Tech Talk – Oil Supply, Oil Prices and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

From the time that The Oil Drum first began, and through the years up to the Recession of 2008-9 there was an increase in the price of oil, and that resumed following the initial period of that recession, and, in contrast to the price of natural gas, oil has recovered a lot of the price […]

Ford’s new F-150 will fortify potential of our natural gas

Ford’s decision to sell the nation’s most popular pickup with a compressed natural gas (CNG) engine is premium news for the Canton (Ohio) area’s gas drillers. It drives home another reason that a natural gas-burning power plant is being built near the Carroll County oil and gas fields. It would produce electricity for 700,000 homes. […]

Meet the New Meat

Artificial meat was in the news this week as the results of one of Sergey Brin‘s alternative investments was unveiled. The Economist has a look at the environmental benefits of artificial meat (quoting a 45% energy saving for meat produced in this way) as well as an interesting quote from long ago – Appetising prospects. […]

Is peak oil demand just around the corner?

For years, there’s been lots of debate over “peak oil” — the notion that, at some point in the near future, the rate of global oil production will bump up against a hard ceiling. This is generally considered a gloomy prospect. But another, related concept has started to bubble up in energy discussions lately. It’s the notion […]

IEA Trims Estimate for 2014 Global Oil Demand Growth on Economy

The International Energy Agency trimmed forecasts for global oil demand growth in 2014 amid slowing expansion in China and a struggle to secure a recovery in the U.S. and Europe. Global consumption will increase by 1.1 million barrels a day, or 1.2 percent, to 92 million next year, the Paris-based adviser to energy-consuming nations said […]

Peak Oil: The Predicament

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Tom Murphy. I like the characterization that what we face here is a predicament, rather than a problem. Problems call for solutions. Predicaments must settle for responses. Our predicament is that we rode the fossil fuel bonanza to the highest possible heights, without a plan for what […]

Focus on family farming to feed a growing world

As farmers and ranchers look for strategies to increase production to feed a growing world population, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and Food Tank suggest the best way to nourish the world is through increased production from family farms. FAO predicts the world population will increase by 34 percent to reach 9.1 billion by […]

Michael Lynch: Is Peak Oil Demand Real?

There has been increasing chatter in the Internet aether about the possibility that world oil demand might peak sometime in the near future.  The thinking is informed primarily by falling demand in areas like the US and Europe, but especially the perception that a plethora of new transportation technologies, such as plug-in hybrids, electric vehicles […]

Are the Government’s International Energy Outlook Projections Too Conservative?

The DOE/EIA recently completed their latest International Energy Outlook (IEO 2013) forecast.  This analysis indicates that total world energy consumption is projected to increase by 50% 2012-2040.  While renewables supplies are projected to almost double by 2040, the majority of added energy supplies are determined to come from increased fossil fuels.  In light of growing […]

Communities that Abide—Part V: An Example of Success

Last week’s post featured an extended excerpt from Peter Kropotkin, who counted off the main reasons of failure among communist groups: communal living, small size, and separatism from the wider world. Yes, an anarchist worker cooperative of a few dozen members that relocates into the American wilderness, shuns the world, and tries to make a […]

The End of the Suburbs

If you’re looking for one book that explains the transformation taking place in our cities, towns and neighborhoods it is Leigh Gallagher’s new book The End of the Suburbs: Where the American Dream is Moving. Gallagher’s straight forward, reasoned tone and meticulous research give her credibility when writing on subject matter that pretty much every American […]

The Future of Energy: Why Power Density Matters

  This is the first column in The Energy Transition series by Robert Wilson. This series, exclusive to theenergycollective.com, will take a critical look at the prospects of a transition away from fossil fuels, and promises to abide by the advice of Richard Feynman that reality must take precedence over public relations. The twenty first […]

What did Henry Ford say about history?

The short answer is “history is bunk.” The more accurate answer is what he told the Chicago Tribune in 1916: “History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history that we make […]

Why is Saudi Arabia not a Threat to Fracking?

Several media outlets have recently carried a story about a prominent Saudi prince warning that Saudi Arabia is increasingly vulnerable to competition from the US shale revolution, as a result of fracking in tight/shale plays. I would turn the question around and ask why is Saudi Arabia not a threat to fracking? Note that as […]

Farming on the suburban edge

When most of us think of a typical farm, we probably imagine sprawling fields in an idyllic countryside, but many farmers have made a go of it in unexpected, underutilized, and challenging locations, sometimes within or on just outside of urban centers. Last Sunday, CUESA organized a tour to two Ferry Plaza farms in unique […]

Of boiling frogs and oil prices

Many readers will know about the claim that a frog plopped into boiling water will hop right back out if it can, while one put into cold water which is then slowly heated will remain until it is cooked. The claim is wrong, but the story is quite useful in understanding some human behavior. Gradually […]

Energy Infrastructure of the Post-Carbon Future

In 2008, The New York Times reported 56% of the energy generated in the United States was wasted. In electricity generation, 66% was lost as heat out the smoke stacks of remote power plants and another ten percent lost during transmission. Of transportation energy, 71% was lost from heavy, idling vehicles and cars carrying only […]

A Hankering for Hybrids

When automakers rolled out their new electric cars three years ago, they had big plans. Even President Obama, in his State of the Union address in 2011, predicted there would be as many as a million of them on the nation’s roads by the middle of the decade. Results have, so far, fallen way short […]

US airlines find fuel for less in 2013…but not everywhere

Years of consolidation, capacity cuts, fuel efficient planes and other cost controls helped jet fuel prices glide downward in 2013. But some US markets have still felt turbulence. US airlines are filling up planes with passengers at a record level. Despite that demand, the US Gulf Coast region, which produces half of the nation’s jet […]

The United States of OPEC

As someone who cheers for the success of this great country, I desperately want to believe in the concept of America’s energy independence. In the past decade we have been inundated with predictions of the U.S. becoming the next Saudi Arabia of oil and natural gas production. Fracking, tar sands, shale gas, et al., are […]

A New Peak Oil Ahead?

There’s a fascinating piece in the latest Economist arguing that the world’s “supermajor” oil companies—BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon, Total, Shell and Chevron—are facing serious challenges in the near term. Two trends undergird these surprising prediction: First, supermajors have been pushed out of directly controlling oil reserves by various national oil companies (NOCs) like Brazil’s Petrobras and Saudi Aramco, […]

Our daily conveniences are somebody else’s suffering

Jain nuns in India reject electricity for ethical reasons. Photo by author. I grope my way up the stairs in near-complete darkness, unaccustomed to the uneven concrete floors and unexpected corners of the building I first entered only a few hours earlier, following a seven-hour bus ride from Jaipur, India. My only guide through the […]

The future of Oil: Yesterday’s fuel

The world’s thirst for oil could be nearing a peak. That is bad news for producers, excellent for everyone else THE dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil […]

Why Oil Could Move Higher… Much Higher

Commodities could rise even as global demand sags. The conventional wisdom of the moment is that a weakening global economy will push the cost of commodities such as oil down as demand stagnates. This makes perfect sense in terms of physical supply and demand, but this ignores the consequences of financial demand and capital flows. I wrote this […]

Peak Oil: Preparations, Anyone?

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Robert Hirsch: The peak oil story is definitely a bad news story. There’s just no way to sugar-coat it, other than maybe to do what I’ve done on occasion and that is to say that by 2050 we’ll have it right and we will have come through […]

Count Yourself Among The Poor!

Go ahead, be a fool, tell yourself that you are still part of that once proud American “middle-class,” then dare look in the mirror and see yourself as nothing but a zombie. Or, rather, the new identifiable species in the US: the Amerizombie, a reanimated economic corpse, undead but politically clueless to the new global […]

A Post-Growth Economy in France?

I’ve recently returned from France’s first high-level “beyond growth” event, entitled An Innovative Society for the 21st Century. The conference, which included five separate sessions for the 250 or so attendees, was officially sponsored by François Hollande, President of the French Republic. It is one of only a handful of events that has received official […]

Huge Saudi metro projects aim to shift economy beyond oil

* Riyadh metro projected to carry 1.16 mln people daily at start * Poorer Saudis, women may be major customers * Metro projects could diversify economy in top Saudi cities * Part of effort to curb rise in domestic oil consumption * Assembling foreign labour force will be challenge By Marwa Rashad and Praveen Menon […]

3 Reasons Peak Oil Might Not Be Such A Big Deal

“Peak oil” was one of the first terms I learned when I became active in environmental advocacy. There are a variety of definitions, depending on who you ask and how much money they’ve invested in the oil industry, but most parties agree that “peak oil” is the point at which the world exhausts the past bit […]

Saudi Crude Exports to U.S. Rose in 2012, Iran Sold More to Asia

Saudi Arabia’s shipment of crude oil to the U.S. rose last year and Iran boosted Asian shipments to counter falling sales to its European customers, OPEC reported. The Kingdom exported 1.42 million barrels a day of crude to the U.S. in 2012 compared with 1.31 million a year earlier, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries […]

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