Opening Oil Exploration to the East Coast

The African Continent’s west coast has long been an oil rich haven for oil companies from the west to exploit, yet now with the continual discoveries of oil rich deposits in the east, companies are turning their attention to countries like Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique to source large quantities of Africa’s oil reserve. With the […]

Middle East OPEC reserves revisited

According to the BP statistical review of world energy 2010, the big six Middle East OPEC oil producers (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Unite Arab Emirates (UAE) and Qatar) had 743 billion barrels (Gbs) of proved oil reserves (1P) between them, representing 56% of reported proved global oil reserves. Knowledge of this bounty provides OECD […]

Peak Oil in Pennsylvania

The first commercial oil well was completed in Pennsylvania in 1859 under the supervision of Colonel Edwin Drake. Williamson and Daum’s The American Petroleum Industry: The age of illumination, 1859-1899, p. 75 have this colorful description of how Drake earned his colonel’s eagle: Following [Pennsylvania Rock Oil Company President James] Townsend’s instructions literally, Drake’s first […]

Demand and supply in the post-peak oil world

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has delivered a confirmation of it. The agency, the energy security adviser to 28 rich nations, had dismissed imminent tapering off of production as a prediction of doomsayers in 2005. Its 2008 report saw the earliest point of no return in 2030. Faith Birol, chief economist of the IEA, told British […]

Mexico rejects Pemex oil reserve estimate

Mexican regulators rejected a huge chunk of state oil monopoly Pemex’s estimate of how much oil and gas the country has, calling into question the long-term sustainability of the industry. The National Hydrocarbons Commission ordered Pemex to produce more evidence to back up its claims of probable and possible oil and gas reserves in its […]

Is ‘Peak Oil’ Behind Us?

Peak oil is not just here — it’s behind us already. That’s the conclusion of the International Energy Agency, the Paris-based organization that provides energy analysis to 28 industrialized nations. According to a projection in the agency’s latest annual report, released last week, production of conventional crude oil — the black liquid stuff that rigs […]

IEA World Energy Outlook 2010: Questionable Assumptions and Major Omissions

1. Net Energy. The WEO assumes all energy resources are equal, without considering “Net Energy” or “Energy Return on Energy Invested.” Society needs a certain level of energy to maintain its current state of development. The resources we are talking about using now are of lower and lower net energy (oil sands, oil shale, arctic […]

IEA Acknowledges Peak Oil

If you go to the executive summary of the 2009 International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook, and search for “peak oil”, your browser will come up empty.  The whole subject was so beneath the dignity of a serious energy agency that they didn’t even bother mentioning it. However, yesterday, the 2010 IEA World Energy Outlook […]

IEA sees oil peak in 2035

Global oil supplies will come close to a peak by 2035 when oil prices will exceed $200 a barrel, the International Energy Agency said yesterday, as China and other emerging economies drive demand higher. The IEA, in its 2010 World Energy Outlook, said it expected conventional crude oil output to flatten out in the next […]

IEA releases World Energy Outlook 2010, “peak oil is an inevitability”

The International Energy Agency (IEA) today launched its eagerly awaited World Energy Outlook 2010 at the Hotel Crowne Plaza Hotel in London. At the press conference, Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the IEA, began by saying that “recent events have cast an veil of uncertainty over our energy future. In the wake of recession, the […]

Libra Oil Field Reserves Could Be Up to 15B Barrels

Brazil’s oil regulator ANP on Friday said a discovery in the Libra oil field could contain recoverable reserves of up to 15 billion barrels of oil, which would make it larger than all of Brazil’s existing oil reserves combined. The estimate produced by Gaffney, Cline & Associates said the field’s reserves were between 3.7 billion […]

Brazil deepwater well hits huge oil reserve

The Brazilian government has found up to 15bn barrels of oil in a deep-water field known as Libra, in a further indication of potentially enormous reserves contained in the so-called pre-salt region first discovered in 2007. If confirmed, the Libra field alone could more than double the size of Brazil’s current proven reserves of about […]

Peak Oil — Where Do We Stand?

On October 14, 2010, Aaron Task interviewed Chris Martenson at Yahoo’s Tech Ticker (video below). Martenson, fresh off of attending ASPO-USA’s annual peak oil conference, told Aaron that “conventional oil” peaked “around 2005.” Aaron had no way to assess this statement, so he ran with it. It was then that I decided to write this […]

Government Slashes Estimate of Alaskan Oil

The U.S. Geological Survey says the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska contains less than one-tenth of the amount of oil it previously estimated. The government’s scientists say new data put the estimate at 896 million barrels, compared with the agency’s 2002 mean estimate of 10.6 billion barrels. The agency also cut its estimates of natural gas in […]

IEA: Unclear If Oil Reserve Growth Will Contribute to Future Supply

Recent increases in oil reserves in Iraq, Iran and Venezuela are “good news,” but it remains unclear whether they will contribute to future supply, Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the International Energy Agency, or IEA, said Monday. “To have more reserves is certainly good news, because it gives us a more precise prediction of costs […]

The Myth of Peak Oil and Why Peak Oil is Overrated

While the peak oil theorists keep consistently declaring that the world oil is going to peak and that society is going to collapse soon afterwards .But these peak oil theorists only consider conventional onshore oil while making their apocalyptic prophecies .but they do not consider the development of new technologies that have enabled the extraction […]

A Primer on Reserve Growth – part 2 of 3

This post is the second part in a three piece series about the phenomenon of reserve growth in already found oil fields. Insight in future reserve growth, which is often attributed to advancement in technology, is crucial in determining the peak of conventional oil production. For those not familiar with reserve growth it would be […]

Those Supposedly Ballooning OPEC Oil Reserves

A slew of reports have been populating my feed reader recently announcing the growth of OPEC oil reserves, first from Iraq, then Iran, and now Kuwait. I pay attention to this stuff because peak oil is very much on my radar, and has been for about a decade now. It’s more than disheartening to see […]

Kuwait adds ’12 billion barrels to oil reserves’

Kuwait has added at least 12 billion barrels of crude oil to its reserves, which are estimated at over 100 billion barrels, following a comprehensive study, a newspaper reported on Thursday. Citing well-informed oil sources, Al-Jarida daily said the new oil was found in Greater Burgan, the world’s second largest oilfield after Ghawar in Saudi […]

Kuwait to add significantly to oil reserves

Kuwait expects to add a significant amount to its oil reserves by March 2011, some of it from the world’s second largest oilfield, Burgan, the chairman of the state explorer Kuwait Oil Co (KOC) said. “More than big quantities will, God willing, enter the oil reserves by the end of the fiscal year (March 2011),” […]

Iraq, Brazil allay peak-oil fears

Iraq says it has 25 per cent more proved oil reserves than the last time it looked. The revised estimate is 143bn barrels, the world’s third-largest after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela (excluding Canada’s oil sands). Iraq’s oil minister said there might be further upward revisions over time. Brazil says one of its recent discoveries could […]

Iraq, Brazil allay peak-oil fears

Iraq says it has 25 per cent more proved oil reserves than the last time it looked. The revised estimate is 143bn barrels, the world’s third-largest after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela (excluding Canada’s oil sands). Iraq’s oil minister said there might be further upward revisions over time. Brazil says one of its recent discoveries could […]

Iraq’s new reserves buck ‘peak oil’ crisis

Iraq’s sharp upward revision of its oil reserves to 143.1 billion barrels, and the prospect that there’s much more to come, has cemented the country’s status as a long-term energy producer when researchers say global oil output is set to decline. The Oil Ministry’s announcement Monday raised Iraq’s known oil reserves by 24 percent, eclipsing […]

Reuters: Oil reserves declining – but how fast?

Iraq’s declaration on Monday that its proven recoverable reserves have risen by 25 percent to 143billion barrels is likely to revive debate on how much oil and gas the world really has left. In July, Venezuela said it hoped soon to overtake Saudi Arabia as the country with the biggest oil reserves. Also in July, […]

Iraq Plans to Raise Official Estimate of Crude Reserves

Iraq’s government will announce tomorrow that the country’s crude oil reserves are larger than the current estimate of 115 billion barrels, an oil ministry spokesman said. Oil Minister Hussain Al-Shahristani will disclose the revised figure at a news conference in Baghdad, Asim Jihad said in a telephone interview in the capital. “The new figure will […]

Oil = education: the alchemy of Texas’ university system fund

A little-known auction in a dusty west Texas town made a splashy oil strike last week. It didn’t find the black stuff in the ground, but the Texas state university system headquartered there stands to reap a financial bonanza from the latest of its twice-yearly lease sales. University Lands, the lease sale sponsor that administers 2.1 million acres of […]

Infographic: Peak Oil Consumption – How much oil is left?

South Africa is nearing peak coal

Research by international and local scientists has shown that coal, like other resources, is finite and can be expected to comply with peak resources theory. The theory shows that production in commodities such as oil grows until a peak is reached, whereafter production declines. In the case of South African coal, the studies show production […]

Robert Rapier on Peak Oil

Energy analyst Robert Rapier discusses Peak Oil and his strategy for investing in renewable processes that require very limited fossil fuel inputs.

Saudi Aramco’s 80-Year Reserves vs. German “Peak Oil”

Saudi Aramco claims to have an 80-yr steady supply of oil or more, while a German thinktank predicts that “peak oil” is imminent. Despite Bill McKibben’s pleas to reduce the amount of carbon in our atmosphere to 350 parts per million, or face serious consequences, and despite the myriad innovations worldwide aimed at shrinking our […]

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