Section » Commentary
Why the Bakken Won’t Save Our Bacon, By Steve Andrews and Randy Udall
The most significant onshore oil development in the Lower 48 over the past decade has occurred in the upper Great Plains. Horizontal drilling of the deep Bakken shale has doubled North Dakota’s oil production, with further growth ahead. The Bakken is not a “field”; it’s an extensive formation that underlies up to 200,000 square miles of the upper Great Plains, crossing the border
More
Debunking Peak Demand
The notion of ‘peak demand’ is often invoked to suggest that the US or global economy is somehow less in need of affordable oil today or that Americans are simply finding car ownership passé. But is this really the case? Are we weaning ourselves from dependence on oil? The statistics paint a more nuanced story. It is
Interview with Ray Leonard
Ray Leonard was appointed CEO of independent and Houston-based oil company Hyperdynamics last summer. For the two previous decades, his background in the oil industry included high-level roles with the former Yukos Oil in Russia and more recently Kuwait Energy in the Middle East. One of his early talks on the topic of peak oil was delivered at ASPO-1 in Upsalla, Sweden (2002). Last October he delivered
Drill Baby Drill-A Second Reality Check
Last week President Obama announced that he would open federal waters off the Atlantic coast from Delaware south, portions of the eastern Gulf of Mexico and portions of the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska to oil and gas exploration and development. A stated objective of this move is to reduce United States dependence on foreign oil. Implied within the objective is that opening these offshore areas to
“A Nighttime Letter to the Grandchildren”
When Stewart Lee Udall died on March 20th at age 90, we lost a giant of a gentleman and a passionate former public servant. The Arizona native was perhaps the most influential U.S. Secretary of the Interior ever. He served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations from 1961 to 1969, and played a major role in some of the nation’s landmark environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act, the
Non-OPEC Oil Production Hits the Wall
In the last year I’ve read several articles expounding on the many non-OPEC* oil discoveries that have been made in recent years and how large the oil resource is within the non-OPEC sphere of the world. The objective of these articles is to reassure the reader that all is well for non-OPEC oil production, now and in the foreseeable future. If all is so well outside OPEC, one must ask why the non-OPEC
Interview with David Shields - update on Mexico and oil
David Shields is a journalist and independent oil industry analyst based in Mexico City. Steve Andrews caught up with him yesterday and posed a few questions. SA: Is Mexico’s well-being tightly tied to oil production? David Shields: I think the oil industry is roughly 3-4% of Mexican GDP, which is not that high. It’s a much bigger proportion of tax revenues. So it’s very relevant. But oil prices
Observations from Al - By Dr. Albert Bartlett
These are random occasional observations by Al Bartlett on items reported in the Peak Oil Review. Peak Oil Review, Vol. 5, No. 9, March 1, 2010 1) In the Ed Stein cartoon, one has an interesting contrast between the giant hyperbolic cooling tower and the small orange cylindrical building to the right of the tower. The small orange building houses the nuclear reactor. There is nothing nuclear about
Drawing the lower and upper boundaries of future oil supply By Rembrandt Koppelaar, ASPO Netherlands
The oil supply challenge is often summarized in terms of the production volume equivalent of Saudi-Arabia’s that needs to be replaced. This popular metric is based on in-depth studies of global decline rates that show a decline range between 4.5 and 6 percent over the current 73 million barrels of crude oil produced per day. By using such literature values for all types of production, it can
The Redundant Subsidy By Robert Rapier
Even for staunch proponents of U.S. biofuel policy, it is hard to argue that the current subsidy on grain ethanol serves the purpose it was designed to serve. With ethanol mandates now in place in the form of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), there is a mechanism - with penalties for non-compliance - to ensure that gasoline blenders use the mandated amount of ethanol. Maintaining a subsidy on top
