On Friday the benchmark crude oil traded in the central United States (West Texas Intermediate) sold for the same price as the benchmark European crude (Brent). That’s the first time that’s happened in almost three years. But I don’t expect the situation to persist.
Category Archives: energy
The death of peak oil
“Peak oil is dead,” Rob Wile declared last week. Colin Sullivan says it has “gone the way of the Flat Earth Society”, writing
Those behind the theory appear to have been dead wrong, at least in terms of when the peak would hit, having not anticipated the rapid shift in technology that led to exploding oil and natural gas production in new plays and areas long since dismissed as dried up.
These comments inspired me to revisit some of the predictions made in 2005 that received a lot of attention at the time, and take a look at what’s actually happened since then.
Declining U.S. carbon dioxide emissions
Emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel consumption in the United States have fallen remarkably since 2008, with recent levels the lowest since 1995. Here I comment on some of the factors behind this.
Planned crude oil pipelines
The EIA last week released a nice summary of planned additional U.S. pipeline capacity.
Prices of gasoline and crude oil
Here I comment on some recent developments affecting the prices of WTI, Brent, and gasoline.
Dude, where’s my cheap gas?
Those who have been told that oil production is booming may be wondering why the prices of oil and gasoline are climbing again.
Links for 2013-01-23
Quick links to a few items I found of interest.
Future production from U.S. shale or tight oil
I attended the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco two weeks ago at which I heard a very interesting presentation by David Hughes of the Post Carbon Institute. He is more pessimistic about future production potential from U.S. shale gas and tight oil formations than some other analysts. Here I report some of the data on tight oil production that led to his conclusion.
Will U.S. oil consumption continue to decline?
A lot of attention has been given to the optimistic assessments of future U.S. and Iraqi oil production in the IEA’s World Energy Outlook 2012. However, perhaps even more dramatic is the report’s prediction of a significant long-term decline in petroleum consumption from the OECD countries. For example, the report predicts about a 1 mb/d drop in U.S. oil consumption by 2020 and a 5 mb/d drop by 2035 relative to current levels. I was curious to examine some of the fundamentals behind petroleum consumption to assess the plausibility of the IEA projections.
Peak oil
I offer some observations on exhaustible resources and economic growth in the latest issue of the UCSD Economics Newsletter.