Peak Oil Watch
Energy Headlines
September 2 Peak Oil is Here: German Think Tank
What will 2010 be remembered for? According to a leaked report from a German think tank, this could be the year that witnesses the arrival of peak oil: that is, a global maximum in petroleum production levels to be followed by a steady — or precipitous — decline.
August 21 Peak Oil Alarm Revealed by secret Official Talks
Speculation that government ministers are far more concerned about a future supply crunch than they have admitted has been fuelled by the revelation that they are canvassing views from industry and the scientific community about "peak oil".
August 16 Crude Prices Likely to Rise on Firm Global Demand
Crude oil, or black gold, is finite and a non-renewable resource of energy. It is undoubtedly one of the most essential commodities at present. A slight fluctuation in crude oil price can lead to direct or indirect impact on the global economy. All of us depend on oil for essential needs of our life. An unprecedented increase in oil prices can instigate recession, like the one we witnessed in 1970s when oil output fell drastically while oil prices kept on rising.
August 11 Peak Oil is the Villain Governments Need
Could peak oil lever politicians out from between the rock of the electorate and the hard place that is climate change mitigation? As Daniel Gros wrote in the Guardian: "the climate-change bill, for which President Barack Obama had pushed so hard, will not even be presented to the US Senate, because it stands no chance of passage". His analysis ends with a fatalistic statement: "Determined action at the global level will become possible only when climate change is no longer some scientific prediction, but a reality that people feel … A world incapable of preventing climate change will have to live with it."
August 9 What's Really Driving the Price of Oil?
The Internet tends to be a Wild West of opinions on investing, but I think some of the best work actually documenting and comparing the various sources of information on energy and petroleum is over at The Oil Drum. Now, to be clear, they don’t claim to be an unbiased news source; their bent is pretty firmly in the peak oil camp. But they regularly feature dissenting voices and academic debate, and consolidate raw data, regardless of whose point it makes.
July 21 The Peak Oil Crisis: Thinking About China
Interestingly, Chinese officials immediately denied that the IEA's announcement was correct. This is not because the Chinese do not want to be the world's number one energy consumer, but because they do not want to be known as the number one polluter and contributor to global warming emissions. As global temperatures set new records, Beijing would rather be thought of as the leader in efficient use of energy and developer of renewable technologies, rather than as a giant pollutant-belching smokestack, which may be closer to the truth for much of China's energy comes from coal.
July 15 Wall Street and Peak Oil
One of the enduring lines about peak oil is that authorities keep it a secret because there would be some kind of financial havoc if it were revealed. A recent example is a claim that Steven Chu, US energy secretary: “… knows all about peak oil, but he can’t talk about it. If the government announced that peak oil was threatening our economy, Wall Street would crash.”
June 25 Native Activist Takes Oil Sands Protest to Toronto
The Canadian and provincial governments are in partnership with big oil and think that it’s okay to put our communities’ traditional territories that we rely on for our entire existence on the sacrificial block of the economic agenda of the G20,” he added, pointing to “catastrophic” cancer rates in nearby communities.
June 24 Oil Supply Crunch Would Leave Us All in Deep Water
“The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico casts doubt on the viability of the deepwater production on which industry forecasts depend,” Leggett said, arguing that “premature peak oil would be quite as bad as the credit crunch”. Indeed, Britain’s industry taskforce on peak oil and energy security has warned the government there to “act now . . . don’t let the oil crunch catch us out in the way the credit crunch did”.
June 20 Two Ways to Profit from 'Peak Oil'
The United States consumes 20 million barrels daily. That's more than the next-five-largest consumers - China, Japan, Russia, Germany, and India - combined. Of those 20 million barrels, 56% are imported. The imports alone represent more oil than Saudi Arabia produces in a day; in fact, it accounts for nearly 20% of the world's entire production.
June 14 Note Urgency of Peak-Oil Scenario
AS A land-use planner, I was encouraged to see peak oil mentioned in Joanna Weiss’s June 8 op-ed “Rethinking our oil-drenched lifestyles.’’ She makes many excellent points about how our complex, industrial civilization is dependent on fossil fuels, especially oil, and that weaning ourselves from this dependency will be a long and difficult process.
June 10 Former Chief Scientist Lends Voice to Peak Oil Warnings
After famously stating that the threat from climate change is graver than that posed by terrorism, former government chief scientist Sir David King has this week issued another stark warning, arguing that oil supplies could peak far sooner than anticipated by politicians and businesses.
June 8 After the Credit-Crisis, Next it Will be Oil
As it now admits, BP “did not have the tools” to contain a deepwater oil leak. Its failure with that risk must now raise questions about its approach to other risks. Top of the list must be the threat that global oil production will fall sooner than generally forecast, ambushing oil-dependent economies with a rapidly opening gap between supply and demand.
June 5 Imagining Life Without Oil, and Being Ready
Americans have long been fascinated by disaster scenarios, from the population explosion to the cold war to global warming. These days the doomers, as Mrs. Wilkerson jokingly calls herself and likeminded others, have a new focus: peak oil. They argue that oil supplies peaked as early as 2008 and will decline rapidly, taking the economy with them.
May 25 Peak Oil: Gas Prices, Supply Depletion & Energy Crisis
We are entering the Peak Oil era. The growth of oil production is slowing, driving up oil and gasoline gas prices, firing inflation, driving unemployment, straining our global economy, and threatening to collapse our entire system. We are reaching Peak Oil and we are unprepared. Teacher Aaron Wissner, in a compact 10 minutes video summary, details Peak Oil, the evidence, the impacts, and the solutions.
May 25 Spill Shows Crisis Looms
The current eco-catastrophe in the gulf should remind us all of the likelihood that we have approached and passed "peak oil." Every barrel of oil is going to become increasingly more difficult to get and way more expensive.
May 20 Eric Nuttall: Maximizing Oil and Gas Investments
"If you want to talk about the Gulf and the oil leak in terms of investment, I think it's creating some pretty interesting investment opportunities," says Eric Nuttall, portfolio manager of Sprott Asset Management's Energy Fund. The straight-shooting Nuttall never fails to opine or shine as he explains why onshore oil plays are solid investments and talks oil and gas juniors, shales and prices in this exclusive interview with The Energy Report.
May 11 Peak Oil and Profits Behind Deepwater Disaster
For big business and their politicians, the biggest worry is not climate change but peak oil. About half of all the available oil in the world has been used and what is left is harder to extract and process. The Pentagon recently produced a report which points to growing oil scarcity and states that by 2015 worldwide “the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day." As the world uses 90 million barrels a day now, and consumption is rising, a shortfall of 10% is bad news.
May 4 Oil is not the Enemy
But what if there is actually enough fossil fuel lying around to last up to, say, 800 years, even factoring increased demand from emerging economies and population growth. If that's true, and just as many people believe that idea as they do peak oil, why bother with alternative energy at all? It's costly. And judging by the headlines, no one wants a wind farm in their backyard. Moreover, we're in the early stage of an economic recovery that is still quite fragile. We need cheap conventional oil more than ever.
April 26 Peak Oil: Why Industry and Goverment Should Sit Up and Listen
As CCS potential is brought into question, Jeremy Leggett, chairman of Solar Century, raises the question of why industry and government should see peak oil as a serious risk issue "The next five years will see us face another crunch – the oil crunch. This time, we do have the chance to prepare. The challenge is to use that time well. ….Our message to government and businesses is clear: act. Don't let the oil crunch catch us out in the way that the credit crunch did."
April 23 Peak Oil Era: Why the Cost and Risk of Oil Exploration Will Keep Rising
Rigs like Deepwater Horizon will continue to push drilling depths merely because the company has to. The days of easy-to-access oil are gone. Now, companies like BP are faced with oil and gas exploration projects that require operating in politically unstable regions or working in technologically complex areas like the deep waters of the Gulf or offshore Brazil.
April 22 Peak Oil Predictions
It's now a truism – among oil companies, and governments alike – that even in an age when we risk catastrophic climate change, and its attendant catastrophes such as we've seen in the Gulf of Mexico this week, oil exploration is an inevitable part of our future. It may be a truism, but is it true?
April 16 Peak Oil - 21st Century's Great Wildcard
In 1956, M. King Hubbert, a petroleum geologist who worked for Shell, gave a speech at the American Petroleum Institute. He declared that American oil production would reach a peak in the early 1970s, and from then on would forever decline...
April 12 Another Financial Crossroads: Attempting to Read the Signs
We are, as usual, at a financial crossroads and the signs to guide us to the proper route are, also as usual, smeared with graffiti and conflicting directions. But in this instance the crossroads are significantly more important than at other times; it's a bit like equality amongst Orwellian animals. Decisions made in times of Great Recessions carry much more impact for the future than any other time.
April 11 US Military Warns Oil Output May Dip Causing Massive Shortages by 2015
The US military has warned that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact. The energy crisis outlined in a Joint Operating Environment report from the US Joint Forces Command, comes as the price of petrol in Britain reaches record levels and the cost of crude is predicted to soon top $100 a barrel.
April 10 After Peak Oil, Are we Heading Towards Social Collapse?
What exactly are the implications? In Life After Growth, Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow-in-Residence at Post Carbon Institute, states, "In effect, we have to create a desirable 'new normal' that fits the constraints imposed by depleting natural resources. Maintaining the 'old normal' is not an option; if we do not find new goals for ourselves and plan our transition from a growth-based economy to a healthy equilibrium economy, we will by default create a much less desirable 'new normal' whose emergence we are already beginning to see in the forms of persistent high unemployment, a widening gap between rich and poor, and ever more frequent and worsening financial and environmental crises—all of which translate to profound distress for individuals, families, and communities."
April 6 Peak Oil Man Shifts Focus to Peak Price, Demand
Retired petroleum geologist Colin Campbell, who worked for major oil companies as well as smaller firms, has long been associated with the belief the world's oil supplies are dwindling. He does not waver from that and dismisses the argument of the so-called optimists that technology will manage to keep eking out more and more oil to keep pace with rising demand.
March 30 Energy Dept. Says World Oil Production Could Decline in 2011
This forecast comes from Glen Sweetnam, the director of the International Economic and Greenhouse Gas Division at the Energy Information Administration (EIA), the statistical branch of the DOE. Sweetnam oversees the publication of the EIA’s yearly International Energy Outlook, one of the most authoritative sources on forecasting global oil supply and demand
March 29 Peak Oil, Climate Change and Democracy: Do they Mix?
Winston Churchill once noted, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” But have the pressing problems facing us today — looming peak oil, climate change, the still-strangled credit markets — given other forms of government an edge over democracy?
March 25 The Best Peak Oil Investments, Part III: Natural Gas Vehicles
There are many proposed solutions to the liquid fuels scarcity caused be stagnating (and eventually falling) oil supplies combined with growing demand in emerging economies. Some will be good investments, others won't. Here is where I'm putting my money, and why. This third part looks at the possibility of displacing gasoline with natural gas, by converting vehicles to natural gas.
March 24 The Church of Peak Oil
The problem with Peak Oil the theory isn't that it's wrong in noting that industry depletes resources, and that oil may, sooner or later, reach a production plateau, it's that it sees those facts through a moralistically-charged and economically-challenged lens. It also embodies extraordinary faith in Big Government and grass roots activism.
March 23 Oil Sands Output Forecast Halved Since Boom
Only half the Canadian oil sands production forecast from projects proposed before the recession is still expected to come on stream despite a recent rebound in development activity, an analyst said on Tuesday.
March 22 The Best Peak Oil Investments, Part II: Hydrogen and Vehicle Electrification
There are many proposed solutions to the liquid fuels scarcity caused by stagnating (and eventually falling) oil supplies combined with growing demand in emerging economies. Some will be good investments, others won't. Here is where I'm putting my money, and why. This second part looks at hydrogen and electrification strategies for replacing oil.
March 21 Energy Minister Will Hold Summit to Calm Rising Fears Over Peak Oil
In a significant policy shift, the government has agreed to undertake more work on whether the UK needs to take action to avoid the massive dislocation that could be caused by the early onset of "peak oil" – the point that marks the start of terminal decline in global oil production.
March 18 The Best Peak Oil Investments, Part I: Biofuels
There are many proposed solutions to the liquid fuels scarcity caused by stagnating (and eventually falling) oil supplies combined with growing demand in emerging economies. Some will be good investments, others won't. Here is where I'm putting my money, and why. This first part looks at biofuel strategies for replacing oil.
March 17 The Peak Oil Crisis: 2014 - The Year of Transition
The key remaining question of the peak oil crisis is just when world production is going to start on an unstoppable decline. A few years ago those analysts who were deeply enmeshed in the problem were saying that 2011 or 2012 looked like the fateful year.
March 12 Peak Oil Production Predicted for 2014
Predicting the end of oil has proven tricky and often controversial, but Kuwaiti scientists now say that global oil production will peak in 2014. Their work represents an updated version of the famous Hubbert model, which correctly predicted in 1956 that U.S. oil reserves would peak within 20 years. Many researchers have since tried using the model to predict when worldwide oil production might peak.
March 8 Peak Oil Demand is Coming, but Here's Why it's Not Good News
When oil crossed $120 a barrel for the first time in May 2008, oil cornucopians knew they were in trouble. Prices had quadrupled in just five years, yet had failed to bring new production online. Regular crude had flatlined around 74 million barrels per day (mbpd). The case for peak oil was looking stronger with every new uptick in crude futures.
March 3 "We are in the Middle of Earth's Sixth Extinction"
The scarcity of resources should be the main focus today. Land will not double itself and the same can be said about minerals, unpolluted air and water. The life blood of economic development is fossil fuels but these are being reduced at high speed. It is said that 86 per cent of present day economic activities is based on fossil fuels. What will we do when the supply runs dry?
March 2 10 Companies Reinventing Our Energy Infrastructure
Here are 10 companies that caught our attention. Any one technology is unlikely to solve the looming climate change and peak oil problems, but working together within the larger system, they could tilt the globe away from catastrophe and towards a sustainable future.
February 24 Oil Shortage Spills Into Water
Matthew Simmons, the chairman emeritus of the US consulting firm Simmons and Company International, says oil production consumes large amounts of water, while boosting clean water supplies is energy-intensive. “The inter-twining of oil and water is something we all missed,” he told the Marsh National Oil Companies Conference yesterday in Dubai.
February 11 The Next Crisis: Peak Oil
“The next five years will see us face another crunch--the oil crunch. This time, we do have the chance to prepare. The challenge is to use that time well… Our message to government and businesses is clear: act. Don't let the oil crunch catch us out in the way that the credit crunch did.”
January 25 Peak Oil: The Mother of All Risk-Management Disaster Scenarios
There is evidence that at least some federal governments have identified (and have begun addressing) peak oil as a significant risk management scenario. They may be choosing to keep a low profile about their recognition and handling of the subject for the sake of order and national security, however.
January 20 Peak Oil Exploration Stocks
Tullow Oil and Heritage Oil, two London-listed explorers, have hit the jackpot in Uganda -- the latest in a string of major oil finds by European exploration and development groups that helps explain why the sector has been on a tear. The share prices of Tullow, Heritage and U.K. rival Cairn Energy have more than doubled in the past year. France's Maurel et Prom is up 61%. But the peak may not be far away.
January 18 China Completes 1st Phast of National Strategic Oil Reserve Project
China has completed the first phase of the national strategic oil reserve project with the average cost of USD 58 per barrel in 2009, the state-run China Daily reported Monday.
China inked loan-for-oil deals worth over USD 60 billion with Russia, Brazil and Venezuela last year, securing a crude oil supply of 75 million tons annually (1.51 million barrels a day (bpd)), the report quoted Zhang Guobao, head of the National Administration of Energy (NEA) as saying.
January 15 Officially, Peak Non-Opec in 2010. Really?
The EIA forecast for non-OPEC supply growth has important implication for the world oil market. The expected decline in non-OPEC supply in 2011 returns to a trend in non-OPEC supply seen prior to 2009 … Declining liquids production from traditional sources of non-OPEC supply raises the importance of new centers of supply growth and strains long-established relationships between producers and consumers. Falling production in Mexico has led to a large decline in oil exports to the United States, forcing some U.S. refiners to locate new sources of supplies. The friction caused by these dislocations can contribute to elevated oil prices, as new relationships form and liquids flow from different sources.
January 14 Exxon Mobil Extends Life of Texas Field
The project will extend the life of the field, discovered by the oil giant in 1940, for an additional 25 years. Though a small part of ExxonMobil's reserves the extension of life for such a mature oil feed is at least some evidence that new technologies can help push back the reckoning of the world's "peak oil" moment.
January 12 'Peak Oil' Expert Confronts the Challenge it Poses
Dr Roger Bentley, who has studied the issue of “peak oil” for many years, will be talking at a public event run by Alnwick Friends of the Earth.... In the latest in the Friends’ climate change series of talks, Dr Bentley will highlight issues surrounding a peak in the production of oil on the United Kingdom, with regard to energy security, climate change and price surges.
January 6 Peak Oil: Are we there yet?
For some time now, and with greater frequency lately, energy analysts have been predicting that the output of conventional oil will soon peak unless something is done to reduce demand. Predictions of the date of this event have varied from ‘imminently’ to ‘in the next 20 to 30 years.’ In the International Energy Agency’s latest World Energy Outlook, however, the chief economist stated that “the output of conventional oil will peak in 2020 if oil demand grows on a business-as-usual basis.”
January 5 Peak Oil Believers Wonder Why Every Government Ignores Them, Conclude It's Due to a Giant Cover Up
The Oil Drum hosts a research piece that wonders why peak oil isn't even discussed or worried about by energy experts in governments all around the world. We'd add that peak oil isn't really discussed by most energy companies around the world either when they host analyst calls or talk about their strategy. At least nowhere near the degree that peak oil disaster scenario believers do.
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