Fossil Fuels

Why Saudi and American bluffing won’t lower oil prices (Hint: It doesn’t work when people know you’re bluffing)

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If you have the power and the desire to bring down oil prices, the best way to proceed is to start bringing them down. The easiest and fastest method would be to make more supplies available to the world market and keep adding until you reach your target price. The less you say about what you are doing, the better. When market participants are filled with uncertainty about your intentions, they have only the direction of prices to guide them. That means the speculative players can help you achieve your goals more quickly as they panic out of their positions.

This was not, of course, the path chosen by the United States, Great Britain and Saudi Arabia recently when they announced that they were contemplating intervention in the oil markets–in the form of releases from strategic petroleum reserves in the case of the United States and Britain and in the form of increased production by Saudi Arabia.

The New York Times exaggerates the significance of shale oil

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The New York Times has shown that it is not concerned about Peak Oil. On 23 March it headed page 1 with an article that reminds us that since Nixon’s time every president has had the same goal of giving the USA “independence from foreign energy sources”. One can interpret the article as saying that the USA is now on the way to reaching this goal but let us compare some of the statements in the article to what the USA’s Energy Information Agency (EIA) says.

ODAC Newsletter – Mar 23

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Brent oil prices flirted with $125/barrel again this week before dropping back on news of weaker than anticipated European and Chinese industrial activity. The political and economic pressure of surging prices prompted Saudi oil minister Ali Al Naimi to claim the kingdom can raise production by 25% (2.5 mb/d) immediately if necessary. But that was in flat contradiction to his recent admission that 700mb/d of Saudi’s claimed 2.5 mb/d spare capacity could not be brought on stream in under 90 days – three times longer than the standard definition.

Tom Murphy Interview: Resource depletion is a bigger threat than climate change

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Rising geopolitical tensions and high oil prices are continuing to help renewable energy find favour amongst investors and politicians. Yet how much faith should we place in renewables to make up the shortfall in fossil fuels? Can science really solve our energy problems, and which sectors offers the best hope for our energy future? To help us get to the bottom of this we spoke with energy specialist Dr. Tom Murphy, an associate professor of physics at the University of California. Tom runs the popular energy blog Do the Math which takes an astrophysicist’s-eye view of societal issues relating to energy production, climate change, and economic growth.

If only we had free energy

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I thought I’d do a thought experiment. Suppose tomorrow morning a hypothetical university—let’s call it T.I.M.—sends out their weekly press release claiming a “revolutionary breakthrough” that will change the way we think about energy. Unlike every other time in the past decade they’ve made this claim, though, suppose this time it’s actually true: they’ve discovered a way of producing extremely cheap energy—as near to “free energy” as can be imagined.

Oil, politics, talk and reality- Mar 21

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-Saudi Arabia Can Raise Output 25% If Needed, Naimi Says
-Tech Talk – Going Back to the First Look at Saudi Arabian Oil Production
-Saudi Arabia sends tankers to US with pledge to bring down oil price
-FACT CHECK: Does more US drilling ease gas pump pain? Math, history show that hasn’t happened
-Tapping Petroleum Reserve has gotten trickier
-US exempts Japan and EU nations from Iran oil sanctions

The Peak Oil Crisis: Parsing the Bakken

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As we have seen with the Bakken and the various natural gas bearing shales we have been drilling of late, it takes an awful lot of expensive wells and environmental disruption to get the oil out. One estimate of the Energy Returned on Energy Investment (EROEI) for the Bakken shale suggests that the EROEI is six. This means that it may take one oil barrel’s worth of energy to produce six barrels of Bakken shale oil. This is getting very close to the theoretical point at which it really is not worth the effort and all the economic disruption.

The aspect of this “energy independence” story that the optimists continue to ignore is that, while oil production from shale may be climbing, depletion of our other sources of oil continues apace

Fun with Trends

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If current energy trends continue . . .
  • By 2015 China will be importing more oil than the United States does that year.
  • By 2030 China will be absorbing all available global oil exports, leaving none for the US or Europe.
  • In just 8 years China will be burning as much coal as the entire world uses today.
  • Natural gas will be virtually free in the US by 2015.
  • Officially assessed US natural gas reserves will be exhausted by 2025.

Why won’t Obama mention peak oil? Blame Rush Limbaugh

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I believe that Obama understands peak oil and for years I’ve been hoping that he would finally take leadership on energy. But if Ezra Klein is right, then even if Obama were a card carrying member of ASPO-USA, in today’s partisan hell, the most powerful man on Earth might be nearly helpless to make any difference on peak oil.