Oil

Kidding ourselves about future MENA oil production

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Depending on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) for 90% of the growth in global oil production between now and 2020 seems unwise. What the world really needs is a rising supply of low-priced oil, if we are to avoid long-term recession. But MENA is unlikely to supply this. The Middle East claims huge oil reserves and Iraq offers high production targets, but in the end, we are likely to be kidding ourselves, if we believe that these will fix world oil problems.

Energy – Oct 21

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– There Will Be Oil, But At What Price?
– Alms for the Rich: How policies meant to promote alternative energies are actually hurting the middle class
– What Will Turn Us On in 2030? Fossil fuels vs ???
– Australia beats them all – in oil imports

ODAC Newsletter – Oct 21

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As temperatures dropped in Britain this week, the political heat over rising energy bills intensified. Prime Minister David Cameron hauled in the utility bosses and demanded action. Cameron claimed “everything that can be done will be done to help people bring their energy bills down…

Course Review (or why Daniel Yergin needs to do his homework)

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Recently I’ve been getting emails from folks who had previously read an article or two on Peak Oil and found the evidence convincing—but who have more recently encountered a piece or two by Daniel Yergin (or another writer following the same train of thought). Their new line of reasoning goes like this:…Just as “fracking” shale gas has been a “game changer” for the natural gas industry, new technologies for accessing tar sands, oil shale, and shale oil…will change the oil game…Now, every element of that argument has already been dealt with at length in the Energy Realist literature. But occasionally a review of previous course material is called for. So here we go…

Oil Sands: Canada’s 10 ethical challenges

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Canada has joined the ranks of exporting oil nations and now supplies more petroleum to the United States than Mexico or Saudi Arabia. The unconventional character of mined bitumen as well as the startling revenue it generates for government coffers has irrevocably changed the country. Five per cent of the nation’s GDP comes from oil while bitumen makes up 25 per cent of the nation’s exports. As the wild debate about the Keystone XL pipeline illustrates, Canada’s $200-billion energy project has also become a global lightning rod. No oil exporting nation, whether Christian or Muslim, is immune from the corrosive influence of oil money and its dirty politics. Yet Canada has anointed bitumen as the nation’s new “economic engine” without setting clear public policy goals or assessing the economic risks.

Peak oil – Oct 17

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– IEA chides MENA producers to increase output capacity (Jeffrey Brown comments)
– World’s top energy provider is beginning to look beyond oil
– Saudi oil Saudi energy demand to double by 2028
– Irish student newspaper tackles peak oil and climate change

Review of Lieutenant Colonel Fleming’s U.S. Army War College thesis on Peak Oil

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Peak Oil predictions range from the year 2000 to 2100 with the highest concentration of forecasts from 2005 to 2016. Confidence in international oil reserves data is lacking. As such, different forecasters make different assumptions about future undiscovered oil amounts and oil reserves, resulting in a wide range of peak oil estimates. Viewing this wide time disparity in forecasts as problematic, the research objective was to look for an economic cross-check indicator, metric, or alternative data-based means to corroborate or refute existing peak oil estimates.