Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Peak Oil is a real phenomenon, based on hard science. Ignore it at your peril. At root, the Peak Oil guys are right. How can I emphasize it properly? OK, they are “right, right, right.” Everybody else is “wrong, wrong, wrong.”
An oil boom swept across the Ohio River when John Newton and Mophet Dye struck oil in 1860 in Macksburg, just north of Marietta…Hundreds of wooden derricks soon poked the Ohio skyline as petroleum speculators and businessmen drilled deep into the ground searching for black gold.
Early days in the oil fields: wildcatters, investment fever and dead horses
The post-peak oil world will look a lot like the bleak 1970s. But much worse.
A recession will grip the globe because the price of oil, and everything tied to it, will skyrocket.
Starvation will abound because oil-based fertilizers we’ve grown to depend on will be in short supply. Energy wars could erupt to control the remaining oil fields.
Wildcatting and exploration in the Canadian Maritimes — how an oil geologist and investor sees the landscape.
New discovery by oil companies – sustainability /
Car columnist says cheap oil gone forever /
Systems, interdependencies and peak oil /
Strapped commuters seek fuel bargains /
Oilcast: Riots, power cuts and Colin Campbell… /
Huge oil profits go for exploration /
Big oil’s output is shaky, but not its profits /
Wales: Fears over future energy sources /
Oil depletion? It’s all in the assumptions
What is the third date in the great Peak Oil saga? It is the year in which alternate energy sources finally offset the equivalent decline in crude oil production. Prior to that date, oil production will in general keep falling but the energy equivalent delivered by solar, wind, nuclear, etc. will always be less.
The big losers from the energy shortage are likely to be the world’s poor nations. Between them, the U.S., Western Europe and Japan—the old industrial centers—and the rising economies of Asia are driving up prices to levels that most of sub-Saharan Africa and countries such as Yemen and Bangladesh will not be able to afford.
“It took us 125 years to use the first trillion barrels of oil,” notes Chevron Corporation’s two full-page ad that began appearing in July in the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Financial Times and elsewhere. “We’ll use the next trillion in 30,” the ad continues, thus quietly admitting to the Peak Oil that the industry has not previously disclosed.
Huge, tarlike deposits in Canada and Venezuela will be critical over the next 50 years to the supply of liquid fuels as the world’s production of easily pumped oil plummets. Yet, turning this nonconventional oil source into synthetic oil is not likely to be the solution to our energy crisis, as some claim. Canada is no Saudi Arabia.
PowerSwitch recently held a conference outside London, titled Peak Speak, providing a platform to discuss the causes, consequences, and mitigation of the peak and decline in global oil production, and action that can be taken. Report includes notes on the speakers, topics they covered, and links to presentations.
Spurred by the nation’s relentless thirst for energy, geologists are suddenly taking a fresh look at the oldest oil-producing basin in the world. They are wondering if Mother Nature stashed a jackpot in the cellar, down deep where the rocky roots of the Appalachian Mountains spread into Ohio.
