Argentina makes onshore oil discovery

Argentine oil company YPF said it had made an oil discovery in the country’s western province of Mendoza, containing estimated reserves of about 15 million barrels of crude oil. “Tests carried out at various depths, all productive, give an initial production estimate of 535 barrels of oil per day,” the company said in a statement […]

Analysts Question Economics of Natural Gas Reserves

The first comprehensive attempt to measure reserves of natural gas made available through fracking doubles previous estimates, but its value is questionable without guaranteed access to markets B.C.’s existing natural gas reserves have doubled, thanks to advances in hydraulic fracturing technology, according to a report published by the federal, B.C. and Alberta governments. The report […]

Peak Coal Report: U.S. Coal “Reserves” Are Incorrectly Calculated, Supposed 200-Year Supply Could Run Out In 20 Years Or Less

America does not have 200 years in coal “reserves” since much of the coal that is now left in the ground cannot be mined profitably, according to a major new report from the Boulder, CO-based nonprofit Clean Energy Action (CEA).   The CEA analysis shows that the U.S. appears to have reached its “peak coal” point […]

Israel to drill for oil in the West Bank

A large reserve may lie under Israel and the occupied territories, but Palestinians are unlikely to reap the benefits. Israeli investors had reason to celebrate last month with the news that Israel may soon be joining the club of oil-producing states, in addition to its recent finds of large natural gas deposits off the coast. […]

This Natural Gas Find Could Completely Change the World As We Know It

One thing that makes the energy sector so intriguing is the constant overlap between markets and politics. In many ways, energy security is synonymous with national security, and the supply and demand needs of the oil market can make the most unlikely bedfellows. One country that has been at the center of energy and politics […]

Oil Reserves Overview: Not Running Out of Oil (Yet)

With all the statistical information that has been published lately, we’ve decided to make a brief review of statistical data on world oil reserves and production. Are we already running out of oil? How much oil is being produced per year? In our article we gathered some of the latest data regarding world oil reserves […]

Marathon Finds Oil in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

Marathon Oil Corporation’s subsidiary Marathon Oil KDV B.V. made a discovery in the company-operated Harir Block in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The Mirawa-1 exploratory well discovered multiple stacked oil and natural gas producing zones, the operator said in a press release. Drilled to a total depth of 14,000 feet, the Mirawa-1 well found oil […]

The Curse Of Oil

Having huge oil reserves can be an economic curse for a developing country. The natural-resource curse often produces oil-rich nations that are ruled by dictators and are so reliant on petroleum that its economic growth is hindered because all other industries are neglected. The prediction of the end of fossil fuels will come true someday, […]

Lebanon says gas, oil reserves may be higher than thought

Lebanese Energy Minister Gebran Bassil said new estimates for nearly half of Lebanese waters suggested the country’s reserves of natural gas and oil might be larger than previously thought. “The current estimate, under a probability of 50 percent, for almost 45 percent of our waters has reached 95.9 trillion cubic feet of gas and 865 […]

Meet Massive New Super-Giant Oilfield in Texas

Early estimate from Pioneer Natural Resources are than it could contain 50 billion barrels of recoverable oil, which would make it the second largest in the world, behind only the legendary Ghawar in Saudi Arabia. _RealClearEnergy The Spraberry Wolfcamp oilfield is still being mapped out, but so far over 50 billion barrels of oil has […]

Bakken Oil Production by County

Bakken by county data can be found here: North Dakota Drilling and Production Statistics And the pertinent data can be found here: Oil and Gas Production Report Rune Likvern has been kind enough to post me the following two graphs and comments. Rune’s comments are in italics. Edit: At the bottom of this post I have just added […]

DNO International Says Iraq Field May Have “Sea of Oil”

A new well at DNO International’s Tawke oil field in Iraq is producing more than any of the other wells that have so far been drilled, the Norwegian company said on Monday. The horizontal Tawke 23 well produced 32,500 barrels of oil per day, beating the 25,000 barrels recently produced at Tawke 20. “The exceptional […]

Lester Brown: The Sobering Facts on Global Resource Scarcity

Environmental analyst Lester Brown has made a lifetime career of tracking declining supplies of global resources. He is the founder of the Earth Policy Institute and author of the book Plan B 4.0 Mobilizing to Save Civilization, both of which provide massive data sets on the precipitous drop in key natural resources as well as […]

Encyclopedia Britannica – peak oil theory

Peak oil theory, a contention that conventional sources of crude oil, as of the early 21st century, either have already reached or are about to reach their maximum production capacity worldwide and will diminish significantly in volume by the middle of the century. “Conventional” oil sources are easily accessible deposits produced by traditional onshore and offshore […]

ENI: World Oil, Gas Reserves Continue to Increase

World oil and gas reserves continue to increase, confirming that operators are able to replace reserves put into production with new discoveries, according to Italian oil major ENI’s 12th edition of its “World Oil and Gas Review”. Eni said its annual statistical review of the world oil and gas market showed that 2012 global reserves […]

Brazil to Announce Massive Offshore Oil Discovery on Oct. 23

Brazilian officials plan to announce the discovery of a gigantic offshore oil area near Sergipe state on Oct. 23, a find that could be the country’s biggest outside the massive “subsalt” area off its southern coast, the state government said. Brazil’s Energy and Mines minister, Edison Lobão, will “officially announce the discovery” during a visit […]

Predicting the timing of peak oil

This Article Predicting the timing of peak oil is composed of Creative Common Content. The Original Article can be location at WikiPedia.org. Various sources predicting the timing of peak oil include assertions that it would peak decades ago that it has recently occurred that it will occur shortly or that a plateau of oil production […]

Shell’s Shale Oil Shutdown—1-800-Dry-Hole

Early last week, Shell Oil announced it was shutting down its oil shale research project in western Colorado. Combine their departure with Chevron’s exit back in February 2012 and you can count another nail in oil shale’s coffin. Yet since this unconventional resource ranks among the largest in the world, estimated by some at 1+ […]

Geology beats technology: Shell shuts down oil shale pilot project

The belief that technology can always overcome natural limits just took a big hit this week when Royal Dutch Shell PLC decided to shut down its pilot oil shale project in western Colorado after 31 years of experimentation. The ostensible reason is that the company has opportunities elsewhere. Shell says it wants to shift resources […]

Ugo Bardi: Mineral resources and the limits to growth

  So, ladies and gentleman, let me start with this recent book of mine. It is titled “The Plundered Planet.” You can surely notice that it is not titled “The Developed Planet” or “The Improved Planet.” Myself and the coauthors of the book chose to emphasize the concept of “Plundering”; of the fact that we […]

Statoil Find Significant Oil Offshore Canada

Statoil and its partner Husky Energy have made a significant oil discovery offshore Canada, the Norwegian oil major confirmed Thursday. Statoil said its first Bay du Nord exploration well has found is between 300 and 600 million barrels of recoverable oil. Although Bay du Nord was originally discovered in August a sidetrack well was completed […]

Tech Talk – The Rise and Fall and . . . . of Brazil

Brazil seems to be appearing in the news a little more regularly these days. Whether it is because the President objects to NSA activities or because Unilever is buying 3 million gallons of algae-produced oil from Solazyme, to be produced at a new plant in Brazil that will generate 30 million gallons a year, the […]

US shale oil hides crude oil peak in rest of world

Recent US shale oil growth sits on top of a bumpy production plateau of the rest-of-the-world (ROW). Other Middle East (Syria, Yemen, Oman) was in long term decline until 2007.  Just when Oman experienced a rebound, did production in Syria and Yemen collapse due to civil unrest which was at least in part caused by […]

Kazakhstan Has The Largest Oil Field Outside The Middle East

From time to time, huge oil reserves are discovered, and are added to global supply reserves. In this regard, we find that the large-scale production of oil in the Middle East began shortly after WWII, though some mega fields had been discovered in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Iran before the war. In the North Sea, […]

Scarcity Reveals an Inaccessible Excess

For decades Zakayo Ekeno has walked Turkana County’s arid land, herding his livestock, and his father’s before that. Yet nothing about the persistently drought-stricken land in northern Kenya could have given him an indication of the wealth beneath it. “I have asked myself many times whether anything good can come out of this godforsaken land,” […]

The Export Capacity Index

In this paper, I briefly review recent global crude oil and liquids production numbers, and I review the Export Land Model (ELM). I also introduce the concept of the Export Capacity Index (ECI), which is simply the ratio of total petroleum liquids production to liquids consumption in net oil exporting countries. I then compare the […]

Peak Coal In China

Citibank has released an interesting report on “peak coal” in China – referring to peak demand rather than any supply driven peak of production (something I view as quite far off) – The Unimaginable: Peak Coal in China. The limit to coal use appears to be how much pollution the Chinese population is willing to […]

OPEC, US Energy Dept. See Enough Oil In The World

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said the world oil market was well supplied despite a plunge in Libya’s output, and forecast a further drop in its oil market share in 2014. In a monthly report, OPEC said oil stocks in developed countries equaled almost two months of future demand although “some supply outages” […]

New projection of Peak Phosphorus

In 2007, we published one of the first papers on peak phosophorus, and since then have monitored coverage of the subject. Now a detailed projection of phosphorus production by two Australian researchers  indicates that world phosphate rock production will most likely peak in 2027. Below is a summary of  the paper, Projections of Future Phosphorus […]

What The Oil Drum Meant

The popular peak oil blog The Oil Drum (TOD) began in early 2005.  I joined as a contributor in mid 2005, later becoming an editor, and I left the site in early 2008.  TOD continued in the meantime, at least up until now when the current editors have decided to transition to an archival format.  They […]

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