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IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven on peak oil

With the introduction of unconventional oil sources, predicting peak oil has become almost impossible, the executive argues “The global energy map is quickly being redrawn,” says Maria van der Hoeven, Executive Director of the Paris-based International Energy Agency. “What we are seeing is an oil boom that shows no sign of slowing” she adds. For energy analysts across the world, the IEA is the premiere source of industry intelligence, producing market reports and events that address all segments of the energy sector. This 360-degree viewpoint, coupled with the agency’s fervent relationships with the world’s biggest energy players, gives its staff unequalled insight into the world’s energy markets. According to van der Hoeven, global energy demand will increase by around 30% by 2035, with oil contributing to around 27% of total energy usage by this date. While she admits increased use of natural gas will result in a slight fall […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Twenty-First-Century Energy Wars

Twenty-First-Century Energy Wars Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, South Sudan, Ukraine, the East and South China Seas: wherever you look, the world is aflame with new or intensifying conflicts.  At first glance, these upheavals appear to be independent events, driven by their own unique and idiosyncratic circumstances.  But look more closely and they share several key characteristics — notably, a witch’s brew of ethnic, religious, and national antagonisms that have beenstirred to the boiling point by a fixation on energy. In each of these conflicts, the fighting is driven in large part by the eruption of long-standing historic antagonisms among neighboring (often intermingled) tribes, sects, and peoples.  In Iraq and Syria, it is a clash among Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Turkmen, and others; in Nigeria, among Muslims, Christians, and assorted tribal groupings; in South Sudan, between the Dinka and Nuer; in Ukraine, between Ukrainian loyalists and Russian-speakers aligned with Moscow; in the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Are We Running Out of Oil?

For many years, a number of industry experts have been sounding the alarm that America, and the world, are about to run out of oil. This is nothing new. In 1914, the Bureau of Mines said that U.S. oil reserves would be exhausted by 1924. The Interior Department said global reserves would last 13 years… and that was in 1939. In 1956, Shell Oil geoscientist Marion King Hubbert advanced his peak oil theory, which said that world oil production had peaked and would begin to decline until all of the oil was gone. Every expert who’s predicted “the end of oil” has been wrong in the past. But with global energy consumption at an all-time high, and much of the world’s economy dependent on oil, the question needs to be asked: Are we about to run out of oil?… The Peak Oil Theory Hubbert, whose […]

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Debt: Eight Reasons This Time is Different

In today’s world, we have a huge amount of debt outstanding. Academic researchers Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have become famous for their book This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly and their earlier paper This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises . Their point, of course, is that the same thing happens over and over again. We can learn from past crises to solve our current problems. Part of their story is of course correct. Governments have gotten themselves into problems with debt, time after time. This is happening again now. In fact, the same two authors recently prepared a working paper for the International Monetary Fund called Financial and Sovereign Debt Crises: Some Lessons Learned and Some Lessons Forgotten , talking about ideas such as governments inflating their way out of debt problems and pushing problems off to insurance […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Tech Talk – of longer wells and drawdown pressure

There are, simply, three major parts to the coming global economic mess that will be created as we enter into the period of Peak Oil. The first of these comes from the current rising demand for oil, particularly emphasized by those countries, such as China and India, where demand is rising fastest. The second part is the declining production from existing fields as their reserves are drawn down. (Though it should be remembered that even when “exhausted” the fields will still contain vast quantities of oil, but oil which is at present not economically recoverable). And finally there is the oil in the undeveloped, and undiscovered wells and fields that can be added to the existing reserve to help ameliorate the imbalance between demand and supply from existing wells. The high decline rates from long horizontal wells drilled into, and along the shale deposits in the United States, most […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Peak Oil – It’s Just a Rumour

Whenever I present a course, someone will inevitably ask: “When, exactly, do you think we will run out of oil?” “Never!” is always my response. The world will never run out of oil. “But”, they protest, “I saw a report about it on TV”. “I saw a YouTube video about it”. “My science teacher showed us a graph”…… When Professor Marion King Hubbert made his predictions almost sixty years ago that US oil production would peak in the mid 1970s and decline thereafter (and so also by the same reasoning would World oil production), little did he realise what consternation he would create! The truth of the matter is that his analysis and predictions were based on proven reserves from conventional oil fields. And it is true, production from these types of fields did indeed start to decline in the 70s much […]

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The Return of the Bad Old Days of Oil Shocks

The Return of the Bad Old Days of Oil Shocks And we thought the bad old days of oil shocks were over. Embargoes, price spikes, gasoline lines in America, a sweater-bedecked president ordering the end of hot water in many facilities, collapsing retail sales as high gasoline and energy prices hit stores as much as a big tax increase would, economic stagflation, or worse. Well, it just might be that we were wrong to believe that danger to our continued prosperity has been removed with the death of theories about “Peak oil.” Certainly, the takeover of part of Iraq by ISIS forces, variously called “militants,” “terrorists,” “gangsters,” and in White House circles thought to be disaffected Sunnis aching to participate in the government of a democratic Iraq, has set nerves jangling among energy planners. True, most of Iraq’s oil production, at around 3 million barrels per day the second […]

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It would seem premature to declare that Peak Oil is dead

From Dr John Howard Wilhelm. Sir, Your assertion that Peak Oil is dead and that US output of liquid petroleum has regained its previous peak reached in 1970 should not go unchallenged (“ Looking past the death of Peak Oil ”, Editorial, June 17). According to data from the US Energy Information Administration, US field production of crude oil in 1970 was 9.6m barrels a day. For 2013 it was 7.4m b/d. That is, in 2013 US crude oil production stood at 77 per cent of its annual 1970 peak. More IN Letters If one looks at the facts, the situation is far more fraught than implied by your analysis later in the piece. Earlier data from the Bakken oilfield indicated that annual production per well averaged 85,000 barrels a year initially with a decline rate of 40 per cent a year, which implies on a compounded basis 856 […]

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Heinberg on peak oil and options for energy transition

Post Carbon Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg was interviewed on peak oil and energy transition options at RT. 3 Comments on "Heinberg on peak oil and options for energy transition" Davey on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 8:17 am  Energy transition will have to include drastic changes in attitudes and lifestyles. This will “Only” happen with a ground shaking crisis where BAU still functions but at a precarious level. After all we are on a knife edge of collapse from here on out. Collapse means little energy to zero energy in many locations. Last crisis sooner the better spoken objectively. On the subjective side “BAU” if you can hear me I need 2 years please. Obama had a bit of straightforwardness yesterday : “It is in our national security interests not to see an all-out civil war inside of Iraq, not just for humanitarian reasons, but because that ultimately can be […]

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Bottom Up, Top Down

Those of us who have some grasp of the urgent dilemmas posed by climate change and peak oil face a terrible conundrum. The whole system of industrial civilization is moving toward collapse. How can we reverse course to avert an unprecedented series of crises that might entail massive human mortality and the more or less permanent crippling of planetary ecosystems? I can think of two broad strategies: Top down. Convince the folks in charge that it’s in their interest to change direction—that is, to reorganize financial, food, transport, and manufacturing systems on a no-growth, low-carbon model. Advantage: this audience at least theoretically has the power to organize a comprehensive and rapid energy descent. Recall the rapidity with which the US re-organized its economy at the start of World War II. Disadvantages: the elites’ incentives are all in the current direction of growth-at-any-cost, many of the key players remain in […]

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