Speeding Down a Dead End Road

Since the birth of car culture more than a century ago, lavish consumption of energy has not been a bug but a feature. That’s now a feature we can ill afford, as we attempt the difficult and urgent task of transition to renewable energies. Notwithstanding all the superlatives lavished on Elon Musk by mass media, […]

Why don’t I have an electric car?

Electric vehicles are on the move. Last year, the number of EVs being driven on the world’s roads increased by almost 50 per cent. According to some analysis, electric vehicles will be a crucial transformative force in the global energy market forcing oil demand to peak by 2020. They bring advantages in terms of parking […]

Will PET bottles change tastes of Japan’s aluminum can collectors?

The beverage sector has long favored aluminum cans for being lighter, stronger and more easily recyclable than the alternatives, despite being up to three times more expensive than steel and twice more than PET. But the economics of the sector are changing, and soda producers such as Coca Cola are increasingly packaging their beverages in […]

Oil Price Outlook: Can OPEC Stick To The Deal?

As demand remains stable, it is clear that OPEC and its allies’ ability to adhere to the agreed upon output levels, combined with the pace of U.S. shale production growth will be the key determining factors for prices over the next two years. Currently, OPEC has extended the production deal agreed to in 2016 through […]

Expect oil demand to plateau and not peak: BP

CNBC-TV18’s Anshu Sharma caught up with Spencer Dale, Group Chief Economist of BP and asked him if he expects the oil demand to peak at some point and what are the key levels to watch out for in terms of crude prices. “I think the better way to think about is not peak, think plateau. […]

Projections For Peak Oil Demand Are Overblown

(Source: Bloomberg) Listen to this podcast on our site by clicking here or subscribe on iTunes here. While oil prices trade above $60 a barrel, up over 40% from their June 2017 lows, energy stocks have languished. Why the disconnect, and will this persist? This time on Financial Sense Newshour, we spoke with Dan Steffens […]

Our Latest Oil Predicament

It is impossible to tell the whole oil story, but perhaps I can offer a few insights regarding where we are today. [1] We already seem to be back to the falling oil prices and refilling storage tanks scenario. US crude oil stocks hit their low point on January 19, 2018 and have started to rise again. […]

Glut Or Deficit: Where Are Oil Markets Headed?

A flurry of recent oil market forecasts have sent a lot of mixed messages about what to expect both in the near-term and over the next several years. Is U.S. shale about to flood the market, setting off another bust? Or is demand so strong that with the oil market already rapidly tightening, another price […]

BP’s Twisted Timeline Of Oil And Gas’ Future

Spencer Dale, BP’s (NYSE: BP) group chief economist, isn’t trying to predict the future—whether it’s the doomsday scenarios of peak oil demand or the advent of electric vehicle (EV) “carmageddon.” At Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, the unabashedly candid economist presented BP’s Energy Outlook 2018, which is interwoven with what appears likely to […]

Does Solving Energy Poverty Help Solve Poverty? Not Quite

Recent research questions a widely held belief. The head of Swedfund, the development finance group, recently summarized a widely-held belief: “Access to reliable electricity drives development and is essential for job creation, women’s empowerment and combating poverty.” This view has been the driving force behind a number of efforts to provide electricity to the 1.1 billion people around the […]

The View from Les Houches: Thermodynamics vs. Economics

School of Physics in Les Houches, France, March 2018. Juergen Miknes shows some of the concepts that he has developed in his parallel analysis of thermodynamics and economics. It is a remarkable synthesis that you can find described in detail here. In the slide above, he suggests to replace the Cobb-Douglas function, commonly used in […]

Glut Or Deficit: Where Are Oil Markets Headed?

A flurry of recent oil market forecasts have sent a lot of mixed messages about what to expect both in the near-term and over the next several years. Is U.S. shale about to flood the market, setting off another bust? Or is demand so strong that with the oil market already rapidly tightening, another price […]

The Energy Economics Of Global Cooling Are Heating Up

A huge economic boom is coming, in an industry you probably haven’t heard of: cooling. The cooling industry provides air conditioning for houses and commercial buildings, refrigerators in homes and grocery stores, and a “cold chain” to transport and deliver everything from food to vaccines around the world. As more people move to cities and […]

Shell Says Oil’s Not Going Anywhere

There’ll be at least one home still welcoming fossil fuels in the face of a growing threat from cleaner resources, according to Royal Dutch Shell Plc. Heavy industry relies on hydrocarbons to generate extremely high temperatures and chemical reactions, according to Mark Quartermain, vice president of crude oil trading and supply at the company. Many […]

India, China to fuel 50% of rise in global oil demand in 5 years

India and China are set to contribute nearly 50 per cent to the increase in the global demand for oil over the next five years, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its report on oil sector for 2018. According to IEA, demand is expected to grow at an annual rate of 1.2 million barrels […]

Peak oil demand, a theory with many doubters

When Haitham Al-Ghais, the director of market research for the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, was asked about peak oil demand Monday, he smiled broadly and responded quizzically, “what demand?” Even as some oil companies like Royal Dutch Shell and BP predict oil demand will peak before 2040 – as electric vehicles hit the road and governments worldwide […]

Saudi Aramco CEO Promises IPO And No End To The Age Of Oil

The IPO of Saudi Aramco is “proceeding very well,” CEO Amin Nasser told the crowd at the CERAWeek conference here in Houston today. He didn’t elaborate much, saying that the ultimate decision to take the plunge would lay with the Saudi government — namely Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A domestic listing on Riyadh’s Tadawul […]

Thoughts of a Modern-Day (Energy) Slaveholder

For all intents and purposes, we are the beneficiaries of a slave economy. We may have exchanged human chattel for the energy slaves contained in a barrel of oil and the machines that consume it, but the economics work out the same and we can’t walk away without giving up status and wealth. Thomas Jefferson […]

Dr. Charles Hall: The Laws Of Nature Trump Economics

Dr. Charles Hall may not be a name you instantly recognize, but it should be. Now a Professor Emeritus of the College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Dr. Hall is a rigorous researcher of energy, oil, biophysical economics — and was a critical early pioneer in developing the key resource metric of Energy Returned On […]

The end of the Oil Age may be closer but more uncertain

Exactly when the world’s thirst for oil starts to ebb as a shift to cleaner, renewable energy gathers pace is increasingly occupying forecasters on both sides of the debate. The booming growth of renewable energy and high hopes for electric cars are seen equally as a challenge or a panacea by the producers of fossil fuels and environmental groups […]

United States as energy exporter: Is it “fake news”?

Much of the media coverage of the American energy industry implies that America has become a vast and growing exporter of energy to the rest of the world and that this has created a sort of “energy dominance” for the country on the world stage. Whether such reports qualify as so-called “fake news” depends very […]

PEMEX Suffers $18 Billion Loss

By Steve St. Angelo The situation in Mexico’s oil industry continues to rapidly disintegrate as falling oil production and rising costs resulted in an $18 billion fourth-quarter loss for the state-run oil company, PEMEX.  Part of the reason for the huge financial loss at PEMEX was the fall in the value of the Mexican Peso.  […]

The Folly of Long-Term Forecasts

In late January, Brexit minister Steve Baker suggested the Treasury had put together 15-year economic projections designed to show “all options other than staying in the customs union were bad.” Though he later walked the statement back, to some, it supported suspicions of government agencies’ complicity in “Project Fear”—an effort to scare Brits out of […]

Global pessimism amid plenty

By Michael Spence/Milan A few years ago, I wrote a book called The Next Convergence, about how developing economies were “catching up” to their advanced counterparts in terms of income, wealth, health, and other measures of well-being. I looked not just at how these countries had achieved rapid growth – including the central role played […]

A Global Perspective On The Outlook For Oil Prices

Summary IEA, EIA projections point to significant supply growth in 2018. However, global upstream investment remains depressed as the market relies almost exclusively on anticipated growth in US output to meet growing global demand. Offshore oil production accounts for 30% of total global oil production and as such remains a key component of the global […]

Oil Demand Strong Into 2020

Oil demand will remain strong through at least 2020, pushing spot costs for crude above futures pricing. That’s the message from Francisco Blanch, Bank of America’s head of commodities and derivative research. Electric vehicles won’t start biting into oil demand until at least 2020,  he said in a Bloomberg Television interview Monday. Blanch expects China to […]

Demand patterns will remain steady for oil and gas

International oil companies have a natural interest in following overall energy developments to see where their fortunes fit. The rising role of electricity makes the competition among energy sources more pronounced as switching from one source of energy to another becomes easier. This is why a long-term energy outlook from BP is worthy of consideration, […]

Russia remains China’s top oil supplier as pipeline expands

Russia remained the top crude oil supplier to China in January, data showed, beginning 2018 on a strong note after the start-up of an expanded trans-Siberia pipeline and as Beijing released more crude import quotas to independent refiners. Angola and Iraq took the second and third positions for the month, leapfrogging Saudi Arabia, which was […]

India’s Oil Demand Will Not Peak Soon, Ties With Saudi Will Be Key

In 1972, Sheik Ahmed Yamani, then the oil minister of Saudi Arabia, commented to the Chairman of Exxon that “the United States cannot take an oil supply shut down”, knowing well that there was no spare capacity anywhere else in the world. The honorable minister may not have imagined that four decades later, the rest […]

BP: Oil Demand Is Going to Peak in the Next 20 Years

Oil use will peak by the late 2030s as electric vehicles hit the road in force after 2035, BP predicted Tuesday in its annual report. With a growth from 2 million electric vehicles in 2016 to an expected 320 million by 2040, company leaders foresee that the number of electric cars will account for 15 […]

« Previous Page — Next Page »

LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• Why the IEA is Wrong About Peak Oil Demand
• Did we inadvertently speed global warming?  
• Venezuela’s Oil Monopoly Eases
• Why Germany is Choosing Natural Gas Over Nuclear Power
• U.S. coal-fired electricity generation decreased in 2022 and 2023

• America Cracks Down on Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Facilities
• Meet America’s Newest Oil Trader Extraordinaire: Joe Biden
• Is It Time To Refill America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
• Oil prices set to end year 10% lower as demand concerns snap winning streak
• What’s Driving America’s New Oil and Gas Boom?
• China’s peak oil demand bombshell eviscerates Danielle Smith’s energy strategy