huge gain everyone and their brother were singing “peak oil is dead’. But if you scroll down through the 37 major world oil producers it becomes obvious that a majority of nations have peaked and most of them are in steep decline. The above chart is EIA data however the next four charts below are JODI data with the last data point February 2015. The data on all charts is thousand barrels per day. Spuds per Rig Permits & Spuds Continue reading […]

Click here to view full article at peakoilbarrel.com

One could argue that the most dangerous push in our energy/environment discussion is that which seeks to stop/limit oil production and/or divest from oil companies. That’s because our primary fuel has nowhere near a significant substitute. As such, publicly-traded oil companies are the lone bastion between us and a complete reliance on OPEC. [1] Well … sure, I guess one could argue that … “Big Oil: Leaping Tall Buildings … for Truth, Justice, and the American Way….” One could also argue this: given that oil is a finite resource becoming increasingly more challenging and expensive to locate and produce—among other inconvenient truths—perhaps we might urge industry and elected leaders to … you know … think about the future in terms other than “let’s maximize oil revenues and our bank accounts today.” Pursuing the one-track approach to our energy supply today and tomorrow has its advantages, at least for some. […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

What happened to peak oil? Here an older 2012 video from Swedish peak oil luminary and ASPO chairman Kjell Aleklett . At the time, when we started this blog, we were entirely in the Richard Heinberg mode of thinking, summarized as: ‘ industrial society is going to be hit very soon by a truck, that few see coming and industrial society is doomed, because the world is running out of oil quickly. ‘ We no longer think that is the case. That doesn’t mean that peak oil is not going to happen, but it is at least a little postponed and there is fossil fuel life after peak oil. On the fossil fuel supply front, we are much more optimistic than we were three years ago. Meanwhile we think that it is very well possible to have a sustainable light-weight industrial society for 100% based on renewable energy, to […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Summary The developments in energy in the USA over the last ten years are a miracle. The USA is now and will remain the dominant world energy producer for decades to come. All Americans should know and be proud of the superlative facts of the US energy revolution. Of Giants, Super Giants and Mega Giants It sounds like the title should be a lead in for a piece about the Avengers or some other comic book heroes. The only hero in this article is the United States Energy Industry. The revolutionary, innovation inspired growth of the last ten years is nothing short of a miracle. This narrative is not popular with the current White House or Democratic Party. You won’t hear them or the media talk much about it. It is not part of their playbook. Along with the intelligentsia in this country, the media, the White House and […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Summary Recent oil crashes show you the hard floor for gauging value oil company equities. Properly understood, the crashes lend an insight into the concept of Peak Oil. All oil equity investors should understand the overarching upward trend on display here. PLEASE NOTE: ALL prices used in this article are using current 2015 dollars, inflation adjusted using the US BLS inflation calculator Generally, when I invest, I try to keep my thesis very simple. Find good companies, with good balance sheets and some kind of specific catalytic event on the horizon. But when one starts to concentrate their holdings in a sector, as I have recently in energy (see my recent articles on RMP Energy (OTCPK: OEXFF ) and DeeThree Energy (OTCQX: DTHRF ) , you need to also get a good handle on the particular tail or headwinds that are affecting it. Sometimes a sector like oil (NYSEARCA: […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

General Ideas While all the buzz surrounds oil prices, the global demand side remains on solid footing: up. Supplying 33% of all energy, oil is the world’s primary fuel. Oil is so important that global demand is ever-growing: 67 million b/d in 1990, 77 million b/d in 2000, and 91 million b/d in 2014. I’ll never understand the animosity of some Westerners toward critical fuels that they depend on everyday, making their lives easier in ways their great grandparents only dreamed of. [1] “Animosity” directed to fossil fuels? Has a nice right-wing playbook buzz to it, but those of us concerned with facts have an annoying habit of insisting that all of them be considered, and that consequences must also find a place at the table where overly-broad statements otherwise prefer being alone. And how exactly does one direct animus toward an energy source which has indeed made it […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

We live in a world with limits, yet our economy needs growth. How can we expect this scenario to play out? My view is that this problem will play out as a fairly near-term financial problem, with low oil prices leading to a fall in oil production. But not everyone comes to this conclusion. What were the views of early researchers? How do my views differ? In my post today, I plan to discuss the first lecture I gave to a group of college students in Beijing. A PDF of it can be found here:  1. Overview of Energy Modeling Problem . A MP4 video is available as well on my  Presentations/Podcasts Page . Many Limits in a Finite World We live in a world with limits. These limits are not just energy limits; they come in many different forms: All these limits work together. We can work around […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Today we will take a look at both Whiting Petroleum (WLL) and Continental Resources (CLR) as far as their Bakken economics. Overall the numbers will show that, despite claims of low cash costs per MBOE ($16 or so for CLR) and high IRRs on $60 WTI, the facts say otherwise. In addition, the analysis will show how very high depletion rates combined with falling rig counts spells trouble for Bakken production growth despite better efficiencies per well. The analysis will be based on April presentations of both companies from which the graphs below are taken. I should note these economics are not much different from Eagle Ford, the second most prolific addition to US production growth in past years. Firstly one must understand that the easy money via QE from the Fed and zero interest rates allowed many shale players to burn free cash flow while showing operationally net […]

Click here to view full article at oilprice.com

Heinberg: Afterburn thumbnail We live in a time of what might be called The Great Burning. However, we tend to ignore the tremendous inferno blazing around us. Most of the combustion occurs out of sight and out of mind, in hundreds of millions of automobile, truck, aircraft, and ship engines; in tens of thousands of coal or gas-fired power plants that provide the electricity that runs our computers, smart phones, refrigerators, air conditioners, and televisions; in furnaces that warm us in the winter; in factories that spew out products we are constantly urged to buy. Add all this burning together and it amounts to the energy equivalent of torching a quarter of the Amazon rainforest every year. In the United States, the energy from annual fossil fuel combustion roughly equates to the solar energy taken up by all biomass in the nation. It’s a conflagration unlike anything that has […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

General Ideas It was not long ago that $100 per barrel oil was accepted as the new normal. China’s strong economic growth (and energy demand) would continue apace, and OPEC and Saudi Arabia would continue to play the traditional role as swing producer in support of oil prices. Events have proved otherwise. Oil markets have entered a new period. Now it is supply, not demand, which is the key the factor, making not-so-distant discussions of “peak oil” seem very far gone. China’s economy, while still growing, has slowed. And by leaving oil prices to the market, OPEC has effectively ceded the role of de facto swing producer to a country that hardly expected it—the United States. Markets never cease in their ability to upend current expectations and confound established thinking. That is certainly the case for the world of energy in a year that has seen the rapid creation […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

This blog began seven years and almost a thousand posts ago, and I thought it a good time to take stock. Since the blog itself was inspired by the “peak oil” movement, and since it’s been ten years, by some measures, since the peak, I wanted to assess the state of that community as well. First the personal notes: Many of my posts are reprints of my columns for our local newspaper, or for Grit and Mother Earth News magazines, short and focused on gardening and crafts. I’d like to write longer articles about broader subjects as well, however, as I have for American Conservative or Low-Tech Magazine, so I’m cutting back to twice a week – one new article every weekend, and one reprint or photo mid-week. There’s a great deal to write about, you see, and too little time. We have three generations of family living in […]

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

Peak oil isn’t what it used to be. That’s not simply because the theory of global oil supply peaking has been postponed courtesy of the U.S. production rebound, it is also because a second meaning to the expression is making a return, and that’s peak demand. A fresh glimpse of demand for oil peaking came last week in the release of the April edition of Oil Market Report by the International Energy Agency. While most interest was in oil supply, a natural focus given the glut which has depressed the price of oil, there was a more important factor in the report and that was the modest demand growth forecast from the agency. Sluggish Demand Growth The key figures were a 1 million barrel-day increase in worldwide oil supply during March to an 95.2 million barrels a day, and a 1.1 million barrel a day increase in demand to […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Oil historian and economist Daniel Yergin has a forecast for where the price of crude is headed: all over the place. The much debated shape of the oil-price curve will take the form of a W as crude is whipsawed by mixed signs from a rattled U.S. shale boom, while Saudi Arabia refuses to balance a global supply glut, Yergin said in an interview on Tuesday. As spending cuts are forecast to begin easing production from shale next month, the fate of world oil markets is largely in the hands of a myriad of U.S. wildcatters, all with different strategies and an unusual ability to respond quickly to changed circumstances. Ramping down will be quicker and easier than stepping up production as prices recover, said Yergin, vice chairman of IHS Inc. Increased supply will renew downward pressure on prices and volatility will be exacerbated by storage and investment decisions, […]

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

Has The U.S. Reached “Peak Oil” At Current Price Levels? thumbnail Last night the EIA once again capitulated on the myth that rig counts don’t matter and the productivity of wells would largely offset, leaving the industry on a continuous path to higher output. The current consensus of 500,000 B/D additional growth in 2015 US production now appears very much at risk. Look how far we have come, folks, from all that media hysteria this past year. Yesterday, Reuters even wrote an article stating that the EIA prediction of a sequential decline in oil production in May vs. April would be the first, if proven, true prediction. Meanwhile, fact checking would indicate that this, in fact, occurred last week as reported here . In any event the EIA now thinks that production will decline 57,000 B/D in May counter to earlier expectations that the Permian would largely offset declines […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Five percent of the world’s oil tanker capacity is waiting to load up near Basra Iraq, where production is way up. The United States has only one month of oil storage capacity left. After that, what comes in must go straight to market, likely for as little as $20 a barrel. Is peak oil dead?  And why isn’t the economy responding to cheaper oil? We’ll ask the guru, Richard Heinberg. He’s one of the people who popularized the oil squeeze, with his book "The Party’s Over". Heinberg has a new book out  Afterburn: Society Beyond Fossil Fuels . After that, during this Spring in the Northern Hemisphere, a couple of us hope to persuade you to grow some of your own food. Marjory Wildcraft, from  growyourowngroceries  joins us. There’s a lot of reasons we need to pay attention to the food supply.

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

Oil companies have a knack for picking the bottom in crude prices, and history may be about to repeat itself. Traders and analysts are speculating that Royal Dutch Shell Plc’s takeover of BG Group Plc for $70 billion announced Wednesday may be the first in a wave of acquisitions as Big Oil seeks to drive out costs following the rout in oil. That happening would resemble the massive deals of the late 1990s that restructured the industry. As oil slid then, BP Plc bought Amoco Corp. for $56 billion in August 1998 and Exxon took over Mobil Corp. for $80 billion in December. Both were announced just weeks before Brent crude reached its trough of $9.55 a barrel. As the market began to recover, Spain’s Repsol SA acquired YPF of Argentina for some $15 billion and Total SA of France bought Elf Aquitaine for $52 billion. Chevron later scooped […]

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

Peak Oil is back at least for now! U.S. oil futures soared after he Energy Information Administration (EIA) acknowledged that U.S. oil output will fall despite earlier predictions to the contrary only to fall back after the American Petroleum Institute reported a 12.2 million barrel increase in crude oil supply. The market seemed to ignore a prediction by the EIA that oil might fall $15 a barrel if Iranian oil came back onto the market. This comes against a back drop of a mega energy deal that may signal more deals to come and a consolidated market bottom. Let us start with EIA’s “Short Term Energy Outlook” that sent oil on a tear. “The reason was that the EIA said that U.S. crude oil production  is expected to peak this year in the second quarter and then decline in the third quarter, before picking up again toward the end […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

This article  was written by Oilprice.com, the leading provider of energy news in the world. Check out these other articles. Earthquake Case Could Doom Fracking In Oklahoma Saudi Influence On Oil Markets Slipping It appears as if oil prices could be on the verge of a rebound, with new data showing that the U.S. oil patch is hitting an inflection point. While specific shale regions — such as  North Dakota’s Bakken and Texas’ Eagle Ford  — have posted production declines, overall U.S. oil output managed to edge up in recent months. But now that U.S. production has finally dipped, it may augur a new phase for oil markets in which production cutbacks could lead to higher prices. The Energy Information Administration  reported  on April 1 that total U.S. oil production fell for the week ending on March 27, falling 36,000 barrels per day to 9.38 million barrels per day. […]

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

It should seem obvious that it takes energy to get energy. And, when it takes more energy to get the energy we want, this usually spells higher prices since the energy inputs used cost more. Under such circumstances there is less energy left over for the rest of society to use, that is, for the non-energy gathering parts–the industrial, commercial and residential consumers of energy–than would otherwise be the case. It shouldn’t be surprising then that as fossil fuels, which provide more than 80 percent of the power modern society uses, become more energy intensive to extract and refine, there is a growing drag on economic activity as more and more of the economy’s resources are devoted simply to getting the energy we want. A more formal way of talking about this is Energy Return on Investment or EROI. The "energy return" is the energy we get for a […]

Click here to view full article at resourceinsights.blogspot.com

From Russia to your local gas station, the consequences of low fuel prices are clear. But the consequences of those consequences are less apparent. An oil field in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk ( Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters ) What do Russia, Exxon Mobil, and ISIS have in common? Not much, except that they’re all grappling with an inconvenient but incontrovertible truth: a sudden, significant, and prolonged shift in the price of oil changes the world.   That truth was on display in 1974, and it’s on display again now. Over the course of just a few months in 1973-1974, the price of oil surged from $3 to $12 per barrel. The new price created new global economic powers: oil-producing countries primarily in the Middle East and North Africa. It also dealt a severe blow to the economies of the United States, Europe, Japan, and other oil importers. The oil shock […]

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

3 Comments on "Supply or Demand? Peak Oil with Richard Heinberg and James Hamilton" Davy on Sat, 28th Mar 2015 10:10 am  Why don’t these academic greenie weennies divest out of the car culture and show real backbone? Why don’t they admit that no matter how much they want to have their cake and eat it there are no free lunches? Why don’t they admit or try to understand that BAU is carbon and without carbon there is no BAU. Then while they are at it admit without BAU there is no Stanford. This is just another greenie joke of feel-goodism that will go nowhere. If you want to change things then lobby government to restrict liquid fuels enough to put the economy in a tailspin so we can begin the power down that will involve huge changes to bad attitudes, lifestyles, and economic activity. This power down will […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

In the past, the usual “oil crisis” was caused by self-serving news items of an oil shortage, causing soaring prices. Just 2-3 years ago, the fear mongers said that the world had “seen peak oil,” meaning that oil production would be on a long term decline and there would be big shortages. Instead, oil production is now at a high The current crisis is one of plunging oil prices and a glut as far as the eye can see. Oil production, after prices have fallen over 60%, is at a new high. As we predicted late last year, oil producers are making up for plummeting income by pumping even more. Rig counts in production are plunging, but these are from the low production wells. The high producers are still pumping away. In fact, the latest rig count even shows that there is little additional reduction in producing rigs. The […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

However, there is concern for decades that in a finite world at some point should be the limits of the world’s population, and that may not be very smart to reach those limits. Although efforts to limit population growth in some countries like India or China, today these efforts have been abandoned or are abandoning were made in the second half of the twentieth century, mainly due to the pace of population growth is declining alone globally. As in all matters based on the laws of nature, we can use science to analyze the problem of the human population. The science that helps us in this case is ecology, which has a specific branch of human ecology . Anyone who thinks that we do not apply the laws of biology, is that it has lost touch with the reality of human nature. For very rational to presume to be, […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Heinberg: AFTERBURN Society Beyond Fossil Fuels thumbnail The advent of fossil fuels changed the world profoundly (giving us everything from plastics and automobiles to global warming); the inevitable and rapidly approaching end of the oil-coal-and-gas era will likewise bring overwhelming transformation in its wake. My new book Afterburn explores that transformation—its opportunities and challenges—in sixteen essays that address subjects as varied as energy politics, consumerism, localism, the importance of libraries, and oil price volatility. Afterburn is a book of “greatest hits”—that is, popular essays that have been previously published—similar in that respect to an earlier book of mine, Peak Everything (2007). Like that previous collection, this one has been carefully selected and arranged, and features an all-new Introduction. Here are just a few of the highlights: “Ten Years After” reviews the debate about “peak oil” from the perspective of over a decade’s work in tracking petroleum forecasts, prices, and […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

This is a guest post by Javier Javier holds a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and has been a scientist for 30 years in molecular genetics and neurobiology. He wrote a blog on macroeconomy and investments from a cyclic point of view for over two years and currently writes a blog in Spanish about the economic crisis, energy crisis and climate change at  http://www.rankia.com/blog/game-over/  . Javier goes by the name of Knownuthing on his blog. Opinions expressed in this post are those of Javier and not necessarily those of the blog owner Ron Patterson. This post was translated from the Spanish by computer and may therefore contain some grammatical errors. The Problem of the Human Population  The question of whether or not overpopulation in the world is clearly debatable. For starters there is no agreement on what should be the world’s population and is also clear that currently the […]

Click here to view full article at peakoilbarrel.com

Heinberg: AFTERBURN Society Beyond Fossil Fuels thumbnail The advent of fossil fuels changed the world profoundly (giving us everything from plastics and automobiles to global warming); the inevitable and rapidly approaching end of the oil-coal-and-gas era will likewise bring overwhelming transformation in its wake. My new book Afterburn explores that transformation—its opportunities and challenges—in sixteen essays that address subjects as varied as energy politics, consumerism, localism, the importance of libraries, and oil price volatility. Afterburn is a book of “greatest hits”—that is, popular essays that have been previously published—similar in that respect to an earlier book of mine, Peak Everything (2007). Like that previous collection, this one has been carefully selected and arranged, and features an all-new Introduction. Here are just a few of the highlights: “Ten Years After” reviews the debate about “peak oil” from the perspective of over a decade’s work in tracking petroleum forecasts, prices, and […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Pickens: Oil Could Hit $100 A Barrel thumbnail Amid falling oil prices mostly due to fears of oversupply and a surging U.S. dollar, American business magnate and financier T. Boone Pickens said Tuesday that oil prices could reach $100 a barrel by the end of next year. The 86-year-old billionaire, who chairs the hedge fund BP Capital Management, also revised his previous forecast in which he said that the prices would hit the $100 mark as early as this year. According to Pickens, the idea of “peak oil” — when oil production goes into an irreversible decline — should not be ignored as regions other than the U.S. are experiencing decline in their oil output, Reuters reported. “I think you could very well be at $100 a barrel by the end of 2016,” Pickens said at the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco. Although oil prices briefly recovered […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Spending cuts for oil-directed drilling have dominated first quarter 2015 energy news but rig counts for shale gas drilling are too high . Investors should pay attention to this growing problem. Bank of America fears sub-$2 gas prices now that winter heating worries are over. Low natural gas prices affect the economics for gas-rich oil production in the Eagle Ford Shale and Permian basin plays as well as for the shale gas plays. Meanwhile, an orgy of over-production is taking place in the Marcellus Shale. Well head prices are now below $1.50 per thousand cubic feet of gas because of limited take-away capacity and near-saturation of regional demand. Even companies in the Wyoming, Susquehanna, Allegheny and Washington County core areas of the Marcellus play are losing money at these prices. The rig count for shale gas plays has decreased by only half as much as for the tight oil […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

David Bernal, Allegro Development This article is written by David Bernal who is a Senior Solutions Manager for Allegro Development, a real-time commodity trading information services and risk management firm. Whether you blame technology, politics, softening demand or a mix of all three, the recent oil price plunge is testament to the dynamic nature of energy markets and the huge risks that emerge in a period of profound volatility. The most important question for energy market participants however, is how they can minimise our exposure? Technology in the form of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and horizontal drilling has arguably made America the world’s pre-eminent oil producer, pulling up to 4m barrels a day from sources that were once called “unconventional”. So much oil is sloshing around that Congress has taken its first tentative steps toward removal of the crude export ban by allowing exports of certain condensates. Full-on exports of crude […]

Click here to view full article at forexmagnates.com

The Oil Age – A new quarterly peer-reviewed printed journal thumbnail 1. Background & Objectives The journal addresses all aspects of the evolving ‘Oil Age’, including physical, economic, social, political, financial and environmental characteristics. Oil and gas are natural resources formed in the geological past and are subject to depletion. Increasing production during the First Half of the Oil Age fuelled rapid economic expansion, with human population rising six-fold in parallel, with far-reaching economic and social consequences. The Second Half of the Oil Age now dawns. This is seeing significant changes in the type of hydrocarbon sources tapped, and will be marked at some point by declining overall supply. A debate rages as to the precise dates of peak oil and gas production by type of source, but what is more significant is the decline of these various hydrocarbons as their production peaks are passed. In addition, demand for […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Rising energy prices will challenge western way of life thumbnail A little-known Ministry of Defence (MoD) report published earlier this year warns that converging global trends will dramatically affect UK economic prosperity through to 2040. The report says that depletion of cheap conventional “easy oil”, along with shortages of food and water due to climate change and population growth, will sustain rocketing energy prices. Long-term price spikes are likely to lead to a long recession in Western economies, fuelling internal unrest and the rise of nationalist movements. The report departs significantly from the conservative and relatively optimistic scenarios officially adopted by the British government, as exemplified in the coalition’s new Energy Security Strategy published in November last year by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc). Peak “easy oil” The report predicts that “the imminent passing of the point of peak ‘easy oil’ will mean that hydrocarbon-based energy […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

What if the world never again sees sustained prices for oil over $100 per barrel? What if—absent exogenous black-swan events like major wars—oil never sells for much more than $50 per barrel for decades into the future? Who wins? Who loses? Short answer: The winners are consumers everywhere, and American businesses that produce oil. The losers are nations that are oil monocultures, and businesses or policies everywhere anchored in expensive oil. Is such a scenario likely? Or is the current price collapse a kind of inverse bubble? History is often meaningfully predictive. In the roughly 150-year history of oil prices there have been just three short periods where oil sold for over $50 per barrel (measured in inflation-adjusted terms). It happened first for about 20 years after 1860 at the dawn of the oil age, followed by nearly a century with oil cycling around $20. The second price bubble, […]

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

What if the world never again sees sustained prices for oil over $100 per barrel? What if—absent exogenous black-swan events like major wars—oil never sells for much more than $50 per barrel for decades into the future? Who wins? Who loses? The short answers: The winners are consumers everywhere, and American business that produce oil. The losers are nations that are oil monocultures, and businesses or policies everywhere anchored in expensive oil. Is such a scenario likely? Or is the current price collapse a kind of inverse bubble? History is often meaningfully predictive. In the roughly 150-year history of oil prices there have been just three short periods where oil sold for over $50 per barrel (measured in inflation-adjusted terms). It happened first for about 20 years after 1860 at the dawn of the oil age, followed by nearly a century with oil cycling around $20. The second price […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

The world’s population continues to explode! thumbnail Feeding the World Basic survival for us humans and just about everything else living; more and more investment funds are focusing on food and water production – why? What are the facts? Starting with water; estimates suggest that the world population will increase by 40 percent to 9 billion by 2050. As their purchasing power increases, developing countries like China and India are consuming more and more goods that require water for their production. Meat, for example, can take up to 10 times more water to produce than cereal crops. Several studies have concluded that demand for water is increasing at twice the rate as the world’s population. Water is one of the strategic resources of the 21st century, along with food and energy resources. Increased investment in water infrastructure and water treatment will be necessary in order to meet higher demand. […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Rising energy prices will challenge western way of life thumbnail A little-known Ministry of Defence (MoD) report published earlier this year warns that converging global trends will dramatically affect UK economic prosperity through to 2040. The report says that depletion of cheap conventional “easy oil”, along with shortages of food and water due to climate change and population growth, will sustain rocketing energy prices. Long-term price spikes are likely to lead to a long recession in Western economies, fuelling internal unrest and the rise of nationalist movements. The report departs significantly from the conservative and relatively optimistic scenarios officially adopted by the British government, as exemplified in the coalition’s new Energy Security Strategy published in November last year by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc). Peak “easy oil” The report predicts that “the imminent passing of the point of peak ‘easy oil’ will mean that hydrocarbon-based energy […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

As a believer in the power of diversification and inflation protection a basket of commodities can provide in a passive index framework, it is hard to grasp how much investors love oil and gold. It must be that oil is the biggest, most economically significant commodity, and gold is the shiniest, most prized metal – arguably a currency in its own right. From the largest pensions in the world to the smallest mom-and-pop retail investors, oil and gold dominate the conversation. In Taipei this week, gold and oil were louder than ever. It is an exciting time for greater China as the first commodity futures exchange-traded funds are soon to be launched. This opens the possibility for investors in this region to get access more easily to the commodities they love, but for the commodity lady that loves passive, singling out gold and oil is a difficult task. Besides […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Sadly, fossil fuels are about as sustainable as my chocolate supply thumbnail WHAT exactly is Transition about? asks Sally Elias. “No, I still don’t get it,” said a good friend, exasperated. “What exactly is Transition all about?” We Dorking Transitioners have always struggled with the challenge of a succinct explanation – a lift-pitch. If you say “We are trying to save the planet”, you sound “boring and worthy” (not my words). If you mention post peak oil, people glaze over or say, “Well now they have discovered fracking we don’t need to worry”. Or if you mention global climate change… well, we all know how that goes down with some people – apparently it’s NOT HAPPENING.  I am not terribly bright, but I do hang out with intelligent people who have read a lot more, studied a lot more and understand a lot more than I do about all […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Energy intensity improvements, or declines in the amount of energy consumption per unit of economic output, must play a critical role in efforts to decarbonize the global economy. Global decarbonization scenarios depend on a wide range of energy intensity improvement rates. Several scenarios which rely heavily on renewable energy and exclude other technologies from consideration (i.e. nuclear or carbon capture and storage), depend on a dramatic acceleration in energy intensity improvement compared to historical rates. Policy making has only limited influence over the mechanisms behind changes in energy intensity. Further research is needed to carefully unpack the mechanisms behind historical rates of change in energy intensity in order to benchmark global decarbonization strategies. Until then, scenarios calling for a step-change acceleration in energy intensity rates should be treated with caution.  Avoiding extreme or dangerous climate change will likely require the nearly complete decarbonization of the global energy system during this century, […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Most people have heard the old saying: "You can put lipstick on a pig. But it’s still a pig." That’s sort of what is happening in the American oil patch as producers try to put a positive gloss on the devastation that low oil prices are visiting on the industry. Perhaps the most inventive redefinition is as follows: The part of the U.S. oil industry devoted to extracting tight oil from deep shale reservoirs in places such as North Dakota and Texas has made the United States  the world’s "swing producer."  A swing producer is a country or territory that has large production in relation to the total market, substantial excess capacity and the ability to turn its capacity on and off quickly in response to market conditions. The term makes the U.S. oil industry sound powerful and important. And, while the U.S. industry remains an important player in […]

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