Oil

How It Could Happen, Part One: Hubris

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It’s easy for discussions about future crises to remain stuck in a realm of abstractions that never quite get down to talking about the lived reality of events as they happen. The toolkit of narrative fiction is one of the few useful ways to get past that roadblock of the imagination. This week’s post, therefore, is the first of a five-part series providing, in fictional form, a glimpse at one way the American empire could go the way of Nineveh and Tyre.

Hofmeister: A difficult decade ahead for oil prices and supplies

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I, along with my editor Sam Avro, recently conducted a broad-ranging interview with John Hofmeister, former President of Shell Oil. The topics touched upon included future oil supplies and prices, climate change, U.S. energy policy, and topics familiar to R-Squared Energy readers such as Peak Lite and the Long Recession. I will present this interview in a series of stories covering some of the various topics. In this first story, I will discuss Mr. Hofmeister’s detailed answer to the question, “What do you feel is the potential for expanding global oil production, and the time frames?”

How much oil growth do we need to support world GDP growth?

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A few days ago, I showed the close relationship between growth in world oil consumption and growth in world GDP. In this post, I will extend that analysis by building a model that shows how much of an increase in world oil supply is needed for a given increase in world GDP. This model indicates that if we want the world economy to grow by 4% per year, world oil supply will need to grow by close to 3% per year. This is more than world oil supply has grown per year since the 1970s–giving a clue as to why the world is having so much problem with economic growth now.

Energy transition: We need to do it fast and we’re way behind

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No doubt you’ve heard people speak of an energy transition from a fossil fuel-based society to one based on renewable energy–energy which by its very nature cannot run out. Here’s the short answer to why we need do it fast: climate change and fossil fuel depletion. And, here’s the short answer to why we’re way behind: History suggests that it can take up to 50 years to replace an existing energy infrastructure, and we don’t have that long.

ODAC Newsletter Sept 28

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Oil prices were once again oscillating between the price depressing effects of economic uncertainty and the price enhancing effects of Middle East political uncertainties this week…Saudi Arabia has promised to keep oil markets supplied in the event of shortfalls elsewhere, but Deutsche Bank, and others question whether the kingdom is really in a position to make good on the promise. The IEA now estimates Saudi spare capacity at just under 2 million barrels/day.

The peak oil crisis: oil & the arctic meltdown

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Last week brought the news that this summer the Arctic icecap shrank to an all-time low of roughly half the size it was in 1980. While this is the lowest ever seen since satellite monitoring began 33 years ago, some experts are saying that the summer of 2012 was probably the smallest the icecap has been in the last million years. The announcement triggered a spate of newspaper and magazine stories pondering the meaning of this development.

It now appears that the arctic is melting much faster than the models have been predicting.

Is shale oil production from Bakken headed for a run with “The Red Queen”?

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In this post I present the results from an in depth time series analysis from wells producing crude oil (and small volumes of natural gas) from the Bakken (Bakken, Sanish, Three Forks and Bakken/Three Forks Pools) formation in North Dakota. The analysis uses actual production data from the North Dakota Industrial Commission as of July 2012 from what was found to be a representative selection of wells from operating companies and areas.

Degrowth and peak oil

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Today, we are discussing another kind of degrowth, intended mostly as a personal choice and most of us seem to believe that it is a good thing. It is an attitude that looks similar to the one we had about peak oil 10 years ago. But is it possible that we are making the same mistake? That is, could we be too optimistic about what degrowth can bring to us?