What Will 2015 do for Peak Oil?

The Cornucopians are exuberant, they believe that collapsing of oil prices dealt the death knell for peak oil. An oil glut, they say, is what we have, not peak oil. But an oil glut is exactly what we would expect at the very peak. After all, that is what peak oil is, that is the […]

Peak Oil and the socio-economic impact of depleting fossil fuel resources

Kurt Cobb is an author, speaker, and columnist who speaks and writes frequently on peak oil, energy and the environment. He is a regular contributor to The Christian Science Monitor and has written columns for the Paris-based science news site Scitizen. Kurt’s writings have been featured on Resilience, The Oil Drum, OilPrice.com, Investing.com, Peak Oil […]

The Seneca Cliff of Energy Production

The graph above was created by Gail Tverberg on her blog “Our Finite World“. It is, clearly, another case of what I called the “Seneca Cliff” (from the Roman philospher who said “the road to ruin is rapid). The Seneca Cliff takes this shape, when generated by a system dynamics model: Gail’s forecast of the […]

Peak oil and peak water explained

Peak oil is something you often hear, but have you ever heard of peak water? Water shortages, and more specifically, fresh water shortages, are likely to become more commonplace in the future. Truthloader took a look into the two terms and what they mean.

Oil Turnaround: Timing The US Production Peak

Summary Analysis points to US production peaking in late April. Oil rig reduction is accelerating. Current two week decline in EIA estimates not too unusual. Canadian rig count down 66% year over year. Current oil rig count 1482. Estimated production breakeven rigs required: 1267. Shale oil wells deplete much faster than traditional wells. This article […]

Mounting debt for energy firms as oil prices plummet

Energy firms have been financing new oil production by taking on large amounts of debt. When oil prices averaged over $100, that strategy made sense. But with oil at $50, most indebted firms are suddenly in crisis. In recent years oil exploration companies have taken on more debt in order to finance their operations. The […]

US Gasoline Demand Is Surging

As oil prices have plunged, US gas demand has soared, something that seemed unlikely just a few years ago. According to Morgan Downey, CEO of Money.net, “A few years ago people were saying that US oil demand had peaked and would never recover — some called it ‘peak demand.’” In an email to Business Insider, Downey said […]

U.A.E. Energy Minister Says Oil Glut Could Run for Years

Oversupply in crude markets could take months or even years to fix depending on when producers outside OPEC cut their output, Abu Dhabi-based The National reported, citing comments by U.A.E. Energy Minister Suhail Al Mazrouei. “We are experiencing an obvious oversupply in the market that needs time to be absorbed,” the newspaper reported Mazrouei as […]

Robert Rapier: My 2015 Energy Predictions

Happy New Year to readers around the world! For the past 5 or 6 years, I have begun the year by making predictions for the upcoming year in the energy markets. I am generally happy if I can hit on 60-80% of them. In 2014 I went 5 for 5, but I can say with […]

The Limits Of A Finite World In 2015-16

The price of oil is down. How should we expect the economy to perform in 2015 and 2016? Newspapers in the United States seem to emphasize the positive aspects of the drop in prices. I have written Ten Reasons Why High Oil Prices are a Problem. If our only problem were high oil prices, then low […]

Deep Debt Keeps Oil Firms Pumping

Producers Have Increased Their Borrowings by 55% Since 2010 American oil and gas companies have gone heavily into debt during the energy boom, increasing their borrowings by 55% since 2010, to almost $200 billion. Their need to service that debt helps explain why U.S. producers plan to continue pumping oil even as crude trades for […]

How $50 Oil Changes Almost Everything

The plummeting price of oil means no more trout ice cream. Coromoto, a parlor in Merida, Venezuela, famous for its 900 flavors, closed during its busiest season in November because of a milk shortage caused by the country’s 64 percent inflation rate, the world’s fastest. That’s the plight of an oil-producing nation. At the same […]

Towards a more sustainable world

In just 60 years, global population, consumption and pollution have all more than doubled. In another 60 years, in 2075, our 15-year-old grandchildren will be the same age as I am now. What do we want the world to look like in 2075? The first step to creating a more sustainable future is to create […]

Cheap oil will fuel global economy

The slump in oil prices is set to boost the global economy, with crude-importing countries expected to substantially benefit, says the World Bank. A 10 per cent drop in oil prices would increase gross domestic product in oil-importing countries by 0.1 percentage points to 0.5 percentage points, World Bank research said. Oil has slipped more […]

Oil Exports From U.S. Jump to Record as Shale Output Booms

The U.S. exported a record amount of crude oil in November after a five-year run of production growth that has made the country the most oil-independent in 20 years. Shipments surged 34 percent to average 502,000 barrels a day in November, the most on record dating back to 1920, data from the U.S. Census Bureau […]

Are low oil prices good or bad for oil traders?

Are low oil prices good or bad for oil traders? In theory oil traders should not care about the price of oil; as they have reminded us many times recently, the big trading companies trade differentials and spreads, not flat (outright) price. In a trader’s ideal world oil prices would fluctuate in a range, giving […]

The Day When Change Will Come

A man of the Co Tu nation prepares to fish in a river that likely supported humans long before historical records began. But this might be one of the last times. Small-scale, high-pollution gold mining is spreading across the lands of the Co Tu, in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, as well as larger corporate […]

The Changing Face of Peak Oil

The dawn of agriculture marked a huge turning point for human civilization.  At that point, when we, as a species (for the most part), abandoned the age-old concept of the so-called “Hunter-Gatherer” lifestyle in favor of putting down roots (pun very much intended), there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 million people on Earth.  […]

Keep your Eyes on the Prize

  At the essential center of the framework of the Crash Course is the almost insultingly simple idea that endless growth on a finite planet is an impossibility. It is so simple it could be worked out by a clever 4 year-old. And yet it must not be so simple because the main narrative of […]

Energy Crisis As Early As 2016

Low oil prices today may be setting the world up for an oil shortage as early as 2016. Today we have just 2% more crude oil supply than demand and the price of gasoline is under $2.00/gallon in Texas. If oil supply falls too far, we could see gasoline prices doubling within 18 months. For […]

Cheap oil is killing my job

Marcus Benson moved 1,500 miles from his home in Philadelphia to North Dakota for the shale boom. He made the lengthy drive — with no job and nowhere to live — in April 2012 after hearing on the news that the state had the lowest unemployment rate in the country. “I felt like it was […]

Iran Accuses Saudis of Oil Conspiracy

Iranian hard-liners are lashing out at Saudi Arabia, accusing it of conspiring with the West to keep oil prices low in a bid to harm the Islamic Republic’s economy and pressure the country to conclude a nuclear deal with West.  In retaliation, Iranian hawks are urging restive Shia Muslims in eastern Saudi Arabia to rebel […]

This Oil Thing Is The Real Deal

Well! WTI below $50 and Brent below $53 when I start writing this. Who knows where they’ll be by the time I’m finished?! The euro down below $1.20, US stocks flirting with -2%, major European ones off -3%, Italy and Greece over -5%. Welcome to the real world, baby! Didn’t think you’d see it again […]

How The Price Of Oil Could Fall To Just $20 A Barrel

Oil prices are plunging even lower today. WTI crude is down below $50 per barrel for the first time since 2009. That’s already down by more than half since the beginning of 2014, a development almost no one saw coming. It begs the question: What is the lowest possible low for oil right now? One […]

Canada, Saudi Oil Set for Showdown

As a test of wills between OPEC nations and U.S. shale drillers fuels a global oil market slump, a brewing battle between Canadian and Saudi Arabia heavy crudes for America’s Gulf Coast refinery market threatens to drive prices even lower. While the stand-off between the oil cartel and U.S. producers of light, sweet shale oil […]

Plummeting oil price casts shadow over fracking’s future

There’s no doubt that US-based fracking – the process through which oil and gas deposits are blasted from shale deposits deep underground – has caused a revolution in worldwide energy supplies. Yet now the alarm bells are ringing about the financial health of the fracking industry, with talk of a mighty monetary bubble bursting − […]

Welcome To Peak Car

It’s looking increasingly likely that we’ve reached peak car, the point at which overall automobile usage tops out. The U.S. and Europe appear to be at that point now; the rest of the world may follow within a decade. You’d think that would spell trouble for the privately owned car—a future of waning use and […]

‘ISIL is losing’: Iraqis optimistic for 2015

Iraqi security forces backed by Shia militias, Kurdish forces and Sunni Muslim tribesmen will drive the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) from all Iraqi lands before the end of 2015, Iraqi security officials and analysts say. Iraq has been witnessing its worst security crisis since the 2003 US-led invasion to topple Saddam […]

Can Nuclear Energy Compete In Today’s Energy Markets?

The passing of the 2014 holiday season also witnessed the passing of another landmark, which is the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station that had been in business since 1972. The questions now are from where will New England get its electricity and how will power markets there be affected? The 604-megawatt nuclear generation plant had […]

Bakken, Let’s Do The Math

There has been considerable dispute over how many new wells required to keep production flat in the Bakken and Eagle Ford. One college professor posted, over on Seeking Alpha, figures that it would take 114 rigs in the Bakken and 175 in Eagle Ford to keep production flat. He bases his analysis on David Hughes’ […]

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