Energy / Crude Oil

• Peak Oil and Depopulation

  The growth of the human population cannot continue forever—there is a limit to our numbers, even if we cannot specify what that limit might be.  There is also a limit to how much oil can be extracted from our planet, even if we don’t know exactly how much oil there really is.  These two variables are related because cheap oil has allowed us to support a population that is much larger than it would be otherwise.  Despite more than 200,000 years of living and growing, the population of Homo sapiens never even reached one billion before the beginning of the…

• Libya: But What About The Oil?

  As I pen these few humble words, Swedish combat aircraft are being tuned up for the long flight from Sweden to somewhere in the Mediterranean. There is no  shortage of volunteers – pilots, mechanics and other ground crew – for this mission, because it has been a very long winter in Scandinavia, and many young Swedish men are so keen to get close to the disco and bar life in that sunny part of the world that they can almost  taste it. As they used to ask in the U.S. during WW2, is this trip necessary? Well, let’s do some…

• OPEC: Beginning of The End?

  The recent uprising in North Africa and the Middle East (MENA) region, which culminated in an UN sanctioned military acton against Libya, suggests that the eventual break-up of the 'Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries' (OPEC) could be near.  OPEC is an organization consists of twelve oil exporting countries, namely, Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela (See Chart). The organization is considered a cartel, while some are more progressive than others, the majority of OPEC members are governed by essentially autocratic system of governments. The start of the break…

• Oil Isn’t What It Used to Be

  Virtually every analyst has been puzzled by the seeming immunity of stock markets to soaring oil prices this year. In fact, stocks and crude have been tracking almost one to one on the upside. The charts below a friend at JP Morgan sent me go a long way towards explaining this apparent dichotomy. The first shows the number of barrels of oil needed to generate a unit of GDP, which has been steady declining for 30 years. The second reveals the percentage of hourly earnings required to buy a gallon of gasoline in the US, which has been mostly flat…

• Peak Oil, Cheap Oil and Stagflation

  America is addicted to oil. We deem it a constitutional right to drive Hummers and have $4 a gallon gasoline. But there is an Achille’s heel to our lifestyle—oil is a finite resource, and one day we will run out of cheap oil. The story of peak oil Let’s say that you live in New York and you make $80,000 a year. Life is good, it isn’t great, but at least you are making $80k. So how is it that you make $80k? Is it because you are skilled and worth it? Sure, you are, but is there something supporting…

• Scientists Develop More Efficient Way to Extract Oil from Oil Sands

  Oil sands represent approximately two-thirds of the world’s estimated oil reserves. Canada is the world’s major producer of unconventional petroleum from sands, and the U.S. imports more than one million barrels of oil per day from Canada, about twice as much as from Saudi Arabia. Much of this oil is produced from the Alberta tar sands. _Newswise Penn State researchers have developed a cleaner, more economical, and more water-efficient method of separating the bitumen component from oil sands. Paul Painter, professor of polymer science in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State, and his group have spent…

• Reducing America’s Reliance on Foreign Oil

  The high price of oil won’t have passed you by if you’ve had to fuel your car or your home boiler recently, and the values of oil exporters’ currencies are seeing the effect as well. The difference is that they are making more money while we are all forking it out, both personally and for the country as a whole, in a deteriorating balance of payments. It made me wonder: what is required to change consumers’ choices on the use of energy? We know that sudden rises in gas prices depress visitor numbers to out-of-town shopping malls, but that is…

• Peak Oil Confronts Peak Idiocracy: What to Do?

  Political restrictions on international oil drilling by OPEC, Russia, and other national oil companies and dictatorships is driving international companies to drill in more extreme environments. Extreme offshore drilling is likely to increase for this reason, and because that is where most of the new giant oil fields are likely to be found. Such a movement into an extreme environment is becoming more difficult as the world confronts "peak manpower" -- which is the inevitable mirror image of "peak Idiocracy." Offshore Oil Installations Due to differential birthrates and other global demographic change, the global average population IQ is dropping from…

• Update on Libyan Oil Production

  The trajectory of Libyan oil production remains concerning. Estimates of current shut in production vary from a low of 500,000 barrels/day (b/d) to over 1 million, from a total production of 1.6 million barrels/day (mmb/d). Company withdrawal of expatriate production workers appears to be a major contributing cause of the production decline, not damage to producing fields, although other factors are in play. Though Libya is a small producer, its oil is highly prized in the Mediterranean basin by Italian, French, and other regional buyers, as well as in northwest Europe for use by heavy, sour-based refiners as a blending…

• Peak Oil – Scaremongering or Soon Reality?

  As pointed out in previous reports we think that the maximum global production of conventional oil could soon be reached. There is no doubt that peak oil is more than simple scaremongering. The production profile of specific fields, regions, and countries has the same structure, i.e. that of a bell-shaped curve. According to Robert Hirsch 64 countries have already reached their maximum production levels. Nevertheless peak oil seems to remain a contrarian topic. According to a Credit Suisse poll, only 5% of investors currently regard peak oil as a threat. The remaining 95% expect peak oil in 20 years or…