Category: Resources
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What are Oil Reserves?
What are oil reserves? Nobody knows. OPEC Rules divi up the production cap according to stated reserves, so when they adopted that rule, declared reserves jumped without any new oil finds, and no-one ever accepts that their reserves have been depleted at all by the fact that they are taking some out.
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Safe energy
A friend recommended reading an opinion piece on the UK’s shambolic policy on nuclear energy. I stopped reading after “The facts on nuclear are pretty clear. It is far and away the safest means of generating a given amount of electrical energy known to man”. Idiot.
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Will the oil price trigger the long-predicted double dip?
Back in March 2008, I put down my prediction that later that year the oil price would reach $145 – from the $110 it had reached then – and bring an end to world economic growth. Now we’re back at $90, will it happen again?
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September oil and other GFC nuggets
A quarter or two where the GDP manages a dribble of growth isn’t “out of recession”. If I’m right about the likely oil price reaction to any sustained return to growth, we possibly never will be.
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Can algae save the world?
Yet another story today about how genetically engineered algae can produce much more crude oil per acre than biofuels. But how do the numbers stack up?
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More oil price speculation
Back in February, I wrote that “oil prices will continue to rise until they have suppressed demand back to match supply”, and forecast a headline barrel price of $120 in June and $145 at year end. Now it’s June and $139.69, what’s next?
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Oil Dollar Euro ULP
I’m interested by the claim repeated in numerous news analyses that “investors are buying oil to hedge against the sliding greenback” – it seems to me to be a tad more significant that world oil demand has exceeded world oil supply for the last several months, and looks like doing so for at least the…
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Peak Coal?
“The perception that coal is the fossil fuel of last resort may well be an illusion.” Energy Watch. Professor David Rutledge of CalTech in a lecture last October, suggests that world coal reserves are grossly overstated and could be substantially exhausted this century.
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Oil Prices: where now?
On Webdiary we’ve gone round the the Peak Oil loop more than a few times over the last few years (eg here). A new point of interest has arisen over this week: for the first time in the last few years the oil futures price has come out of its persistent state of contango as it rose back over…
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Wedging the climate
No one strategy can do all that we need to stop dangerous climate change. We need to follow several strategies simultaneously – but which ones? And are there solutions without nuclear power?