Comments on: The first peak oil recession: Interview with Steven Kopits

By: Vito Buonomano

Vito Buonomano — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 03:04:08 +0000

Well I listen to all the doom and gloom and I am not worried about our future.
For starters we are in this bloody oil mess because of our Goverment policies in the last 40 years.
If gasoline were eight dollars a gallon in the US like it is in Europe from Goverment taxes by golly SUV’s and gas hogs in the US would go away faster than road kill on interstate 95. Decades of political oil money from oil companies to our Congressman and Senators means cheap gas and oil.
So watch out oil companies because the Chevy Volt and peak oil is your worst nightmare. The end of cheap gas and oil means the end of cheap gas and oil period.
I have two sons that are draft age and I hope and pray that oil companies in the future will not have the most US Military behind them to invade counties for cheap oil.

By: Stu

Stu — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:24:45 +0000

And every time we have a peak oil recession, the gov can just come along with more multi trillion dollar bailouts…..right. Hey, I have an idea, why don’t we just print 10000000 trillion dollars and distribute it to everyones bank accounts equally, making everyone super rich…….then it won’t matter how high the price of petrol gets……we can all afford it…….solving the problem once and for all……and if not once and for all……just print more later when needed. Gee I’m smart.

By: Foreign oil dependence means perpetual recession… « Christopher A. Haase

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 17:40:20 +0000

[...] is a poster boy on all the “peak oil” websites and doomsayer blogs, and his metric on the link between recessions and oil price is interesting. If [...]

By: KJMClark

KJMClark — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:23:18 +0000

OK, but here in SE Michigan, I’m not sure we *are* all still here. My enduring memory of this recession - so far - is lots of people losing their jobs and their homes.

And if this is the first peak oil recession, what will the others be like? I’m not convinced that this is as bad as it can get.

I’ve only known one person who drove a natural gas car, and he wisely ended up moving to Canada. Do you see enough happening to mitigate coming problems? I looks to me like our most common coping mechanisms so far involve job loss, housing loss, bankruptcy, and increased government debt to slightly increase fleet fuel economy.

Oh, and don’t worry about me needing a deep breath. I have a very steady job, bike to work, and have about a fifth of my retirement funds in the energy sector.

By: Steven Kopits

Steven Kopits — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:08:10 +0000

Well, I think we need to draw a breath and relax a bit.

First of all, we’ve just come through the first peak oil recession, and aside from some nasty economic dislocation, we are still pretty much all here. we havent’t starved to death; the world has not ended. My enduring memory of the recession will be trying to get to the airport in Houston, stuck in a massive traffic jam. So, that’s one view of the first peak oil recession.

Second, even if US consumption falls to 14 mbpd, we’ll still be ahead of per capita oil consumption in Europe today. That’s not great news, but it’s not end of days, either.

Third, we have 100 years supply of natural gas, and if we could power our automobiles with it today, we could have high octane (115-130) fuel for about $1 gallon equivalent, and probably not more than $2 on average for the next several years. At Colorado State’s Energy Conversion Lab, they converted a pick-up to nat gas, with the result that it i) improved acceleration by 3 sec to 60; ii) reduced gasoline-equivalent fuel consumption, and iii) had super clean emissions. (The US manufacturer also made a similar conversion, with exactly the opposite results, I might add.) So we have a good solution at hand, lacking only greater fuel distribution and public acceptance for wide-scale market penetration.

I believe the most important thing from a domestic perspective is constructive engagement with the issue, focusing on relatively near-term, lowest cost, practical solutions. On the international front, we need to be in dialogue with other countries about managing the oil supply at the medium term (3-5 years), and most importantly, we need to keep in mind that US energy, economic and military security is best served by insuring China has enough energy to grow. We need to be outward-looking and engaged, building a basis for common action on shared challenges.

I don’t mean to minimize the challenges of peak oil, but as long as we don’t ignore the issue and let it fester, there is need for concern and action, but not despair.

By: Diane Francis: Oil and a never-ending recession | Loans in

Diane Francis: Oil and a never-ending recession | Loans in — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:04:01 +0000

[...] firm Douglas-Westwood LLC in New York. Kopits is a poster boy on all the “peak oil” websites and doomsayer blogs, but his metric on the link between recessions and oil price is interesting. If [...]

By: Bill Simpson of Slidell LA.

Bill Simpson of Slidell LA. — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:14:04 +0000

The Business Week article is down the page in the Europe section titled, ” The Race for Riches Under the North Pole” It is well worth reading and not great news.

By: Bill Simpson of Slidell LA.

Bill Simpson of Slidell LA. — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:49:07 +0000

As I wrote in a recent Business Week comment, peak oil will probably destroy the economy years before you will starve because farmers can’t grow you food, because they can’t find any diesel fuel. That is, in my opinion, why peak oil is so dangerous. Smarter people than me think that the economy will have enough time to adjust to an coming explosion in the price of liquid fuels. No it won’t. And once peak oil becomes obvious, all kinds of bad economic failures will accelerate. You can use less gasoline, but you can only live for so long without a job. The government can’t support half the population forever. If you can figure out how things will play out, you could become richer than Bill Gates. If I had to guess, I would expect the development of a stagflation situation, similar to what happened after the first Arab oil embargo. Look how much speculators bid up the oil price in 2008. How many non-peak oilers thought that could happen? But it did, and fast. I will be very surprised if, as the current recovery progresses, the oil price doesn’t start to head right back up. How rapid the increase will be will depend on the speed of the recovery. Remember that it could take a couple of years just to get back to the level of economic output that existed before this recession began, and that a lot of oil is now in storage. So the oil price won’t immediately explode. I don’t see any problem for the next several years, but eventually, all those cars being bought in China will demand more fuel than the world’s oil wells can produce. Then, look out world. A bidding war for oil will begin, and the price will start to rise, until the price finally becomes unaffordable to enough people to reduce oil demand. That price will be higher than most people can now imagine. What will people give up purchasing before they give up using their cars, a hell of a lot. The lack of spending throughout the rest of the economy will destroy millions of jobs. Unemployed people don’t pay taxes for long, so much more government debt will result.
The dollar could then become another big problem. I’m no banking genius, but you’ve got to figure that a huge increase in the cost of oil could lead to the creation of more and more dollars to pay for less and less oil. How will the US pay for imported oil if the dollar collapses? Remember that we now import over half of the oil that we use. How will we pay for oil imports, trade gold? Barter food? Invade Canada?(not a good plan) Trade part of the United States? Ask yourself if your government in Washington is studying these questions and formulating viable solutions. And then try to stop laughing. And remember that some of the smartest, highest paid, people on this planet thought that housing prices would never fall, and that the fancy debt instruments that they created were a great idea. How did that work out?

By: Don Hirschberg

Don Hirschberg — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:48:37 +0000

I don’t know what the solution is. (Actually I don’t believe there is a solution given an earth with nearly 7 billion people.) I do know the problem is too many people. We get a mind boggling number of solutions (almost a solution du jour to the energy dilemma) but rarely does anyone touch on the crucial problem.

The energy problem has become unsolvable while we watched. World population was about to tick over to 2 billion when I was born, most of the world’s oil was being produced and used in the US. From the dawn of man until the fall of Rome world population had never been over 0.3 billion. In a brief 1000 years we increased by a factor of 23 times the previous high. How does one un-ring a bell?

By: captain Rick

captain Rick — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 22:44:50 +0000

Kunstler makes good points The main one is don’t look for cheap energy to power over a billion cars world wide. Give it up. We must get out of them soon. Back to public transportation,more walkable cities so on.CNG is a pipe dream and you should not raise false hopes for that as a motor fuel. It is a disservice to all of us.same for hydrogen. It is time writers like you wake up to these facts. THERE is NO replacement for oil, plain and simple………….