Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
With peak oil moving closer globally and with oil prices spiking yet again (bouncing around over US$100 per barrel), subsidies become economically unsustainable. So the question becomes: at what point should a government begin to decrease an oil subsidy and how, if ever, can this be done without severely impacting the poorest?
Recently I was asked by a high school teacher if I had any ideas about why students today seem so apathetic when it comes to engaging with the world around them. I waggishly responded, “Probably because they’re smart.”
In my opinion, we’re asking our young adults to step into a story that doesn’t make any sense.
-Argentina won’t be joining the global petro-surge any time soon – Steve Levine
-Argentina Claims Resource Sovereignty – Molly Scott Cato
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Istanbul talks
-The IEA’s Oil Market Report
-Quote of the Week
-Briefs
Yesterday I gave a presentation to a group of distinguished business leaders. In my presentation, I tried to show that the global rate of production of petroleum and the associated lease condensate is at an all-time high or a "peak" that at a greatly expanded scale looks like a "plateau." I used my published, peer-reviewed extensions of King Hubbert’s approach to support my arguments.
I received a significant push back from several members of the audience.
Gas prices are on the rise again, which means the “man on the street” will complain to local news reporters about greedy oil companies and foreign cartels, and energy-illiterate pundits and politicians will cry for domestic drilling with wild abandon. But is gasoline, now approaching $4 per gallon in Ohio, really expensive?
The IEA poured oil on troubled waters, so to speak, in its April Oil Market Report this week, suggesting a possible “turning of the tide for market fundamentals”. The agency said supply is ahead of demand for the first time since 2009, though geopolitical threats remain…
Lloyd’s of London, the world’s biggest insurance market, has become the first major business organisation to raise its voice about huge potential environmental damage from oil drilling in the Arctic.
The City institution estimates that $100bn (£63bn) of new investment is heading for the far north over the next decade, but believes cleaning up any oil spill in the Arctic, particularly in ice-covered areas, would present “multiple obstacles, which together constitute a unique and hard-to-manage risk”.
The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently released full-year 2011 world oil production data. In this post, I would like show some graphs of recent data, and provide some views as to where this leads with respect to future production.
– Big NY Times piece – Fuel to Burn: Now What?
– Australian ABC TV falls into oil and climate trap of unconventional oil
– Colin Campbell: Facing the Future from an Irish Perspective (PDF)
– Michael Lardelli: Peak oil, economic growth and the big lie
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
Some while back, I found myself sitting next to an accomplished economics professor at a dinner event. Shortly after pleasantries, I said to him, “economic growth cannot continue indefinitely,” just to see where things would go. It was a lively and informative conversation. I was somewhat alarmed by the disconnect between economic theory and physical constraints—not for the first time, but here it was up-close and personal. Though my memory is not keen enough to recount our conversation verbatim, I thought I would at least try to capture the key points and convey the essence of the tennis match—with some entertainment value thrown in.
