Michael Lynch: What Is Peak Oil?

Forbes contributor Don Blackmon initiated not a firestorm but a tempest in a teapot by suggesting that peak oil had been debunked by the work of M. A. Adelman, my mentor.  Amazingly, there are many people who believe in peak oil, but are not particularly aware of the history of the theory and its evolution.  […]

Kurd Oil Supply Seen Growing as Region Grabs Territory

Iraq’s Kurdish region may be able to gain more autonomy and increase crude exports after taking control of territory around the nation’s fourth-largest oil field, analysts from Saxo Bank A/S and JBC Energy GmbH said. Kurdish troops are protecting the Kirkuk oil field and surrounding areas after an offensive by Islamist insurgents last week prompted […]

End of Oil and Gas Still Many Decades Away

With the June 16 release of the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2014, there is some continuing good news. The end of oil and natural gas is still at least a half-century or more away. The reserves-to-production (R/P) ratios for both fossil fuels are well above 50 years. The end of oil is further […]

Russia plunges into Cuban oil exploration

Russia has agreed to plunge into the search for oil in deep waters between the shores of Cuba and Florida, renewing fears of a major oil spill and the potential for environmental disaster. With President Vladimir Putin looking on, Russian companies Rosneft and Zarubezhneft signed an energy agreement with Cuba late last month to explore […]

The rare earth crisis: Is it a sign of things to come?

The crisis over the availability of rare earths seems to have receded, but is it a precursor for more troubles ahead? Rare earth elements are not typically found in economically exploitable deposits. The 1972 oil embargo left us with a keen perception of how vulnerable we are to interruptions in the supply of mineral resources. […]

Forecast of oil reserves depletion America

The United States has built a broad economic recovery hopes achieved finally in oil and gas production the Rocky, but these reserves will dry from the third decade of the twenty-first century, to return to dependence on Gulf oil, the International Energy Agency also predicted, she wondered whether the Gulf States are ready to take […]

Modeling Peak Oil and the Geological Constraints on Oil Production

Abstract We propose a model to reconcile the theory of inter-temporal non-renewable resource depletion with well-known stylized facts concerning the exploitation of exhaustible resources such as oil. Our approach introduces geological constraints into a Hotelling type extraction-exploration model. We show that such constraints, in combination with initially small reserves and strictly convex exploration costs, can […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: The Monterrey Shale Debacle

Last week the LA Times ran a story saying that the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is about to reduce “its” estimate of the amount of shale oil that can be recovered from the Monterrey Shale under California by 96 percent. This reduction cuts the estimate of producible shale oil in the U.S. by 60 […]

The great imaginary California oil boom: Over before it started

It turns out that the oil industry has been pulling our collective leg. The pending 96 percent reduction in estimated deep shale oil resources in California revealed last week in the Los Angeles Times calls into question the oil industry’s premise of a decades-long revival in U.S. oil production and the already implausible predictions of […]

Pumped Up: Man-made earthquakes

IN MAY 2011 something routine happened at the Cavone oilfield in northern Italy. Padana Energia, its operator, started pumping more high-pressure water into their wells, to squeeze more oil out. This unremarkable event may, though, have had remarkable consequences. A year later, on May 20th and 29th 2012, two nearby earthquakes killed 27 people and […]

The US Shale Oil Miracle Disappears

The US shale oil “miracle” has about as much believability left as Jimmy Swaggart. Just today, we learned that the EIA has placed a hefty downward revision on its estimate of the amount of recoverable oil in the #1 shale reserve in the US, the Monterey in California. As recently as yesterday, the much-publicized Monterey formation […]

Heinberg: What Happened to My 13 Billion Barrels?

In 2011, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the US Department of Energy commissioned INTEK Inc., a Virginia-based consulting firm, to estimate how much oil might be recoverable from California’s vast Monterey Shale formation. Production of tight oil was soaring in North Dakota and Texas, and small, risk-friendly drilling companies were making salivating noises (within […]

US officials cut estimate of recoverable Monterey Shale oil by 96%

Federal energy authorities have slashed by 96% the estimated amount of recoverable oil buried in California’s vast Monterey Shale deposits, deflating its potential as a national “black gold mine” of petroleum. Just 600 million barrels of oil can be extracted with existing technology, far below the 13.7 billion barrels once thought recoverable from the jumbled […]

Peak Oil: Forecast Totals Aren’t Always The Answer

‘The multiple forecasts of regional and global peaks that have been made since the 1950s have frequently proved premature. More optimistic forecasts have often proved equally incorrect, but it takes longer for their errors to become evident.’ Q: Where does this leave the broader energy dialogue in terms of the role of peak oil and […]

Oil exploration carries ‘real risk’ in ‘hostile’ Irish waters

Ireland’s oil potential may “hold some intrigue” but exploration carries “real risk”, according to a BP executive. While many believe waters off Ireland could prove lucrative, Bernard Looney, chief operating officer in production at the energy giant, said the sheer size, depth and hostility of some of the areas makes it “exceptionally challenging”. During a […]

Saudi Gas Reserves Up as Aramco Taps New Shale Deposits

Saudi Arabia’s natural gas reserves rose last year as it explored for the fuel in the Red Sea and tapped shale gas to free more crude oil for export, according to the kingdom’s state-run oil company. Saudi reserves increased to 288 trillion cubic feet of gas last year from 285 trillion in 2012, Saudi Arabian […]

Israel to be Major Force in Energy Market

A former Royal Dutch Shell plc Chief Scientist has urged the international oil and gas industry to take note of the significant potential that Israel has to become a major force in the energy market. Dr. Harold J. Vinegar said Tuesday: “These are very exciting times for Israel’s budding energy industry. The same qualities which […]

How Soon Will the World Oil Production Peak?: A Hubbert Linearization Analysis

In this informal paper, I conduct Hubbert Linearization exercises on the world’s 11 topoil producers as well as the rest of the world. The results are used to project the world oilproduction in the future. The evidence presented in this exercise suggests that the world oil production may peakin 2018 or a few years later. […]

Massive oil discovery claimed offshore Angola

Cobalt International says find may be largest ever off the coast of the OPEC member. Early results from a program off the coast of Angola show there may be as much as 700 million barrels of oil in the region, Cobalt International Energy said.Cobalt, through a partnership with national and international energy companies, released results […]

A short introduction to Peak Oil

We need to transition the community away from fossil fuels! This is a message we hear often today, too often according to some. But still, it seems to progress slowly. Climate negotiations stalled in Copenhagen and since then not much has happened on the scene of world politics. People generally seem not interested enough to […]

Proven Reserves, IOCs and Other News

Not much new data to report this past week but I did try to hammer out a few things of interest. The EIA released their Crude Oil Production report for the US and individual states with data through February 2014. I combined Montana and North Dakota to show their production. Their combined production was 1,027 […]

Natural gas – Thoughts of a Lapsed Physicist

For those of us who follow energy issues closely, a long-standing, persistent question has been: Are methane hydrates for real? Are they a realistically large potential energy resource? The answer seems to be yes. Thirty years ago the information available to answer these questions was not available. Today the literature on methane hydrates (also known […]

Rosneft, Exxon to explore Russian arctic

Russian oil company Rosneft said it was moving ahead with a joint effort with Exxon Mobil to explore for hydrocarbons in the arctic waters of Russia. The board of directors said Monday they’d work to develop the Ust-Lensky reserve area in the northern Laptev Sea and the Severo-Vrangelevsky-1 in the Chukchi Sea in eastern Russia. […]

New York state shale gas: Not so much

A drilling foreman once told me, “Don’t believe ANY reserve number unless it’s linked to a price.” And, that is just what petroleum geologist and consultant Arthur Berman and his colleague Lyndon Pittinger have done in a new report on the viability of shale gas in New York state. Not surprisingly, when Berman and Pittinger […]

Do the Math of Peak Oil and Convince Yourself

Until Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrère published their paper The End of Cheap Oil in 1998 (Campbell & Laherrére, 1998), the petroleum geologist Marion King Hubbert (1903 – 1989) was all but forgotten, including his correct forecast – back in 1956 – of the US’s peak of oil production in 1970 (Hubbert, 1956). […]

Shale Gas Explorers Could Pump $55B into Britain

The development of shale gas in Britain could create more than 64,000 jobs and give local businesses a 33-billion-pound ($55.37 billion) capital injection, according to an Ernst & Young report commissioned by an industry body. Shale gas explorers would need to spend that amount on their supply chains for drilling work over 18 years, said […]

S. Korea working on exploration plan for oil, gas in continental shelf

South Korea is working on a mid-term plan to explore oil and gas reserves off the country’s coast as part of efforts to help reduce its heavy reliance on foreign crude imports, an energy ministry official said. “The government plans to complete the plan by the end of this year,” the official at the Ministry […]

GEOG Researchers Address Economic Dangers of ‘Peak Oil’

Researchers from the University of Maryland and a leading university in Spain demonstrate in a new study which sectors could put the entire U.S. economy at risk when global oil production peaks (“Peak Oil”). This multi-disciplinary team recommends immediate action by government, private and commercial sectors to reduce the vulnerability of these sectors. While critics […]

Allure of vast oil reserves buried deep in Monterey Shale

To reach the crude using conventional methods requires oil companies to drill far-deeper wells, and more of them — a prohibitively expensive undertaking. Companies are busily drilling test wells, using various fracking and acidization techniques in search of cheaper solutions. A bustling city is sprouting on five acres here, carved out of a vast almond […]

Norwegian Crude Oil Reserves And Production Per 2013

In this post I present actual Norwegian crude oil production and status on the development in discoveries and reserves and what this has now resulted in for expectations for future Norwegian crude oil production. This post is also an update of an earlier post about Norwegian crude oil reserves and production per 2012 (in Norwegian). […]

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