A New Era for Aviation?

  The pressure to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and the prospect of a world running largely on renewable electricity has sent research and development teams in every sector back to their respective drawing boards to look at options that might exist for electrification. Perhaps the most challenging sector is aviation, where liquid hydrocarbon fuels are […]

OPEC should go for ‘responsible pricing’, says oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan

India today pressed oil cartel OPEC to adopt “responsible pricing” for oil and consider the world’s third-biggest oil consumer as its preferred sales destination. Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan met OPEC Secretary General Sanusi Mohammad Barkindo to discuss “the current scenario of oil and gas industry of the world and exchanged notes on the recent developments”, […]

World’s Largest Oil Trader Says Peak Demand Is Coming

Vitol is responsible for the trade of around 7 percent of global oil, which makes it the biggest oil trading firm in the world. Taylor admitted he is concerned about the company’s place in a new, less oil-dependent, world. An additional cause for worry is the shrinking pool of talent, as more young people opt […]

Why “peak” arguments are always wrong

The human tendency to extrapolate is a wonderful thing. It’s given us so many technological revolutions that would otherwise have never been funded. A charismatic if somewhat eccentric chap comes along, repackaging the idea of an electric car into a sleek Apple-esque exterior, and at just the right time in the oil production cycle. Everyone […]

The future of oil is almost here and it doesn’t look very pretty

The world is propelling fast towards a post-oil future when electric batteries will drive the world. After Elon Musk’s Tesla popularised electric vehicles (EVs), now is the turn for planes to go electric. Boeing and JetBlue Airways have announced they would begin selling a hybrid-electric commuter aircraft by 2022. Planned by start-up Zunum Aero, the […]

China’s Oil Demand Is Far Ahead Of Last Year’s Pace

OPEC recently released its Monthly Oil Market Report which covers the global oil supply and demand picture through July. OPEC crude oil production decreased by 79,000 BPD in August to average 32.8 million BPD. This marks the first OPEC production decline since April and was primarily driven by sizable outages in Libya. The cartel revised global oil […]

Want to bet on $100 crude oil in 2018? Some investors already have

When crude prices crashed in early 2016 to $27 per barrel, most industry executives said the world had seen the last of oil at $100. Almost two years later, as a global crude glut shows signs of receding, the oil options market has seen a spike in activity at $100 a barrel, indicating some oil […]

Puerto Rico: When the electricity stops

When the electricity stops in modern civilization, pretty much everything else stops. Not even gasoline-powered vehicles can get far before they are obliged to seek a fill-up—which they cannot get because gas pumps rely on electricity to operate. When I wrote “The storms are only going to get worse” three weeks ago, I thought the […]

Peak Oil? Not So Fast

One hundred and twenty years ago the famous American 19th-century novelist and humorist, Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name, Mark Twain, responded to speculation over his death with the immortal quip, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” So, it would seem with oil. The rapid and incessant news of newer and […]

$60 Oil Enters The Realm Of Possibility

Oil markets took a bullish turn this week amid growing geopolitical tensions and a tightening oil market. (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) (Click to enlarge) – China and India will account for much of the growth in energy consumption for the next few decades, but the EIA says that energy consumption will […]

What The Peak Oil Demand Group Is Missing

Summary Demand for oil has increased every single year since the 2008 recession. In spite of EV sales, the global non-EV fleet keeps increasing. Rapid, or even rabid, growth will take a long time to stop the ICE fleet from expanding. The market makes the news. Negative price action begets negative stories, and vice-versa. The […]

Citi Says Get Ready for an Oil Squeeze

Those in the oil market fearing a flood of OPEC supply next year will probably be better off preparing for a shortage, according to Citigroup Inc. Five countries in the group — Libya, Nigeria, Venezuela, Iran and Iraq — may already be pumping at their maximum capacity this year, Ed Morse, the bank’s global head […]

US crude surges 3% to settle at $52.22, best closing price in five months

Brent crude oil hit a new 2017 high, as U.S. crude topped $52 a barrel for the first time in four months. The market expects oil producers to extend a deal to limit output as demand forecasts rise. Hedge funds raised their bets that oil prices will rise, figures from the CFTC show. US crude […]

Riding The Energy Transition – Oil Beyond 2040

The motor vehicle was very quick to replace horses in the early 20th century, and the advent of the electric car suggests that another profound shift in transportation and energy could be around the corner. This column projects how different rates of electric car adoption will effect oil demand and consumption over the next three […]

How to Survive the Apocalypse

President Trump threatens to “totally destroy North Korea.” Another hurricane lashes out. A second monster earthquake jolts Mexico. Terrorists strike in London. And that’s just this past week or so. Yes, the world is clearly coming to an end. But is there anything you can do to prepare? That is not a philosophical question, or […]

The Real Cause Of Peak Gasoline Demand

New analysis shows that fuel-efficient cars that utilize gasoline engines will lower oil demand more effectively than the widespread adoption of electric cars, according to an analyst from FGE who spoke to Reuters. Though Asian and European nations have pledged a shift towards electric cars in the next decade, the biggest threat to oil prices […]

Thirst for oil returns in wealthy nations

  A decade’s worth of efforts to cut oil consumption in industrialised countries is at risk of being reversed, as low fuel prices boost demand and send motorists flocking back to larger gas-guzzling cars. Figures from the International Energy Agency and other forecasters show OECD oil demand, which declined between 2005 and 2014, has been […]

kinda a shame you need a spreadsheet to compete

It might just be me in my little echo chamber, but it seems as though oil is hardly being spoken about. There was a time – in fact, there has been many a time – when the subject was on everybody’s lips. Either because supply was about to run out (Peak Oil) or because of […]

China’s Electric Vehicles Run on Coal! Yes, But …

China’s offhand bombshell about potentially consigning gasoline-fueled cars to the scrapheap has met, predictably, with a round of cheers and jeers. This is about one of the latter, which concerns the chart below: Steam Engines Almost 90 percent of China’s power derives from fossil fuels, especially coal Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance Note: Data are for […]

IEA: Oil Price Spike Coming In 2020

The halving of oil prices from $100 per barrel before 2014 down to just $50 today has led to a corresponding plunge in upstream investment. But even as benchmark prices seem to have stabilized over the past year, with most analysts predicting gradual and modest gains in the year ahead (depending on OPEC’s actions), there’s […]

Global Oil Demand is Surging But That’s Still Not Enough to Fix the Oil Market

The oil industry just can’t seem to snap out of its doldrums this year. Crude remains stubbornly low, which has stalled the industry’s attempts at a recovery. However, while weaker prices have been bad for oil producers, they’ve been great for consumers because it has kept prices for refined products like gasoline down, which is […]

Beyond peak oil

The last decade has seen a significant change in the terms of the debate around the concept of “peak oil”. Ten years ago the focus was on when oil resources would start to run out and was still based on a concept developed in the 1950s by a Shell geophysicist called M King Hubbert. Hubbert […]

The High Cost Of Going Green

It has become raison d’être that electric vehicles (EV) will keep increasing in use without considering serious factors that could hamper their growth. The British electrical grid example and the growth of EVs should bring pause to consumers, investors and governments promoting their unconstrained usage. According to the British National Grid, “the growing use of electric […]

Food or Feed? A New Look at the Global Grain Drain

The use of grains such as corn and wheat to feed cattle, chicken, sheep, and other animals destined for human meat consumption has been maligned for decades as wasteful, inefficient, and even unethical. Those grains, after all, could be used to feed hundreds of millions of hungry people, and livestock need to consume large amounts […]

The ‘Ghost Geography’ Of Midwest Farmland And A Year In The Life Of A Modern American Family …

A grain cart collects corn harvested from one of the Hammond family’s fields. Courtesy Mary Anne Andrei Every year on the farm has its challenges. There are weeds, insects and random hailstorms. Unpredictable global markets can make or break a profitable crop. Recent years, though, have been especially troubling for the Hammond farm in York […]

IEA Sees Strongest Global Oil-Demand Growth in Two Years

Global oil demand will climb this year by the most since 2015, the International Energy Agency said, amid stronger-than-expected consumption in Europe and the U.S. The IEA, which advises most major economies on energy policy, increased its estimate for demand growth in 2017 by 100,000 barrels a day to 1.6 million a day, or 1.7 percent. […]

Gail Tverberg: Why Oil Prices Can’t Bounce Very High; Expect Deflation Instead

Economists have given us a model of how prices and quantities of goods are supposed to interact. Figure 1. From Wikipedia: The price P of a product is determined by a balance between production at each price (supply S) and the desires of those with purchasing power at each price (demand D). The diagram shows […]

China to Phase Out Internal Combustion Engine Cars

  In the first day of trading after China said it’s working on a deadline to end sales of fossil-fuel-powered vehicles, shares are holding ground in the oil companies that stand to lose out. The listed units of China’s big three oil companies — PetroChina Co., Cnooc Ltd and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. — […]

More Is More

Lauren Greenfield/Institute Christmas morning at Jackie and David Siegel’s Seagull Island mansion, Windermere, Florida, 2010. Their construction of a 90,000-square-foot mansion inspired by the palace of Versailles was the subject of Lauren Greenfield’s documentary The Queen of Versailles (2012); this photograph appears in her new book, Generation Wealth, just published by Phaidon. The dictum “Less […]

To Understand Pipeline Economics, Follow the Money

I have worked for electric and gas utilities in other states, so I am interested in seeing a modern energy system developed in Virginia. I prefer to find solutions where everyone wins, but Virginia is currently split between those who want to protect our land and waters and those who want the lower cost energy […]

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