Home » Posts tagged 'oil age'

Tag Archives: oil age

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

The End of the Oil Age Gets Postponed Again. Really?

March 2, 2023

Photo by Diyar Al Maamouri on Unsplash

British Petrol (or BP for short) has famously put this ‘peak demand’ date into 2019 — a forecast they would quickly backtrack two years after. A couple of more years into this brave new world, and after years of unprecedented shortages, the world has started to realize that fossil fuels might indeed be needed for a while down the road.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The end of the Oil Age, as we knew it

December 28, 2021

The end of the Oil Age, as we knew it

I’ve just spent the last hour reading this long article, full of links to keep you occupied right through the holidays…. Louis loves his acronyms, and they can be tedious, but this is such an important piece of work. He’s the only person I know who thinks in a thermodynamic fashion; and as we know, thermodynamics takes no prisoners. You have to bear in mind he wrote this in 2017 when not many people were forecasting a pandemic. As I’ve been saying, pandemic or no pandemic, 2020 was crunch time, and 2030 is full on TSHTF time. You might need a strong drink at the end….

Part 3 of Looking down the barrel — the Tooth Fairy & the Dragon-King

This is our fifth GB post on the global demand for something else. Our two previous posts cast light on two “thermodynamic elephants” roaming in the “globalised industrial world room”, the GIW — the loss of access to bioenergy and the loss of access to oil. We characterised the second elephant as being in fact a Dragon-King, the Oil Fizzle Dragon-King (OFDK), that is, a very high probability abrupt process of very high impact that nonetheless almost no one saw coming because they were blinded by their beliefs, prejudices and short term interests. We are now going to look more in depth down the barrel, into the fizzling out, that is, the oil dynamics that triggered OFDK, as this will give us insight as to what may be coming next and how best to address OFDK. Most importantly, OFDK heralds the end of fiat currencies and an explosion of the demand for cryptocurrencies anchored in sound thermodynamics.

The Oil Fizzle Dragon-King in brief

Figure 1 — This is not a Black Swan

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Venezuela’s collapse is a window into how the Oil Age will unravel

February 7, 2019

Protestors clash with police in Caracas (Source: REX / Shutterstock)

Venezuela’s collapse is a window into how the Oil Age will unravel

For some, the crisis in Venezuela is all about the endemic corruption of Nicolás Maduro, continuing the broken legacy of Chavez’s ideological experiment in socialism under the mounting insidious influence of Putin. For others, it’s all about the ongoing counter-democratic meddling of the United States, which has for years wanted to bring Venezuela — with its huge oil reserves — back into the orbit of American power, and is now interfering again to undermine a democratically elected leader in Latin America.

Neither side truly understands the real driving force behind the collapse of Venezuela: we have moved into the twilight of the Age of Oil.

So how does a country like Venezuela with the largest reserves of crude oil in the world end up incapable of developing them? While various elements of socialism, corruption and neoliberal capitalism are all implicated in various ways, what no one’s talking about — especially the global oil industry — is that over the last decade, we’ve shifted into a new era. The world has moved from largely extracting cheap, easy crude, to becoming increasingly dependent on unconventional forms of oil and gas that are much more difficult and expensive to produce.

Oil isn’t running out, in fact, it’s everywhere — we’ve more than enough to fry the planet. But as the easy, cheap stuff has plateaued, production costs have soared. And as a consequence the most expensive oil to produce has become increasingly unprofitable.

In a country like Venezuela, emerging from a history of US interference, plagued by internal economic mismanagement, combined with external intensifying pressure from US sanctions, this decline in profitability became fatal.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Some reflections on the Twilight of the Oil Age (Part II)

July 17, 2016

Some reflections on the Twilight of the Oil Age (Part II)

Part 2 – Enquiring into the appropriateness of the question
Let’s acknowledge it, the situation we are in, as depicted summarily in Part 1, is complex.  As many commentators like to state, there is still plenty of oil, coal, and gas left “in the ground”.  Since 2014, debates have been raging, concerning the assumed “oil glut”, concerning how low oil prices may go down, how high prices may rebound as demand possibly picks up and the “glut” vanishes, and, in the face of all this, what may or may not happen regarding “renewables”.  However, in my view, the situation is not impossible to analyse rigorously, away from what may appear as common sense but that may not withstand scrutiny.  For example, Part 1 data have indicated,that most of what’s left in terms of fossil fuels is likely to stay where it is, underground, without this requiring the implementation of  difficult to agree upon resource management policies, simply because this is what thermodynamics dictates.
We can now venture a little bit further if we keep firmly in mind that the globalised industrial world (GIW), and by extension all of us, do not “live” on fossil resources but on net energy delivered by the global energy system; and if we also keep in mind that, in this matter, oil-derived transport fuels are the key since, without them, none of the other fossil and nuclear resources can be mobilised and the GIW itself can’t function.
In my experience, most often, when faced with such a broad spectrum of conflicting views, especially involving matters pertaining to physics and the social sciences, the lack of agreement is indicative that the core questions are not well formulated.  Physicist David Bohm liked to stress: “In scientific enquiries, a crucial step is to ask the right question.  

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Much Longer Can The Oil Age Last?

May 11, 2015

How Much Longer Can The Oil Age Last?

History has been so fascinated with oil and its price movements that it is indeed hard to imagine our future without oil. Over the last few months, we have witnessed how oil prices have fluctuated from a 6 year low level of $42.98 per barrel in March 2015 to the current levels of $60 per barrel. It is interesting to note that, in spite of the biggest oil cartel in the world deciding to stick to its high production levels, the oil prices have increased mainly due to falling US crude inventories and strong demand. However, the current upward rally might be short lived and there may yet be another drop in the international oil price when Iran eventually starts pumping its oil into the market at full capacity, potentially creating another supply glut. In these endless price rallies, it is important to take a holistic view of the global energy industry and question which way it is heading. Are the dynamics of global energy changing with current improvements in renewable energy sources and affordable new storage technologies? Can the oil age end in the near future? Will we ever stop feverishly analyzing the rise and fall of oil prices? Or, will oil remain irreplaceable in our life time?

Are Renewables ready to take over?

With little or no pollution, renewables like solar, wind and biofuels are viewed by many as a means to curtail the rising greenhouse emissions and replace oil as a sustainable alternative. There is little doubt as to why China, US, Japan, UK and Germany, some of the world’s biggest energy gluttons have invested heavily in renewables.

EIAENergyConsumption

Image Source: EIA

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

 

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress