{"id":16561,"date":"2016-01-16T11:47:57","date_gmt":"2016-01-16T16:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16561"},"modified":"2016-01-16T11:47:57","modified_gmt":"2016-01-16T16:47:57","slug":"why-we-may-never-see-100-a-barrel-oil-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16561","title":{"rendered":"Why We May Never See $100-a-Barrel Oil Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why We May Never See $100-a-Barrel Oil Again<\/a><\/h3>\n

‘Race for What’s Left’ author surveys geopolitical fortunes in aftermath of a pricequake.<\/p>\n

\"Oil-Barrels\"<\/p>\n

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Pricequake: Recent turmoil could spell doom — not just for ‘tough oil’ projects now underway — but for some over-extended companies (and governments) that own them. Oil barrel photo via Shutterstock.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As 2015 drew to a close, many in the global energy industry were praying that the price of oil would bounce back from the abyss, restoring the petroleum-centric world of the past half-century. All evidence, however, points to a continuing depression in oil prices in 2016 — one that may, in fact, stretch into the 2020s and beyond. Given the centrality of oil (and oil revenues) in the global power equation, this is bound to translate into a profound shakeup in the political order, with petroleum-producing states from Saudi Arabia to Russia losing both prominence and geopolitical clout.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

To put things in perspective, it was not so long ago — in June 2014, to be exact — that Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, was\u00a0selling<\/a>\u00a0at $115 per barrel. Energy analysts then generally\u00a0assumed<\/a>\u00a0that the price of oil would remain well over $100 deep into the future and might gradually rise to even more stratospheric levels. Such predictions inspired the giant energy companies to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in what were then termed “unconventional<\/a>” reserves: Arctic oil, Canadian tar sands, deep offshore reserves, and dense shale formations. It seemed obvious then that whatever the problems with, and the cost of extracting, such energy reserves, sooner or later handsome profits would be made. It mattered little that the cost of exploiting such reserves might reach $50 or more a barrel.<\/p>\n

As of this moment, however, Brent crude is selling at $33 per barrel, one-third of its price 18 months ago and way below the break-even price for most unconventional “tough oil<\/a>” endeavours [Editor’s note: Since this story first appeared, prices\u00a0fell<\/a>\u00a0below $30 per barrel<\/i>].<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why We May Never See $100-a-Barrel Oil Again ‘Race for What’s Left’ author surveys geopolitical fortunes in aftermath of a pricequake. Pricequake: Recent turmoil could spell doom — not just for ‘tough oil’ projects now underway — but for some over-extended companies (and governments) that own them. Oil barrel photo via Shutterstock. As 2015 drew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[91,1894,4333,11761,522,588,592,694,701,5499,846],"class_list":["post-16561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-brent-crude","tag-canadian-tar-sands","tag-crude","tag-michael-t-klare","tag-middle-east","tag-oil","tag-oil-price","tag-russia","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-the-tyee","tag-us-shale-oil"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16561"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16562,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16561\/revisions\/16562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}