Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In just a century, we’ve become almost entirely dependent on cheap oil. We rely on oil for just about everything, in fact the global economy is reliant on its free flowing supply. So what would happen if the well started to run dry and demand outstripped supply? Some oil industry experts think we’ve already hit Peak Oil and we should brace ourselves for the imminent Oil Crunch.
You can see that the IMF is basically forecasting five years of pretty good growth – near the top of the historical range, but certainly not above it. They are not projecting any serious global slowdowns, still less an outright global recession (those are rare – 2009 was the only case in the last thirty years)…This requires the world come up with another 17mbd of supply in the next five years, though it only managed to come up with about 3-4mbd over the last five years, and that took a quadrupling of prices to achieve. I don’t see where this much oil can possibly come from.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-China
-The Saudi enigma
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Despite soaring rhetoric and some promising proposals, President Obama is repeating the same mistakes that have doomed U.S. energy policy to failure for 40 years. Until Obama and Congress finally put a true price on the fossil fuels America consumes, the U.S. will continue its addiction to foreign oil and domestic coal.
– Peak oil special on ABC (Australia) with IEA’s Fatih Birol, Chris Skrebowski and Jeremy Leggett
– What’s Driving Gas Prices (interview with ex-CEO of Shell John Hofmeister)
– A short history of oil: 1900 to 2010
– Is the Tide Turning Against Arab Freedom?
– Lester Brown: This will be the Arab world’s next battle (water and population)
– Iraqi Oil: What is hidden inside the Oil Contracts from the 1st and 2nd Bid Rounds?
Documentary evidence has emerged showing that Great Britain’s Lords and Ladies lied about how big oil companies, like BP, lusted after Iraqi oil in the months leading up to the attack on Iraq.
Oil researcher Greg Muttitt’s new book Fuel on Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq presents that evidence. After a five-year struggle, he obtained more than 1,000 official documents which — how to say this — do not reflect well on the peerage, the captains of the oil industry, and the government of Tony Blair.
I was surprised that CNBC (I sometimes think that the first “C” stands for Cornucopian*) just ran two programs that seriously talked about resource limits, Sprawling from Grace on Wednesday and Fuel on Thursday.
Of the two, I think that Sprawling from Grace was a lot better, but having said that, it seemed to me to be largely a remake of End of Suburbia, and in fact Jim Kunstler was prominently featured in both. But Sprawling was on CNBC, while End of Suburbia was not.
President Obama’s to-do list:
– Increase domestic production of oil.
– Root out fraud and manipulation in oil markets.
– End $4 billion in subsidies to oil and gas companies.
– Invest in renewable energy.
– Gas-price spike sparks U.S. probe of oil traders (Obama)
– Guardian: Shale gas special report
– Peak Oil – Gail Tverberg’s April 2011 Update
– Prof. David Rutledge of Caltech on “Hubbert’s Peak, The Coal Question and Climate Change” (video)
Confusion around the true extent of the spare oil production capacity of Saudi Arabia increased this week following a statement by Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi that his country had reduced production in March by 800,000 barrels–this despite the loss of 1 million barrels/day of production from Libya. Al Naimi went on to claim that global markets are currently oversupplied.
Chris Martenson joins David Pakman live in studio for a discussion about the budget, economic situation, Wall Street, corruption, energy, the Japanese nuclear crisis, and more.
