Shale EROEI Failing

Rigzone, which reports new finds and plays in the fossil fuel industry, complains that, US Shale Debt Increases as Drillers Push to Maintain Gains: Shale debt has reportedly doubled over the past four years, according to a Bloomberg News analysis of 61 shale drillers, while revenue has increased just 5.6 percent. Many are spending at least […]

Peak Oil: The Limits of “Techno-Optimism” 3

This is the third and final look at another great effort by Dr. Samuel Alexander * in his working paper entitled A Critique of Techno-Optimism: Efficiency without Sufficiency is Lost, examining the longstanding belief that no matter what society’s problems in an endless quest for more and better, technology will provide and resolve in due […]

Map and Report on Oil-By-Rail, “Booming Bomb Train Industry”

A new report and website released today by Oil Change International provides a comprehensive overview of the current oil-by-rail industry in North America and it isn’t a pretty picture. The report and interactive map of the “booming bomb train industry” capture the alarming scope of this very recent development.  As the report points out, 70 times as much […]

China’s Massive Disputed Oil Rig Near Vietnam Is Now Drilling

A giant Chinese oil rig has finished its first round of drilling in South China Sea waters also claimed by Vietnam and moved to another site in the area, the rig’s operator, China Oilfield Services Ltd (COSL), said on Tuesday. In a statement, COSL said exploration would still take place off the Xisha islands, China’s name for the disputed Paracel chain, suggesting […]

Iraq Oil Revival Stalls Again as Violence Pinches Growth

The revival in Iraqi oil output has stalled. Again. Production forecasts for 2014 are getting less optimistic. The Oil Ministry’s official target is 4 million barrels a day by the end of the year. More likely it will be 3.75 million, Thamir Ghadhban, an adviser to the prime minister, said in an interview May 14. […]

Orlov Reviews: Age of Limits 2014

I got back to the boat late last night, after an intense three days of presentations and discussions. This was my third year presenting at this conference, and I am at this point quite heavily invested in this annual event and have started to take on roles I didn’t even know existed when I first […]

Why Are Food Prices so High? Because We’re Eating Oil

Regardless of what we eat, we’re actually eating oil. Anyone who buys their own groceries (as opposed to having a full-time cook handle such mundane chores) knows that the cost of basic foods keeps rising, despite the official claims that inflation is essentially near-zero. Common-sense causes include severe weather and droughts than reduce crop yields, […]

The History Of The Global Economy Since 1000000 B.C.

I construct estimates of world GDP over the very long run by combining estimates of total human populations with largely-Malthusian estimates of levels of real GDP per capita. Population I take my estimates of human population from Kremer (1993), but it would not matter if I had chosen some other authority. All long-run estimates of […]

Exxon, BP Defy White House; Extend Partnership with Russia

Several of the largest oil companies in the world are doubling down in Russia despite moves by the West to isolate Russia and its economy. ExxonMobil and BP separately signed agreements with Rosneft – Russia’s state-owned oil company – to extend and deepen their relationships for energy exploration. The U.S. slapped sanctions on Rosneft’s CEO […]

The Bees’ Needs

The sky darkens above the ruins of a cluster of ponderosa pine that burned 20 years ago. Two women stand amid grass and wildflowers, in a field studded with the charred stumps and downed trunks of dead trees. In the dry hills of Montana’s Helena National Forest, the landscape can take decades to recover after […]

High Oil Prices And Peak Oil

The evidence is starting to stack up that 2006 will indeed be the year of peak world oil production. You only have to Google “peak oil” to find more, but here are three of the most compelling reasons for believing that the peak is almost upon us. As you walk through the cave you will […]

The Religion Of Consumerism

The notion of consumerism as the religion of the United States is nothing new. That said, Warren Pollock did an excellent job explaining just how corrosive this mindset can be to a society. We were particularly taken by the idea that since the vast majority of people define themselves almost entirely by their level of […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: The Monterrey Shale Debacle

Last week the LA Times ran a story saying that the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is about to reduce “its” estimate of the amount of shale oil that can be recovered from the Monterrey Shale under California by 96 percent. This reduction cuts the estimate of producible shale oil in the U.S. by 60 […]

A Closer Look at Saudi Arabia

A press release from The Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies Program at MIT,  December 6, 2013, Bold mine. Uthmaniyah Fact Sheet: Commercial EOR using Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Company/Alliance: Saudi Aramco Location: Saudi Arabia Start Date: 2013/2014 Size: 0.8 Mt/yr CO2 Source: Hawiyah gas plant Transportation: 70 Km onshore pipeline Oil Field EOR Storage Site: Ghawar field Reservoir Type: Jurassic Carbonate limestones Comments: The objectives […]

China oil demand up a small amount…again

China’s apparent oil demand* in April rose 1.4% compared with the same month last year to 39.92 million metric tons (mt) or an average 9.75 million barrels per day (b/d), a just-released Platts analysis of Chinese government data showed.   The year-over-year growth in apparent oil demand in April was greater than the 0.5% recorded […]

Libya Oil Disruption Worsens Amid Anti-Government Protest

The disruption of Libyan crude exports worsened as rebels shut down a recently re-opened oil port after protesting over the appointment of the country’s new prime minister. Petroleum Facilities Guards members aligned with federalist rebels stopped loadings at the Hariga oil port in eastern Libya, Oil Ministry Director of Measurement Ibrahim Al Awami said by […]

Explaining Peak Oil

Hubbert’s Peak Peak oil is seen by many oil experts and economists as a major threat to the stability of the global economy and social structure. In 1956, M King Hubbert developed models that correctly foretold that between 1965 -70 oil production in the United States of America would reach a peak and then decline. […]

Big Oil Spending More, Getting Less in Production

Despite increased spending, oil majors are seeing flat or declining production as they struggle to replace reserves, according to a recent analyst report. Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp., Royalty Dutch Shell plc and BP plc recorded declines in their 2013 production. ExxonMobil reported an average production of 4,175 million barrels of oil equivalent per day […]

Why Do These Tank Cars Carrying Oil Keep Blowing Up?

Early on the morning of July 6, 2013, a runaway freight train derailed in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, setting off a series of massive explosions and inundating the town in flaming oil. The inferno destroyed the downtown area; 47 people died. The 72-car train had been carrying nearly 2 million gallons of crude oil from North Dakota’s […]

Sky Could Fall On North Dakota’s Oil If We’re Not Careful, Shale Boss Says

All parties with a collective interest in seeing the North Dakota oil experiment succeed need to work together because, right now, the boss at the largest stakeholder in the Bakken shale says opponents are drawing a bead on the region. And it’s not just exploration and production that’s a concern. Oil production from the Bakken […]

Canada oil will flow any way it can to U.S.

If Canadian crude cannot be transported to the United States because of delays in building pipelines, it will go by rail, Canadian Transport Minister Lisa Raitt said on Monday. Last week TransCanada Corp said it was in talks with customers about shipping Canadian crude to the United States by rail as an alternative to the […]

Tech Talk – China, Russia and East Siberian natural gas

The recent agreement between Russia and China for the sale of some 38 billion cu m of natural gas a year for 30 years, at a reported price of $400 billion ends a long-going negotiation between the two countries over the price of that supply. (Which works out at roughly $10 a thousand cubic feet, […]

Oil and gas well costs surge

As ExxonMobil and partners Santos and Oil Search yesterday celebrated the sailing of a maiden cargo from their $US19 billion ($20.6 billion) PNG LNG plant in the Pacific, Australia’s peak oil and gas lobby has revealed a five-fold increase in the cost of locally drilled offshore wells. Based on industry data, the average cost of […]

When will we run out of space? Human Population Growth

So how many people is too many people. To get a feel for human population growth, we introduce it quickly with an example from fish tank – the guppies. This video is far from a complete video on human population growth. It should serve as an introduction though and allow us to create other videos […]

Are Shales a Bubble?

Hype works. Particularly when monetary and economic benefits are promised. Hype has been the primary tool used by the oil and gas industry with regard to shales and it has worked brilliantly. There is just one problem. When considering shale economic viability, hype was the only aspect that actually existed. Interestingly, the past year has […]

Why War Is Inevitable

Memorial Day is being turned into a celebration of war Memorial Day is when we commemorate our war dead. Like the Fourth of July, Memorial Day is being turned into a celebration of war. Those who lose family members and dear friends to war don’t want the deaths to have been in vain. Consequently, wars […]

Charles Hall “Peak oil, declining EROI and the probability of degrowth”

Second Conference on Economic Degrowth for Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity March 26-29th 2010, Barcelona Peak oil is not some fuzzy academic concern but a reality: for the US in 1970, for some 60 of 80 oil-producing countries and, at least for the moment, for the world since about 2005. In addition the net energy […]

World Population Crisis

“Individually we may be brilliant, collectively we’re dumb as a rock”

Mike Ruppert’s Story Part 32 – Therapy

Yesterday’s post prompted an unusual crop of expansive and informed comments, among them, that people would either love the post or hate it.  This was surprising because I had thought it more of a holding pattern, filling in details of Mike’s daily life and preoccupations but providing no revelations.  Perhaps that particular commenter thought that some […]

Mike Ruppert’s Story Part 31 – Prelude to Bellevue

We were at a pizzeria, killing time before Mike’s doctor’s appointment in a neighborhood run by the Mafia.  I knew this because my husband had lived there when we met and when I had voiced misgivings about moving in, he had assured me the Mafia kept it safe since they didn’t want any unnecessary visits […]

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