The Peak Oil Crisis: On Closing Our Refineries

Here is one more thing for those of us who live in the northeastern U.S. to start worrying about – the refineries that make our gasoline, diesel, heating oil, etc. are dropping like flies. In today’s economy, these refineries are simply losing so much money that their owners who are not major oil companies that […]

No oil for old countries

I THINK my colleague is right to take some encouragement from the latest Energy Information Agency outlook. As one would expect to occur amid a period of sustained, high oil prices, American oil consumption has fallen from 2005 while its production has risen. That, in turn, has led to a decline in the quantity of […]

‘Peak timber’ concerns in tropics

Current tropical timber practices are not sustainable and nations should consider the “implications of ‘peak timber’”, a study has suggested. A team of researchers says the standard cutting cycle of 30-40 years is too short to allow trees to grow to a volume required by commercial loggers. As a result, they add, the pressure to […]

Shortages send fuel oil price soaring

In oil industry jargon, fuel oil is the bottom of the barrel. Fuel oil, used to fire power stations and ships, has lived up to its moniker: for years it was cheap compared with other refined oil products such as petrol and diesel. Now an acute shortage of fuel oil has sent prices soaring. The […]

Peak Oil’s Impact: Credit Cards

Other posts will describe routine aspects of daily living that will likely change when producers of goods and services no longer have inexpensive and adequate supplies of the fossil fuel resources they need. I’m certain that the questions I raise will in turn raise other concerns as well. It is only by acknowledging the consequences […]

Elaborating eCOOLnomics

“Voluntary simplicity must be extolled for the ineffable quality of life it bestows, to the point where it becomes a viral meme that infects teenagers and sticks with them for life.“ Humorist historian SarahVowell, in her book on the rise and fall of Hawaii, UnfamiliarFishes, writes that “expectingcapitalists to refrain from gobbling up the Earth […]

As Price of Oil Soars, Users Shiver and Cross Their Fingers

When David Harris built his 2,000-square-foot hilltop home nine years ago, he wanted to put in natural gas, but the utility wouldn’t run a line to his house. Like many people here, he was stuck using heating oil. Mr. Harris added a wood stove to help cut costs and now uses only about one-third of […]

US Oil Use Down 1.2% in 2011

U.S. oil demand fell 1.2 percent to 18.9 million barrels a day last year, trade group American Petroleum Institute said Friday. Early data from the federal Energy Information Administration issued Jan. 10 showed a 1.6 percent, or 310,000 barrels a day, drop to 18.87 million barrels a day. The International Energy Agency, the oil-market watchdog […]

U.S. Only Buying 10% of Oil From Middle East

Shraga Biran, founder of Alon Group and author of “Opportunism: How to Change the World One Idea at a Time,” and Ward McCarthy, chief financial economist at Jefferies & Co., talk about U.S. energy dependence and oil imports from the Middle East. They speak with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television’s “Taking Stock.” Bloomberg

Where do continued high oil prices lead us?

We know high oil prices have an adverse impact on the economy, often leading to recession. According to Economist James Hamilton, 10 out of 11 of US recessions since World War II have been associated with oil price spikes. But where do continuing high oil prices lead us? How will economic contraction “play out,” if […]

McKinsey: Resource revolution

The English thinker Thomas Malthus argued in his famous essay1 on the principle of population that there was no longer sufficient land to feed the world’s rapidly growing population, threatening poverty and famine. But an agro-industrial revolution soon transformed the economies of Europe and North America, and his fears proved unfounded. More recently, conventional wisdom […]

EIA analysis: big drop in imports leads to big drop in inventories

Markets today don’t seem to be reacting significantly to a sharp decline in US crude imports and a resultant drop in crude inventories. You can read Platts analysis of the Energy Information Administration weekly statistics here.

$4-a-gallon gas likely this spring

Get ready to pay $4 or more at the pump this spring: Analysts say gas prices could hit a record high. Fred Rozell, retail pricing director at Oil Price Information Service, says he expects the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline to reach $4 to $4.25 per gallon for regular gasoline when […]

Town prepares for peak oil

A small but determined Woodstock group is attempting to change the way their community thinks about and uses energy. It’s called Transition Town Woodstock, a push to slowly reduce the community’s dependence on fossil fuels and to prepare for rising oil prices, group member Keith Helmuth says. “The idea is to do what we can […]

IEA cuts 2012 global oil demand growth forecast

The International Energy Agency said on Wednesday that it expects global oil demand to grow by 1.1 million barrels a day in 2012, which is lower than its previous estimate of 1.3 million barrels a day. “Clear signs of economic weakness tipped global oil demand into a declining year-on-year trend at the end of 2011, […]

Error margins: forecasting energy demand

Long-term energy demand forecasts have always been as much art as science. They involve so many elements and can encompass such a wide array of approaches that any prediction can only be taken as a general guide as to what might — rather than what will — happen. As Danish physicist Niels Bohr said: “Prediction […]

BP Cuts Energy-Demand Growth Forecast to 2030 to 1.6% a Year

BP cut its estimate of global energy demand growth through 2030 to 1.6 percent annually from 1.7 percent a year ago, according to statements on its website. The cut followed an increase in BP’s estimate of 2010 demand by 1.6 percent to 12 billion metric tons of oil equivalent, said Christof Ruehl, BP’s chief economist. […]

World Bank slashes global GDP forecasts, outlook grim

The World Bank warned developing countries on Wednesday to prepare for the “real” risk that an escalation in the euro area debt crisis could tip the world into a slump on a par with the global downturn in 2008/09. In a report sharply cutting its world economic growth expectations, the World Bank said Europe was […]

China’s Skyrocketing Consumption And Surging Urban Population

China’s latest GDP number suggests the world’s second largest economy is clearly headed for a soft landing, as opposed to the economic crash many economists forecasted.  Despite delivering the slowest growth rate in over two years, Chinese policymakers have managed to substantially slow down inflation and nearly halve yearly property investing rates, as the Central […]

Returning to Simplicity (Whether We Want to or Not)

Eventually the point is reached when all the energy and resources available to a society are required just to maintain its existing level of complexity. – Joseph Tainter The modern world depends on economic growth to function properly. And throughout the living memory of every human on earth today, technology has continually developed to extract […]

Will oil and globalisation continue to keep the peace?

With Iran threatening to close the Strait of Homurz – through which 32 per cent of global oil supplies and 28 per cent of the world’s liquefied natural gas supplies pass every day – because of tighter European Union sanctions on the country’s fossil fuel exports, and fears that any blockade of the vital ocean […]

Price of Oil: Economic Breakeven vs. Political Breakeven Prices

The following table provided by the Bank of Kuwait gathers current reported break-even prices of major oil producing nations: Oil Break-Even Prices Nation US$/Barrel Bahrain 40 Kuwait 17 Saudi Arabia 30 U.A.E. 25 Oman 40 Qatar 30 Canada’s oil sands 33 Based on the formula, profitability of these countries’ oil operations are in order: Profitability […]

Saudi Arabia targets $100 crude price

Saudi Arabia is aiming to keep oil prices at about $100 a barrel, a third above its previous public target, in a sign that Riyadh needs higher oil revenues to sustain a big rise in public spending. Ali Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, on Monday for the first time said the world’s largest oil producer […]

The World in 2050: Four Forces

Trying to predict the future is always a dodgy enterprise, as everyone from the ancient prophets to recent prognosticators like Paul Ehrlich have learned the hard way. Whenever an author promises near or long-term events to anticipate, it’s good to take anything they write with a healthy dose of skepticism. That said, contemplating the future […]

Somali famine ‘will kill tens of thousands’

The UN in Somalia says tens of thousands of people will have died of starvation by the time the famine in the Horn of Africa ends. The food crisis was declared in Somalia six months ago and levels of need are expected to remain high until July or August. UN aid chief in Somalia, Mark […]

Saving energy means saving money as well as saving the mekong

In this very fast-changing region, few countries are changing faster than Laos. With economic growth of around 8%, the country is awakening and Vientiane is bustling with new developments, new trucks, and an even brighter outlook. Laos is finally catching up with its neighbours, and though this will take time, the pace and direction is […]

Triple digit oil prices to hamper growth

The global economy depends on oil as the human body on blood. It is because oil is the major source of energy to drive the wheels of production across the globe. Interestingly, it is the converging point of economics and politics. That is why it is sold in a world market in which every barrel, […]

Peak Oil, Energy Descent, and the Fate of Consumerism

A new paper by Dr. Samuel Alexander, “Peak Oil, Energy Descent, and the Fate of Consumerism” of Simplicity Institute (www.simplicityinstitute.org). Rethinking energy at the end of the era of cheap energy is crucial and is not optional – the laws of Thermodynamics cannot be repealed and Mother Nature has a way of settling such issues […]

A Provisions Shortage Sparked the Arab Spring?

In 1798 32 year-old British economist Malthus anonymously published “An Essay on the Principle of Population” and in it he argued that human population’s increase geometrically (1, 2, 4, 16 etc.) while their food supply can only increase arithmetically (1, 2, 3, 4 etc.). “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in […]

Energy use sucking up a precious resource

If you enjoyed a cup of coffee this morning, it might interest you to know it took 140 litres of water to produce that cup. Such a simple but profound equation. It is strange, strange, strange that when it comes to the most important subject on the planet, the basis of all life – water […]

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