Oil Producers See Untapped, Unconventional Fields Meeting Demand

Total SA (FP) and Petroleos Mexicanos executives said still-untapped global fields and new methods for extracting fuel from shale rock and deep water will help meet demand for oil and natural gas. Undeveloped fields will produce 1 million barrels a day of oil by 2025, Yves-Louis Darricarrere, president of exploration and production for Paris-based Total, […]

The best of all possible worlds has no use for peak oil

Are things really looking up? Photo: Wesley Fryer via Flickr. Panglossian Disorder? What on earth is that? And how does it apply to peak oil? Inspired by the eternal optimist Dr. Pangloss from Voltaire’s Candide, psychologist Kathy McMahon, who calls herself the “peak shrink,” explains on Peak Moment TV (episode 199) that she invented Panglossian Disorder. […]

A New Era of Hydrocarbon Fuels: Gas to Liquids & Coal to Liquids

Unconventional liquid fuels are slated to provide ever growing proportions of future demand for transportation fuels. The burgeoning success of plants such as Shell’s Pearl GTL plant in Qatar herald a new era of liquid fuels production. In terms of what GTL is, it is the process of chemically turning natural gas into cleaner-burning liquid […]

Oil Rich Eastern Libya declares autonomy

Cyrenaica, the eastern region of Libya, has elected a regional congress and declared semi-autonomy from the capital Tripoli. The “blatant call for fragmentation” of the country was condemned by Libya’s ruling NTC. Thousands of major tribal leaders and militia commanders attended a celebratory ceremony in the region’s center Benghazi on Tuesday. The congress stated that […]

World Economic Forum: Population, Water, Food, Energy Nexus

The World Economic Forum‘s Network of Global Agenda Councils and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) called on global leaders, particularly organizers of the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Developmentscheduled for June 2012, to integrate population in research, discussion and debate at the intersection of water, food and energy. “We reaffirm the global commitment to poverty […]

Total’s Upstream Chief Says Peak Oil Is Around The Corner

For the past couple of years executives from French oil giant Total have espoused a belief that the world is pretty close to a peak in oil supply. Today in a speech at the CERAWeek energy conference in Houston, Yves-Louis Darricarrere, president of the company’s oil and gas exploration division, said, “We think it will […]

Obama says he is concerned about global oil outages

President Barack Obama said on Tuesday he is concerned about oil output around the world as gasoline prices soar and is looking to ease bottlenecks at U.S. refineries to help ease prices at home. Republicans have slammed Obama for oil prices that are trading at more than $100 a barrel in New York ahead of […]

Maximum potential global GDP growth to 2030:

There are many long-term global growth models out there, which intend to give us a guide to our economic future, including assessments made by prestigious organizations such as Goldman Sachs, the OECD, IMF and the World Bank. Most current projections give us a picture of a global economy that has cooled somewhat from the pace […]

GM and Chrysler to offer natural gas pickup trucks

Both GM and Chrylser plan to offer compresses natural gas (CNG) pickup trucks to the US market. Chrysler said its CNG-powered Rams can travel 255 miles on the fuel before automatically switching to an eight-gallon gasoline tank for an additional 112 miles. GM’s pickups would go up to 650 miles using both CNG and gasoline. […]

Global Powers Agree to Resume Nuclear Talks With Iran

The global powers dealing with Iran’s  disputed nuclear program said Tuesday  that they had accepted its offer to resume negotiations broken off in stalemate more than a year ago — a  move that could help relieve increased pressure from Israel to use military  force against Tehran. “I have offered to resume talks with Iran on […]

LPG: lots of supply, and US export prospects rising

And up the road from the CERA meeting, another IHS unit–Purvin & Gertz–was holding its own annual meeting on the market and outlook for NGLs/LPGs. Starting off the presentation session was Ken Otto, consultant with the host company, who set the table for the day-and-half event. Total growth in LPG supply over the next three […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: East Coast Refineries Redux

It has been six weeks since we last discussed the problems that could be in store for the U.S.’s East Coast due to closing of refineries in the Philadelphia area. Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a second, more detailed report on what could happen to the availability of oil and prices in […]

Do Oil Wells Re-Charge Themselves?

There have been numerous reports in recent times, of oil and gas fields not running out at the expected time, but instead showing a higher content of hydrocarbons after they had already produced more than the initially estimated amount. This has been seen in the Middle East, in the deep gas wells of Oklahoma, on […]

Green economy: blessing or curse?

The above was the title of a panel debate hosted by the UK newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, late last week. There is a short write up in the Saturday edition of the newspaper. I was fortunate to participate in this, alongside Oliver Letwin MP, Minister of State (providing policy advice to the Prime Minister in the Cabinet Office) and […]

Hayward Receives BP Bonus for 2009-2011 Performance

BP awarded former chief executive Tony Hayward shares worth more than $1.1 million (GBP 700,000) in February under a three-year incentive scheme that ended in 2011, even though he left the company before the scheme ended, the company’s annual report showed Tuesday. Hayward’s bonus also comes a year after BP decided not to pay bonuses […]

A review of Local Dollars, Local Sense

I hastened to buy Local Dollars, Local Senseby Michael Shuman, because I was attracted to the title and had high hopes for the emphasis on localization.  Shuman’s book represents a small step in a needed direction, but I was yearning for much deeper. The cover claims that it is “a Community Resilience Guide” — I […]

Billionaires Buying Gasoline Tankers as Fuel Demand Accelerates

The richest investors in shipping are buying gasoline tankers, anticipating that fuel demand will expand faster than the fleet for the first time in nine years. Global shipments will jump 4.3 percent in 2012 as vessel capacity gains 3.7 percent, according to London-based Clarkson Plc (CKN), the world’s largest shipbroker. Daily rates for Medium- Range […]

Wind energy cheaper than coal

the two most recent contracts approved by the Commission for new wind farm capacity have levelized costs of $61-$64 per MWh. This is significantly lower than the levelized costs of the first wind power contracts. We often run “Fact check” articles on this blog when fossil-fuel-funded “experts” exaggerate the cost of electricity generated with wind […]

Is the US Gulf oil spill issue truly settled?

It was the worst oil spill in US history. Over the course of 87 days, nearly five million barrels of crude oil spewed into the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April 2010. The impact on the environment was devastating – both for the people living along the coastline of the […]

Iran, Canada and the Petro State

Whenever North Americans fill up their vehicles with gasoline these days they should reflect on their ongoing contribution to the dysfunctional status of petro states and the Islamic Republic of Iran in particular. Iran’s civilian nuclear power ambitions, of course, have set off a grand political tiff with the United States and Israel. Both suspect […]

Statoil confirms size of major Arctic discovery

* Field seen at 400 million to 600 million boe * Confirmation priced in Further test on Statoil’s Skrugard and Havis oilfields in Norway’s Arctic north confirmed an earlier resource estimate, the firm and the National Petroleum Directorate said on Tuesday. The find, the latest major discovery in a series for Norway, the world’s eighth-largest […]

Peak or Plateau Oil, Oil Prices and Economic Growth

There does seem to be a supply shortage in the oil markets at present. Well, of course, obviously there is, that’s why the price has risen. We’re all entirely out of $80 oil which is why the price is higher than $80. However, I think there’s a small thing being left out of this particular […]

Reviewing Jevons’ Paradox

Wired has a look at the accuracy of Jevons Paradox and the implications for energy efficiency strategy – Clive Thompson on Unsaving the Planet. We put a lot of stock in energy efficiency. It is regarded as the quickest and easiest way to reduce carbon emissions. Al Gore even ended An Inconvenient Truth with a […]

Kunstler: Reality Check

       America is starting to remind me of Bette Davis in the horror movie classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? America is losing its grip on reality. America is acting like an elderly strumpet in too much pancake makeup performing a song-and-dance on the beach while its kinfolk lie dying in the […]

China vigorously promoting shale gas exploration, development

Shale gas exploration and exploitation in China is still at an early stage. Natural gas accounted for 4% of China’s total energy consumption in 2010. The natural gas share of total world energy demand was nearly six times that, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2011. In the first 5 months of […]

Peak Oil Denial: Alive, Well, Still Not Helping (Pt 3)

I devoted the first two posts of this series [here and here] to a discussion of an especially egregious but all-too-typical recent article denying Peak Oil, which found its way into the blogosphere, echoing the same tired, fact-free nonsense which now serves as the biblical foundation for denying the reality of what’s happening to a […]

Iran May Halt Oil Sales to Three More EU Members

Iran will probably stop sales of crude to Belgium, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, the state-run Mehr news agency reported, without saying where it obtained the information. The final decision on halting sales to the three European Union countries will be made soon by the Iranian oil ministry, Mehr said. Those countries haven’t accepted […]

Natural Gas Demand To Quadruple

Gary Kendall, former Exxon chemist US oil billionaires, Robert Hefner III and T. Boone Pickens have championed natural gas as oil’s successor for around 15 years. They’ve done this mainly by pushing the ‘green’ attributes of natural gas. Calling it ‘the bridge’ to a cleaner future… Which it may be in some ways… Pickens even […]

Urban agriculture: Growing green in grey concrete

Half of the world’s population today lives in cities. By 2015, almost 26 cities of the world are expected to have a population of 10 million or more. At least 6,000 tonnes of food must be imported every day to feed a city of this size. Low income urban dwellers spend between 40% and 60% […]

The Shi’ite rebellion in Saudi Arabia and oil

We’re getting more considered commentary from the ‘other’ side. I have little doubt that the Saudis are lying – they have plenty of reason to. Comments from Mike Ruppert: The excellent report from Radio New Zealand adds much more detail to recent events in KSA. We can now say the following with certainty based on […]

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