Category: Peak Oil

Think back to early 2004. Oil cost around $40 per barrel 1 —on the high side compared to the previous few decades but not much out of the ordinary. Gasoline still cost under $2.00 a gallon for most of the country. The evening news was more concerned with wardrobe gaffes by Janet Jackson ( too little , at the Super Bowl) and President Bush ( too much , on the USS Abraham Lincoln ) than with energy prices. In retrospect, these were the last days of "normal." Most everyone in business, the media, and government assumed that the world had plenty of cheap oil. 2  And hardly anyone outside the fossil fuel industry had heard of peak oil, the idea that we were nearing physical limits to global oil production and a new period of oil price and supply volatility. We now know that the world’s conventional oil production […]

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Think back to early 2004. Oil cost around $40 per barrel 1 —on the high side compared to the previous few decades but not much out of the ordinary. Gasoline still cost under $2.00 a gallon for most of the country. The evening news was more concerned with wardrobe gaffes by Janet Jackson ( too little , at the Super Bowl) and President Bush ( too much , on the USS Abraham Lincoln ) than with energy prices. In retrospect, these were the last days of "normal." Most everyone in business, the media, and government assumed that the world had plenty of cheap oil. 2  And hardly anyone outside the fossil fuel industry had heard of peak oil, the idea that we were nearing physical limits to global oil production and a new period of oil price and supply volatility. We now know that the world’s conventional oil production […]

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

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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Despite major oil finds off Brazil’s coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada , fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau—roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day—since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency—an energy cartel for oil consuming nations. To support our modern lifestyles—from cars to plastics —the world has used more than one trillion barrels of oil to date. Another trillion lie underground, waiting to be tapped. But given the locations of the remaining oil, getting the next trillion is likely to cost […]

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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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Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society has the prestige of being the world’s first scientific journal and also published the work of Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, William Herschel and many more celebrated names in science. Recently, this journal published a theme issue, edited by Richard G. Miller and Steve R. Sorell, on peak oil. This volume presents the best scientific evidence on why a decline in oil supply may, or may not, be in sight. It considers the production and resources of conventional oil and the potential for developing alternative liquid fuels from tar sands, shales, biomass, coal and gas. It describes how economies might react and adapt to rising oil prices and how the transport sector could be transformed. It provides comprehensive and interdisciplinary perspective on the ‘peak oil’ debate and reflects a range of views. Ultimately, it reminds us that the […]

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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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Earth insight badge An oil refinery in Canada An oil refinery in Canada. Has cheap oil gone forever? Photograph: Dave Reede/All Canada Photos/Corbis A conference sponsored by a US military official convened experts in Washington DC and London warning that continued dependence on fossil fuels puts the world at risk of an unprecedented energy crunch that could inflame financial crisis and exacerbate dangerous climate change . The ‘ Transatlantic Energy Security Dialogue ‘, which took place on 10th December last year, was co-organised by a US Army official, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel L. Davis, in association with former petroleum geologist Jeremy Leggett, chairman of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Gas . Participants, who addressed one another via video link, consisted of retired military officers, security experts, senior industry executives, and politicians from the main parties – including two former UK ministers. According to US Army colonel Daniel […]

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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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As I mentioned in the first post of this short series, we are once again being subjected to differing interpretations of the same set of facts. It does make planning and strategizing a bit more challenging…. YES? NO? UP? DOWN? LEFT? RIGHT? Global oil demand will expand by 14 million barrels to average 101 million a day in 2035, according to the IEA report. The share of conventional crude will drop to 65 million barrels by the end of the period because of growth in unconventional supplies, the IEA said without providing current data. [1] How much of the decline in crude production has been counterbalanced by the new US shale oil production to date? The answer is barely 2 million barrels per day — which required more than half the world’s oil rigs outside Russia and China to produce. Worse, detailed studies […]

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BP PLC’s Energy Outlook 2035, released Jan. 15, forecasts that world energy consumption will increase 41% between 2012 and 2035. Countries outside of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, especially China and India, are believed to contribute to virtually all of this growth. Global energy intensity in 2035 is 36% lower than what it was in 2012, while energy per capita use will increase by 14%. According to the outlook, all fuels experience growth, with the fastest in renewables (+6.4% p.a.). By 2035, 14% of world electricity is from renewable sources, up from just 5% in 2012. Among fossil fuels, natural gas is fastest (+1.9% p.a.), followed by coal (+1.1% p.a.) and oil (+0.8% p.a.). Out to 2035, more than a third of global liquids will be supplied by the US, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Natural gas supplies will reach nearly 500 bcfd by 2035, of which 20% […]

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Normally I would have had this out two weeks ago, but the 60 Minutes story has thrown me behind schedule. I continue to get lots of comments and questions about Vinod Khosla and now his righteous indignation over how the 60 Minutes story was portrayed (especially since that was the only part of my interview they aired), so I may follow up in a week or so to explain (once more) the precise nature of my criticism — as well as what it isn’t. To be honest, I am tired of writing about it, and I am sure that regular readers are tired of reading about it, but new readers continue to ask questions that indicate they misunderstand the nature of my criticism. In the meantime, here is my report card for my predictions from last year. In the next article, I will […]

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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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Jeremy Leggett column in Recharge magazine : “We are betting our entire national economic life on the hope — indeed the expectation — that the fracking boom will continue until well into the 2020s, and that, at a rate and cost we desire, significant amounts of ‘yet to be discovered’ oil will somehow be found to meet the demand.” “If any of that proves incorrect, we have no plan, no alternative, and have given no thought to how we would respond in such a case.”The speaker is national-security expert Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, a veteran of four tours of duty with the US Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am not a military man, but I worry just as much about the energy security of my own country as he does about his. In the UK, the government, the civil service and most of the big energy companies seem […]

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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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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 […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

“We are betting our entire national economic life on the hope — indeed the expectation — that the fracking boom will continue until well into the 2020s, and that, at a rate and cost we desire, significant amounts of ‘yet to be discovered’ oil will somehow be found to meet the demand.” “If any of that proves incorrect, we have no plan, no alternative, and have given no thought to how we would respond in such a case.”The speaker is national-security expert Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, a veteran of four tours of duty with the US Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am not a military man, but I worry just as much about the energy security of my own country as he does about his. In the UK, the government, the civil service and most of the big energy companies seem perfectly content to replicate the grand gamble […]

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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 […]

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

The eulogies for peak oil came too soon. Among the big energy stories of 2013, “peak oil”—the once-popular notion that worldwide oil production would soon reach a maximum level and begin an irreversible decline—was thoroughly discredited. The explosive development of shale oil and other unconventional fuels in the United States helped put it in its grave. As the year went on, the eulogies came in fast and furious. “Today, it is probably safe to say we have slayed ‘peak oil’ once and for all, thanks to the combination of new shale oil and gas production techniques,” declared Rob Wile, an energy and economics reporter for Business Insider. Similar comments from energy experts were commonplace, prompting an R.I.P. headline at Time.com announcing, “Peak Oil is Dead.” Not so fast, though. The present round of […]

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The U.S. will surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s top oil producer by 2015, and be close to energy self-sufficiency in the next two decades, amid booming output from shale formations, the IEA said. (links in original) [1]  The International Energy Agency has sounded the alarm about a potential oil supply crunch…. (links in original) [2] The boom in oil from shale formations in recent years has generated a lot of discussion that the United States could eventually return to energy self-sufficiency, but according to a report released Tuesday by the International Energy Agency, production of such oil in the United States and worldwide will provide only a temporary respite from reliance on the Middle East. [3] [A]n analysis of a few key global oil production factors exposes the unstable foundation upon which hopes for North American oil independence are built. […]

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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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As recently as the mid-2000s, conventional wisdom held that U.S. crude oil production was in secular decline, while the nation’s demand for oil was expected to keep rising. But over the past five years, U.S. oil production has surged by more than 50%, while domestic demand has been more or less stagnant. Now, policymakers are less concerned than they were a decade ago about the nation’s reliance on foreign oil and are even debating the prospects of exporting crude oil from the United States. It’s all thanks to the application of advanced drilling techniques such as horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing that have allowed energy companies to tap previously unreachable shale formations in places like Texas and North Dakota. But even though production from these shale formations has surged in recent years, it will eventually peak at some point. The question is when exactly. Is U.S. crude oil production […]

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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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OPEC December Crude Output Falls to 2-Year Low: Survey Venezuelan Policies Venezuelan production dropped 235,000 barrels a day to 2.45 million this month, the survey showed. The South American country pumped the least crude since October 2011. Resources have been diverted from energy sector into social welfare programs, sending production lower. Petroleos de Venezuela SA, the state oil company, was purged after a two-month oil strike intended to oust President Hugo Chavez from power in 2003. Nicolas Maduro, who became president in March when Chavez died, has continued his predecessor’s policies. “It’s hard to see how the situation in Venezuela gets any better,” said Bill O’Grady, chief market strategist at Confluence Investment Management in St. Louis, which oversees $1.4 billion. “Funds have been used to prop up the government instead of maintaining the oil industry since the PDVSA strike in 2003. It’s clear the country is on an unsustainable […]

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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 […]

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

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

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HONG KONG — China’s financial system is in danger of becoming too big to bail out. Official bank lending has more than doubled since the global financial crisis, growing nearly twice as fast as the overall economy. The even bigger problem, however, appears to come from the rise of a shadow banking system that has allowed a number of companies and individuals, often with political connections, to borrow from state-controlled banks at low interest rates and relend the money at much higher rates to private businesses desperate for credit at almost any price. Now, in an effort to wean the banks and the economy off their addiction to such risky practices, Beijing has pledged to deliver what amounts to the country’s most sweeping financial overhaul in decades. Markets will play the “decisive” role in directing the economy, policy makers promised last month after a key plenum meeting of the […]

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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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One of the more famous portraits of peak oil. Image: Wikimedia In a year that saw the United States reach near-historic levels of fossil fuel production , it seemed that the words ‘peak oil’ were scarcely uttered. But it’s still a looming question, that we have yet to satisfactorily answer—when are we going to run out of oil? Have we already started to? A renowned geologist, and a former top analyst for BP no less, says the answer is yes.  "We are probably in peak oil today, or at least in the foot-hills," Dr. Richard Miller said recently at a talk in London. According to the Guardian , Miller "prepared BP’s in-house projections of future oil supply for BP from 2000 to 2007," and is bringing peak oil back into focus at the end of a petroleum-soaked year. He says that oil production has already peaked in 37 oil-producing countries, and that […]

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Food may run out long before the oil does. A study by scientists at the University of Nebraska warns of " abrupt plateaus or declines " in industrial agricultural production. As much as "31% of total global rice, wheat and maize production" has experienced "yield plateaus or abrupt decreases in yield gain, including rice in eastern Asia and wheat in northwest Europe." The declines and plateaus in production have become prevalent despite increasing investment in agriculture, which could mean that maximum potential yields under the industrial model of agribusiness have already occurred. Crop yields in "major cereal-producing regions have not increased for long periods of time following an earlier period of steady linear increase." The paper makes for ominous reading. Production levels have already flattened out with "no case of a return to the previous rising yield trend" for key regions amounting to "33% of global rice and 27% […]

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A former British Petroleum ( BP ) geologist has warned that the age of cheap oil is long gone, bringing with it the danger of “continuous recession” and increased risk of conflict and hunger. At a lecture on ‘Geohazards’ earlier this month as part of the postgraduate Natural Hazards for Insurers course at University College London (UCL), Dr. Richard G. Miller, who worked for BP from 1985 before retiring in 2008, said that official data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), US Energy Information Administration (EIA), International Monetary Fund (IMF), among other sources, showed that conventional oil had most likely peaked around 2008. Dr. Miller critiqued the official industry line that global reserves will last […]

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Today, I came across two news stories that would seem to contradict each other. Both are based on newly released U.S. government agency reports. The first headline reads, " Gas-Powered Vehicles To Dominate Roads in 2040, Feds Say .’ Published on the car-centric Edmunds web site, it contends "In 2040, 78 percent of all cars and trucks will run on gasoline, compared to 82 percent in 2012." By contrast, "Plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles will take a backseat to gas-powered vehicles, accounting for just 1 percent of total sales in 2040…" Now some of this clearly has to do with the legacy effect. Many, if not most of the 15 million gasoline cars purchased this year will likely still be in service some twenty years from now. That’s 2034. Even the most optimistic projections of EV sales – that includes plug-in and fully electric models – sees them capturing […]

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There is a lot of confusion about which limit we are reaching with respect to oil supply. There seems to be a huge amount of “reserves,” and oil production seems to be increasing right now, so people can’t imagine that there might be a near term problem. There are at least three different views regarding the nature of the limit: Climate Change.  There is no limit on oil production within the foreseeable future. Oil prices can be expected to keep rising. With higher prices, alternative fuels and higher cost extraction techniques will become available. The main concern is climate change. The only reason that oil production would drop is because we have found a way to use less oil because of  climate change concerns, and choose not to extract oil that seems to be available. Limit Based on Geology (“Peak Oil”).  In each oil field, production tends to rise […]

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More As the race heats up for drilling in Arctic waters, several U.S. Senate members have requested the Interior Department to delay future oil and gas lease sales and permitting in the Arctic Ocean, including the proposed lease sale 237, until a thorough reevaluation of environmental risks is conducted. Six Senate Democrats, with Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Dick Durbin of Illinois leading the charge, published an addressed letter to Secretary Sally Jewel to suspend plans to auction new leases in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s northern coast in 2016, with Shell Oil Company being used as an example. “The myriad problems faced last year by Shell Oil Company as it attempted to drill exploration wells in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas demonstrated the unpredictability, harsh conditions, and heightened potential for human error that characterize any industrial activity in the Arctic Ocean,” the letter stated.  In September, the Bureau […]

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The world may be nearing the upper limits of agricultural production, raising questions about how we will feed a more crowded planet. US researchers say yields of about 30 per cent of crops, including rice and wheat, have decreased abruptly or have plateaued in recent years. Most future projections that would ensure global food security are typically based upon a constant increase in yield. However, this new research reported in Nature Communications , suggests this may not be possible. Past trends have been dominated by the rapid adoption of new technologies which allowed for an increase in crop production. Kenneth Cassman and colleagues at the University of Nebraska characterise past yield trends for cereal, oil, sugar, fibre, pulses, tuber, root crops, rice, wheat and maize, as evidence against a projected scenario of crop yield increase. Their data suggest the rate of yield gain has recently decreased or stopped for […]

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By Collin Eaton December 15, 2013 The stubborn rock that the energy industry breached to unleash a nationwide oil and gas rush remains a worthy foe, as producers must turn their drills ever faster to keep the boom’s lifeblood flowing. Engineers have long known that shale, the source rock that fed North American sandstone reservoirs for millennia, could never muster the natural pressure producers need to extract oil and gas. Its molecules are too tightly packed: Shale is about 1,000 times denser than brick, and so far, only hydraulic fracturing can induce enough artificial permeability to clear a path for the fossil treasure. But that technique also creates an initial production spike that soon turns south: Behind the headlines boasting of a U.S. oil boom, producers have been grappling with rapid production declines at aging shale-play wells. The only answer: drill more and more wells. In recent months, falling […]

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