Category: Peak Oil

What is correct way to model the future course of energy and the economy? There are clearly huge amounts of oil, coal, and natural gas in the ground.  With different approaches, researchers can obtain vastly different indications. I will show that the real issue is most researchers are modeling the wrong limit . Most researchers assume that the limit that they should be concerned with is the amount of oil, coal, and natural gas in the ground. This is the wrong limit . While in theory we will eventually hit this limit, because of the way fossil fuels are integrated into the rest of the economy, we hit financial limits much earlier . These financial limits include lack of investment capital, inability of governments to collect enough taxes to fund their programs, and […]

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“We are betting our entire national economic life on the hope — indeed the expectation — that the fracking boom will continue until well into the 2020s, and that, at a rate and cost we desire, significant amounts of ‘yet to be discovered’ oil will somehow be found to meet the demand.” “If any of that proves incorrect, we have no plan, no alternative, and have given no thought to how we would respond in such a case.”The speaker is national-security expert Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, a veteran of four tours of duty with the US Army in Iraq and Afghanistan. I am not a military man, but I worry just as much about the energy security of my own country as he does about his. In the UK, the government, the civil service and most of the big energy companies seem perfectly content to replicate the grand gamble […]

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The Romans named the first month of the year after the double-headed god Janus, the symbol of thresholds and transitions. He reminds us how life often involves choices between opposites. Janus stands at January’s doorway looking at both 2013 and the New Year. One Janus-like debate in the energy sector revolves around the world’s oil and gas supply. Views are always vacillating between “there’s not enough” and “there’s more than enough”. This point would be trivial were it not for a recent dramatic shift towards the first view. Until the middle of the last decade, the popular view was that production of “non-renewable” energy resources was peaking. In a sense, […]

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The following interview with Richard Heinberg was originally published in Flemish at the Belgian website De Wereld Morgen . The interview was given in conjunction with the release of the Dutch translation of Richard’s Book Snake Oil: How Fracking’s False Promise of Plenty Imperils Our Future . The Dutch title is Schaliegas, piekolie & onze toekomst . Selma Franssen: Considering the shale gas and oil reserves in Europe, is there any sense in fracking here, all other objections aside? Richard Heinberg: Until test wells are drilled, it’s very difficult to know what the actual shale gas and oil production potential is for Europe. All sorts of numbers have been cited, but they are simply guesses. Back in 2011, the US Energy Information Administration estimated that Poland’s shale gas reserves were 187 trillion cubic feet, but a little on-the-ground exploration led the Polish Geological Institute to downgrade that figure to […]

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Page added on January 9, 2014 Selma Franssen: Considering the shale gas and oil reserves in Europe, is there any sense in fracking here, all other objections aside? Richard Heinberg: Until test wells are drilled, it’s very difficult to know what the actual shale gas and oil production potential is for Europe. All sorts of numbers have been cited, but they are simply guesses. Back in 2011, the US Energy Information Administration estimated that Poland’s shale gas reserves were 187 trillion cubic feet, but a little on-the-ground exploration led the Polish Geological Institute to downgrade that figure to a mere 27 TCF—a number that may still be overly optimistic. My institute’s research suggests that US future production of shale oil and gas has been wildly over-estimated too. So, without attempting to put a specific number to it, I think it would be wise to assume that Europe’s actual reserves […]

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For many years, the most compelling issue driving sustainability efforts among businesses, consumers, governments and activists has been climate change. We are all becoming increasingly concerned with the impacts of rising temperatures and extreme weather events on our supply chains, cities, transportation networks, agricultural industries, and lives. We have become increasingly alarmed about the results of burning too much coal, oil and gas; the consequences of excessive emissions resulting from some of the most useful substances humanity has ever harnessed. We have identified our most important struggle – to maintain economic growth while reducing carbon emissions. Because our concern has been first and foremost the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, we have designed and sporadically implemented economic incentives to reduce carbon emissions. We issue carbon credits to companies that emit less carbon. We offer cash to countries who don’t cut down […]

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The eulogies for peak oil came too soon. Among the big energy stories of 2013, “peak oil”—the once-popular notion that worldwide oil production would soon reach a maximum level and begin an irreversible decline—was thoroughly discredited. The explosive development of shale oil and other unconventional fuels in the United States helped put it in its grave. As the year went on, the eulogies came in fast and furious. “Today, it is probably safe to say we have slayed ‘peak oil’ once and for all, thanks to the combination of new shale oil and gas production techniques,” declared Rob Wile, an energy and economics reporter for Business Insider. Similar comments from energy experts were commonplace, prompting an R.I.P. headline at Time.com announcing, “Peak Oil is Dead.” Not so fast, though. The present round of […]

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The U.S. will surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s top oil producer by 2015, and be close to energy self-sufficiency in the next two decades, amid booming output from shale formations, the IEA said. (links in original) [1]  The International Energy Agency has sounded the alarm about a potential oil supply crunch…. (links in original) [2] The boom in oil from shale formations in recent years has generated a lot of discussion that the United States could eventually return to energy self-sufficiency, but according to a report released Tuesday by the International Energy Agency, production of such oil in the United States and worldwide will provide only a temporary respite from reliance on the Middle East. [3] [A]n analysis of a few key global oil production factors exposes the unstable foundation upon which hopes for North American oil independence are built. […]

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Shocking Prediction: Part II – The ‘Second Phase’ Of The Oil Boom Could Eclipse The First Last week, I told you about how the "second phase" of the oil boom could make the first phase look like small potatoes (you can read the article here ). At the end of my article, I mentioned that if the price of oil drops below $70 per barrel, horizontal drilling plays could see their margins shrink considerably, along with investment returns. I know a lot of oil investors are worried about that potential outcome, so I wanted to write this follow-up to show you why I think high oil prices are here to stay, and why over time they’re likely to go higher. If you think we’ve escaped "peak oil" and oil prices are destined to fall… think again. Back in 2008, before the financial crisis […]

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Shocking Prediction: Part II – The ‘Second Phase’ Of The Oil Boom Could Eclipse The First Last week, I told you about how the "second phase" of the oil boom could make the first phase look like small potatoes (you can read the article here ). At the end of my article, I mentioned that if the price of oil drops below $70 per barrel, horizontal drilling plays could see their margins shrink considerably, along with investment returns. I know a lot of oil investors are worried about that potential outcome, so I wanted to write this follow-up to show you why I think high oil prices are here to stay, and why over time they’re likely to go higher. If you think we’ve escaped "peak oil" and oil prices are destined to fall… think again. Back in 2008, before the financial crisis […]

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