Category: Peak Oil

The debate over whether we are running out of oil sometimes resembles the medieval controversy over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. By redefining the size of the pin and the agility of the angels, today’s “peak oil” proponents have managed to continue the argument. The characters have changed though. Matthew Simmons, author of Twilight in the Desert, casting doubt on Saudi oil production, died in August 2010, and the Oil Drum website closed down last September. New disputants, including economist James Hamilton from the University of California, and Stephen Kopits, the managing director of the consultancy Douglas-Westwood, argue that oil production is limited by geology and is a severe drag on economic growth. These factors will ultimately drive up the oil price if they are right. On the other side of the argument, voices such as the Reuters columnist John Kemp, who states […]

Click here to view full article at www.thenational.ae

There are enough articles on the “myth of peak oil” floating around the Internet to fill a book; and there are enough books on the subject to fill a small library.  One of the common threads throughout these publications is their lack of credible sources, because not only is peak oil real, but we’re rapidly approaching that threshold.  An example that is smacking the United States and the oil industry in the face right now is floating in the Gulf of Mexico.  According to a new government report , oil and natural gas production in the Gulf has been steadily declining for the last decade. The report looked at oil production in the Gulf of Mexico on federal lands only, not any privately-held lands where production is taking place. Since 2010, according to the report , the annual yield of oil from the Gulf has fallen by almost 140 million barrels.  […]

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

OPEC has released their Annual Statistial Bulletin 2014 . Under the heading of “Oil and Gas Data” there are several tables you can download. I was excited to find one labeled “Table 3.21: World Exports of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products by Country”. It turned out to be useless however as it includes a lot of exports of imported products. And they have no table of “Net Imports”. However their their table labeled “ Table 3.18: World Crude Oil Exports by Country” turned out to be very useful as it seems to measure the same thing as the EIA does in their International Energy Statistics, Crude Oil Exports  which also includes lease condensate. The OPEC export data goes back to 1960 but I have only plotted it from 1990. The EIA data only goes back to 1993. The OPEC data is through 2013 while the EIA data only goes through […]

Click here to view full article at peakoilbarrel.com

Solar and renewables are being touted as the energy sources of the future, but will they provide enough power relative to the energy that must be invested in them? Engineer Graham Palmer argues there’s no easy solution to the fact that we’re running out of fossil fuels. Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan once quipped that the last thing a fish would notice is the water. You could almost draw a parallel to the essential role energy plays in modern society—cheap accessible energy is now so ubiquitous that we barely notice the importance of it to modern living, nor the astonishing wealth it has brought. Just one litre of petrol provides the equivalent of a week or more of pre-industrial human labour. Having achieved this miraculous transformation, it is not likely that societies will voluntarily turn back. According to Joseph Tainter’s thesis, societies grow more complex in order to solve new […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com

These are indeed good times to be a Peak Oiler. All the  peak oil deniers are dancing with wild exuberance, pointing to that spike of US shale oil production that they believe drives the final nail in the “Peak Oil Theory” coffin. And it is all happening right before reality slaps them in the face. There is no doubt that world Crude + Condensate production, without that tight oil spike, has been on a ten year bumpy plateau. World Less USA A But, you may ask, when the shale bubble burst, won’t that only mean we will still stay on that bumpy plateau? No for several reasons. First the bursting of the shale bubble will likely cause a decline in US production of perhaps half a million barrels per day per year for three to four years. Second Russia, whose production increase of over 1.5 million barrels per day […]

Click here to view full article at peakoilbarrel.com

In 2006 when James Howard Kunstler published his breakthrough book The Long Emergency , the next two years seemed to vindicate his warning that the oil age was coming to an end with perilous consequences. Oil soared to $147 a barrel in mid-2008. A few analysts suggested that it was headed for $200; but that was not to be. By autumn the stock market had collapsed and with it the world economy. Oil, too, then collapsed, trading in the mid-$30 range by December as demand for oil fell off a cliff with the economy. It seemed for months that the world was headed for an economic depression. But extraordinary stimulative spending by governments around the world and emergency measures by central banks reversed the trend and led to a weak, but extended recovery of sorts that […]

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

In 2006 when James Howard Kunstler published his breakthrough book The Long Emergency , the next two years seemed to vindicate his warning that the oil age was coming to an end with perilous consequences. Oil soared to $147 a barrel in mid-2008. A few analysts suggested that it was headed for $200; but that was not to be. By autumn the stock market had collapsed and with it the world economy. Oil, too, then collapsed, trading in the mid-$30 range by December as demand for oil fell off a cliff with the economy. It seemed for months that the world was headed for an economic depression. But extraordinary stimulative spending by governments around the world and emergency measures by central banks reversed the trend and led to a weak, but extended recovery of sorts that […]

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

Tech Talk – Changes in global supply and demand At the beginning of the month I pointed out that there are three components to the coming Energy Mess. The first of these is the steady increase in global demand for oil and its products, the second is the decline in production from existing wells and fields, and the third is the shrinking pool of places from which new oil can be recovered to make up the difference between the first two. Internal demand gnaws away at that available for export, as the situation in Saudi Arabia clearly illustrates: Figure 1. Changing relation between Saudi production, internal demand and thus available exports. ( Energy Export Databrowser ) Internal consumption has now reached 3 mbd – out of a production of around 10 mbd, a trend bound to go higher, as the country’s population continues to grow , having risen from […]

Click here to view full article at peakoil.com