Lower second tier oil producers – Norway, Brazil, Iraq and Algeria

This current series of posts is aimed at an overview of the top oil producing nations, seeking to establish how the ranking of the countries is changing from the original table that EIA put out in 2008, After looking at the conditions governing the top six, this was followed last week when I looked at the condition […]

Gasoline Gangsters Episode 7: Did Cuba Survive Peak Oil?

Did Cuba really survive peak oil? Unfortunately Cuba is yet to hit it’s own peak oil production. This week I discuss how this small island nation has the potential to produce 20 billion barrels of oil from the North Cuba Basin. That’s more than the total proven oil reserves of America & double the size […]

Iraq’s largest oil refinery shut by bombing

Militants attacked Iraq’s largest oil refinery on Saturday, killing four workers and detonating bombs that touched off a raging fire and shut down the plant in northern Iraq, officials said. In the southern town of Samawa, a second refinery was shut down by fire but officials said initial reports indicated it was started by a […]

Wiarton Jeff’s peakonomics

The surge in oil prices in the wake of Libyan turmoil has inevitably brought the Peak Oil groundhogs out of their burrows. Wiarton Jeff Rubin, former chief economist for CIBC, was on the CBC’s The Current on Wednesday, and in The Globe and Mail on Thursday, claiming that further sharp price increases could be on the immediate […]

World Oil Supplies as Reported in EIA’s most recent International Energy Statistics

My post is mainly an update to Global Oil Supplies as Reported by EIA’s International Petroleum Monthly (IPM) for November 2010, based on data which the EIA reported in the past few weeks in their final edition of IPM and in their International Energy Statistics. I will also briefly present updated information regarding OECD and Non […]

MICHAEL LYNCH: Drilling for an Oil Crisis

AS WikiLeaks’s trove of diplomatic dispatches continues to trickle out, one recent release has caused quite a stir: a cable from an American diplomat who said he was told by a Saudi oil executive that both official estimates of Saudi oil reserves and their ability to meet global demand in the long run have been vastly […]

Saudi Arabia in talks to boost oil output

Saudi Arabia is in “active talks” with European oil companies to meet the production shortfall left by Libya, the clearest indication to date that the leader of the Opec oil cartel is about to boost supplies to stop further rises in the oil price, which surged to near $120 a barrel on Thursday. Riyadh is […]

Libyan Oil Grinding to a Halt

Here’s the latest: At least 300kbd-400kbd of oil production are shut-in already, and likely more, but the situation is still confusing. As much as a quarter of Libyan oil output has been shut down, Reuters calculations showed on Wednesday, as unrest prompted oil companies to warn of production cuts in Africa’s third-largest producer. Austria’s OMV said […]

Greg Palast: We’re Not Running Out of Oil, Just Cheap Oil

In this eighth video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, investigative journalist and author Greg Palast says the era of cheap fuel is over. Now energy companies are scouring the globe for oil, often extracting resources in more expensive and more environmentally sensitive conditions. […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Inflection Point

It has taken two months for the contagion that began with the immolation of a fruit seller in Tunisia to reach the first significant oil producing nation. As oil production in Libya grinds to a halt and Muammar Gadhafi clings to power amidst increasing turmoil, it is beginning to look as if it may be […]

Why all of the Concern about Libya?

We keep hearing about unrest in the Middle East and Northern Africa, with Libya being the latest country to get top billing. Why all of the concern, especially related to oil? Libya is a relatively oil-rich country. According to the CIA World Factbook, its per capita income is more than double Egypt’s. While Egypt is […]

Egypt, a Classic Case of Rapid Net-Export Decline and a Look at Global Net Exports

In a recent guest column, “Peak Oil Versus Peak Exports,” we discussed the dramatic differences between simple post-peak oil-production declines, e.g., Texas and the North Sea, and net export declines, e.g., the UK and Indonesia, as illustrated in the “Export Land” Model (ELM), a simple mathematical model. Based on the ELM, we have concluded that […]

Graph of the Day: The Cost of Production Of Oil

TreeHugger points to a TOD post looking at the cost of production for oil from various sources – Does Peak Oil Even Matter?. The summary – “Peak Oilers have always pointed out that we will never run out of oil, it will just get a lot more expensive. And when it does, it will crush […]

Is time running out?

In this article, Dr Samuel Fenwick takes a look at the long-term issues facing the energy sector and looks at how we might escape the seemingly inevitable. One of the most worrying issues that I’ve been introduced to since I started this position at IFandP is that of peak oil and resource depletion. Much of […]

Gail Tverberg : Low Quality is What is Killing Us, Not Low Quantity

The Peak Oil argument focuses on the question “How much oil?” We spend a lot of time discussing the exact inputs for Hubbert Linearization and projections of Ultimate Recoverable Reserves, in order to calculate the moment of Peak Oil. Sadly, the question of “How much oil?” is a lot more complicated than it seems. As […]

Is “shale oil” the answer to “peak oil”?

Readers have been asking questions about a couple of shale oil articles recently. One is an AP article called New drilling method opens vast oil fields in US. A similar article is a CNBC article titled Massive New US Oil Supply – ‘Peak Oil’ Fears Overblown? Both of these articles talk about the extraction of shale […]

‘Peak oil’ — it’s baaaack

Hey, remember “peak oil“? I used to blog about that a lot back in the early days of this blog back in 2005 or so, and so did a lot of other libs. For a time it was on a par with global warming — because a) oil prices were climbing well over $100 a […]

Shale Gas Potential

My man T. Boone appeared on the Daily Show a few nights ago… But none of the juicy details appeared in the 7-minute segment appearing on television. To get the good stuff, you had to check out the video on the Web. I’ve been covering the Pickens Plan in these pages since early 2008. His […]

Brazil Set to Become a Top Oil Producer

Brazil has a sunken treasure off its shores… though not the type Jack Sparrow might seek. Instead, it is stashed beneath miles of water, rock and layers of salt beneath the ocean’s floor. And these so-called “pre-salt” oil fields make for the biggest oil discovery in the Americas since the 1970s. Brazil’s oil regulator estimates […]

Massive New US Oil Supply—’Peak Oil’ Fears Overblown?

New drilling techniques may open up “vast fields of previously out-of-reach oil” in the United States—and cut our dependence on foreign oil in half within a decade. Ed Morse, the head of commodities research at Credit Suisse, predicts that oil imports could be cut by 60 percent—driven by the kind of news announced today—including the […]

Peak oil: We are asleep at the wheel

John Vidal’s report on US diplomatic cables from Saudi Arabia raises the spectre of premature peak oil: an unexpected deline in global oil production in an oil-dependent world. The US government is among many administrations that routinely reassure the public that supplies of oil can go on growing far into the future. But in private, […]

Oil sands project inventory

Although much maligned by some as dirty oil, projects are moving ahead in Alberta to recover the billions of barrels of bitumen contained in the oil sands found in the Athabasca, Peace River, and Cold Lake regions. In its December 2010 inventory of major oil sands projects, the Alberta government lists 55 projects in various […]

All The Guardian Saudi Oil Cables

At present, I have found five Wikileaks cables that the Guardian has published which concern Saudi Arabian oil production and reserves. Here are links to each one, in chronological order, and a short excerpt to give the flavor: 2007-09-19: TOO DARN HOT: SAUDI EP BOOM REACHING LIMITS? With temperatures reaching 115 degrees, the Eastern Province […]

Italian oil tanker falls to pirates

An Italian oil tanker has been hijacked by pirates in the Indian Ocean, news reports here quoted the Italian coast guard as saying Tuesday. According to the Italian Marine Corps, the captain tried to evade capture by speeding up, suddenly changing gear and firing powerful water jets on the priates’ skiff. At least five pirates […]

Don’t count on natural gas to solve US energy problems

We often hear statements suggesting that by ramping up shale gas production, the US can raise total natural gas production and solve many of its energy problems. While there is the possibility that shale gas will allow US natural gas supplies to increase for a few years, it is doubtful this advantage will last for […]

Egyptian natural gas supplies to Israel cut off after explosion

Natural gas supplies to Israel have been cut off after an explosion in an Egyptian gas line in the Sinai Peninsula. It is unclear whether Saturday’s explosion was caused by a gas leak or by sabotage. The head of Egypt’s natural gas company said the explosion was caused by a gas leak; Egyptian state television said […]

Oil Tankers in the wake of the Egyptian Crisis

Gail Tverberg’s analysis of some of the underlying causes of the current Egyptian crisis is cogent, but one of the other consequences caught my attention today. For, as was noted in Forbes While most equity-related assets got battered, a select group of stocks, oil shippers, were corking champagne bottles. Apart from Overseas Shipholding, Frontline Ltd. […]

Uganda has the oil curse

For close to five years now, Uganda’s oil industry has attracted heated debate, especially on the lack of transparency in the industry. In a two-part commentary, Isaac Imaka analyses Uganda’s young oil industry by tracing the discovery of the mineral, the major developments in the industry; its impact on the social, economic and political life […]

Iran claims more refining capacity

Iran’s oil minister said Saturday the country has boosted its refining capacity by 2 million liters of fuel per day, claiming it was a sign of growing self-sufficiency in the face of international sanctions. Though Iran is the second-largest oil producer in OPEC, its lack of sizable refining capacity makes it dependent on imports of […]

Oil Shock Potential of OPEC Nations

While we are all having our minds focussed anew on the wisdom of deriving economically critical commodities from unpleasant autocratic regimes, it seems a good moment to review the potential impact on oil prices of revolutions in each of the various OPEC countries.  This is a rather uncertain exercise for at least these reasons: It […]

« Previous Page — Next Page »

LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• Why the IEA is Wrong About Peak Oil Demand
• Did we inadvertently speed global warming?  
• Venezuela’s Oil Monopoly Eases
• Why Germany is Choosing Natural Gas Over Nuclear Power
• U.S. coal-fired electricity generation decreased in 2022 and 2023

• America Cracks Down on Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Facilities
• Meet America’s Newest Oil Trader Extraordinaire: Joe Biden
• Is It Time To Refill America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
• Oil prices set to end year 10% lower as demand concerns snap winning streak
• What’s Driving America’s New Oil and Gas Boom?
• China’s peak oil demand bombshell eviscerates Danielle Smith’s energy strategy