Peak Oil for Dummies (and Cornucopians)

As happens with most finite resources, “loose” oil gets found & extracted first, and “tight” oil is pursued later. More drilling and/or new drilling technology can’t turn tight oil into loose oil and reverse the fundamental predicament. So-called new discoveries (like the Bakken shale) are just old oil revisited out of desperation. To put it […]

World Has 10 Years of Shale Oil: US Department of Energy

Global shale resources are vast enough to cover more than a decade of oil consumption, according to the first-ever U.S. assessment of reserves from Russia to Argentina. The U.S. Department of Energy estimated “technically recoverable” shale oil resources of 345 billion barrels in 42 countries it surveyed, or 10 percent of global crude supplies. The […]

Slower Global Agricultural Production In Next Decade

Global agricultural production is expected to grow 1.5% a year on average over the coming decade, compared with annual growth of 2.1% between 2003 and 2012, according to a new report published by the OECD and FAO released this week. FAO Graziano Silva: agriculture increasingly market-driven sector as opposed to policy-driven as in the past […]

Earth may have more oil than anyone thought

There could be a lot more oil and gas out there than we thought. But it’s going to cost a whole lot to extract it. The Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration has upgraded its estimates of global oil reserves by 11% after scouring 41 countries and finding a lot more “technically recoverable” shale oil […]

Renewable Energy in Numbers

About 17% of our worldwide energy consumption comes from renewables. And that share has not increased in recent years. However, in coming years, wind energy and solar energy will probably bring that share of renewables up. Though the possibilities vary a lot by country. For instance, Iceland is making use of its great geothermal potential […]

EIA: UK Shale Gas Equal to 9 Years of Demand

The UK’s potential recoverable shale gas resources are enough on their own to meet the country’s gas consumption for almost a decade, according to a report published late Monday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The EIA report – with the rather unwieldy title ‘Technically Recoverable Shale Oil and Shale Gas Resources: An Assessment of […]

Rising energy prices will challenge western way of life – MoD report

South-east Asian economies’ growing demand for energy and resources could lead to long periods of recession in the UK A little-known Ministry of Defence (MoD) report published earlier this year warns that converging global trends will dramatically affect UK economic prosperity through to 2040. The report says that depletion of cheap conventional “easy oil”, along […]

Peak Oil, Ecoflicks

“Peak Oil” by Larry Larstead EcoFlicks 2013

Yet another appeal for the adoption of ERoEI*

So, we have Gail (Tverberg) who believes that renewable energy technology is NOT sustainable and George (Oprisko) who is quite sure that it is even without further technological breakthroughs. But, no one knows for certain because the most respected analysts upon whom the world relies do not carry out their computations sufficiently far to determine […]

Workers protest at consulate in Saudi Arabia

Indonesian workers frustrated by long waits to get exit visas from Saudi Arabia protested outside their Jeddah consulate on Sunday, setting fire to the building’s outer wall and briefly clashing with security forces, witnesses said. Hundreds of thousands of foreign workers in the world’s top oil exporter are trying to rectify their immigration status or […]

EIA: Amount of Technically Recoverable Global Shale Resources Grows

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) has increased its estimate of technically recoverable global shale gas resources by 10 percent from its 2011 estimate of 6,622 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) to 7,299 Tcf. EIA’s new update of global shale resources includes data on U.S. shale oil and gas resources as well as data for 137 […]

Kunstler: Dmitry Orlov’s Excellent New Book

This essay is a review of Dmitry Orlov’s excellent new book, The Five Stages of Collapse. I can’t recommend the book highly enough. Orlov is one of the great literary stylists of his generation as well as one of the leading intellectuals. Link to Chris Martenson’s Peak Prosperity Click Image to Buy Book A Review […]

Peak Oil: preparing for the ‘second half of the age of oil’

In the journal, Science Omega, James Morgan has published an interview with me where we discuss how we can prepare for “the second half of the age of oil”. In light of the fact that so many articles in the last half year have tried to convince us that we do not need to worry […]

Energy Poverty: We Need to Do So Much More

A recent multi-agency study led by the World Bank and the International Energy Agency has found that if we continue as we do, i.e. a business as usual approach, it will be nowhere near sufficient to achieve the goals of the UN’s Sustainable Energy for ALL (SE4ALL) Initiative. As a natural cynic, I am hardly […]

Crop Models Predict World Food Production when Population Touches 9 Billion

The world’s population is expected to reach about 9 billion by 2050. Now, a team of researchers has developed computer models that can help predict how much food the world will produce in the next few decades. Previous research on the subject has shown that by the end of the century, half of the world’s […]

High Oil Prices are Starting to Affect China and India

The US Energy Information Administration recently released its report showing oil consumption by country updated through 2012. Based on this report, it appears that at current high oil prices, demand in both China and India is being reduced. Thus, for those who are wondering how high oil prices need to be, to be “too high,” […]

A Shale Tale: Natural Gas Will Pay the Price for Own Success

U.S. natural gas is one of the best-performing commodities this year, but past rallies have faded away. Developments in the Marcellus Shale basin indicate the market is past the low for this gas-price cycle, but higher prices will lead to more drilling, potentially limiting the gain. By Liam Denning In this nascent age of shale, […]

What permaculture isn’t — and is

Permaculture is notoriously hard to define. A recent survey shows that people simultaneously believe it is a design approach, a philosophy, a movement, and a set of practices. This broad and contradiction-laden brush doesn’t just make permaculture hard to describe. It can be off-putting, too. Let’s say you first encounter permaculture as a potent method […]

The Human Race (Part 1)

The world is on the brink of disaster. An overwhelming cast of characters now dot the sacred spaces of earth. With a finite amount of resources, and an exploding population, there would come a time when the human race would fall. We have but one earth. Most estimates put forth a value of 4 billion […]

Low energy return on investment (EROI) need not limit oil sands extraction

This is a guest post by Adam Brandt, Assistant Professor from Stanford University, Department of Energy Resources Engineering. 1. Introduction Low energetic returns (e.g., EROI, NER) from oil sands extraction and upgrading have been noted as a potential limit to the development of the oil sands as a substitute for depleting conventional oil resources (e.g., […]

Peak Oil: Pre-Planning

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from the International Energy Agency: …pre-planning is essential in order for transport demand restraint measures to succeed during an emergency. It is not enough for countries to have a list of measures to use; they must be ready to implement those measures on very short notice. To do […]

Future oil production in Canada

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) has just released a report ”Crude Oil – Forecast, Markets & Transportation”. In 2007 we wrote our article on production from the Canadian oil sands titled, “A crash program scenario for the Canadian oil sands industry” and since then I have followed developments in Canada. Therefore, it was […]

Men, Women, Collapse, And Conflict

As I reflect on my travels and interactions during the past year, one theme persists in my conversations with folks about collapse. Whereas the most burning questions used to relate to timelines and the speed of collapse, what I now hear more about these days is a nearly bottomless pit of longing so many people […]

Abandoned Oil Wells Raise Fears of Pollution

Amid the dry weeds on a 470-acre ranch here, a rusted head of steel pokes up, a vestige of an oil well abandoned decades ago. Across the field stand two huge, old wooden oil tanks, one of them tilting like a smokestack on the Titanic. “Basically I get 61 acres here I can’t do anything […]

Gas Prices, Consumption, And Why The Average American Is Being Left Behind

The summer driving season is upon us. For many, that means vacations, barbeques, and of course, higher gas prices. For 23 out of the last 35 years, gas prices have risen an average of 14.7% from one summer to the next, while 12 decline years have only averaged -8.1%. Prices tend to be highest in […]

A new source of natural gas

The name “natural gas” might be a puzzle. After all, how could there be such a thing as unnatural gas? The reason we call it natural gas has to do with history. There was a day that people made burnable gas by heating coal. The gases that came off the coal were piped around cities […]

Tech Talk – Concerns over future oil production from Iraq

Let me begin with two brief apologies – first, my last post on Iraq on TOD was hit with a vast quantity of spam that made it difficult to find all the pertinent comments, hopefully this post will have a little easier time. And secondly, although I used an EIA graph to show Iraqi production […]

Peak Oil Was A LIE

Peak Oil Was A LIE. Nevada Governor 2014 David Lory VanDerBeek http://nevadagovernor2014.com/

Saudi Arabia to maintain natural gas self-sufficiency

Saudi Arabia will remain self-sufficient in natural gas, with production rising from an estimated 116.2bn cubic meters (bcm) in 2013 to 152bcm by 2022, Business Monitor International said in its quarterly updates. Efforts to tap the Red Sea and continued efforts to extract tight gas could surprise to the upside. With industry estimates placing the […]

Renewable Energy, Peak Oil, the Energy Supply and Oil Production

http://www.patrickschwerdtfeger.com/sbi/ Peak Oil should be here by 2020 or 2030 and after that, oil demand will continue to rise while oil production declines, and oil prices will skyrocket. Through these higher prices, the free market system will give massive incentives to develop renewable energy sources including wind energy and solar power. Nothing will ever replace […]

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