Free Republic

... It was on this same porch five years ago that Simmons had the insight that convinced him that the oil age had passed its zenith. During a trip to Saudi Arabia in February 2003 with his friend Herbert Hunt (yes, the son of H.L. Hunt who, with his brother Bunker, almost cornered the silver market in 1980), Simmons had become suspicious of the Saudis' claims about the vastness of their oil supply. In his four decades of working in the oil and gas industry, everyone he had ever talked to had taken it as gospel that the Saudis had...

Monday, September 22, 2008 Whack a Mole The Fed and Treasury's massive and unprecedented bailout of the financial industry has given momentary respite to the American economic system, but the assumption of over a trillion dollars in new public debt has now raised the specter of national insolvency and runaway inflation. The economy is still in decline and the only way that the government will "pay" for these bad loans is by printing money. Accordingly, the price of gold has jumped in the past week from the mid-$700's per ounce to $910, including a $45 per ounce jump today alone....

Why do the big deals always happen over the weekends? So the big boyz in government and finance can take off their neckties when they bargain with each other? So the markets will be closed and unable to register a response one way or another? So the shrinking fraction of the US public that pays attention to anything besides Nascar and pornography won't catch the news Saturday evening? This weekend's big deal was the US government taking over the "government sponsored enterprises" (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that guarantee trillions of dollars in mortgages. The "guarantee" is supposedly accomplished...

Rising oil prices in recent years have again raised the question whether worldwide oil production has reached a peak. Various analysts have suggested that the rapid run up in prices indicates that if oil hasn’t yet reached its peak of production, it will do so very soon.At the same time, though, the world keeps discovering new reserves as higher prices provide incentives to bring more oil onto the market. As the above table demonstrates, the world’s oil reserves have steadily increased in the face of rising consumption.The Energy Information Administration has reported that “the world production peak for conventionally reservoired...

HOUSTON — American natural gas production is rising at a clip not seen in half a century, pushing down prices of the fuel and reversing conventional wisdom that domestic gas fields were in irreversible decline. The new drilling boom uses advanced technology to release gas trapped in huge shale beds found throughout North America — gas long believed to be out of reach. Natural gas is the cleanest fossil fuel, releasing less of the emissions that cause global warming than coal or oil. Rising production of natural gas has significant long-range implications for American consumers and businesses. A sustained increase...

Oil production has begun falling at all of the major Western oil companies, and they are finding it harder than ever to find new prospects even though they are awash in profits and eager to expand. Part of the reason is political. From the Caspian Sea to South America, Western oil companies are being squeezed out of resource-rich provinces. They are being forced to renegotiate contracts on less-favorable terms and are fighting losing battles with assertive state-owned oil companies. And much of their production is in mature regions that are declining, like the North Sea. The reality, experts say, is...

How much do we really have? According to API (Transcript 23:17), we really don't know how much recoverable oil is available. There are some published estimates for various pieces--coastal oil, OCS-48 states oil, Alaska-offshore, Alaska-ANWR--but none of these is very big. At this point, we haven't done any on-site research to see what is really there, using today's equipment. We don't know if there are some fairly good sized fields that we have overlooked. It is possible that the estimates are too high, but without looking, we really don't know. Better use of existing pipeline systems We have pipeline systems...

The Commodity Futures and Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating trading in oil futures to determine whether the surge in prices to record levels is the result of manipulation or fraud. They might want to take a look at wheat, rice and corn futures while they’re at it. The whole thing is a hoax cooked up by the investment banks and hedge funds who are trying to dig their way out of the trillion dollar mortgage-backed securities (MBS) mess that they created by turning garbage loans into securities.

Since 2003, worldwide oil prices have quadrupled. According to a new study, the price of oil is rising at a faster-than-exponential rate, and cannot be sustained. In other words, we’re in the midst of an oil bubble, say researchers Didier Sornette and Ryan Woodard of ETH Zurich in Switzerland and Wei-Xing Zhou of the East China University of Science and Technology in Shanghai, China. By analyzing oil prices over the past four years, the researchers have demonstrated more support for the hypothesis that the recent oil price run-up has less to do with supply-demand interplay and more to do with...

Gas prices will never go down.” “The price at the pump can only go higher.” “High prices are here to stay.” This seems to be the current wisdom. I hear it everywhere. There’s no need for a specific citation, for you’ve heard it too. But why should we believe it? Gas prices have gone down in the past. Why not again? Two words: Peak Oil.Or make that three: Peak Oil blather. In a Wikipedia article on gas prices, we are told that “there are now very few parties who do not acknowledge that the concept of a production peak is...

The data is becoming conclusive that peak oil is a myth. High oil prices (USO) (OIL) are doing their job as oil exploration is flush with new finds: 1. An offshore find by Brazilian state oil company Petrobras (PBR) in partnership with BG Group (BRGYY.PK) and Repsol-YPF may be the world's biggest discovery in 30 years 2. A trio of oil companies led by Chevron Corp. (CVX) has tapped a petroleum pool deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico that could boost U.S. reserves by more than 50 percent.. 3.West Cape Three Points is the largest discovery in deep water West...

Why Saudi Arabia's King Wants to Dampen Oil Prices By Bernhard Zand Consumers aren't the only ones being hit by high oil prices. Now that the oil shock has reached producing countries, Saudi Arabia has called a crisis summit this weekend in an effort to find concerted solutions that could push barrel prices down. Others would be overjoyed to be earning a $1 billion a day, and to have good reason to expect that number to climb to $2 billion a day next year. But Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud seems less than thrilled these days, and the newly tense atmosphere...

With the cost of crude oil surging to record highs, a heated battle of blame is in full swing, with a lineup of suspects that includes the oil industry, Congress, commodity speculators, environmentalists and developing countries in Asia. Meanwhile, predictions that we've reached a peak in oil production or will very soon — dismissed only a few years ago as being alarmist and without merit — are receiving more serious consideration. The problem is, nobody really knows how much oil is down there. The only thing that's certain: Dead organisms produced a limited amount of oil long ago, and eventually...

In 2000 a Saudi oil geologist named Sadad I. Al Husseini made a startling discovery. Husseini, then head of exploration and production for the state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, had long been skeptical of the oil industry's upbeat forecasts for future production. Since the mid-1990s he had been studying data from the 250 or so major oil fields that produce most of the world's oil. He looked at how much crude remained in each one and how rapidly it was being depleted, then added all the new fields that oil companies hoped to bring on line in coming decades. When...

Junk your SUV and buy an electric scooter. Recent claims by various OPEC leaders that the world has plenty of oil left are bunk, alleges Sadad Al-Husseini, a former top executive at Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company. Oil-producing countries are inflating the size of their oil reserves by as much as 300 billion barrels by padding supposedly proven reserves with “probable” reserves and tar and oil sands, according to Husseini. Such hypothetical reserves are “not delineated, not accessible and not available for production,” Husseini said at a recent energy conference in London. Oil production has now reached its...

Energy: Analysts have found that investors spooked by the peak oil theory — the belief that crude production has topped out and is in decline — are partly behind the soaring oil prices. Someone should set them straight.Blame part of $135-a-barrel oil on the increased demand in China and India, where the populations and economies are growing rapidly. But the impact of those nations on crude prices in recent months is suspect. Global oil consumption grew 2% in the first quarter of this year over the first quarter of 2007, while production increased 2.5% over the same period. On a...

BUSKIRK — A few years ago, Kathleen Breault was just another suburban grandma, driving countless hours every week, stopping for lunch at McDonald's, buying clothes at the mall, watching TV in the evenings. That was before Breault heard an author talk about the bleak future of the world's oil supply. Now, she's preparing for the world as we know it to disappear. Breault cut her driving time in half. She switched to a diet of locally grown foods near her upstate New York home and lost 70 pounds. She sliced up her credit cards, banished her television and swore...

------------------------------------------------------ Robert Hirsch, an energy advisor, says CNBC morning show prediction was a citation of the 'Dean of Oil Analysts.' By Jeff Poor Business & Media Institute 5/21/2008 3:38:13 PM It may be the mother of all doom and gloom gas price predictions: $12 for a gallon of gas is “inevitable.” Robert Hirsch, Management Information Services Senior Energy Advisor, gave a dire warning about the potential future of gas prices on CNBC’s May 20 “Squawk Box”. He told host Becky Quick there was no single thing that would solve the problem, due to the enormity of the problem. “[T]he prices...

More than 200 communities in the English countryside may be sitting on billions of pounds of undiscovered oil, according to prospectors. Scores of greenfield sites across southern and eastern England are being mapped for viability as world oil prices soar. The Government has received 60 applications from 54 companies to explore 182 plots, but is keeping the details confidential because they are commercially sensitive. Villages, hamlets or new estates will learn about a prospector’s interest only if permission is sought to drill or extract oil. The Times has learnt that rural locations from the South Downs to the Lincolnshire Wolds...

Periodically people take a look at the plateauing of oil reserve discoveries and oil production and compare that to the rapid increases in demand – particularly as China and India become more industrialized. They then declare that “peak” oil supplies have been reached, and the world will soon be plunged into a struggle for the remaining supplies. I made this mistake a couple of years ago, when I also concluded that the “peak” was upon us. Now, we all know that something weird is going on in oil markets as the price of oil and gasoline is advancing in large...

Fossil fuels are finite by definition. Eventually, since a growing global population will consume more energy, we'll run out of oil. Some time after the world's oil reserves are depleted, what little food hasn't been contaminated with Bisphenol A will be gone. Climate change will have rendered the earth uninhabitable, and WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! The environmental movement has become a death cult seduced by the fantasy of the coming Apocalypse. That's why prophets of doom like Al Gore draw audiences and win awards for their specious exhortations, and those who doubt the thesis are excommunicated. Peak oil proponents have...

It could potentially be one of the biggest energy breakthroughs in history – genetically manipulating bacteria to quickly convert anything that grows out of the Earth into oil. But the biggest names in the national media have thus far not provided any coverage of this possible solution to skyrocketing gas prices and Ameria's long-term energy security. A WND story last month introduced to the nation a new technique where altered bacteria "rapidly digest" everything from grass clippings and wood chips, turning them into hydrocarbons for fuels such as gasoline and diesel. If done on a large scale, it could provide...

Fears emerge over Russia’s oil output By Carola Hoyos and Javier Blas in London Published: April 14 2008 22:10 | Last updated: April 14 2008 22:10 Russian oil production has peaked and may never return to current levels, one of the country’s top energy executives has warned, fuelling concerns that the world’s biggest oil producers cannot keep up with rampant Asian demand. The warning comes as crude oil prices are trading near their record high of $112 a barrel, stoking inflation in many countries. Leonid Fedun, the 52-year-old vice-president of Lukoil, Russia’s largest independent oil company, told the Financial Times...

Oil's recent slide and the slackening demand that an economic slowdown's expected to bring have stimulated hopes that crude could soon safely stabilize below the $100 range. But beneath seesawing supply and demand lies the deeper question of just how much oil the planet has in the first place — and how much it will have in the future. The answer to that question supports — or undermines — the theory that we are in the midst of an ever-tightening supply that will lock prices into a permanent, rising arc. That, in nutshell, is what's meant by the term "peak...

John Hofmeister, the Houston-based president of Shell Oil's U.S. operations, expressed doubt about the validity of peak oil theory in an appearance on CNBC's Squawk Box show. "The peak oil theory has really swamped the world. God bless Matt Simmons," Hofmeister told CNBC anchor Carl Quintanilla, according to a transcript provided to WND by CNBC. "His assumptions are correct based on his hypotheses, but his hypotheses are too narrow." Matt Simmons, a Houston-based investment banker who specializes in the energy industry, is widely known for his 2005 book, "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World...

As we all know but are sometimes reluctant to contemplate, oil is a finite, non-renewable resource. This automatically means that its use is not sustainable. If the use of oil is not sustainable, then of course the added carrying capacity the oil has provided is likewise unsustainable. Carrying capacity has been added to the world in direct proportion to the use of oil, and the disturbing implication is that if our oil supply declines, the carrying capacity of the world will automatically fall with it. These two observations (that oil has expanded the world's carrying capacity and oil use is...

Saturn's smoggy moon Titan has hundreds of times more natural gas and other liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, scientists said today....

Hydrocarbons bubble up from the mid-Atlantic's Lost City. Deep-sea vents could offer a non-biological source of oil and gas.D. KELLEY & M. ELEND, UNIV. WASHINGTON INST. FOR EXPLORATION/URI-IAO/NOAA/THE LOST CITY SCIENCE TEAM Undersea thermal vents can yield unexpected bounty: natural gas and the building blocks of oil products. In a new analysis of Lost City, a hydrothermal field in the mid-Atlantic, researchers have found that these organic molecules are being created through inorganic processes, rather than the more typical decomposition of once-living material. Most of the planet's oil and natural gas deposits were created when decomposing biological matter is 'cooked'...

MIDDLEVILLE, Mich. -- It was around midnight one evening in November when Aaron Wissner shot up in bed, jolted awake by a fear: He wasn't fully ready for the day when the world starts running low on oil. Yes, he had tripled the size of the garden in front of the tidy white-clapboard house he shares with his wife and infant son. He had stacked bags of rice in his new pantry, stashed gold valued at $8,000 in his safe-deposit box and doubled the size of the propane tank in his yard. "But I felt panicky, like I needed more...

A sizeable faction of the people who think peak oil is important, and happening soon enough to care about, think it has big implications for agriculture. And most of them agree on what those implications are: as a society, we are going to have to give up the big combine harvesters, the thunderous power of 275 horsepower tractors, and instead we will have to return to small-scale, hand-labor organic production. Rather than having 2-5% of the working population involved in agriculture, as in most western societies at present, most people will need to be involved in growing food. This is...

World not running out of oil, say experts       Carl Mortished, World Business Editor   Doom-laden forecasts that world oil supplies are poised to fall off the edge of a cliff are wide of the mark, according to leading oil industry experts who gave warning that human factors, not geology, will drive the oil market. A landmark study of more than 800 oilfields by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (Cera) has concluded that rates of decline are only 4.5 per cent a year, almost half the rate previously believed, leading the consultancy to conclude that oil output will...

Panelists discuss climate changes, peak oil By Jake Palmateer Staff Writer http://www.thedailystar.com/local/local_story_340040035.html ONEONTA _ "Kill your lawn." That was one of the recommendations from a panel discussion based around peak oil and climate change held Wednesday night at the First United Methodist Church. Angelika St. Laurent of Cornell University promoted growing more vegetables and fruits locally _ including on lawns _ as a way to mitigate food-supply problems related to peak oil and climate change. ... ...Hubbert [in the 1950's] accurately predicted that American petroleum production would peak in less than two decades. ... a global peak, which Fleisher said...

It seems every day we find another entity that slams us for just living. One cannot smoke a good cigar, enjoy a glass of wine, drive a sport-utility vehicle, live in a decent home, turn on the lights or eat a steak without incurring the wrath of some do-gooder offended by behavior that supposedly is killing the planet or killing us. We need a new holiday: Freedom from Fear Day. Just before Thanksgiving, members of the Peak Oil Committee had a hearing in Hartford involving Connecticut's apparent lack of preparedness for the world running out of oil and natural gas....

"Water, water every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water every where, Nor a drop to drink." --Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ----------------------------------------------------- Iran isn’t an energy-independent country. I’m well aware that Iran produces more than 4 million barrels of oil per day, the fourth-highest production in the world. And with the near-constant reporting about Iranian crude reserves during the past six months, I find it difficult to believe that anyone could be unaware that Iran has 132 billion barrels in proven reserves--or, at least, they claim to. But what’s often ignored is that...

Energy Futures Fall After Energy Department Reports Unexpected Jump in Oil, Gasoline Supplies NEW YORK (AP) -- Energy futures fell sharply Thursday after the government reported unexpected increases in crude oil and gasoline inventories last week and OPEC forecast fourth-quarter demand for oil would be less than expected. ADVERTISEMENT At the pump, meanwhile, gas prices inched 0.1 cent higher overnight, pulling further above $3 to a national average price of $3.112 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Prices are likely to rise another 10 to 15 cents in coming weeks to catch up with oil...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Oil prices fell over $1 Thursday on signs of lower demand, a weakening economy and a surprise gain in U.S. supplies. U.S. light crude for January delivery fell $1.34 to $92.75 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil traded down 53 cents just prior to the report's release. In its weekly inventory report, the Energy Information Administration said crude stocks rose by 2.8 million barrels last week. Analysts were looking for a drop of 300,000 barrels, according to a Dow Jones poll.

After the CEO of Total (the French oil major) last week, two more CEOs of an oil major came out this Thursday to give stark warnings that mean that peak oil is happening right now. In addition, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency (the IEA), one of the main cheerleaders of the "there's more than enough oil" camp until now, is giving an extraordinarily pessimistic interview in the Financial Times, following the recent publication of their latest World Energy Outlook. Let me take you through all their affirmations. Big Oil CEOs Point To Constraints On Supply Growth HOUSTON...

“Peak oil” is becoming the latest doomsday buzzword. What is it? It’s a well-thought-out theory that predicts that the rate at which we find and recover oil is soon going to fall behind the rate at which we consume it. The point at which that happens is the “peak.” Prior to this peak, prices will have been relatively stable and reasonable, and the economies of the world have grown because the supply of energy outpaced the demand. But there is coming a time, and some say it’s here now, when the world’s oil fields cannot produce as fast as we...

Global oil production will peak sometime between next year and 2018 and then decline, according to a controversial new model developed by a Swedish physicist. Since 1956, when American geophysicist M. King Hubbert correctly predicted that U.S. oil reserves would hit a peak within 20 years, experts have debated when the same might occur globally. Some oil companies and consultancy firms such as Cambridge Energy Research Associates speculate that oil will peak sometime after 2020, but a number of oil geologists and executives predict it will happen much sooner. And once production starts declining, there could be major supply problems,...

A rule of thumb for the price of oil in the past five years has been to take the last digit of the year and add a zero: 2002 saw prices in the $20s; 2003 in the $30s; now oil is hovering around $70 a barrel. These high prices are desirable for steering the economy away from oil, but in the meantime they could also spell trouble. Oil companies need to adjust to this new reality and rethink their business model. The latest report by the International Energy Agency warns of an oil supply crunch in five years. Demand is...

Cannot post due to copyright. Follow the link off of Drudge.

OTTAWA — You will have noticed the marked decline these days in the number of "peak oil" people making cataclysmic pronouncements. Global oil production set records throughout 2006 -- for all-time highest production day, month, quarter and year. For the single-year record, production reached 31.3 Gb (billion barrels), an average of 85.2 million barrels a day. Affirming the trend, production set a new global single-day record before the end of January, 2007. Along with record-setting production came record-setting increases in reserves -- moving "peak oil" deeper into the century and ultimately beyond. The "peak oil" hypothesis, relentlessly propounded for decades,...

Oil supplies from non-Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries producers will increase by as much as 4 million barrels a day and peak in 2015 before dropping from then until 2030, OPEC said Tuesday. Conventional non-OPEC crude production is expected to rise to at 50.5 million barrels a day in 2015 and will fall by nearly 2 million barrels a day to 48.6 million barrels a day over the following 15 years, according to a presentation held by OPEC's research director, Hasan Qabazard, in Riyadh. Non-OPEC production stood at 46.8 million barrels a day in 2005, the presentation, entitled "Global Oil...

Petroleum geologists are pretty sure that there is more than enough oil in the world to meet projected demand for at least the next 25 years. In other words, as I reported in my article “Peak Oil Panic� last year, geologically speaking “peak oil� is at least a generation away. But the days when you could punch a hole in the ground and up would bubble some crude have now passed. It will take increasing technical savvy and a lot of money to keep oil production up with demand. Fortunately, the International Energy Agency believes that projected demand for oil...

People in the Peak Oil movement chafe at the label of doomer, but many of us do have an apocalyptic bent. Although plenty of Peak Oil commentary is sober analysis, a survey of the major websites and books quickly brings up apocalyptic titles like dieoff.org, oilcrash.com, The Death of the Oil Economy, The End of Suburbia, and The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. Peak Oil writings are sprinkled with predictions that billions will die, civil order will collapse, and even that civilization will end. Scientists, too, aren't immune. During geologist Ken Deffeyes's Peak Oil presentations, he displays the words "war,"...

"Peak Oil" the widely discussed theory that world oil production will soon reach a peak and go into sharp decline, is the subject of a new analysis by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA). CERA finds that the remaining global oil resource base is actually 3.74 trillion barrels -- three times as large as the 1.2 trillion barrels estimated by the theory's proponents. Cambridge, MA (PRWEB) December 7, 2006 -- Peak Oil, the widely discussed theory that world oil production will soon reach a peak and go into sharp decline, is the subject of a new analysis by Cambridge Energy Research...

Are hydrocarbons "renewable"- and if so- what does such a conclusion mean for the future of the world's oil and natural gas supplies? The question is critical due to the enormous amount of coverage the issue of "Peak Oil" is receiving from the mainstream press. If the supply of hydrocarbons is renewable- then the contrary to the conventional wisdom being touted throughout the mainstream press today- the world is NOT running out of oil. Unbeknownst to Westerners, there have actually been for quite some time now two competing theories concerning the origins of petroleum. One theory claims that oil is...

According to a report published by Stratfor, the Strategic Forecasting consultancy, in late 2002, "tankers bearing Russian crude from the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk would unload at Israel's Mediterranean port of Ashkelon. After that, the oil would traverse the Tipline to Israel's Red Sea port of Eilat, where it would be reloaded onto tankers for shipment to Asia. The Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Co. estimated the pipeline will be ready for Russian crude in mid-2003." Russia is emerging as a major oil supplier and a serious challenge to the hegemony of Saudi Arabia and OPEC... Russia also hopes to neuter the...

NEW YORK - According to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas, the end is near - when the earth's oil reserves start to run dry and scarce petroleum will go to the highest bidder. Seers have written books detailing that time, and websites such as EnergyShortage.com forecast a steady rise in prices - such as Tuesday's oil price of more than $59 a barrel. Not so fast, maintains a new report issued Tuesday by the widely respected group Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA). Instead of the wells running dry, CERA says petroleum supplies will be expanding...

RIMINI, Italy (AP) -- A top OPEC official said Sunday that oil companies with surging third-quarter profits should use the money to increase their refining capacity and help ease pressure on oil prices. "This is a chance for them to invest," said Adnan Shihab-Eldin, acting secretary-general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. "We believe that they should definitely make an effort to invest in the downstream in trying to resolve the bottlenecks," caused by rapidly expanding demand, Shihab-Eldin said during a conference here on long-term issues of energy supply. Several major oil companies reported third-quarter profits this week. "We've...