New year, new worries?

This is the first Oil Big Five post for 2015, and we’re happy to still be sharing with you some of the big issues and topics our global oil editors and analysts are tracking. The start of a new year often brings the dreaded New Year’s Resolutions, and we’d like the oil industry to promise […]

Everything Has Changed: Oil, Saudi Arabia, and the End of OPEC

Saudi Arabia’s decision not to cut oil production, despite crashing prices, marks the beginning of an incredibly important change. There are near-term and obvious implications for oil markets and global economies. More important is the acknowledgement, demonstrated by the action of world’s most important oil producer, of the beginning of the end of the most […]

The Seneca Cliff of Energy Production

The graph above was created by Gail Tverberg on her blog “Our Finite World“. It is, clearly, another case of what I called the “Seneca Cliff” (from the Roman philospher who said “the road to ruin is rapid). The Seneca Cliff takes this shape, when generated by a system dynamics model: Gail’s forecast of the […]

Peak oil and peak water explained

Peak oil is something you often hear, but have you ever heard of peak water? Water shortages, and more specifically, fresh water shortages, are likely to become more commonplace in the future. Truthloader took a look into the two terms and what they mean.

Robert Rapier: My 2015 Energy Predictions

Happy New Year to readers around the world! For the past 5 or 6 years, I have begun the year by making predictions for the upcoming year in the energy markets. I am generally happy if I can hit on 60-80% of them. In 2014 I went 5 for 5, but I can say with […]

The Changing Face of Peak Oil

The dawn of agriculture marked a huge turning point for human civilization.  At that point, when we, as a species (for the most part), abandoned the age-old concept of the so-called “Hunter-Gatherer” lifestyle in favor of putting down roots (pun very much intended), there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 million people on Earth.  […]

Keep your Eyes on the Prize

  At the essential center of the framework of the Crash Course is the almost insultingly simple idea that endless growth on a finite planet is an impossibility. It is so simple it could be worked out by a clever 4 year-old. And yet it must not be so simple because the main narrative of […]

Energy Crisis As Early As 2016

Low oil prices today may be setting the world up for an oil shortage as early as 2016. Today we have just 2% more crude oil supply than demand and the price of gasoline is under $2.00/gallon in Texas. If oil supply falls too far, we could see gasoline prices doubling within 18 months. For […]

A new global currency; the rise of the East; and peak oil

Episode 126: Alasdair Macleod interviews Erik Townsend (/) — a specialist on “peak oil investing”

Great Expectations: Revisiting Peak Oil

Crude oil supply expectations have changed over the last twenty years. In the late 1990s, the idea of “peak oil” was gaining popularity. The theory was presented by M. King Hubbert in the 1950s and popularized in the last quarter of the 20th century. Working as a geologist for Shell, he predicted US oil production […]

Is Peak Oil Dead?

Longtime readers of the site and listeners to the show will know that the founder of Financial Sense, Jim Puplava, has been a regular proponent of peak oil since 2002, when oil prices were trading around $20/barrel. Now that oil has fallen in half from its $100+ range in place over the past few years, […]

The Ironies of Oil

Gasoline prices are on the verge of crashing down to below $2 a gallon. The price of oil may dip below $50 a barrel. Even with renewed demand from a global economic resurgence, energy prices continue to fall. The U.S. has suddenly become the world’s largest combined producer of oil and natural gas. That fact […]

Tom Whipple: The peak oil crisis

I know that it is getting harder all the time to believe that there really is a “peak oil crisis” lurking out there waiting to engulf our civilization and create all sorts of havoc.  Nearly every day now oil and gasoline prices are falling. We are forever told that America is on the verge of […]

The Imperial Collapse Playbook

Leon Kuhn Some people enjoy having the Big Picture laid out in front of them—the biggest possible—on what is happening in the world at large, and I am happy to oblige. The largest development of 2014 is, very broadly, this: the Anglo-imperialists are finally being forced out of Eurasia. How can we tell? Well, here […]

Is OPEC Washed Up?

OPEC’s unwillingness or inability to reduce output to defend high oil prices raises doubts about the cartel’s effectiveness and future. Absent cuts by OPEC, it is not yet clear whether the burden of rebalancing oil markets will fall on shale production or larger, more traditional oil projects. As oil prices continued their slide following OPEC’s meeting on […]

Five energy surprises for 2015: The possible and the improbable

The coming year is likely to be as full of surprises in the field of energy as 2014 was. We just don’t know which surprises! I am not predicting that any of the following will happen, and they will be surprises to most people if they do. But, I think there is an outside chance […]

Will The World War 3 Be Fought Over Food?

Pope Francis said a few months ago that the World War 3 has already begun. Russian president Vladimir Putin is threatening the West almost every other day, which could trigger the World War 3 anytime. The Ukraine crisis continues to escalate as the country moves towards joining NATO. Russia’s ambitions to gain control over the […]

After turbulent 2014, next year may be no calmer

From financial crisis in Russia to cyber warfare with North Korea, 2014 has generated new flashpoints right into its final days, setting 2015 up to be just as turbulent. Almost all of the major confrontations, such as the battle with Islamic State militants, the West’s stand-off with Russia over Ukraine and the fight against Ebola, […]

The Oil Drum & Peak oil videos

The Oil Drum was a website devoted to analysis and discussion of energy and its impact on society. The Oil Drum was published by the Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future, a Colorado non-profit corporation. The site was a resource for information on many energy and sustainability topics, including peak oil, and […]

The Great Transition – The End of Growth?

New research suggests that the ongoing global economic crisis is symptomatic of a deeper crisis of industrial civilization’s relationship with nature. The continuation of the crisis, though, does not imply the end of the world – but rather is part of major phase shift to a new form of civilization that could either adapt to […]

Peak Oil: the elephant in the room

“Elephant Country” a book on peak oil by Luca Pardi. The title refers to the fact that some politicians had defined Italy an “oil country” because it produces some oil, but that’s just as wrong as it would be to say that Italy is an “elephant country” because it has some elephants in zoos. In […]

Energy in 2015: Cheap oil changes everything

A year ago today, few would have predicted a collapse in oil prices would be the biggest energy story of 2014. Pinpointing next year’s equivalent is just as unlikely. Still, we can at least consider what to watch worldwide in one of the most dynamic, unpredictable, and misunderstood industries. Whatever happens in 2015, these five […]

A year in a word: Peak

The humble word has become a fully-fledged ‘thing’, writes Jonathan Ford Peak noun – 1. The pointy top of a mountain; 2. The stiff brim at the front of a cap. adj – At the highest level, maximum, as in “peak condition”. colloq, vulg: very good or very bad, as in “Oh man, that rave […]

Robert Rapier: Five for Five in 2014

As the year expires and the new year arrives, there are several topics I like to cover in a series of articles. One is to review the top energy stories of the year. Another is to grade my predictions for the year. And finally, I lay out my predictions for the upcoming year. Usually I […]

Global Systemic Financial Crisis 2015: Geopolitics, Oil and Currency Markets

For almost two years, by combining various points of view (speculative, geopolitical, technological, economic, strategic and monetary…), we have continued to anticipate a major crisis in the entire oil sector. Today, no one doubts the fact that we are actually at that point, and the GEAB must therefore anticipate the consequences of this veritable atomic […]

There Is Hope In Understanding That A Great Economic Collapse Is Coming

If you were about to take a final exam, would you have more hope or more fear if you didn’t understand any of the questions and you had not prepared for the test at all?  I think that virtually all of us have had dreams where we show up for an exam that we have […]

The Conventional Wisdom On Oil Is Always Wrong

In 2008, I moved to Dallas to cover the oil industry for The Wall Street Journal. Like any reporter on a new beat, I spent months talking to as many experts as I could. They didn’t agree on much. Would oil prices — then over $100 a barrel for the first time — keep rising? […]

John Michael Greer: Déjà Vu All Over Again

Over the last few weeks, a number of regular readers of  The Archdruid Report have asked me what I think about the recent plunge in the price of oil and the apparent end of the fracking bubble. That interest seems to be fairly widespread, and has attracted many of the usual narratives; the  blogosphere is […]

World on drip of unconventional oil

Currently lower oil prices due to a combination of increasing oil supplies and subdued demand come at a high cost to the environment and the climate. Additional oil supplies are exclusively from fracking tight oil in the US and from Canadian tar sands. Fig 1: Production of US tight oil, Canadian tar sands and rest-of-world […]

There’s No Tomorrow, Or Is There?

Much of what I have written and have yet to write about Peak Oil is humorously addressed in the animated documentary There is No Tomorrow (See below). Written and directed by Dermot O’Connor, the film was produced by Incubate Pictures, in association with the Post Carbon Institute. Below, I have summarized some of its main […]

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