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ODAC Newsletter – 8 June 2012

At the end of March, when Brent traded at around $125 per barrel, Saudi oil minister Ali al Naimi wrote a sharply worded article in the FT claiming there was no justification for such high oil prices, and Brent has since slumped to $100, which happens to be the Saudi target price. The decline is likely to be temporary, however, and Mr al Naimi soon shown to be as influential as King Canute…

Peak oil – June 8

-For first time in years, the world is producing more oil than it needs
-Bill Reinert Describes What the Future of Energy Looks Like to his University of Colorado Audience
-The Saudi Oil Problem
-Citi’s Ed Morse Has A Huge Note Blasting Everyone Who Believes In Peak Oil
-The Oil Bubble Is Popping, But Will It Pop Down To $67?
-Aggregate factors in the price of oil

Oil prices

It’s worth a comment on oil prices which have been collapsing with remarkable speed lately. Firstly, let’s briefly recap the price history of the last five years, which I have divided into eight eras…

Commentary: Why doesn’t the UN take peak oil into account?

In thousands of ways, UN policy helps shape how we respond to emerging crises, from basic poverty to world political events, from food to climate change and population. What is emerging, however, is that UN analyses are increasingly diverging from reality – as they attempt to describe our future, they have failed to adequately (or at all) take into account that most basic of all considerations, material limits on energy resources.

Thinking in miracles

I saw this cartoon in a comment on a post about optimistic oil supply projections at the oil analysis site The Oil Drum — which is must-visit if you are interested in the future — a rich cluster of technical experts clustered around a single blog. It was relevant to the post — broadly, the projections being critiqued needed good fortune pretty much everywhere, and not a single instance of bad luck — but it also made me think of the role of miracles in futures analysis.