Oil

A real chance to cut subsidies to Big Oil?

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Oil subsidies of nearly $40 billion will be on the block if Democrats have their way. And though the GOP and the industry claim cutting the handouts will cost American jobs, a former Shell CEO says that when prices are high enough, Big Oil doesn’t need help. What’s for sure is that, to have any hope of getting America prepared for peak oil, we’ll need an energy policy that stops encouraging people to use more of the oil that we’re already running out of.

Earth’s Limits: Why Growth Won’t Return

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The 2008 crude oil price, $147 per barrel, shattered the global economy. The “invisible hand” of economics became the invisible fist, pounding down world economic growth to match the limitations of crude oil production.—Kenneth Deffeyes (petroleum geologist). An excerpt from Chapter 3 of Richard Heinberg’s upcoming book The End of Growth.

Peak Oil – Sicherheitspolitische Implikationen knapper Ressourcen

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Last year a German military report on peak oil was leaked: “Peak Oil: Implications of Resource Scarcity on Security.” Last month, the final report was officially released by the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Center. It is available online in German. [Excerpt]

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?