Fossil Fuels

Commentary: An oil shock in 2012?

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The price of oil is once again daily in the news. The Western Europe benchmark Brent crude has hovered near $100 / barrel for much of the last month, and the IEA is again warning of the burden of oil consumption. Is this a harbinger of things to come, or a mere statistical blip in a market that is “well supplied”? How will events play out in oil markets in the coming year or two?

The coming misery that Big Oil discusses behind closed doors

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When big-thinkers at companies with the most skin in the energy game are behind closed doors and they discuss how the world really looks going forward, do they say that there are bumps in the road but that things will be fine, just fine, as they suggest publicly? Three years ago, we got a glimpse into the room when Royal Dutch/Shell issued a scenario forecasting the world in 2020. Based on current economic and energy-use patterns around the world, Shell said that energy supplies will be so tight that they will tip the world into a full-blown crisis in which governments will force their populations to reduce driving, use less electricity, and pay an extremely steep increase for what they do consume. Today, Shell returned with an update. If the world does not change how it uses energy, its scenario will hold true.

The week of the game changer in oil, or was it?

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This past week was supposedly the week of the game changer in the world of oil. Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables from Saudi Arabia called into question the ability of the globe’s largest oil exporter to raise production to satisfy a world increasingly thirsty for petroleum. In the United States a technique called hydraulic fracturing–which has seemingly unlocked vast natural gas resources–will now be applied to oil trapped in shale deposits. Are these two developments really the so-called game changers they are claimed to be?

Excessive optimism is our enemy, with Coal-to-liquids as a case study

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Confidence provides strengths for a society, but only when coupled with clear vision. Unfortunately modern America too-often too often sees the future only in terms of doomsters’ pessimism and advocates’ optimism. Here we have a case study of the latter. Coal-to-liquids will not be cheap oil. It’s one part of the solution for the next several generations. Not the largest part, and certainly not a panacea.

Preface to a Prelude to Peak Oil

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Prelude may be the first thriller novel explicitly about peak oil (numberless thrillers concern the nefarious machinations of international oil conglomerates — ultimately those are stories about peak oil too). It follows a short period in the life and career of Cassie Young, an oil industry analyst based in Washington, DC.

Paul Erhlich interview- Humanity on a tightrope

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There is no question our food system is incredibly dependent on fossil fuels, and we are not showing any sign of transitioning off of them. Which means that the fossil fuels get more expensive, scarcer, and more importantly, as the climate system changes ever more rapidly, it’s going to clobber agriculture. You clobber agriculture where people get hungry and have nuclear weapons – and you can paint your own scenarios. They are not going to be painted in sky-blue happy colors.

ODAC Newsletter – Feb 11

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Saudi Arabia’s recoverable oil reserves may have been overstated by 40%. That was the warning sent to Washington from its embassy in Riyadh in 2007, according to a cable released by Wikileaks this week. The source was Sadad al-Husseini, former head of E&P at Saudi Aramco, who allegedly told US diplomats in Riyadh that Saudi’s claimed reserves of some 700bn bbls were overinflated by 300 billion barrels of ‘speculative resources’, and that output would peak once the kingdom had produced half of its original proven reserves of 360bn barrels. With 116bn produced so far, the diplomats concluded that on this basis Saudi’s peak could come in the early 2020s.