The Cost of Cheap Oil
By Richard E. Vodra, Advisor Perspectives
The world price of oil - Brent Crude - fell below $84 per barrel on October 15. What is going on? Why does the price of oil matter to financial advisors? What might these fluctuations mean to the price and supply of oil for the rest of the decade?
Oil Abundance? Not So Fast- A Risk Checklist
By Richard E. Vodra, ASPO-USA
Understanding how we use oil and where it comes from provides many reasons why Americans should be worried about the future of oil supplies.
Oil Abundance? Not So Fast – Drilling holes in the energy boom story
By Richard E. Vodra, ASPO-USA
The story of America’s new energy abundance has been accepted uncritically by too many people.
Commentary: Looking Back at Peak Oil
By Richard E. Vodra, ASPO-USA
Peak Oil – the maximum sustainable rate of global oil production - happened in 2012. That’s one of the main conclusions of a new report, Fossil and Nuclear Fuels – The Supply Outlook, released in March 2013 by the Energy Watch Group (EWG). This event will have profound long-term implications for how advisors should manage clients’ portfolios, and how clients should plan their future expenses.
Is fracking a “happy solution” to our energy needs?
By Richard E. Vodra, Advisor Perspectives
Looking at technical, economic, energetic, and environmental issues, this is a wide-ranging response for financial advisors by a long-time planner and ASPO board member.
Book review: “Energy and the Wealth of Nations”
By Richard E. Vodra, JD, ASPO-USA
When our society relies on an understanding of economics that did not predict, prevent, or mitigate the current economic crisis, and that, more importantly, does not effectively address climate change or resource depletion, it is time for a new and different approach to understanding the economy. That premise is the foundation of Energy and the Wealth of Nations, an important book by ecologist Charles Hall and economist Kent Klitgaard, who together are pioneering the new discipline of biophysical economics.
Can overconfidence be overcome in advance?
By Richard E. Vodra, ASPO-USA
What seems to be missing from the coming New York Times energy conference is a sense of skepticism about the underlying assumptions for energy sufficiency in the decades to come. The agenda, speakers, and likely attendees remind one of what a shipboard symposium might have been like on the future of trans-Atlantic shipping held in the salon of the Titanic exactly one hundred years earlier. Maybe it’s inevitable that the hard questions won’t be entertained until the disaster occurs and we realize there aren’t enough lifeboats.
The energy expert you shouldn’t trust
By Richard E. Vodra, Advisor Perspectives
Daniel Yergin has written The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, designed to provide information that policy-makers can rely upon in shaping energy policy for the decades ahead. This could be a dangerous reliance, for Yergin is an advocate for the fossil fuel community, not an honest broker of information. Nearly all the data cited in the book is from his company and is proprietary and non-public, so it can’t be verified or challenged. He doesn’t appear to take seriously the views of people he doesn’t agree with, and they are not included in his extensive bibliography or interviewee list.