Category:

10 Years After 'The Party's Over': an interview with Richard Heinberg

10 Years After ‘The Party’s Over’: an interview with Richard Heinberg While running the risk of sounding like a Hello! Magazine reporter, I must introduce this post by saying that while in the US recently, I joined Richard Heinberg and his wife Janet in their beautiful permaculture garden in Santa Rosa, California.  Richard will be known to most readers of this blog as the author of  The Party’s Over, Powerdown, The Oil Depletion Protocol, Peak Everything, Blackout  and  Snake Oil  as well as one of the best communicators on the whole peak oil/everything question.  This year marks the tenth anniversary of the publication of  The Party’s Over .  Richard has already reflected on this in September’s Museletter [ 10 Years After ], but Richard and I pulled up a chair under a tree in his garden and chatted more about the book, its impact, and other related issues.  You transcript […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

The propaganda campaign against peaking fossil fuel production

Page added on November 5, 2013 (Paper produced after a presentation at the Fenner Conference on Population, Resources and Climate Change: Implications for Australia’s Near Future , Canberra, October 2013) A formal definition of “energy” is “the capacity to do work”. The overwhelming majority – ~80%) of the work done in our advanced technological society (i.e. the “economic activity”) is done using the energy released by burning fossil fuels [1]. In fact, even a large part of the work done by humans themselves can be attributed to fossil fuels since 30% of all fossil fuel use is for growing, processing, distributing and cooking the food that powers human bodies [2]. Of course, food production is vital when considering the future of our nation of Australia and of world civilization. The act of people living in cities (the origin of the word “civilisation”) is only possible when farmers produce food […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Unfortunately, peak oil is not at hand

Consumption A Citi Research report on so-called peak oil demand has been drawing a lot of attention lately . Understandably: what could be bigger news for anyone concerned with climate change, energy security, etc.? The report comes out hot right from the start, suggesting “The End is Nigh” and we are “Approaching a Tipping Point” on global oil demand. Unfortunately, though, it’s less than persuasive. The first thing that ought to raise an eyebrow or two is how wildly Citi’s analysis diverges from that of established data information centers like the International Energy Agency and the US Energy Information Administration —not to mention our own Roadmap Model , or Exxon Mobil , or really anyone else at all—on the demand for oil from transportation and other global activity, based on known business-as-usual practices, vehicle ownership and activity, technology trends, and adopted policies. One explanation for that divergence is that […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

What’s After Oil ?

What’s After Oil ? If you’re wondering about the direction of gasoline prices over the long term, forget for a moment about OPEC quotas and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and consider instead the matter of Hubbert’s Peak. That’s not a place, it’s a concept developed a half-century ago by a geologist named M. King Hubbert, and it explains a lot about what’s going on today at the gas pump. Hubbert argued that at a certain point oil production peaks, and thereafter it steadily declines regardless of demand. In 1956 he predicted that U.S. oil production would peak about 1970 and decline thereafter. Skeptics scoffed, but he was right. It now appears that world oil production, about 80 million barrels a day, will soon peak. In fact, conventional oil production has already peaked and is declining. For every 10 barrels of conventional oil consumed, only four new […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

US will always remain a crude oil importer

Eagle_Ford_Play_Jan2009_Jul2013 Page added on October 31, 2013 US shale oil has so far replaced 2 mb/d of its crude oil imports which peaked at around 10 mb/d in 2005. If this effort can be doubled the US would still need to import around 6 mb/d. US crude oil imports vs production History: US crude imports skyrocketed in the early 1970s after the US peak. High oil prices as a result of the 1 st and 2 nd  oil crises in 1973 and 1979 triggered a recession and therefore a drop in oil demand and a reduction in crude oil imports. After Alaska’s peak crude imports increased again until the 3 rd  oil crisis which started in 2005. Despite the shale oil boom which began in serious in 2011, the US still imports around 2 mb/d (25%) from the Persian Gulf and 3.5 mb/d (44%) from OPEC. So there would […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

New EIA Report, Production Per Rig  

All Tight Oil Jean Laherrere has pointed out a huge discrepancy in in the Permian data from the latest  EIA Drilling Productivity Report  that I posted Wednesday and what has been posted, also from EIA data, in other places. Here, below, is a graph first posted in May and re-posted many places since, from:  Outlook for shale gas and tight oil development in the U.S. This report was generated and posted by Adam Sieminski, an administrator with the EIA. Now compare that, the Permian data, with the chart in my post from Wednesday. That chart starts with production from 2007 and eyeballing the chart above the EIA has the Permian at about .2 million barrels per day 2007 and at just a tad over .5 million barrels per day at the beginning of this year. But the report that came out of the EIA Tuesday, link above, shows the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

World Energy Congress report dismisses fears of peak oil  

Fossil fuels will continue to dominate the energy sector for the foreseeable future, after a report issued by the World Energy Council made it clear that fears expressed in respect of so-called “peak oil” were unlikely to be realized within the next forty years at least. Following the recent World Energy Congress in Daegu, Korea, Christoph Frei, Secretary General of the WEC said that the chances of the world running out of oil were slim, citing the fact that global reserves of the engineering resource were 25 percent higher than in 1993 while production has increased by 20 percent. According to Canada’s Financial Post, the WEC report demonstrates two potential scenarios for the energy industry, both of which include the implementation of renewable sources, and fossil fuels remain the dominant factor in both. “Our latest World Energy Resources report shows that ‘peak oil’ has moved into a far future. […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

No need to panic about ‘peak oil’  

No need to panic about ‘peak oil’ Page added on October 21, 2013 SO MUCH for “peak oil” alarmism, the dire warnings of a looming economic catastrophe when global crude oil production reaches its maximum rate and then starts to decline. Such cries of imminent doom reached a crescendo in 2008, when the oil price hit record levels on soaring demand and restricted supplies, topping out at $145/barrel. But then came the US subprime collapse, closely followed by international banking and sovereign debt crises, a liquidity freeze and global recession. Demand for oil fell back sharply, along with economic growth, taking the pressure off the market and causing the oil price to plunge. Peak oil crisis averted. But for how long, the pessimists cried? Demand may have fallen off temporarily, but the peak oil problem relates to supply; when the world economy starts growing again, consumers regain confidence and […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

The numbers don’t add up to U.S. energy independence  

Oil pumpjacks (by Richard Masoner at Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/bike/3153652073/ Page added on October 20, 2013 Energy independence sounds good, and that’s why politicians and oil company executives love to say the words. It’s so easy to say, but oh so hard to actually accomplish, which is why the United States has been a consistent importer of oil since the late 1940s . Recent overblown statements about U.S. energy independence from the oil industry, its paid consultants and the fake think-tank academics it funds simply aren’t supported by the numbers. I have discussed this issue in two previous pieces, “The Oil Industry’s Deceitful Promise of American Energy Independence” and “Oil and gas industry uses deceptive energy independence message to push U.S. exports” . Recently, friend and colleague Jeffrey Brown–who is best known for his Export Land Model which foretold of shrinking global oil exports–did some fairly simple math to show how […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
Category:

Peak Oil: A Splash of Cold Water

IMG_4816               An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Steve LeVine :  If Montana is a microcosm of the world, one message to glean is that we are not in the midst of a decades-long flood of oil supply in the United States, as many suggest. Instead, the red lights are blinking across the exuberant U.S. oil patch. As  you recall, much has been made in recent months about the momentous prospects for U.S. oil and gas, which are said to be leading a global fossil fuel revolution, with meaningful implications for fortune-hunters and geopolitical players alike: North America will be independent of outside oil producers, the U.S. will experience an industrial revolution, and OPEC will drift into laggardly inconsequence. So what to think about the latest news from folks approaching the punch bowl with bad intentions? Let’s start with Montana, and […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple