Oil and Gas: How Little Is Left

“If we’re doing things like fracking, it just shows how little is left of all this stuff, and how desperate we are to get at it.” — Anonymous Global production of conventional oil is past its peak and is now beginning its decline. A mixed bag of unconventional fuels (shale oil, tar-sands oil, natural-gas-liquids, etc.) […]

Jean Laherrere uses Hubbert linearization to estimate Bakken shale oil peak in 2014

In his latest research on shale oil French oil geologist Jean Laherrere from ASPO France http://aspofrance.viabloga.com/texts/documents estimates a Bakken shale oil peak in 2014. He uses a Hubbert linearization to calculate a total of 2,500 mb to be produced In global terms, a total cumulative of 2.5 Gb is just around 10% of annual crude production […]

Map: Iraq’s Oil & Gas Infrastruture

In January, Iraq  found itself once more  beset by a wave of insurgency, as Sunni extremists took hold of large areas of Ramadi and all of Fallujah, the two main cities in Anbar province. Given its strategic importance to global oil supply, our Design and Production team have put together this map detailing the complex […]

Mexico’s Pemex makes new light crude oil find in deep water Gulf field

Mexico’s state-run oil company Pemex has found light crude at its deep water Exploratus-1 well in the Perdido Fold Belt in the Gulf of Mexico, a senior company official said in an interview on Wednesday. Exploratus-1 struck light crude at a depth of approximately 3,600 meters (11,811 feet) below the sea floor, said Carlos Morales, […]

Oil peak in North Dakota & Montana

This is a guest post from Jean Laherrere. There are 12 graphs in this post. I have added a “continue reading” break in this post after the first three. I will do this for all long posts.   peak oil barrel

Has Petroleum Production Peaked, Ending the Era of Easy Oil?

A new analysis concludes that easily extracted oil peaked in 2005, suggesting that dirtier fossil fuels will be burned and energy prices will rise Despite major oil finds off Brazil’s coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada, fresh supplies of petroleum are only […]

An Interview with Dr. Sadad Al-Husseini

Since the autumn of 2011, a storyline of “oil revolution” and oil abundance–even “North American energy independence”—has taken the US media by storm.  That storyline seems to have lifted off in rough tandem with an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal by Daniel Yergin—“There Will Be Oil”—followed not long thereafter with a report by CitiGroup’s Edward […]

Fracking in the Barnett Shale around Dallas-Fort Worth, a city of 1 million

For the past 100 days I have visited shale formations with oil and gas from Amarillo in the north to Laredo and Eagle Ford in the south, from Odessa and the Permian Basin in the west to Nocogdoches and the Haynesville Shale in the east. The only remaining shale formation to visit on my list […]

New lessons for an aging geologist

DR. E. KIRSTEN PETERS, Washington State University When I was young geology student, I learned the basics of petroleum production as they were then understood. Deep layers of sedimentary rocks, including shale, were the “source rocks” for hydrocarbons. The source rocks were too difficult to exploit directly — it just wasn’t economical to mess with […]

Will We Ever Run Out of Oil?

Fossil fuels such as oil come from, well, fossils—organisms that died long ago. This means there is a limited supply, and at some point we’ll be tapped out. Scientific American editor David Biello explains when the well may run dry.

Turkey finds oil near Iran, Iraq border

A state-run oil company in Turkey said Tuesday it discovered oil while working in what it described as tough conditions near the borders with Iraq and Iran. State-run Turkey Petroleum Co., known by its Turkish initials TPAO, said it discovered oil while working in Sirnak province near the southern border with Iraq and Iran. Gokhan […]

The Rumored Death of Peak Oil Was Greatly Exaggerated

From Earth Insight by Nafeez Ahmed, hosted by the Guardian, Former BP geologist: peak oil is here and it will ‘break economies’: Dr. Richard G. Miller, who worked for BP from 1985 before retiring in 2008, said that official data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), US Energy Information Administration (EIA), International Monetary Fund (IMF), among […]

Michael Klare: Peak Oil Is Dead. Long Live Peak Oil!

The eulogies for peak oil came too soon. Among the big energy stories of 2013, “peak oil”—the once-popular notion that worldwide oil production would soon reach a maximum level and begin an irreversible decline—was thoroughly discredited. The explosive development of shale oil and other unconventional fuels in the United States helped put it in its […]

Desert project illustrates selecting acid-gas removal technology

Mahmoud Abu El Ela Cairo University Egypt This article presents criteria that should be considered in preparing a short list of acid-gas removal processes that seem to be appropriate to meet treated-gas specifications. Final selection is on the basis of technical and economic criteria. A case study for development of gas producing fields of 200 […]

Energy-Return-On-Energy-Invested (EROEI) For Crude Oil and Other Sources of Energy

The term Energy-Return-On-Energy-Invested (EROEI) is self-explanatory and this topic has been the author’s primary research interest since about 2007. Many publications in journals including ‘Fuel’ (an Elsevier journal) have resulted. This paper comprises a synthesis and analysis of this work together with some new ideas. Keywords Energy-return-on-energy-invested; Crude oil; Sources of energy Introduction and Literature […]

IPR Strikes Major Gas Discovery in Egyptian Desert

Texas independent oil & gas explorer IPR announced the discovery of a significant gas condensate field in its Alamein Concession located in the Western Desert of Egypt. IPR, operator of the Concession, pursued a new play concept for several years targeting the untapped Alam El-Bueib (AEB) formation in the Yidma-11X well.  The discovery well, located […]

The Man Who Predicted the Future for BP Says Peak Oil Is Nigh

In a year that saw the United States reach near-historic levels of fossil fuel production, it seemed that the words ‘peak oil’ were scarcely uttered. But it’s still a looming question, that we have yet to satisfactorily answer—when are we going to run out of oil? Have we already started to? A renowned geologist, and […]

China Finds Major Gas Hydrate Reserve in South China Sea

China said it has identified a major gas hydrate reserve in the northern part of the South China Sea, joining a small group of nations in the world seeking to tap a potentially vaste future source of energy. There is currently no technology to commercially unlock the energy also known as “flammable ice”, gas frozen […]

What Peak Oil Means

Professor Heinberg explains what peak oil means. The theory of peak oil started with M. King Hubbert, who said that global oil production would decline. Predictions for when global oil reserves will run out vary but there is general consensus on oil depletion.

Global oil reserves up

As a continuation to last week’s article titled “Oil industry’s R&D deactivates ‘peak’”, and as reported by the 2013 BP Statistical Review of World Energy, the world has increased its global oil reserves by 15 billion barrels in 2012 reaching a total of 1,669 billion barrels by end of 2012. These additional global reserves amounted […]

No big wells found in northcentral Montana this year

The recent spurt in oil production in eastern Montana probably will continue for at least a year, a top Montana oil and gas official said, but efforts to find a similar big “resource play” in northcentral Montana are not panning out yet. In another top trend, Tom Richmond, longtime administrator for the Montana Board of […]

The future of oil supply

Were they crying “Wolf”? Concerns about “peak oil” have recurred repeatedly since the resource was first developed, but they reached an unprecedented height in 2007 just prior to the global economic recession. Since then public concern has diminished, partly as a result of shale oil production in the United States. Yet, despite these developments and […]

Undersea Freshwater Reserves Could Quench the World’s Thirst for Decades

Freshwater is fast becoming a scarce resource as our global population swells. Some say World War III will be fought over access to it. But newfound reserves of freshwater under the sea may represent a vast source that has been previously overlooked. Researchers announced this week that they’ve probed the extent of freshwater reserves under the […]

“Wildly optimistic” Monterey Shale estimates

 By now, you’ve probably heard the proclamations: California is on the brink of a modern-day oil boom, and that the Monterey Shale formation, long a source of crude oil in Kern County could usher in another black gold rush. Industry insiders and politicians, citing several recent studies, are literally gushing with optimism over the prospect […]

Japan Finds Methane Hydrate in Sea of Japan

Japan has discovered methane hydrate lying over a large area in the Sea of Japan in northwestern Japan, in addition to previously discovered areas in the Pacific Ocean, the trade ministry said. The government plans to spend the next three years trying to determine the nation’s reserves of methane hydrate – a frozen gas known […]

Peak Oil, Not

Do you remember the many predictions in past years that oil production has peaked world-wide and we will soon deplete this natural resource? M. King Hubbert, a petroleum engineer with the Shell Research Lab, developed his theory of Peak Oil  in 1956, predicting U.S. production of oil would peak between 1965 and 1970 and thereafter […]

IEA World Energy Outlook 2013

The IEA World Energy Outlook was published the 12th of November. The report is available on line, in PDF form, for 120 Euros. But a friend a friend of mine at the brokerage firm of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe lent me access to his copy. As discussed, adding unconventional oil into the equation does not have large […]

Peak Oil, A Brief Description

You will find hundreds of articles written about Peak Oil but to the casual reader this term probably has little meaning. Most people take oil for granted with little more than a thought that it exists. We are told from birth that oil came from decaying plants and dinosaurs from millions of years ago. That […]

The IEA raises a little warning flag on future oil production

By Kjell Aleklett Uppsala University Department of Geosciences and Visiting professor at University of Texas at Austin Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering On 12 November the International Energy Agency (IEA) released this year’s edition of their World Energy Outlook report, WEO-2013. I have not studied all the detail in the report but I listened […]

When is the oil going to run out – and should we worry about it?

Energy experts have warned recently that Britain currently stores enough natural gas for only thirteen days of supply. Such a stark reality indicates how little reserve actually exists to fall back on. The news also brings to mind the concept of energy and fossil fuel shortage, depicted in movies such as ‘Mad Max’. But with […]

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