Section » Commentary
“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
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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
Two Short Commentaries: Green Jobs Race Lost?
There is discomforting new green jobs data that suggest the USA might have already lost much of its technology leadership to green energy development abroad, including wind, PV energy, and electric cars. http://abcnews.go.com/WN/wind-power-equal-job-power/story?id=9759949
The Market Potential of CNG as a Transportation Fuel
In the search for alternative fuels and technologies to oil-based engines, basic cost-benefit analysis is often over-looked, and yet the dissemination of a new technology works is most successful when the market actually wants it. In making an initial assessment of the potential of a new technology, venture capitalists often apply a set of relatively simple tests to determine whether the business potential
Natural Gas - Bridge to sustainability by Tom Hewett
Steve Andrews says it’d be nice to have more viewpoints from ‘inside the industry,’ so who am I too let the big guy down! I’m a petroleum engineer going on 24 years. My first 6 years were on platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and gave me an appreciation for the teamwork and technology that go into the drilling business Charlie Brister sometimes writes about on these pages. My last
Top 10 Pieces of the Peak Oil Puzzle during the 2000s
Here’s one take on key events that impacted the peak oil story during the decade of the 2000s. If you have a favorite factor that isn’t listed below, send it along; we may run a follow-up. USGS World Oil Study released during summer of 2000. The USGS study was a continuation of efforts that Chuck Masters headed up every
