Cape Town, South Africa is running out of water as ‘Day Zero’ looms

Cape Town, South Africa is set to run out of water by April 12, 2018, sooner than previous predictions. Andrea Willmore/Shutterstock Cape Town, South Africa has moved up its predictions for when the city will run out of water, with officials now saying they’ll likely have to shut off the taps in early April. The city […]

Oil imports by China could lead to zero-sum game

One of the assumptions most observers of the crude oil market make is that China will continue to be the engine of global demand growth, thereby providing underlying support to prices. It’s not an unreasonable assumption, given that the world’s largest importer brought in 8.4-million barrels per day in 2017, 10.1% more than in the […]

Art Berman: Like It Or Not, The Future Remains All About Oil

Art Berman, 40-year veteran in the petroleum production industry and respected geological consultant, returns to the podcast this week to talk about oil. After the price of oil fell from its previous $100+/bbl highs to under $30/bbl in 2015, many declared dead the concerns raised by peak oil theorists. Headlines selling the “shale miracle” have […]

Why the oil price is so high

PERHAPS the most vexing thing for those watching the oil industry is not the whipsawing price of a barrel. It is the constant updating of theories to explain what lies behind it. In March 2014, when the price of a barrel of Brent crude was in three figures, the then boss of Chevron, an oil […]

How long will the rich be willing to share the roads with the poor?

  In Ray Bradbury novel “Fahrenheit 451” we are told of a world with no private cars (above, a still from the 1966 movie by François Truffaut). Bradbury had correctly understood that dictatorships not only tend to burn books but also don’t like their citizens to own private cars. In this post, I argue that the […]

Hail the Return of $100 Crude! Maybe

A slump in new production outside the U.S. shale patch in 2019 could help to send Brent crude briefly back above $100 a barrel next year, according to London-based consultancy Energy Aspects. The International Energy Agency also has a 100 number in its latest outlook, published Friday. While it doesn’t forecast prices and doesn’t yet […]

Oil demand to peak by 2030 due to EV adoption

Oil demand is set to peak by 2030 as demand for electric vehicles increases, according to a study by Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML). The company said oil demand has primarily been driven by transport over the last five decades to total 54 per cent of global demand today. Based on this reliance on […]

When Economic Growth Indicates Failure

Nothing can be duller than listening to an economist or other policy expert pontificate endlessly on such metrics as gross domestic product, stock market prices, employment, and consumer confidence. Most of all they talk about GDP: Rising GDP is good; falling GDP is bad. But as a measure of economic activity, GDP is what it […]

“We Must Avoid Day Zero” – Cape Town Is 90 Days Away From Running Out Of Water

If you’ve ever needed a reason to store extra food and water, this just might be it.   Cape Town, South Africa is on schedule to run out of water in less than 95 days, and when they do, the government will turn off the taps. “There are only 95 days left before we reach […]

Peak oil demand and its implications for prices

Even if oil consumption reaches a peak and then starts to fall, the world will still need large quantities of oil for many decades to come. “Global oil demand is likely to continue growing for a period, driven by rising prosperity in fast-growing developing economies,” they wrote in a paper published on Monday. “But that […]

The equations are changing for the oil industry

In 1846, the US was the behemoth of the whaling industry, with Nantucket Island and New Bedford, Massachusetts its twin capitals. Demand for whale oil, as industrial lubricants or as fuel for heating and lighting, had driven the growth of the whaling industry by a factor of fourteen since 1816. New Bedford had the highest […]

Oil Could Hit $80 a Barrel This Year

Tightening global supplies and rising demand for crude oil helped prices for the commodity start the year with a bang—hitting their highest levels in more than three years—and many analysts believe the market has the fuel it needs to continue the rally to as high as $80 a barrel. “The reason that oil will soar […]

Are we ‘Beyond Meat’?

With the world’s population increasing, we’re increasingly seeing pollution and the mass consumption of land jeopardising the earth’s future for generations to come. Can we help? Slowly, people are realising the importance in nurturing the earth and what can be done to positively progress. Start-up ‘envirotech’ companies are using their knowledge of global warming to […]

Oil Reaches $70 a Barrel for First Time in Three Years

Oil topped $70 a barrel in London for the first time in three years as production cuts by OPEC and rising demand whittle away a global surplus. Brent crude futures, used in the pricing of more than half the world’s oil, rose as much as 1.2 percent to the highest since Dec. 4, 2014. Prices […]

Bedazzled by Energy Efficiency

To focus on energy efficiency is to make present ways of life non-negotiable. However, transforming present ways of life is key to mitigating climate change and decreasing our dependence on fossil fuels. Energy efficiency policy Energy efficiency is a cornerstone of policies to reduce carbon emissions and fossil fuel dependence in the industrialised world. For […]

Europe Becomes Victim Of Russia’s Newest Oil Strategy

Higher shipments of Russian crude oil to China may saddle European importers with a fatter bill, an industry consultancy warned at the end of last year, noting the latest stage of Russia’s Eastern pivot: the launch of the expanded East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline that would lift Urals crude supply to China twofold, to 30 million […]

The end of the internal combustion engine

The adoption of the internal combustion engine, a revolutionary invention that took the power of the steam locomotive and made it more compact and convenient, saw horse-drawn carriages moved from the streets to the history books within 15 years. Enormous fortunes were made, everyday life was transformed and cityscapes were reimagined. Now, almost a century […]

Inevitable Job-Growth Slowdown Could Be a Good Thing

The U.S. economy is still creating lots of jobs, with a seasonally adjusted 148,000 added in December and 2.2 million (not seasonally adjusted, for reasons I discuss below) for full-year 2017, according to Friday’s employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That 2.2 million is up a little (93,000 jobs, to be misleadingly precise […]

Hawaii’s existential choice: Tourism, food and survival

Hawaiians used to feed themselves quite easily on this island paradise. With the arrival of Europeans and Americans came European and American ideas about plantation agriculture. Hawaii became a producer of coffee, sugar, pineapple, papaya, rice and other plantation crops. While destroying Hawaii’s diverse food system, the growers created a prosperous agricultural trading economy with […]

Death of a Mall Man

    Discuss this article at the Economics Table inside the Diner Death of a Salesman was written by Arthur Miller in 1947, and is widely considered one of the greatest plays of the 20th Century.  It’s a play about broken dreams and the lifetime failure of the protagonist, Willy Loman.  It’s a sad and […]

What does peak oil demand mean for the future of gas?

In our final editorial in our peak oil demand series, we look at the consequences of peak oil demand on gas. Many oil majors are talking about reshaping their supply portfolio towards gas in response to concerns about peak oil demand. Massimo Di Odoardo, Vice President, Gas Research talks us through the potential for gas […]

Toyota wants to change the world with Mirai, its new hydrogen car

The fourth-generation Toyota Prius is manufactured at the company’s Tsutsumi plant, a few kilometres south-east of Nagoya, around 100 minutes from Tokyo by Shinkansen bullet train. From Tsutsumi’s viewing gantries, two production lines stretch away into the distance. These halls house the trim workshop. Here, completed body shells roll in, are divested of their doors […]

Ten Years Ago Oil Was Worth $100 More Than Today

As the calendar changes, the price of West Texas Intermediate oil (WTI) is hovering around $60 per barrel. WTI is the U.S. benchmark oil and the underlying commodity used by the New York Mercantile Exchange in oil futures contracts. It is based on a type of light, sweet oil that was produced primarily in Texas […]

The Biggest Oil Story Of 2017

There have been plenty of eye-catching stories in the energy industry this year, but one notable development has been the rise of the U.S. as a crude oil exporter. The ban on crude exports from the U.S. was lifted at the end of 2015, and exports ticked up in the following year, but only modestly. […]

Global economic growth in 2018 on track to be fastest since 2011

The global economy is set to grow by almost 4% in 2018 in purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, adding an extra $5 trillion to global output at current values, according to new projections in PwC’s Global Economy Watch. The main engines of the global economy – the US, emerging Asia and the Eurozone – are […]

India’s Insatiable thirst for oil

In the Eighties, consumption of oil was the highest in Europe followed by North America. European oil demand, more or less, remained stagnant over the last 15 years, whereas Asian-Pacific countries picked up consumption in the Nineties. Notably, the current demand drivers are India and China. There are multiple competing arguments supporting oil consumption growth […]

Shale Growth Hides Underlying Problems

All eyes are on U.S. shale as we head into 2018, with a growing number of analysts worrying that shale will spoil the oil price rally. Estimates of supply growth varying quite a bit, but directionally, everyone is in agreement: Supply is set to surge. However, there are some cracks in the shale complex that […]

What The Peak Oil Demand Group Is Missing

Summary In Part 1, we showed that the impact of EV growth is highly overestimated. Here, we look at the biggest demand factor being underestimated. India. In Part 1 of this series, we explained why Electric Vehicles (EV) while strong will unlikely make a dent in existing demand for more than a decade. Here, we […]

Brent Hits Two-Year High

Brent crude closed at its highest in more than two years as shrinking U.S. stockpiles allay concerns over a global glut, while a key North Sea oil pipeline remains shut. In New York, futures closed at their highest in two weeks. Crude stockpiles last week plunged by the most since the height of North America’s […]

How Will Fossil Fuels Fare In 2040?

Fossil fuels have been the dominant source of energy for global economic prosperity for over 150 years. In 2016, fossil fuels overwhelmingly account for over 85 percent in global total primary energy consumption (TPEC)—but what role will they play in 2040 and beyond? There’s an ongoing debate among various agencies, researchers and academia whether the […]

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