French Prime-Minister declares: peak oil happened in 2009

” We, in 2009, reached the peak in oil production. Production may decrease now that , even though the growth of the global economy has found a train of 4.5% ” , has said Prime Minister Francois Fillon on April 5 before the National Assembly. He was responding to a question on the current energy […]

Science magazine: Peak oil production may already be here

Perhaps the most sobering outcome of a non-OPEC plateau might be reminding everyone that even planet-scale resources have their limits. And that when you are consuming them at close to 1000 gallons a second, the limits can catch you unaware. The next 5 years, assuming oil prices remain on the high side, should show who […]

Exploding the Myth of Nuclear Energy Security

In an incredibly ill-fated play of both publishing date and policy being urged on deciders in the energy field, the Japan-based United Nations University (UNU), in February 2011 published a long research paper on how Japan, thanks to nuclear power, could shield itself from a possible new Oil Shock. The paper, written by Brendan Barrett, […]

Peak Oil: It’s not if it will happen, but when

While filling my car’s gas tank the other day I had a sense of foreboding. Watching the dollars add up as each gallon registered, I suspected $4.25 a gallon was going to look good by this time next year. What’s happening? Why are prices steadily going up? You can thank oil speculators for that. Those […]

Red Herring: Libya Oil Export Offline Indefinitely?

There were some interesting developments coming out of Libya that It seems behind the scenes a transitional government is already being put in place, and contracts are being signed for the resumption and export of Oil to Libya`s trading partners. Rebels Making Oil Deal The finance minister for the Libyan opposition, a University of Washington […]

U.S. Shale Gas Bonanza

Lost among the calamities in the Middle East, North Africa and Japan is some of the best news in decades for the energy sector. America, like Jed Clampett of old, finds itself sitting on a new found bonanza of natural gas and oil reserves. These reserves not only hold the promise of energy independence for […]

Can We Do Without the Mideast?

IMAGINE a foreign policy version of the movie “Groundhog Day,” with Bill Murray playing the president of the United States. The alarm clock rings. Political mayhem is again shaking the Middle East, crude oil and gasoline prices are climbing, and an economic recovery is under threat. President Nixon woke up to the same alarm during […]

Oil Reveals Where the Next Bombs Will Fall

When President Obama explained America’s involvement in Libya’s civil war, he didn’t mention oil once. Instead, he used euphemisms like “national interest” and “strategic interest.” Yet it’s hard to imagine that the United States or its European allies would be mounting airstrikes in Libya if the African nation weren’t one of the world’s top 20 […]

Libyan opposition announces plans to export oil

Libyan rebels say they have forged an agreement with Qatar that will enable them to begin exporting oil and accessing the revenues through an escrow account. “We contacted the oil company of Qatar and they agreed to take all the oil we export and market that oil for us,” said Ali Tarhoni, the rebel representative […]

A Saudi Oil Supply Disruption-The Ultimate Crisis Scenario

This morning, I had a very revealing conversation with Vance Scott, a Partner at A.T. Kearney who leads the Energy and Chemicals Practice in the Americas. What might a marketing strategist have to discuss with an oil analyst, you ask? These days: lots – because 2011 is shaping up to be the year of the […]

Pickens’ energy plans has skeptics

Since the United States has no energy plan, billionaire energy investor T. Boone Pickens has proposed his own. First, the U.S. should wean itself off foreign oil and switch to domestic resources, beginning with natural gas, Boone said, outlining the basics of the “Pickens Plan” at a talk at the Yale University Law School last week. Pickens […]

One Country’s Disaster, Another’s Boon

The Japanese earthquake, tsunami and resulting nuclear accident at the Fukushima power plant spawned a disaster that will be hard to remedy or forget. As usual the events have had a number of dimensions, mostly unfortunate for that country no matter how developed and prosperous it has been, no matter how stoic and expectant the […]

Top 5 Oil-Producing Countries In 2011

1. Russia Russia is the single largest oil producing country in the world, with a production of about 10,124,000 barrels per day, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. This represents just under 12% of the world supply of oil. Russia has about 60 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, or about […]

Peak Oil Theory Misses 2010’s New Peak

Like the TV show Twin Peaks in the 1990s, “Peak Oil” theory also has a cult following. A day doesn’t go by that we do not hear about peak oil, and a lot of time is devoted to these types of conspiracy theories without solid analysis. The message becomes the foundation for erratic thinking, and […]

Saudi Aramco Agrees to Supply Oil to Chinese Refinery

State-owned Saudi Arabian Oil Co. Sunday said its unit Aramco Overseas Co., signed a memorandum of understanding with PetroChina Co. Ltd., a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corp. to supply crude to a planned grassroots refinery in southwest China. Aramco, the world’s biggest oil company, will supply as much as 200,000 barrels a day of […]

Suppliers of LNG, coal, oil look to replace nuclear in Japan

Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has ordered officials to accelerate development of the OAO Rosneft-led Sakhalin-3 oil and gas project to help meet projected demand coming from Japan. “It is obvious that this is a long-term loss of generation so we need to think how to speed up plans for developing hydrocarbon production including gas […]

Jean Laherrère: Why Cheap Energy Is a Bad Thing

In this tenth video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, petroleum geophysicist and author Jean Laherrère explains that we are in the current energy crisis not only because fuel is running out, but because its cost is too cheap. Laherrère, a former TOTAL oil company employee, […]

On The Libyan Oil Tank “Time Bomb”

Three weeks ago we first mused about the irrational endgame of it all when we asked: “When Hussein left Kuwait he set the oil wells on fire. Will Ghaddafi?” It now appears that this could well be the endgame, after Al Jazeera reports that “desperate Gaddafi might hit oil facilities in an attempt to fend […]

Oman’s unrest may be a domino, not just to suppliers, but also to customers

There are reports that the unrest in the Middle East has spread to the Sultanate of Oman. While at the moment there have been only one or perhaps two deaths, small in number relative to the larger number of fatalities in countries like Libya, such a milepost, nevertheless, is sadly likely to indicate that the situation […]

The Difference Between Oil Reserves and Supply

In his recent column in the New York Times, Michael C. Lynch shows that he does not grasp the crucial difference between crude oil reserves and supply (”Drilling for an Oil Crisis”, February 24, 2011). Demand and the rising cost of getting oil out of the ground are apparently not important in his “don’t worry […]

Libyan oil sales continuing

Despite sanctions on government, international companies still buying oil from Libya. Libya’s oil sales contribute significantly to the country’s export earnings, making the industry one of Muammar Gaddafi’s main financial pressure points. The international community has been trying to prevent the Libyan leader from obtaining revenue from sales, as his regime’s violent crackdown on protests continue. But the web of international sanctions […]

Israel’s Gas supply fixed?

Israel Electric Corporation continues use of polluting fuel, diesel oil but expected to return to natural gas. After the Yam Tethys conglomerate, which operates the Mari-B natural gas field off Ashdod, said Saturday that a computer glitch was temporarily preventing the gas from coming back onstream, Noble energy, a partner in Yam Tethys and the site’s […]

Market turmoil as IEA warns ‘age of cheap oil is over’

Growing fears of an enduring oil crisis prompted huge volatility on investment markets yesterday – with shares in the world’s biggest oil producer, Saudi Arabia, slumping to a 22-month low – as a top energy official warned that the “age of cheap oil is over”. Concerns about the turmoil in Libya triggered sharp sell-offs in […]

Oil Drilling To Resume In The Gulf

The Interior Department said Monday that it had approved the first new deepwater drilling permit in the Gulf of Mexico since the BP explosion and spill last spring, a milestone after a period of intense uncertainty for industry and a wholesale remaking of the nation’s system of offshore oil and gas regulation. Michael R. Bromwich, […]

International Energy Agency confirms peak oil was in 2006

The Energy Watch Group (EWG) has reiterated its warning that the highpoint of conventional worldwide oil exploitation had been reached in 2006 and said that with its “World Energy Outlook 2010”, the International Energy Agency (IEA) expressly endorsed this conclusion for the very first time, corroborating that the production of crude oil will never again […]

Rebels battle over oil port

Muammar Gaddafi launched a land and air offensive to retake territory in Libya’s east at dawn on Wednesday, sparking a rebel call for foreign air strikes against African mercenaries they said were helping him cling to power. The veteran ruler twinned the attack with a fiery propaganda broadside against the rebels, playing on both nationalist […]

Libyan crisis leads to cut in OPEC output

OPEC output fell in February from a two-year high the previous month as the uprising in Libya curbed supplies from Africa’s third-largest producer, even as Saudi Arabia pumped more, a Reuters survey showed on Tuesday. The loss of a large part of Libya’s high-quality oil has sent oil prices well over $100 a barrel and […]

EU says Gadhafi not in charge of Libyan oil

Libya’s oil chief says production is down 50 percent because of the exodus of foreign oil workers fleeing the country’s violent uprising against leader Moammar Gadhafi. But Shukri Ghanem, the head of the National Oil Co., told The Associated Press on Monday that all of Libya’s oil installations are protected and safe, and disputed comments […]

So, We Have Only Six Months of Oil Left… Any Last Words?

Seven international organizations, including the International Energy Agency, APEC, the United Nations Statistics Division and the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), have been keeping public data on global oil production and exports in the name of transparency in this strategic industry. They call this effort the Joint Organisations Data Initiative or JODI. The last set […]

How much oil will be recoverable?

The world holds a huge amount of oil resources. Besides liquid oil, there is very heavy oil in various forms. There is also liquid oil trapped in oil shale, oil in very deep water, and oil that in not yet fully formed (still kerogen) in shale oil. Some would like us to believe that eventually, […]

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