Category: Peak Oil

Think back to early 2004. Oil cost around $40 per barrel 1 —on the high side compared to the previous few decades but not much out of the ordinary. Gasoline still cost under $2.00 a gallon for most of the country. The evening news was more concerned with wardrobe gaffes by Janet Jackson ( too little , at the Super Bowl) and President Bush ( too much , on the USS Abraham Lincoln ) than with energy prices. In retrospect, these were the last days of "normal." Most everyone in business, the media, and government assumed that the world had plenty of cheap oil. 2  And hardly anyone outside the fossil fuel industry had heard of peak oil, the idea that we were nearing physical limits to global oil production and a new period of oil price and supply volatility. We now know that the world’s conventional oil production […]

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Think back to early 2004. Oil cost around $40 per barrel 1 —on the high side compared to the previous few decades but not much out of the ordinary. Gasoline still cost under $2.00 a gallon for most of the country. The evening news was more concerned with wardrobe gaffes by Janet Jackson ( too little , at the Super Bowl) and President Bush ( too much , on the USS Abraham Lincoln ) than with energy prices. In retrospect, these were the last days of "normal." Most everyone in business, the media, and government assumed that the world had plenty of cheap oil. 2  And hardly anyone outside the fossil fuel industry had heard of peak oil, the idea that we were nearing physical limits to global oil production and a new period of oil price and supply volatility. We now know that the world’s conventional oil production […]

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

Image via The Prime Minster’s Office/flickr. Creative Commons 2.0 license.   Three things you shouldn’t miss this week Commentary: America’s Feel-Good Oil Bonanza -What the EIA says matters—regardless of its veracity or substantiation. In this light, let’s take a look at what the EIA is now saying in AEO 2014. Commentary: 6 reasons why there’s no community in fracking – Fracking is too capital intensive to allow communities to set up and run their own wells, even if they wanted to…Income such as is being proposed is only one small part of the bigger picture of thinking about what a resilient community needs. Commentary : In brief: The EU’s new 2030 climate and energy package – The European Commission today announced new energy and climate targets for the EU. The UK is to go all out for shale gas and David Cameron is asking British people to get on […]

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Several months ago, I discussed the issue of “Capex compression.” When decreasing oil industry revenues cannot keep up with the increasing exploration and production costs of unconventional resources such as deep-water and shale fields, investments decline. Not exactly rocket science….   GETTING LESS = HAVING LESS   As I noted in that post, and as common sense suggests, when they invest less, we wind up with less. We now live in a world where demand is forecasted to increase [see this ] and conventional crude oil  production continues to decline by 3-4 million barrels per day—depending on which source is referenced. Lower investments and thus lower supply from resources harder to find, extract, and produce to begin with, means that we’re confronted with some legitimate supply and demand issues most fifth-graders would understand: Less supply and higher demand = a problem. Of course, prices at the pump could increase […]

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Despite major oil finds off Brazil’s coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada , fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau—roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day—since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency—an energy cartel for oil consuming nations. To support our modern lifestyles—from cars to plastics —the world has used more than one trillion barrels of oil to date. Another trillion lie underground, waiting to be tapped. But given the locations of the remaining oil, getting the next trillion is likely to cost […]

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The supermajor sees energy landscape shifting as demand growth slows and new fuels emerge to challenge oil’s supremacy. Helen Robertson reports   Click here to view charts  UK SUPERMAJOR BP has claimed the concept of global energy supply peaking amid rapidly rising consumption is no longer valid as new fuels emerge and energy demand growth slows.   "The theory of peak oil has peaked," BP chief executive Bob Dudley said as he unveiled the company’s new energy outlook to 2035 . The outlook, which forecasts global energy supply and demand trends between 2012 and 2035, estimates total global energy consumption will rise by 41% between 2012 to 2035. This is compared to a rise of 55% over the last 23 years and 30% over the past decade.  Global energy demand will grow at around 2% per year between now and 2020 then falling to a rate of 1.2% per […]

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All signs of desperation, Albert. The party’s about to end and the most greedy people are getting as bladdered as they can, and stashing away their own private supplies before the booze runs out. Sad, and also childish. 2014 – This documentary and the other documentaries on this channel are very informative, interesting, and even fun. You will see documentaries on important times and figures in history, science, technology, nature, archaeology, and education, as well as some more fringe topics like conspiracy theories and government corruption. The topics of these video documentaries vary greatly and cover ancient history and civilizations like Rome, Greece, Egypt, science, technology, nature, planet earth and other planets, the solar system, the universe, World wars, battles, military and combat technology, current events, teaching and education, biographies, television, movies and cinema, the arts, popular music worldwide, archaeology, the Illuminati, Area 51, serial killers, paranormal and supernatural […]

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Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said he viewed the increase in U.S. oil production as a new source of supply that will help stabilize oil markets. Oil from shale is providing a buffer against an unsteady Middle East market, but it’s not too early to consider what happens to markets after the revolution. Skip to next paragraph Recent posts Naimi said during a meeting in Riyadh with U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz the increase in U.S. oil production was adding a level of stability to an international oil market unsettled by problems in the Middle East and North Africa. "It is necessary to continue consultations between our two countries to expand the horizons of cooperation, including joint investments, and working with oil producing and consuming countries for the stability of […]

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Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society has the prestige of being the world’s first scientific journal and also published the work of Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday, William Herschel and many more celebrated names in science. Recently, this journal published a theme issue, edited by Richard G. Miller and Steve R. Sorell, on peak oil. This volume presents the best scientific evidence on why a decline in oil supply may, or may not, be in sight. It considers the production and resources of conventional oil and the potential for developing alternative liquid fuels from tar sands, shales, biomass, coal and gas. It describes how economies might react and adapt to rising oil prices and how the transport sector could be transformed. It provides comprehensive and interdisciplinary perspective on the ‘peak oil’ debate and reflects a range of views. Ultimately, it reminds us that the […]

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