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On Not Jumping the Gun By Sharon Astyk
The e-mails started coming in to my mailbox this fall, their quantity and excitement level tracking the rising oil prices. Had I heard that this analyst just predicted $110 a barrel of oil by next year? How about this analyst, who suggested we might hit $200 a barrel by the end of 2015? As oil snuck past
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Interview with Michael Smith (Part 2 of 2)
Peak Oil Review: Saudi Arabia is obviously yours and everyone’s kingpin producer. Smith: Saudi Arabia has been the world’s main swing producer. Since 2006 when I developed the slides, Saudi Arabia has increased its production capacity; a lot was planned at the time, but they’ve been quite proactive in investing in their industry. Meanwhile the global recession of the last two years has
Interview with the UK’s Michael Smith (Part 1 of two parts)
Peak Oil Review Team: Could you share a little about your background? Michael Smith: I was once a geologist, and worked with oil and gas consultancies and companies after graduating from Oxford University in the UK with a PhD. I had worked in most parts of the world when, at the turn of the millennium, I started my own company Energyfiles, focusing on oil and gas production, consumption and activity.
Remembering the Remarkable Matthew R. Simmons
By Steve Andrews, Sally Odland, John Theobald and Randy Udall Matt Simmons was arguably the most influential individual on this side of the Atlantic to warn about the coming peak-and-decline of world oil production. Beginning in 2001, when he published his ground-breaking white paper on the world‘s giant oil
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
Review - July 6, 2009
1. Production and Prices Crude prices started the week firmly as traders hoped for an improvement in the US economy, the US dollar remained weak, and Nigerian militant attacks continued to cut production. On Tuesday prices jumped to $73 a barrel when a rogue trader in London, acting without authorization, amassed huge positions in Brent crude, losing his firm $10 million in the process. By Thursday,
Obama Tackles the Liquid Fuels Problem
All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance. It is easier to deplore the fate, than to describe the actual condition, of Corsica The principal conquests of the Romans were achieved under the republic; and the emperors, for the most part, were satisfied with preserving those dominions which had been acquired by the policy of the senate, the active emulation of the consuls, and the martial
The Role of Speculation in the 2007-2008 Spike in Oil Prices.
Over the last 8 years many explanations have been offered on why oil prices gradually increased before spiking upward. In the United States, Bush administration officials and industry lobbyists consistently blamed conservation groups and the laws that protect our environment for causing high energy prices. The accusations reached a crescendo in the summer of 2008 as oil prices peaked and chants
Briefs February 2, 2009
Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the International Energy Agency, estimates that around $100 billion in projects, mostly outside of OPEC, have been delayed or canceled over the past year because of weaker oil prices. In some cases, companies are waiting for lower costs. In others, they are deferring projects that have become unprofitable at today’s oil prices.
Briefs January 26, 2009
China boosted crude oil production by 2.3 percent in 2008 while natural-gas output gained 12 percent even as the economy expanded at the slowest pace in seven years. (1/22, #12) Colombia’s 2008 average crude oil output totaled 588,000 barrels a day, up from 531,000 barrels a day in 2007 as high prices in the first half of the year pushed companies to increase production.
