Speculation Has Been Driving Oil Prices

2016 has been a roller coaster year for the oil traders. Markets had a near 100 percent rise from February lows, followed by a drop of more than 20 percent, which took the oil markets into a bear phase. However, the bear phase lasted only for a few days, as the markets again gained 20 […]

Revisiting the Peak Car Debate

I’ve never liked the term “peak car.” First, it was always unclear exactly what was supposed to be peaking – total vehicle travel, per-capita travel, car ownership, or all of the above? Second, like peak oil before it, “peak car” applies a catchy name to a collection of concepts that are important to understand – […]

We’re nearing peak energy

The world has hit peak energy, in one sense. Based on per capita consumption — on an individual basis — there isn’t much more growth in the amount we can consume, according to Bernstein’s Neil Beveridge and team in a note on Friday. That’s not to say the fossil fuels that have powered the global […]

World’s first self-driving taxis debut in Singapore

The world’s first self-driving taxis are picking up passengers in Singapore. Select members of the public began hailing free rides Thursday through their smartphones in taxis operated by nuTonomy, an autonomous vehicle software startup. While multiple companies, including Google and Volvo, have been testing self-driving cars on public roads for several years, nuTonomy says it […]

Heinberg: Is the Oil Industry Dying?

The ‘peak oil’ controversy is staging a come-back as the industry confronts higher costs—and low prices Talking about “peak oil” can feel very last decade. In fact, the question is still current. Petroleum markets are so glutted and prices are so low that most industry commenters think any worry about future oil supplies is pointless. […]

Merrill Lynch Expects A 46% Jump In Oil Prices By June 2017

Oil has finally found a strong bull in Savita Subramanian, commodity strategist at BofA Merrill Lynch, who believes oil will rally to $54 a barrel by this year-end and continue its march higher to touch $69 a barrel by June of next year. The commodity team led by Savita has upgraded the energy sector to […]

The Spike and the Peak: what future for humankind?

From The Oil Drum Europe 2009 by Ugo Bardi   The figure above, from Robert Anson Heinlein’s “Pandora’s Box” (1952), is perhaps the first graphical representation of the concept that technology is not only progressing but progressing at an exponentially growing rate. Today, this concept goes sometimes under the name of the “technological spike” or the […]

No One Knows How Much Oil Is Being Stored Around the World

Peak oil, if it even exists, is very much a moving target. But so, it turns out, is measuring how much oil is already above ground, sitting in the holds of ships and in storage facilities around the world. It’s not that humanity is fundamentally incapable of measuring how much oil we are extracting—it’s that […]

Can Oil Prices Continue To Rally Like This?

After 3-4 weeks of waiting for oil to drop convincingly below $40 for a buying opportunity we seem to have missed the boat on this rally. We see prompt Brent trading choppily within a $45-$54 range in the coming weeks and if forced to pick a side believe the market is closer to being a […]

Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

Near the end of 2014, Uber co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick flew to Pittsburgh on a mission: to hire dozens of the world’s experts in autonomous vehicles. The city is home to Carnegie Mellon University’s robotics department, which has produced many of the biggest names in the newly hot field. Sebastian Thrun, the […]

Feeding the masses

It’s an unavoidable question, and right now it’s a problem. How do we feed 9 billion people on this planet? Leaders all over the world are furiously crunching numbers and developing strategies, preparing for one eventuality: There will be 9 billion people on Earth by 2050. Currently, 7.3 billion people inhabit this planet we call […]

What Will You Do When The Lights Go Out? The Inevitable Failure Of The US Grid

Delta Airlines recently experienced what it called a power outage in its home base of Atlanta, Georgia, causing all the company’s computers to go offline—all of them. This seemingly minor hiccup managed to singlehandedly ground all Delta planes for six hours, stranding passengers for even longer, as Delta scrambled to reshuffle passengers after the Monday […]

Kunstler: Burning Down the House

here’s a new feature to the Anything-Goes-and-Nothing-Matters economy: Nothing-Adds-Up. The magicians who pretend to measure the growth of GDP (Gross Domestic Product — the monetary value of all the finished goods and services) came up with a second quarter “adjusted” figure of 1.2 percent. That would have to be construed by anyone acquainted with basic […]

Why I Am Skeptical Of Electric Vehicles

Before you start furiously typing out a retort, hear me out. First, I want to make it clear what I am not skeptical about. I am not skeptical about electric vehicles (EVs) continuing to grow rapidly for the foreseeable future. Indeed, I believe that will happen — although growth has slowed in the U.S. in […]

Oil #2: The Price Of Oil

This is the second of five episodes. In the first episode of our oil series, we bought oil — and we paid $40 a barrel. A few weeks earlier, the price of that same oil would have been about 25 percent more. A few weeks from now, it might be 25 percent lower. Oil is […]

IEA Sees Oil Glut Easing

Global oil markets will continue to re-balance this year as a pick-up in demand from refiners absorbs record output from several Persian Gulf producers, the International Energy Agency predicted. Refiners around the world will process record volumes of crude this quarter as their intake rebounds after falling in the second quarter by the most since […]

Heinberg: Is the Oil Industry Dying?

The peak oil controversy stages a comeback as the industry confronts a future of higher costs — and low prices. By Richard Heinberg A spindletop spouter gushes oil in 1902. (Image: Wikimedia Commons) Talking about “peak oil” can feel very last decade. In fact, the question is still current. Petroleum markets are so glutted and prices are […]

The Discrete Charm of Economic Growth

Robert Balthazar. The Discrete Charm of Economic Growth. Part I: The Bilinguals; Part II: The Making of an Overriding Collective Preference (2016). At the outset Balthazar briefly summarizes his own intellectual journey as an economist, looking back on his earlier assumption that the economy as a whole was the spontaneous result of innumerable interacting trends […]

An Updated Version of the “Peak Oil” Story

The Peak Oil story got some things right. Back in 1998, Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère wrote an article published in Scientific American called, “The End of Cheap Oil.” In it they said: Our analysis of the discovery and production of oil fields around the world suggests that within the next decade, the supply of conventional oil […]

Have we finally reached the limit of owning stuff?

WHEN a book telling people to throw out piles of their possessions becomes a best seller, it might be an indication we’re consuming too much. Japanese writer Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying has been one of the biggest-selling books on Amazon for months with more than five million copies sold worldwide. While Kondo […]

Amid economic hard times, Venezuelans turn to city farming

Facing a national food crisis, Venezuela’s pumpkin-growing socialist president is exhorting compatriots to grow fruit and vegetables on balconies and roofs and in barracks across the country. His government’s “Great Agro-Venezuela Mission” is promoting city farming to offset shortages which have led to lootings and riots as the OPEC country undergoes a major economic crisis. […]

Is Food the Last Thing to Worry About?

Our food system is woefully dependent on petroleum, as writers such as Richard Heinberg (1) and Michael Pollan (2) have eloquently pointed out. Soaring food costs have brought on riots in some countries, and in unstable nations, famine continues to be a regular visitor. Fears of empty grocery shelves have made food security the centerpiece […]

The End Of A Trend: Oil Prices And Economic Growth

It used to be that when it came to the world economy, oil prices and economic growth were more like distant cousins who disliked each other rather than a happily married couple always seen nuzzling together in public. The received wisdom was that low oil prices are good for the overall economy even if they […]

Greenspan Says Oil Prices Have Probably Bottomed Out at $40

Former Fed chairman comments in Rock Creek Group client call Greenspan also calls Chinese economic system ‘unsustainable’ Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan suggested that oil prices have probably bottomed out at about $40 per barrel after tumbling more than 20 percent in the past two months into a bear market. “It’s hard for me […]

Beware oil inventory data, experts warn it’s misleading markets

Oil markets are once again in the doldrums amid fears of a persistent oversupply and concerns over the slow drawdown in U.S. inventories, but oil experts say those concerns are overdone. “We are at the start of the rebalancing, we haven’t finished it yet, whereas the market almost priced in that everything was done but […]

Which Way Is Oil Going?

Crude oil prices dropped on Monday, dipping below the $40 a barrel mark for the first time since April. Weeks of slow decline precipitated this 4% loss, which many are blaming on poor earnings from ExxonMobil XOM +0.93% and Chevron CVX +0.13%. The truth is that for most of the summer oil has been overpriced. […]

The Energy Transition

by Dennis Coyne I expect World Fossil fuel output to peak in 2025. If the World economy continues to grow in the future, a gap between Energy produced from all sources (including non-fossil fuels) and the demand for Energy will grow over time. If the gap between energy demand and energy supply is not filled […]

Grimace to Loathe

How many economic models are basically correct 45 years later? We are in summer re-runs now and have selected another vintage blast from the past. This was originally published to The Great Change on Friday, February 15, 2008. Charlie Hall sent us this lovely graph, which has his handwritten scrawl over the page torn from […]

US Admits It “Found A Problem” In Calculation Of GDP

For years we have complained against both the BLS’ and the BEA’s comical seasonal adjustments, which “serve” just one purpose: to goalseek the data to a desired, politically-mandated outcome, and which culminated last May when the Department of Commerce announced it would seasonally adjust last year’s woeful Q1 GDP data not once but twice in […]

The Best Reason to Ride a Bike

Cars have taken over our cities: More than half of downtown Los Angeles is devoted to roads and parking lots. Bikes are an afterthought at best, and those brave, or perhaps foolhardy, souls who bike risk life and limb. So says Bikes vs Cars, a 2015 film by Swedish director Fredrik Gertten. At first glance, […]

« 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