Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
This book – and others it references, particularly Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems’ – should be a standard read for university students, but I suspect it will only be read by those who are already-there, or at least already well-on-the-way.
On this episode, petroleum geologist Arthur Berman returns to unpack the development and drawbacks of ‘peak oil’.
Finite resources are real constraints that no magical thinking or predicting by the industry can overcome.
Colin Campbell, the petroleum geologist who coined the term “peak oil,” has died. He was a co-founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) in 2000 and the author of many articles and books on petroleum geology and oil depletion.
The world teeters on the brink of economic disaster due to energy shortages caused by war.
The main oil-producing nations are unable and unwilling to increase output, even though prices
are high and threatening to go much higher. The solutions being proposed—electric cars and
renewable energy technologies—are coming on line, but not fast enough. Sound familiar?
If there is so much more oil for us to discover and produce, why have estimates of recoverable resources been declining for three years in a row?
An analysis in Bloomberg points to a key and obvious cause of today’s high prices for oil and other commodities: There isn’t enough of them to go around.
Investment icon Warren Buffett once wrote in a letter to shareholders, “You only find out who is swimming naked when the tide goes out.” In the wake of the pandemic, the tide has gone out in U.S. shale oil and the naked swimmers are all around. With this decline of the so-called “shale miracle” is a peak in world oil production already behind us?
Just like the ancient Garamantes, the Saudi Arabians were able to overcome the aridity of their land by using fossil water. But when they ran out of it, it was time over for them.
Adaptation will require leadership and social cohesion. Instead, America may be lurching toward further political division and violence.
Last month, the world’s 4th largest oil company—BP—predicted that the world will never again consume as much petroleum as it did last year. So, have we finally hit peak oil? And if so, what does that mean for our economy and our world?
With global demand having fallen by about 29 million barrels per day from a year ago, it seems like this pandemic might delay peak oil production while the pandemic and consequent depression lasts, since so much less oil is being consumed.
