Oil

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.

Commentary: I. Collapse? Really?

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Collapse is a scary word, and some people doubt it is even relevant to us. Obviously we are facing some major challenges in this century. Does that mean collapse? What is collapse, exactly? When societies have collapsed, what actually happened? How bad is it? Are there ways of reducing the badness? While historic events can’t give a totally accurate picture of the future, they can at least give us some ground to stand on.

World energy consumption since 1820 in charts

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In this post, I provide…charts showing long-term changes in energy supply, together with some observations regarding implications. One such implication is how economists can be misled by past patterns, if they do not realize that past patterns reflect very different energy growth patterns than we will likely see in the future.

ODAC Newsletter – Mar 16

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Finally, a plausible explanation for the Obama-Cameron political orgy — ‘love-in’ doesn’t quite do it — in Washington this week. For Cameron the benefit of this floorshow was obvious — like Blair with Bush, revelling in the reflected glory of US power — but Obama’s motive remained a mystery. What could possibly justify gifting all that folderol and face time with the world’s most powerful man? Yesterday we got the answer: international cover for a politically motivated release from strategic petroleum reserves, that’s what.

The peak oil crisis: surging gasoline

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The Washington Post is beginning to understand the realities underlying America’s gasoline price problem and look behind the political bombast far enough to develop a somewhat realistic appraisal of our energy situation.

However, the newspaper has to take one more giant step before it comes completely in touch with reality. One searches in vain for any mention in a recent article that conventional petroleum production, from which our high-priced gasoline is made, has been stagnant for the last six years – i.e. global oil production is peaking. Once this threshold is crossed we (the press, the administration, political candidates, and the body politic) can begin a meaningful discussion of our options for the future.

Has the global economy become less vulnerable to oil price shocks?

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This paper examines the impact of oil price changes on global economic growth. Unlike some recent studies, this paper finds that oil price rises have had significant negative impacts on world economic growth. A time-series analysis of the data from 1971 to 2010 finds that an increase in real oil price by 10 dollars is associated with a reduction of world economic growth rate by between 0.4 and 1% in the following year. As oil prices approach historical highs, the global economy may be vulnerable to another oil price shock.