Scraping the bottom of the barrel

Several articles in the international media in recent months have claimed that worries about peak oil – the peak and decline in yearly world oil production – are unfounded because vast new reserves of unconventional oil are coming on stream. But a closer look at these new sources of oil casts doubt on this assertion. Data from the US Energy Information Administration show that conventional crude oil production – oil from wells accessed using typical drilling techniques – has been essen- tially flat at around 74-million barrels per day (mbpd) since 2005. Looking at the history of con- ventional crude oil discoveries, this is not surprising – they peaked in the mid-1960s and have been on a declining trend ever since. Since 2005, all liquid fuels production – which includes natural gas liquids, biofuels, gas-to-liquids and unconventional oil – has been growing ...

Forget Peak Oil, Time To Worry About Peak Oil Labor

In a recent working paper, researchers at the the IMF (International Monetary Fund) attempt to reconcile the Peak Oil debate that whether resource constraints will dictate the future of oil output and prices, or advance in technology motivated by high oil price would eventually provide a solution to more production, as well as higher oil prices. An economic model was developed incorporating both views, and identified two biggest factors contributing to the recent run-up in oil prices: Relative price insensitivity on the supply side - We have to point out that this IMF observation is partly due to oil production increase/decrease typically significantly lags the oil price movement. "Shocks to excess demand for goods and to demand for oil" due to the recent phenomenal growth from countries like China and India. The paper also gives out this dire warning: "....our prediction of small further increases in ...

Australia Seen a Decade Away From Large-Scale Shale Production

Australian shale explorers may be a decade away from producing oil and gas on a large scale because of obstacles ranging from a lack of drilling equipment to higher labor and infrastructure costs, Wood Mackenzie Ltd. said. “The only factor that could change that significantly is if there’s a liquids-rich play that really drove the need to rapidly bring in the rigs,” Andrew McManus, the Sydney-based vice president of Australasia energy consulting at Wood Mackenzie, said in an interview. “Then you can see the value proposition and would want to fast-track that.” Projects focusing on higher-priced oil and liquids may earn better returns and reach production faster, according to Wood Mackenzie and ConocoPhillips. (COP) In the U.S., the largest producer of the fuel, a supply glut has caused gas prices to slump and forced companies including BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP) and Royal ...

Japan trades nuclear power for fossil fuels

Energy is the lifeblood of modern economies and there’s no more amazingly useful form of energy than electricity. That’s why I was initially startled to read the recent news that the last of Japan’s 54 nuclear power plants has been shut down, a turn of events that makes Japan the first major economy of this century to run without operating any such reactors. The news impressed me because prior to the mega-quake and tsunami of 2011, Japan powered 30 percent of its electrical grid from nuclear plants. Giving up about a third of the electrical power used by a major economy is a convulsive change. (By way of comparison, in the U.S. about 20 percent of our electricity comes from nukes. That’s more than most people realize, but still a full notch less than what Japan had been doing before the quake.) But ...

How The U.S. Dollar Will Be Replaced

After being immersed in the world of alternative economic analysis for several years, it sometimes becomes easy to forget that most people do not track forex markets, or debt to GDP ratio, or true unemployment, or hunch over IMF white-papers highlighting subsections which expose the trappings of the globalist ideology. Sometimes, you just assume the average person knows what the heck you are talking about. This is, of course, a mistake. However, it is a mistake that is borne from the inadequacy of our age and our culture, and is not necessarily a product of weak character, either of the analyst, or the casual reader. The great frustration of being actively involved in the Liberty Movement is the fact that many people are rarely on the same page (or even the same book) during political and economic discussion. Where we see ...

John Michael Greer: The Twilight of Protest

Over the last four months or so, as this blog has sketched out the ...

Peak Oil Denial: The Liberal’s Dilemma (Pt 6)

[NOTE: This is the sixth and final installment of a subset of my ongoing ...

Resilience or death: Preparing our farms for the end of agriculture (…as we know it)

“[G]lobal food production is hitting an array of ecological constraints, while population growth and ...

Gulf of Mexico site chosen for first US floating LNG plant

Excelerate Energy LP, Houston, will develop the first US floating natural gas liquefaction plant ...