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Peak Oil: It’s Baaaack

 As an old oil hand, I was seriously disturbed five years ago when it was almost impossible to develop a payback time for shale oil production.  Since then it has continued to go missing as massive amounts of cash was spent on the industry.  This suggests that we now know.  It is never at the present pricing regime. This could not be worse news.  It means that our vulnerability to supply disruption is rocketing while elasticity is dropping.  US shale oil has merely postponed our day of reckoning by a few years while the decline in conventional oil production actually accelerates. Right now we are swapping dollars in the oil industry at best and the ship is clearly leaking. The only good coming out of all this is that massive amounts of money are coming home to be spent drilling more wells.  Obviously this allows repatriation of US currency […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Peak Oil Depletion Scenarios

In 1972, the Club of Rome attempted to shock stakeholders, politicians and policy makers with its Limits to Growth study forecast of All Liquids Peak Oil:  117-Mbd in 1995.  They attempted to promote awareness natural resources are finite, but in jeopardy with growing global population.  This was underscored in 1974 with M K Hubbert’s similar prediction:  111-Mbd in 1995 (excluding NGL, deep sea, polar, Orinoco & tar sands). Because OPEC manipulation truncated both these predictions, Colin Campbell attempted to update the long-term prospects for All Liquids .  The Irish geologist stunned many when in 1989 he declared present All Liquids flow (65.5-Mbd) would never again re-attain its 1979 pre-crisis Peak of 67-Mbd ( ) .  Well, he was very wrong (88-Mbd today).  This episode made it quite clear the uncertainty & price volatility caused by such pessimistic reports (even by well-intentioned professionals) required formal addressing by the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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The global Transition tipping point has arrived

Last Friday, I posted an exclusive report about a new NASA-backed scientific research project at the US National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (Sesync) to model the risks of civilisational collapse, based on analysis of the key factors involved in the rise and fall of past civilisations. The story went viral and was quickly picked up by other news outlets around the world which, however, often offered rather misleading headlines. ‘Nasa-backed study says humanity is pretty much screwed’, said . ‘Nasa-funded study says modern society doomed, like the dodo’, said the . Are we doomed? Doom is not the import of this study, nor of my own original research on these issues as encapsulated in my book, A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It . Rather what we are seeing, as I’ve argued in detail before , are escalating, interconnected symptoms of the unsustainability of […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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How do ex-Saudi Aramco geologist Dr Husseini's oil price spike predictions of USD 140 by 2016-17 stack up?

In an interview with ASPO USA in January 2014 Ex-Saudi Aramco geologist Dr. Sadad-Al-Husseini predicted oil price spikes of $140 by 2016/17. This post shows some graphs explaining why this could happen. Husseini:  My base oil price forecast in 2012 dollars still ranges between $105 and $120/barrel Brent with a volatility floor of $ 95/barrel and more probable upward spiking to $140/barrel within 2016/2017. Husseini did not elaborate how he arrived at that time frame but this question and answer give us a hint:   ASPO:  “In the larger context, how has your view of future world oil production supply evolved over the last four or five years? As a benchmark, I reference your slides from the 2009 Oil & Money Conference slides”   Husseini:  “The realities of the 2009 O&M forecast of a limited plateau of oil supplies have been pretty much vindicated since then. The oil plateau […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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How do ex-Saudi Aramco geologist Dr Husseini’s oil price spike predictions of USD 140 by 2016-17 stack up?

In an interview with ASPO USA in January 2014 Ex-Saudi Aramco geologist Dr. Sadad-Al-Husseini predicted oil price spikes of $140 by 2016/17. This post shows some graphs explaining why this could happen. Husseini:  My base oil price forecast in 2012 dollars still ranges between $105 and $120/barrel Brent with a volatility floor of $ 95/barrel and more probable upward spiking to $140/barrel within 2016/2017. Husseini did not elaborate how he arrived at that time frame but this question and answer give us a hint:   ASPO:  “In the larger context, how has your view of future world oil production supply evolved over the last four or five years? As a benchmark, I reference your slides from the 2009 Oil & Money Conference slides”   Husseini:  “The realities of the 2009 O&M forecast of a limited plateau of oil supplies have been pretty much vindicated since then. The oil plateau […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Shale gas and oil boom not sustainable

How much faith can we put in our ability to decipher all the numbers out there telling us the US is closing in on its cornering of the global oil market? There’s another side to the story of the relentless US shale boom, one that says that some of the numbers are misunderstood, while others are simply preposterous. The truth of the matter is that the industry has to make such a big deal out of shale because it’s all that’s left. There are some good things happening behind the fairy tale numbers, though—it’s just a matter of deciphering them from a sober perspective.   In a second exclusive interview with James Stafford of  Oilprice.com , energy expert Arthur Berman discusses:   Why US gas supply growth rests solely on Marcellus When Bakken and Eagle […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Shale gas and oil boom not sustainable – Peak Oil

How much faith can we put in our ability to decipher all the numbers out there telling us the US is closing in on its cornering of the global oil market? There’s another side to the story of the relentless US shale boom, one that says that some of the numbers are misunderstood, while others are simply preposterous. The truth of the matter is that the industry has to make such a big deal out of shale because it’s all that’s left. There are some good things happening behind the fairy tale numbers, though—it’s just a matter of deciphering them from a sober perspective.   In a second exclusive interview with James Stafford of  Oilprice.com , energy expert Arthur Berman discusses:   Why US gas supply growth rests solely on Marcellus When Bakken and Eagle Ford will peak The eyebrow-raising predictions for the Permian Basin Why outrageous claims should have […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Net vs. gross energy: Is it wise to be complacent?

Everyone knows that when a potential employer makes a job offer, the salary or wage he or she proposes isn’t what you’ll be taking home. What you’ll take home is your net pay. The number the employer offers you is your gross pay, and that’s just what it says on your pay stub. It’s not quite a perfect analogy with net energy versus gross energy. But it’s an everyday analogy that most people can understand. Net pay is what you have to pay your bills today. And, net energy is what society has in order to conduct its business (and its fun) on any given day. Net energy is what’s left after the energy sectors of the economy–oil and gas, coal, nuclear, hydroelectric, renewable energy industries, and farming which provides food for human and animal energy and crops for biofuels–expend the energy they must to extract energy from the […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Shale, the last oil and gas train

How much faith can we put in our ability to decipher all the numbers out there telling us the United States is closing in on its cornering of the global oil market? There’s another side to the story of the relentless U.S. shale boom, one that says that some of the numbers are misunderstood, while others are simply preposterous. The truth of the matter is that the industry has to make such a big deal out of shale because it’s all that’s left. There are some good things happening behind the fairy tale numbers, though—it’s just a matter of deciphering them from a sober perspective. In a exclusive interview with James Stafford of Oilprice.com , energy expert Arthur Berman discusses:   Why US gas supply growth rests solely on Marcellus When Bakken and Eagle Ford will peak The eyebrow-raising predictions for the Permian Basin Why outrageous claims should have […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Peak Oil Denial: Reality Is Still Here

Page added on March 10, 2014 At the risk of starting a cat fight where truth may too quickly become a casualty, why don’t we more forcefully challenge those who deny peak oil (and global warming) and who do so for reasons that generally ignore reality in favor of narrowly-defined interests? Those motivations will ultimately do nothing but promote more eventual harm by denying the truths to those who clearly need them the most…. Of course, we run the risk of getting bogged down in he said/she-said arguments that quickly devolve into the lowest forms of ‘debate’, but why let those types of offerings go unchallenged? They feed on themselves, and it is tiresome and time-consuming to have to rebut all the nonsense. But if we don’t, uninformed readers and listeners have no reason to at least consider the possibility that there may indeed be other facts out there […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA