Category: Peak Oil

The oil price crash coupled with growing concerns about global warming will encourage at least one of the major oil companies to turn its back on fossil fuels in the near future, predicts an award-winning scientist and former industry adviser. Dr Jeremy Leggett, who has had consultations on climate change with senior oil company executives over 25 years, says it will not be a rerun of the BP story when the company launched its “beyond petroleum” strategy and then did a U-turn . “One of the oil companies will break ranks and this time it is going to stick,” he said. “The industry is facing plunging commodity prices and soaring costs at risky projects in the Arctic, deepwater Brazil and elsewhere. “Oil companies are also realising it is no long morally defensible to ignore the consequences of climate change.” Leggett, now a solar energy entrepreneur and climate campaigner, points […]

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

Posted:   01/10/2015 05:01:00 PM MST Gas prices are displayed at a gas station in Boston last week. (Steven Senne, The Associated Press) In Denver, gasoline dipped below $2 per gallon after Christmas, and I’ve heard rumors of $1.75. Most of us like this immensely. Not so the stock market, which has stumbled as oil prices have dipped below $50 per barrel. Cheap oil has also gummed up a variety of political arguments. Keystone XL is at the top of the news today, as it was last fall when many political candidates, from statehouse to Congress, ran on platforms seeking "energy security." This sounds suspiciously like code for giving drilling companies and pipeline transport companies just about everything they want. The argument on behalf of Keystone XL is that it will, with the help of the Canadians, deliver us from the capriciousness of "people who don’t like us," as […]

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

The Cornucopians are exuberant, they believe that collapsing of oil prices dealt the death knell for peak oil. An oil glut, they say, is what we have, not peak oil. But an oil glut is exactly what we would expect at the very peak. After all, that is what peak oil is, that is the the point in time when the world produces more oil than ever in history… and the most it ever will produce. I am of the firm conviction that the world is at the peak of world oil production right now, or was at that point three or four months ago. I think history will show that the 12 months of September 2014 through August 2015 will be the one year peak. Whether the calendar year peak is 2014 or 2015 is the only thing still in question, or that is my opinion anyway. The […]

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The cure for low oil prices is low oil prices. But an important twist to that pearl of Houston wisdom is that the real cure is prices way lower than anyone expected. It is when oil drops far below levels budgeted by exploration and production companies that rigs get idled, curbing supply growth and supporting prices. Yet the U.S. oil rig count has fallen by only 8% since early October. On that front, the latest outlook for E&P spending from Evercore ISI offers some hope to a sector with precious little right now. Since 2000, they have tracked the industry’s oil-price expectations. Last year was the first time that the sector overestimated the average oil price, guessing around $90 a barrel versus the outcome of about $76. Usually, the price has come in above expectations. The sector kicked off 2015 expecting oil to average $77.55 a barrel, ISI says. […]

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

The Cornucopians are exuberant, they believe that collapsing of oil prices dealt the death knell for peak oil. An oil glut, they say, is what we have, not peak oil. But an oil glut is exactly what we would expect at the very peak. After all, that is what peak oil is, that is the the point in time when the world produces more oil than ever in history… and the most it ever will produce. I am of the firm conviction that the world is at the peak of world oil production right now, or was at that point three or four months ago. I think history will show that the 12 months of September 2014 through August 2015 will be the one year peak. Whether the calendar year peak is 2014 or 2015 is the only thing still in question, or that is my opinion anyway. The […]

Click here to view full article at peakoilbarrel.com

Resilience Published on Resilience (http://www.resilience.org) The price of oil is down. How should we expect the economy to perform in 2015 and 2016? Newspapers in the United States seem to emphasize the positive aspects of the drop in prices. I have written Ten Reasons Why High Oil Prices are a Problem . If our only problem were high oil prices, then low oil prices would seem to be a solution. Unfortunately, the problem we are encountering now is extremely low prices. If prices continue at this low level, or go even lower, we are in deep trouble with respect to future oil extraction. It seems to me that the situation is much more worrisome than most people would expect. Even if there are some temporary good effects, they will be more than offset by bad effects, some of which could be very bad indeed. We may be reaching limits […]

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

Summary Analysis points to US production peaking in late April. Oil rig reduction is accelerating. Current two week decline in EIA estimates not too unusual. Canadian rig count down 66% year over year. Current oil rig count 1482. Estimated production breakeven rigs required: 1267. Shale oil wells deplete much faster than traditional wells. This article attempts to determine the number of rigs that need to be deployed in order to neither increase nor decrease the US production of oil. To estimate a ballpark peak date and ballpark breakeven number of rigs in this cycle, one needs to: 1. Estimate the number of barrels that are produced in a given week, given a known number of oil rigs in operation. 2. Estimate the rate of depletion (that is, to estimate the amount of additional depletion expressed as a percentage of peak production as a function of time that occurs as […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Summary Analysis points to US production peaking in late April. Oil rig reduction is accelerating. Current two week decline in EIA estimates not too unusual. Canadian rig count down 66% year over year. Current oil rig count 1482. Estimated production breakeven rigs required: 1267. Shale oil wells deplete much faster than traditional wells. This article attempts to determine the number of rigs that need to be deployed in order to neither increase nor decrease the US production of oil. To estimate a ballpark peak date and ballpark breakeven number of rigs in this cycle, one needs to: 1. Estimate the number of barrels that are produced in a given week, given a known number of oil rigs in operation. 2. Estimate the rate of depletion (that is, to estimate the amount of additional depletion expressed as a percentage of peak production as a function of time that occurs as […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

Happy New Year to readers around the world! For the past 5 or 6 years, I have begun the year by making predictions for the upcoming year in the energy markets. I am generally happy if I can hit on 60-80% of them. In 2014 I went 5 for 5 , but I can say with a fair amount of confidence that this is a feat that’s unlikely to be repeated for 2015. The reason for this is that I see a lot of uncertainty in the energy markets at this point. There are many changing variables right now, and the direction on several fronts is unclear. And if you look at some of the predictions others have made, that becomes obvious. I have seen predictions of $30 per barrel (bbl) oil and $100/bbl oil, and some suggesting that we would see both extremes. I have also seen people […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com