Top Five Factors Affecting Oil Prices In 2015

As we ring in the New Year, let’s take stock of where we are at with the oil markets. 2014 proved to be a momentous one for the oil markets, having seen prices cut in half in just six months. The big question is what oil prices will do in 2015. Oil prices are unsustainably […]

The Real Cause Of Low Oil Prices: Interview With Arthur Berman

With all the conspiracy theories surrounding OPEC’s November decision not cut production, is it really not just a case of simple economics? The U.S. shale boom has seen huge hype but the numbers speak for themselves and such overflowing optimism may have been unwarranted. When discussing harsh truths in energy, no sector is in greater […]

Libyan warplane bombs Greek-operated oil tanker at port, two dead

A Libyan warplane from forces loyal to the internationally recognized government bombed a Greek-operated oil tanker anchored offshore, killing two crewmen in an escalation of a battle between the country’s rival factions. The air strike on Sunday damaged the Liberian-flagged ARAEVO that was carrying 12,600 tons of crude oil when it was off the eastern […]

Michael Lynch: King Abdallah’s Illness, Political Change And The Oil Market

With King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia in serious condition, oil market participants are undoubtedly nervous that this could portend change and even upheaval in Saudi Arabia. Concern that his death could lead to a coup attempt or unrest in the Shi’ite population will no doubt be voiced, but is also likely to prove overblown. The […]

Sharp declines in well production typical in Ohio’s Utica Shale

In the world of shale gas in Ohio, the top-producing wells aren’t king of the hill for long. Take the Tippens 6HS well, for example. Located in Monroe County in southeastern Ohio, it produced more natural gas in the first quarter of 2014 than any other Utica Shale well in the state — some 1.117 […]

Why water is not the new oil

“Water is the new oil.”Nowhere is this platitude more recited than here in Texas, where homegrown oil-and-gas money — and now even global capital — is flowing into the next resource boom: groundwater. T. Boone Pickens’ Mesa Water, which was the first to acquire groundwater rights from landowners for export to thirsty communities, is just […]

A new global currency; the rise of the East; and peak oil

Episode 126: Alasdair Macleod interviews Erik Townsend (/) — a specialist on “peak oil investing”

A Stick in the Stocking: Santa’s Supply Shock

It’s déjà vu all over again: another oil “supply shock.” Seems like we’ve had one every few weeks for the past few months. Santa stuck another one in the Christmas stocking, and by New Year’s Eve crude oil prices fell to Great Recession levels. Frankly, though, an oil supply shock is hardly . . . […]

Morgan Stanley Sees ‘More Problems’ for Oil Market on New Supply

The oil market is set for “more problems” this year as increasing supplies from countries includingRussia and Iraq add to the global glut that drove prices almost 50 percent lower in 2014, according to Morgan Stanley. Output may increase from fields in West Africa, Latin America, the U.S. and Canada in addition to more exports […]

Toyota’s Jim Lentz Predicts Peak Oil by 2020

Toyota’s Jim Lentz Predicts Peak Oil by 2020 Commonwealth Club – The Commonwealth Club of California Though the auto industry seemed on the brink of collapse, the recent Cash for Clunkers program arguably helped to jump-start the car economy and get wheels moving again. But what does this really mean for cars and drivers today?During […]

Great Expectations: Revisiting Peak Oil

Crude oil supply expectations have changed over the last twenty years. In the late 1990s, the idea of “peak oil” was gaining popularity. The theory was presented by M. King Hubbert in the 1950s and popularized in the last quarter of the 20th century. Working as a geologist for Shell, he predicted US oil production […]

Oil, Power, And Psychopaths

Iran has a – very – long running dispute with the US about its nuclear technology. The US wants Assad (Bashar Al-Assad) out of Syria, while Iran and Russia support Assad (Russia’s sole proper base in the Middle East), who’s an Alawite (a Shi-ite branch), a people historically persecuted by Sunni’s. ISIS (or Daesh in […]

Oil’s future hangs between the emirates and the shales of Eagle Ford

The decision by president Barack Obama to open the door to US oil exports seeped out of Washington in a low-key manner last week, but the impact could be as explosive as a New Year’s Eve firework display. The ban – imposed after the Middle East oil embargoes in the 1970s – has made it […]

Oil price drop expected to hurt fringe areas in Bakken the most

OGA, N.D. – Ben Chorn had a good vacation in Minnesota last month, making it to a Vikings game, a hockey game in Duluth and getting engaged. But while he was gone, the price of oil hit him personally. “While on vacation, I got a call from someone who’s covering for me and said, ‘Hey […]

Sustainable Ways to Feed the World are Subverted by Corporations

Humans’ relationship to food is one of the most fundamentally shaping aspects of our societies. The sole fact that the majority of the world’s population now lives in urban centers is the direct result of a process that began approximately 10,000 years ago. This process was the switch from nomadic hunting-gathering societies to urban sedentary […]

Could the World Be 100 Percent Solar?

What is the global potential of solar energy? – Perhaps the only thing more unrealistic than the idea of a modern world powered 100 percent on solar energy is the idea that extracting every last bit of fossil energy is sustainable, good for the long-term economy or a habitable planet. Building a new energy economy […]

The Tragedy of the American Military

The American public and its political leadership will do anything for the military except take it seriously. The result is a chickenhawk nation in which careless spending and strategic folly combine to lure America into endless wars it can’t win. In mid-September, while President Obama was fending off complaints that he should have done more, […]

The plunge in oil will hurt these people most

From oil workers to big-money men Getty Images Slide 1 ofOil prices plunged around 50% from their June peak by the end of 2014, the fastest collapse since the dark days of 2008. This time around, supply is seen as the biggest culprit as the world deals with a glut of oil. Overall, the drop […]

Turkey to become a strategic player in global energy sector

As an energy dependent country Turkey worked on a strategic plan to provide energy supply security in 2014. With the perspective of energy as a reason for establishing peace, it became a strategic player in its region as well as a reliable partner for other countries Both the local and global energy sector have witnessed […]

Wind and Solar Energy: Transforming the Grid with Clean Energy, Reliably, Every Day

Despite years of successful experience, dozens of studies, and increasing utility support for clean energy, urban myth holds that electricity from renewable energy is unreliable. Yet over 75,000 megawatts (MW) of wind and solar power have been integrated, reliably, into the nation’s electric grid to date. That’s enough electricity to supply 17.9 million homes. And, […]

Scrap “The Call on OPEC”

Steven Kopits is the President of Princeton Energy Advisors, and has been a guest blogger on The Barrel numerous times in the past.  Seven years ago, when I first turned my attention full time to oil, one of the strangest concepts I encountered was the “call on OPEC”.  The call on OPEC means different things […]

Is Peak Oil Dead?

Longtime readers of the site and listeners to the show will know that the founder of Financial Sense, Jim Puplava, has been a regular proponent of peak oil since 2002, when oil prices were trading around $20/barrel. Now that oil has fallen in half from its $100+ range in place over the past few years, […]

US Expected To Increase Oil Production In 2015 Despite Declining Oil Prices

Oil prices continue to fall, but don’t expect the U.S. to curtail its production in 2015. In fact, a recentreport from the U.S. Energy Information Administration suggests that U.S. oil production will grow in 2015. Through an analysis of oil permits, rig movement and the groundbreaking of new drilling projects, known as spudding, in North […]

Russia Pumps Most Oil Since Soviet Era With Sanctions Yet

Oil supplies in Iraq and Russia surged to the highest level in decades, signaling no respite in early 2015 from the glut that has pushed crude prices to their lowest in five years. Russian oil production rose 0.3 percent in December to a post-Soviet record of 10.667 million barrels a day, according to preliminary data […]

Tough times for US natural gas

While inventories for US natural gas are low, production is up, causing prices to fall 29 per cent in December alone. Lex’s Oliver Ralph and Alan Livsey discuss.

The Oil Plunge: The Facts & Why We Should Care

According to The Wall Street Journal four of the five worst stocks in 2014 were oil/energy related and the fifth was Avon.  Gas prices were cheaper and women were opting for more expensive cosmetics? I’m guessing that’s probably not the case. TRANSOCEAN LTD. – DOWN 62% DENBURY RESOURCES INC. – DOWN 50% NOBLE CORP. – […]

Peak Oil From The Demand Side: A Prophetic New Model

The most attention-grabbing attempts to predict oil futures have come from geologists and environmental activists, who tend to look solely at production. An overlooked doctoral thesis by Christophe McGlade, Uncertainties in the outlook for oil and gas, in contrast, focuses on how both supply and demand might be constrained in the coming decades. Peak oil […]

Occam’s Oil

As my colleague Joe Calhoun continually reminds us, everything that happens has happened before. The ongoing “struggle” to define what is driving crude oil prices lower is perhaps another instance of a past “cycle” being reborn. With oil prices now heading much closer to the $40’s than the $60’s, consistent commentary is increasingly swept aside. […]

US shale boom is same as dotcom bubble, says Russian oil executive

The rise of US shale is similar to the dotcom boom of the late Nineties and will cause many companies to fail, one of Russia’s top oil executives has warned. Leonid Fedun, vice-president of Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil producer, believes that with the price of Brent crude and WTI at multi-year lows, fracking companies will […]

Low Oil Prices in the New Year Are Screwing Petrostates

Low oil prices in 2015 could spark an economic revival in the United States while impoverishing Russians, Venezuelans, and other petrostate citizens. The New Year starts with oil prices at their lowest since 2009. This week they dropped around $1, to $53.11 for West Texas crude and $56.75 for Brent traded in London. Oil prices […]

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