The Shale Wonderland

The world was taken aback when oil prices fell dramatically early this year. We had grown used to oil at over US$100/barrel. To drop to about half was unprecedented. Many in the oil production business are desperately revising their budgets; the rest of us are starting to enjoy an improved cash flow. Of course, what […]

Oil Demand Strong Into 2020

Oil demand will remain strong through at least 2020, pushing spot costs for crude above futures pricing. That’s the message from Francisco Blanch, Bank of America’s head of commodities and derivative research. Electric vehicles won’t start biting into oil demand until at least 2020,  he said in a Bloomberg Television interview Monday. Blanch expects China to […]

In Search Of Investors, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Is Coming To America

Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, will be leaving his kingdom next month for a three-week charm tour. His agenda hasn’t yet been revealed, but sources say MbS (as he’s known) will start his tour March 7 in London, then head to New York, Washington, San Francisco and maybe […]

What if every car sold in the world was an electric vehicle?

Big Oil is finally contemplating the unthinkable, and until recently what was also unimaginable for them. What if every car solar across the globe was an electric vehicle? What would that do to their trillion-dollar business model? Well, they’ve looked at it. They’ve crunched the numbers. But they are not telling. At least that is […]

Global Energy Demand Could Grow 124% by 2100: Even Fossil Fuels Won’t Cut It

The “silly” demand coming for the earth’s resources. A forecast this month showed the world might need 124 percent more energy in 2100, raising questions over where the capacity will come from. Dr. Euan Mearns, writing on the Energy Matters blog, looked at the expected increase in population and per capita energy consumption between 2015 […]

How does KFC run out of chicken?

How on earth does a fast food restaurant that specializes in chicken run out of … chicken? This week KFC temporarily closed up to 800 stores in the UK and Ireland after a failure in its supply chain for chicken. KFC had recently switched delivery and logistics suppliers from Bidvest Logistics to DHL (DPW). It was a […]

Kunstler: Resist That

Perhaps because a weary public was underwhelmed by his indictment last week of thirteen ham sandwiches with Russian dressing, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has returned to an old baloney sandwich with American cheese named Paul Manafort, and slathered on some extra mayonnaise to lubricate his journey to federal prison. The additional charges specify tax evasion […]

Our only hope for long term survival

Sometimes, a good rant is needed. Here is one by Geoffrey Chia by Geoffrey Chia, February 2018 Language warning: Many may find the following article offensive, such as: Technocornucopians – eg geoengineering and carbon drawdown fantasists, blinkered university academics and engineers, TZM, Elon Musk etc People who think reducing population and/or consumption are sacred cows […]

Demand patterns will remain steady for oil and gas

International oil companies have a natural interest in following overall energy developments to see where their fortunes fit. The rising role of electricity makes the competition among energy sources more pronounced as switching from one source of energy to another becomes easier. This is why a long-term energy outlook from BP is worthy of consideration, […]

Cornucopian Renewable-Energy Claims Leave Poor Nations in the Dark

Stanford professor Mark Jacobson and his colleagues have written yet another paper purporting to show that 100 percent of energy demand can be fulfilled by wind, solar, and hydroelectric generation. This latest study, which comes in the form of a manuscript accepted but not yet published by the journal Renewable Energy, seeks to show how […]

‘Fishing continued’ after East China sea oil spill

Fishing continued at the site of a massive oil spill in the East China Sea for days after the incident, satellite images obtained by the BBC suggest. Most of the fishing vessels in the affected region were identified as Chinese. There have been major concerns over possible contamination in seafood and marine life in and […]

Egypt builds world’s largest solar park

Egypt has the natural potential to become one of the world’s strongest energy players as it contains the three main natural elements to develop an abundance of energy: sunlight, wind and hydro-energy. Despite that, Egypt has been failing to provide a stable source of electricity to its ever-growing population. The country imports oil despite having […]

Venezuela’s Petro: Stable Coin For Crypto-Economy Or Illegal Oil Futures?

Starting in late 2017 Venezuela’s President Nikolas Maduro began expanding heavily into media space in an attempt to promote a new payment instrument– the government-issued cryptocurrency Petro. On Feb. 20 the pre-sale of Petro was launched and has already raised $735 mln, according to Maduro’s Twitter. Total amount of PTR issued for sale is 100 mln […]

Russia remains China’s top oil supplier as pipeline expands

Russia remained the top crude oil supplier to China in January, data showed, beginning 2018 on a strong note after the start-up of an expanded trans-Siberia pipeline and as Beijing released more crude import quotas to independent refiners. Angola and Iraq took the second and third positions for the month, leapfrogging Saudi Arabia, which was […]

Mideast Strife Is Cash Positive For U.S. Natural Gas — And Chinese Coal

By Jim Krane Over the years, America’s involvement in the strife-ridden politics of the Middle East has brought a lot of heartache. By one measure, however, Americans’ luck in the Middle East has improved. It’s not that political divisions have mended. It’s that U.S. natural gas producers have found a way to capitalize on those […]

BP Predicts Renewables Will Peak by 2040

One of the world’s leading energy companies, BP is predicting renewable energy sources to be influential in shaping the global energy sources by 2040. The report released by BP proposed that renewable energy will grow in five-folds within the next twenty-two (22) years to provide 14% of the world’s primary energy. A growing competition in […]

The ERoEI of Mining Uranium

In 2009, in the comments to this post on The Oil Drum we stumbled upon a mine of information on the operation of the Rossing uranium mine in Namibia. The data table provided numbers for the amount of energy used on site together with the amount of uranium mined. This provided an opportunity to calculate […]

Why America wants a war with Russia

Just recently I saw this innocent question asked on Moon of Alabama’s website, and decided to post a reply: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/russian-bots-how-an-anti-russian-lobby-creates-fake-news.html “For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia.” Ever since US Crude Oil production peaked in 1970, the US has known that at some point the oil majors […]

The world’s taps are rapidly running dry

The world has abundant fresh water but it is unevenly distributed and under increasing pressure, United Nations agencies say, as highlighted by the drought in Cape Town. On Tuesday South Africa declared the drought that has hit parts of the country and threatened to leave the Mother City without domestic tap water a national disaster. […]

India’s Oil Demand Will Not Peak Soon, Ties With Saudi Will Be Key

In 1972, Sheik Ahmed Yamani, then the oil minister of Saudi Arabia, commented to the Chairman of Exxon that “the United States cannot take an oil supply shut down”, knowing well that there was no spare capacity anywhere else in the world. The honorable minister may not have imagined that four decades later, the rest […]

Vision 2030 & the Political Costs of Saudi Reforms

A pillar of the Saudi social contract has been the allocation of oil rents to the population in exchange for loyalty and fidelity to the Saud clan. A key weakness of Vision 2030 is its lack of focus on the potential political consequences of economic reforms. The plan seems to assume that its ramifications will […]

Gail Tverberg: Raising Interest Rates Is Like Starting a Fission Chain Reaction

Central bankers seem to think that adjusting interest rates is a nice little tool that they can easily handle. The problem is that higher interest rates affect the economy in many ways simultaneously. The lessons that seem to have been learned from past rate hikes may not be applicable today. Furthermore, there can be quite […]

BP: Oil Demand Is Going to Peak in the Next 20 Years

Oil use will peak by the late 2030s as electric vehicles hit the road in force after 2035, BP predicted Tuesday in its annual report. With a growth from 2 million electric vehicles in 2016 to an expected 320 million by 2040, company leaders foresee that the number of electric cars will account for 15 […]

Robert Rapier: Peak Oil In Four Years?

Between 2010 and 2015, annual oil production in the U.S. grew by four million barrels per day (BPD). Production dipped in 2016, but then U.S. crude oil production again rose by 1.2 million BPD between January and December 2017, to levels that haven’t been seen since the early 1970s. The surge in production is a […]

India Will Lead Global Oil Demand By 2035

Oil market participants and analysts have been closely watching the record level of supply coming out of the United States that is threatening to undo OPEC’s production cuts. But in the latter part of 2017 and early in 2018, robust oil demand growth — both in emerging markets and OECD economies — has supported oil […]

Richard Heinberg: Old Age and Societal Decline

People grow old and die. Civilizations eventually fail. For centuries amateur philosophers have used the former as a metaphor for the latter, leading to a few useful insights and just as many misleading generalizations. The comparison becomes more immediately interesting as our own civilization stumbles blindly toward collapse. While not the cheeriest of subjects, it’s […]

Offshore Oil Recovery Beginning in World’s Harshest Environments

Explorers are once again testing the waters in their search for oil, according to Transocean Ltd., the world’s biggest offshore rig contractor by market value. Drillers worldwide are forecast to boost new commitments for all types of offshore work by 140 percent this year, Jeremy Thigpen, Transocean’s Chief Executive officer told analysts and investors in […]

Iran ready to share resources with India

Oil and gas-rich Iran is ready to share its natural resources with India to help its development, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said on a visit to India on Friday. “Iran is rich in oil and natural gas resources. It is ready to share the natural resources with India for its development and progress,” Indian media […]

Singapore to introduce carbon tax in 2019

Singapore will introduce a tax on emissions of S$5.00 per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent ($3.80/tCO2e) from 2019, according to The Straits Times. The move was announced in the country’s budget on Monday and will apply to all facilities producing more than 25,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year. – All facilities producing 25,000 […]

The Militarization of U.S. Energy Policy: Donald Trump Enlists Fossil Fuels in the Struggle for Global Dominance

As the recently published National Security Strategy shows, Donald Trump has turned the expansion of the U.S. fossil fuel industry and its exports into a major component of American foreign and security policy, writes energy expert and author Michael T. Klare. In the view of the Trump administration, anyone that stands in the way of […]

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