The Oil ConunDRUM

I synthesized the last several years of blog content and placed it into The Oil ConunDRUM. This document turned into a treatise of topics relating to the role of disorder and entropy in the applied sciences. Volume 1 is mainly on the analysis of the decline in global oil production, while Volume 2 uses often […]

The Great Food Crisis Of 2011

As the new year begins, the price of wheat is setting an all-time high in the United Kingdom. Food riots are spreading across Algeria. Russia is importing grain to sustain its cattle herds until spring grazing begins. India is wrestling with an 18-percent annual food inflation rate, sparking protests. China is looking abroad for potentially […]

No peak oil yet? The limits of the Hubbert model

Fig. 2 World production of “all liquids.” Image from “Oilwatch Monthly” A few words of caution before going on. First, it is too early to say that the data are not compatible with the Hubbert model since it may take a few years before the peak is clearly detectable in the curve. Second, the data […]

ZeroHedge: Total Cost of Corn Ethanol @ 85% Blend $6.80

“Today, the government decides and they misdirect the investment to their friends in the corn industry or the food industry. Think how many taxpayer dollars have been spent on corn [for ethanol], and there’s nobody now really defending that as an efficient way to create diesel fuel or ethanol. The money is spent for political […]

Russia opens Arctic to BP to remain top oil nation

Russia’s move to open up its prized Arctic reserves to oil major BP (BP.L) is driven by the Kremlin’s desire to avoid a fall in production and remain the world’s leading oil nation. Analysts and bankers told Reuters that the deal, in which BP agreed to a multi-billion-dollar share swap with state major Rosneft (ROSN.MM), […]

Below the ocean floor off Angola, modern-day wildcatters have pinpointed what they think is a major oil field

Oilmen are optimists, by creed if not always by nature, and early last spring things looked, as those in the industry like to say, prospective. The deepwater rigs in the Gulf of Mexico were steadily drilling, with no suggestion of any impending calamity, and oil was flowing from the vast finds in offshore Brazil. Circumstances […]

Peak Moment: How to Boil a Frog

Filmmaker Jon Cooksey is one funny guy, even while presenting the most serious problems facing humanity. In this fast-paced conversation, he gallops all over the map with five big problems, five big solutions, and a playful and heartfelt approach. Wacky, sobering, full of animations, with Jon in dozens of personnas, “How to Boil a Frog” […]

The New Feudalism

The new feudalism is evidently to be worldwide; and the drive toward increased global governance is to be accompanied by eroding economic conditions, food insecurity and heightened authoritarianism. There is evidently and obviously a pattern in what is occurring; a level of planning seems evident and the implementation is ongoing. On the other hand, as […]

Population control: Room – not doom – for everyone

For decades, it has been a great international unmentionable. Population growth is the ever expanding elephant in the room, wherever governments gather to address world poverty or environmental degradation. Though everyone knows its importance, it is little discussed and only referred to in passing, if that, in the conventions and communiqués that eventually emerge from […]

Evidence of climate change as 2010 joint warmest year on record

Climatologists have reported further evidence of climate change as figures show that 2010 was the joint warmest year since records began in 1880. Temperatures seen last year and in 2005 were 0.62 C above the global average and the year marked the 34th consecutive year of above average global temperatures, according to the National Oceanic […]

How variations in Sun’s energy contribute to climate change

A new study has brought experts one step closer to understanding how much energy the Earth receives from the Sun, and how changes in that energy could contribute to climate change. The researchers report a lower value of that energy, known as total solar irradiance, than previously measured. “Improved accuracies and stabilities in the long-term […]

Jeremy Rifkin: The third Industrial Revolution

American economist Jeremy Rifkin has an optimistic take on what is generally considered a crisis, and believes peak oil is actually driving us to a new and more sustainable world. “We are on the cusp of a Third Industrial Revolution that could give us an open door to a new post fossil fuel era,” Rifkin […]

Past, Present and Future Venezuelan oil production

Last week I wrote a little about the planned production of heavy oil from the Orinoco Basin in Venezuela and used that as the basis for a discussion on API gravity and refinery gains. What I would like to do today is to revisit this area of Venezuela and discuss a little more of the […]

A dramatic shift in the peak oil discussion: “You don’t have to take my word for it”

If you write about, speak about, or talk with your family, friends and co-workers about peak oil, you’ve almost certainly been asked: “Well, who else is saying what you’re saying?” It’s wise not to rely on just one source of information. Humans are fallible creatures. Knowing that, we feel much more comfortable when we can […]

Beware of the ‘Food Bubble’

Experts worry that the world is facing a looming food crisis, one that we are currently not well prepared to deal with. In his new book, World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, Earth Policy Institute’s Lester Brown looks at the state of the world’s resources, warning that the outlook does […]

Combating Peak Oil with Wind and Smarter Electric Power

We spend a lot of time on this site discussing the risks posed by Peak Oil. It’s important to us that you understand the magnitude of our national/global predicament and take appropriate preparations. But in addition to tracking the gathering stormclouds (of which there are many), our info scouting efforts also look for developments with potential to […]

Norway cuts 4.4 bln barrels from oil/gas reserves

Norway slashed its undiscovered oil and gas resource estimate by 4.4 billion barrels and forecast a 5.8 percent drop in oil output in 2011 as exploration results disappoint and North Sea oilfields mature. The downgrade, expected after exploration wells spudded in prospective gas areas in the Norwegian Sea missed industry expectations, comes at a time […]

Ted Trainer’s new paper: De-Growth is not enough.

Ted Trainer’s new paper was just published in the International Journal of Inclusive Democracy. Jan Hanson have archived it here: http://www.jayhanson.us/_Economics/Trainer_DeGrowth_14_11_10.pdf

$100 oil, Deal with it

The global economy can withstand an oil price of $100 a barrel, Kuwait’s oil minister said on Saturday, as other exporters indicated OPEC may decide against increasing output through 2011 as the market was well supplied. Analysts have said oil producing countries are likely to raise output after crude rallied more than 30 percent from […]

Peak oilers still blind to economic reality

If you don’t know about the Simon-Ehrlich bet, go here to read up on it.  The quick version is that rational optimist Julian Simon bet ‘genius’ doomsayer Paul Ehrlich that the price of certain commodities that Ehrlich was worried that mankind was using up would go down, not up, in reflection of Simon’s belief that […]

Global Population Speak Out, 2011

Third annual Global Population Speak Out to be launched in February: World Population will reach 7 Billion in 2011 The third annual Global Population Speak Out (GPSO), an international advocacy campaign that recruits leading ecologists, academicians, parliamentarians and ordinary citizens to speak out publicly on the fundamental links between population and sustainability, will take place […]

Joe Bageant has cancer

Joe Bageant’s website advises he has a massive internal tumour. http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2011/01/a-note-from-joe.html I have followed Joe’s writings and my view he is one of the USA’s more gifted and lucid commentators, often working Peak Oil into his unique exposition of the “American Hologram”. He has a lot of heart and a unique and charming American voice […]

WORLD OIL OUTLOOK 2010: Oil supply by regions – UPDATE 6

America In the US , and for the first time since 2002, Alaska will be adding production capacity over the medium-term. However the gross addition is only around 100,000 b/d by 2014, mainly from Liberty a… ordons.com

Petroleum-based products are part of life

As the news begins its quarterly coverage of increasing gas prices, the argument often arises whether the United States and the industrialized world is addicted to oil. News stories often focus on the cost of gasoline at the gas station. However, they rarely are able to grasp the scope of how deeply integrated petroleum-based products […]

If shale is a game changer, why do producers seek oil?

Curious, isn’t it, how some of the largest shale gas producers seem to be drilling more for oil these days? According to Baker Hughes Inc., a major oil services company, last week the number of natural gas rigs operating in the U.S. fell for a fifth consecutive week to a 10-month low. Just as the […]

A Cubic Mile of Oil: Realities and Options for Averting the Looming Global Energy Crisis

Listen to MP3 One cubic mile of oil (CMO) corresponds very closely to the world’s current total annual consumption of crude oil. The world’s total annual energy consumption – from all energy sources- is currently 3.0 CMO. By the middle of this century the world will need between 6 and 9 CMO of energy per year to provide […]

The Peak Oil Crisis: Civil Unrest

Buried in the millions of words that were written about the shootings in Arizona last week was a recent poll showing that only 13 percent of the American people think favorably of the U.S. Congress. The implication, of course, is that as 87 percent or roughly 270 million Americans harbor some level of animosity towards their elected federal representatives, the emergence of […]

Richard Heinberg: Peak Oil and the Globe’s Limitations

Richard Heinberg, senior fellow with the Post Carbon Institute and the author of The Party’s Over, Peak Everything and, most recently, Blackout, discusses the phenomenon of peak oil and how it will affect life on this planet.

In an Energy-Scarce World, Is Energy Efficiency Finally King?

In 1865 William Stanley Jevons pointed out something paradoxical: historically, the better we get at efficiently using a resource, the more of that resource we use. Known as the “Jevons paradox,” it’s been the elephant in the room for advocates of energy efficiency, who cite it as one of the core technologies that could reduce […]

When Economic Recovery Collides with Flat Oil Production

A theme that I commonly discuss in articles and presentations is the problem of economic recovery when oil prices are high. If the market is well-supplied and there is ample excess oil production capacity, oil prices tend to be moderate and stable, and economic growth can proceed without much headwind. However, the world has now […]

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