Category: Peak Oil

4607 Votes Not even a third world war or a lethal pandemic, leave alone a one child policy globally, will be able to slow down the planet’s rocketing population rise, scientists say. New multi-scenario modeling of world human population has concluded that even stringent fertility restrictions or a catastrophic mass mortality would not bring about large enough change this century to solve issues of global sustainability. Scientists concluded that even a world-wide one-child policy like China’s, implemented over the coming century would still likely result in 5-10 billion people by 2100. There are currently about 7.1 billion people on earth, and demographers estimate that this number could rise to about 9 billion by 2050. Professor Corey Bradshaw and Professor Barry Brook from the University of Adelaide’s Environment Institute said that the locked-in population growth means the world must focus on policies and technologies that reverse rising consumption of natural […]

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The Post Carbon Institute has just released a critique of the EIA’s Light Tight Oil projections. It is titled DRILLING DEEPER . The report is highly critical of the EIA’s projections and should be read by everyone interested in Peak Oil. All data on all charts is in million barrels per day unless otherwise specified. EIA Oil Projection First a look at the EIA oil projections for US production from all sources. They expect offshore to increase to 2 million barrels per day by 2016, an increase of almost 600,000 bpd from current production. Also note that the EIA has US almost peaking in 2016 and increasing only slightly until the peak in 2019. EIA LTO Hi Lo Projection The EIA has several projections, covering all bases. However the reference, or most likely, will be the only one covered in this post. EIA LTO Projection Here is where all […]

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4599 Votes Peak Oil is still the reality of the future In a reply to my previous contribution, “The falling oil price may presage a future recession”, Civil Economist Magnus Grill ( 19 October in Swedish ) says that I assert, “that Peak Oil does not mean that oil will run out rather than that demand for oil will disappear. Thus it is no longer a question of Peak Oil from a production standpoint rather than now it is from a demand standpoint. This means that Aleklett has completely altered his early reasoning.” I must disappoint Magnus Grill. Peak Oil is still related to production of oil from oilfields. When we discuss Peak Oil we do this based on the fact that oil production in an area or group of areas reaches a maximum and then declines. There are several factors that determine the production profile when production begins […]

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Peter Thiel last August Photo: Art Streiber for Fortune The famed investor says the fracking revolution, fuel efficiency standards, and slowing demand have only bought us time in the search for a true technological breakthrough Peter Thiel, whom we profiled in September in the cover story “ Peter Thiel Disagrees With You ,” is the founder of two billion-dollar companies (PayPal EBAY 0.46% and Palantir), a venture capitalist (his flagship Founders Fund now manages $2 billion in assets), a hedge fund manager, the first outside investor in Facebook FB -0.15% , and the author of the recently released book about launching startups, Zero to One . When his hedge fund, Clarium Capital, launched in 2002, Thiel followed a peak-oil thesis, which paid off splendidly as oil prices rose from about $40 to $140. But prices fell off a cliff in 2008, the fund got clobbered, and institutional investors fled. […]

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In public lectures that I give about global energy, I often note that since the writing of A Cubic Mile of Oil the global reserves of oil have increased, not decreased, despite the fact that in the intervening time (i.e., between 2007 and 2013) the world has consumed about 7.5 cmo. In this post I want to dig deeper and look at the changes that have brought about this paradox, and what it means for Peak Oil. As I explain in the book, reserves have a special meaning refer to those geologic accumulations that can be economically extracted with the current technology. With the development of technology and/or changes in the price of oil, geologic accumulations that were once only part of the larger resource base may get transferred to the reserves. Focusing only on the reservesis apt to give a wrong impression about the total availability of oil. […]

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A person might think that oil prices would be fairly stable. Prices would set themselves at a level that would be high enough for the majority of producers, so that in total producers would provide enough–but not too much–oil for the world economy. The prices would be fairly affordable for consumers. And economies around the world would grow robustly with these oil supplies, plus other energy supplies. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to work that way recently. Let me explain at least a few of the issues involved. 1. Oil prices are set by our networked economy. As I have explained previously , we have a networked economy that is made up of businesses, governments, and consumers. It has grown up over time. It includes such things as laws and our international trade system. It continually re-optimizes itself, given the changing rules that we give it. In some ways, it […]

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4597 Votes Increasing Oil Reserves and Peak Oil As I explain in the book, reserves have a special meaning refer to those geologic accumulations that can be economically extracted with the current technology. With the development of technology and/or changes in the price of oil, geologic accumulations that were once only part of the larger resource base may get transferred to the reserves. Focusing only on the reservesis apt to give a wrong impression about the total availability of oil. The chart below shows the historic data from the 2014 edition of the BP Statistical Review of Global Energy (BP2014) for the World Proved Reserves and the Reserves to Production (R/P) ratio. This ratio has often been mistakenly interpreted as the years to exhaustion. Likewise, current price of oil largely reflects the immediate surplus or shortage of supplies, and reflects more on the conditions above ground (in the supply […]

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So how’s peak oil working out? Crude prices have fallen about 20 percent since June. A gallon of gasoline is on average 20 cents cheaper than it was a month ago. The world is facing a glut of petroleum and, for the first time in 40 years, America is exporting oil. Obviously this is not the scenario of limits sketched out by some geologists, environmentalists and industry observers a few years ago. At the risk of oversimplifying, peak oil, which originated with petroleum geologist M. King Hubbert in the 1950s, generally stated that the planet would soon use up half of its available oil. The easy and inexpensive to reach and refine half. The theory was borne out when the continental U.S. hit peak around 1970. I wrote about peak oil as one of many disruptions headed our way. Nor was peak oil a tin-foil-hat coven on the margins. […]

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4591 Votes TreeHugger has a post on a rare mention of peak oil in the mainstream media – HSBC Economist Says Weve Got Just 50 Years of Oil Left. Now if youve even gotten a small bit of knowledge about the state of the worlds oil reserves and the concept of peak oil, the statement that weve got confidently just 50 years of oil left in the ground is hardly shocking–check out the video of HSBC senior economist Karen Ward delivering the lines below (around the 02:00 minute mark), h/t Climate Progress. But what is shocking to me is the calmness with which the line is delivered and how outside of specialist reporting such statements are seldom to be heard. Fifty years is within my lifetime as in within the lifetime of many TreeHugger readers, yet when President Obama recently talked about transitioning off foreign oil and developing future […]

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Printer-friendly Energy Information Awareness graph of oil prices (2004). Source US Government via Wikimedia Commons.  So oft in theologic wars, The disputants, I ween, Rail on in utter ignorance Of what each other mean, And prate about an Elephant Not one of them has seen! — The Blind Men and The Elephant by John Godfrey Saxe When the world’s business editors sent their reporters canvassing to find out what is behind the recent plunge in the world oil price, they were doing what they do almost every day for every type of market: stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities and real estate. In financial journalism more often it’s the price that makes the story rather than the story that makes the price. If a story is about something very surprising which almost no one can know in advance–a real scoop–say, an unexpected outcome in a major court case affecting a company’s […]

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