A Key Oil Trend That Everyone Is Missing

My friend Rick Rule likes to say, “The cure for low prices is low prices.” Here’s what’s supposed to happen… Marginal producers can’t make money at today’s prices. Therefore they shut in wells (turn them off). As supplies get tighter, prices move higher. But that hasn’t happened. Prices and drilling activity have both continued to […]

Ending the U.S. oil export ban is an empty gesture

Both the House and Senate are considering measures that would lift a ban on the export of U.S. crude oil that has been in place since 1975, the height of the Arab oil embargo. Ending the 40-year prohibition may seem counter-intuitive in an era of global supply glut and collapsing prices. For oil producers and […]

US Oil Production On Brink Of ‘Dramatic’ Decline

Oil executives warned on Tuesday of a “dramatic” decline in U.S. production that could pave the way for a future spike in prices if fuel demand increases. Delegates at the Oil and Money conference in London, an annual gathering of senior industry officials, said world oil prices were now too low to support U.S. shale […]

Shell CEO sees oil price recovery

Oil markets are beginning to recover but the scale of global oversupply means prices may rise only slowly, the chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell Plc (RDSa.L) said on Tuesday. “I see the first mixed signs for recovery of oil prices,” Ben van Beurden told an oil industry conference in London. “But with U.S. shale […]

US EIA Sees Tighter 2016 Oil Market As Demand Accelerates

Global oil demand will grow by the most in six years in 2016 while non-OPEC supply stalls, according to a monthly U.S. energy report that suggests a surplus of crude is easing more quickly than expected. Total world supply is expected to rise to 95.98 million barrels a day in 2016, 0.1 percent less than […]

Supply, Demand, and the Price of Oil

Could the price of oil be a value such that the current quantity produced exceeds the current quantity consumed? The answer is yes, and indeed that has been the case for much of the past year. Suppose for illustration that even at a price of $40, there would be enough producers with sunk costs on […]

Have We Reached A “Peak Water” Tipping Point In California?

It may be a see-saw course, but it’s riding an uphill train. A bit ago I wrote, regarding climate and tipping points: The concept of “tipping point” — a change beyond which there’s no turning back — comes up a lot in climate discussions. An obvious tipping point involves polar ice. If the earth keeps […]

Russia Oil Giant Selling Assets

A refinery went to the Chinese. A stake in a Siberian oil field went to BP. And a large regional oil company widely expected to be gobbled up by Rosneft, the Russian state oil giant, remained on the balance of a government agency instead. With a powerful ally of President Vladimir V. Putin at the […]

Dancing with Doom

“The Shakers believed they were living in the last millennium, the final page of humanity, and since all people shared a brother/sister relationship, they should not marry as there was no longer a need to procreate.“   What do you do if you think the world as we know it is about to end and […]

BP’s Oil Spill Settlement Rises to More Than $20 Billion

The value of BP Plc’s settlement with the U.S. government and five Gulf states over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill rose to $20.8 billion in the latest tally of costs from the U.S. Department of Justice. The settlement is the largest in the department’s history and resolves the government’s civil claims under the Clean Water […]

The US Shale Oil Industry Will Simply Vanish

After many years of prosperity, the tough time has come for the US shale industry.   Dramatic US oil production decline is inevitable and many shale companies face bankruptcy. Their assets can end up to larger producers, reinforcing market concentration. US energy independence can only be saved by government intervention.   US government will remove […]

Lifting Iran sanctions could flood worldwide oil market

Iran has faced sanctions for decades, but those implemented in 2012 have taken a severe toll on the Iranian economy. Even if sanctions are lifted, it’s likely the global oil market will remain flooded late into next year, keeping prices low and employees out of work. In November 2013, Iran signed an interim agreement with […]

‘Peak Water’ After ‘Peak Oil’ Fails

Twenty years ago, the volatile Persian Gulf supplied 35 percent of U.S. oil consumption and the left’s so-called experts were screaming that the world had hit the “peak oil” extraction point, after which supply would soon dwindle rapidly. The left demanded a radical reduction in capitalist economic activity to save what precious energy resources remained […]

Sociocultural Boundaries

Some years ago now a team of Swedish scientists proposed an interesting framework for understanding planetary environmental problems. It generated a range of responses from the environmental community, mostly positive. I had what is undoubtedly a very unusual response to their framework, and while it is perhaps old news, it may still be useful to […]

Kunstler: Syriasly

Senior administration officials say the new offensive holds promise and may change the dynamics on the ground. — The New York Times Whew…. That’s reassuring. Finally, a Middle East policy you can believe in. It’s apparently based on a joint Kurdish-Arab army that our side (the USA) is pretending to assemble around the ISIS stronghold […]

President Hillary Clinton Will Oppose Crude Oil Exports

Another Clinton Administration Likely I know some people cringe at the idea, but Hillary Clinton is the current favorite to win not only her party’s nomination, but the presidential election in 2016. An online Irish bookmaker lists Hillary at 11/8 odds to win the presidency, followed by Jeb Bush and Donald Trump at 9/2 odds, […]

Iran Readies Massive Syrian Ground Invasion

On Thursday, in “Mid-East Coup: As Russia Pounds Militant Targets, Iran Readies Ground Invasions While Saudis Panic”, we attempted to cut through all of the Western and Russian media propaganda on the way to describing what Moscow’s involvement in Syria actually portends for the global balance of power. Here are a few excerpts that summarize […]

Saudi Arabia Cuts Oil Prices Amid OPEC Price War

Saudi Arabia on Sunday made deep reductions to the prices it charges for its oil, hard on the heels of cuts last month by rival producers in the Gulf. With U.S. production still increasing despite lower oil prices, members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries are battling to keep their share of the […]

Liquefied natural gas to take place of oil, coal?

Now may not be the best time to unveil plans to export liquefied natural gas from the U.S. But don’t tell Charles “Buddy” Roemer. The former governor of Louisiana will formally announce Monday one of the largest LNG-export proposals in the U.S., at a time when faltering demand for gas in Asia, as well as […]

Russia and Saudi Arabia to Continue Pumping Oil

Russia and Saudi Arabia—the world’s two biggest oil producers—indicated Friday they weren’t pulling back from huge crude output levels that have helped send prices tumbling. Russia said it produced oil in September at levels not seen since the fall of the Soviet Union, pumping an average of 10.74 million barrels a day, government data showed […]

There Are Half as Many Fish as There Were in 1970

Mankind’s insatiable appetite for seafood has decimated global fisheries. A disturbing new report from the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London reveals that the number of fish and other aquatic animals dropped 49 percent between 1970 and 2012. And some fish populations have been hit even harder: tunas, mackerels, and bonitos have […]

Frackers Face Mass Extinction

Awareness is gradually seeping into the financial press that the Great American Oil Revolution has been over for months — witness the current Fortune headline,“Frackers Could Soon Face Mass Extinction.” If the general media had any grasp of what was happening in America, or what it meant, CNN would be doing wall-to-wall coverage of the deserted man-camps […]

The Mind of Mr. Putin

So Vladimir Putin in his U.N. address summarized his indictment of a U.S. foreign policy that has produced a series of disasters in the Middle East that we did not need the Russian leader to describe for us. Fourteen years after we invaded Afghanistan, Afghan troops are once again fighting Taliban forces for control of […]

Oil Price Forecasting Lessons From 2008

Most people who attempt to predict the price of oil in either the short- or long-term soon learn humility, but some are so, shall we say, self-confident that they have no problem ignoring their records or ability to understand why they have been wrong, let alone correct it. For example, I have openly admitted my […]

We’re a Long Way From ‘Peak Car’

Many environmentalists hope, and oil producers worry, that we’re entering a post-car era spearheaded by tech-savvy, bike-path-loving, urban-dwelling, Uber-using millennials—leaving behind generations of automobile owners whose thirst for gasoline seemed limitless. “Millennials have been reluctant to buy items such as cars,” a Goldman Sachs analysis concludes, turning to “what’s being called a ‘sharing economy.’ ” […]

Silicon Valley’s Hot New Investment: Oil and Gas

Technology investors aren’t usually known for backing anything related to fossil fuels—they tend to favor solar energy and other environmentally responsible endeavors. But Peter Thiel, whose Founders Fund recently led a $7 million investment an oil-related startup called RunTitle Inc., isn’t your typical Silicon Valley investor. Thiel, Facebook Inc.’s first backer, is known for making contrarian bets. […]

The Exxons of Agriculture

It goes without saying that oil and coal companies should not have a seat at the policy table for decisions on climate change. Their profits depend on business-as-usual and they’ll do everything in their power to undermine meaningful action. But what about fertiliser companies? They are essentially the oil companies of the food world: the […]

US Shale Oil too Expensive, Peaks 1H 2015

According to EIA data, monthly US crude oil production peaked in April 2015 at 9.6 mb/d. Fig 1: US crude oil production to June 2015 http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_crd_crpdn_adc_mbblpd_m.htm The above graph shows that US crude production increased by around 4 mb/d between mid 2011 and mid 2015, mostly from shale oil which took off – with a […]

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