peak oil

A civilizational tipping point

In recent years there has been a growing concern over thresholds, or tipping points, in nature. For example, scientists worry about when the shrinking population of an endangered species will fall to a point from which it cannot recover. Marine biologists are concerned about the point where overfishing will trigger the collapse of a fishery. […]

World’s top energy economist warns peak oil threatens recovery, urges immediate action

“Oil prices leapt above $70 a barrel Monday in Asia on investor expectations a recovering global economy will boost crude demand,” the AP reports. You might call those investors speculators – if speculation can be based on marketplace reality.  The UK’s Independent opens its interview with Dr. Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the International […]

Will Iraq be a global gas pump?

This guest essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. —– Has it all come to this? The wars and invasions, the death and destruction, the exile and torture, the resistance and collapse? In a world of shrinking energy reserves, is Iraq finally fated to become what it was […]

Stop calling Americans “consumers”

I was at a small meeting on peak oil Friday – Executive Summary:  We’re peaking now! James Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, was there.  He is in the Mad Max/Lovelock/Wall-E school of dystopia, and so I have a number of disagreements with him (see “Why I don’t agree with James Kunstler about peak oil […]

The oil intensity of food

Today we are an oil-based civilization, one that is totally dependent on a resource whose production will soon be falling. Since 1981, the quantity of oil extracted has exceeded new discoveries by an ever-widening margin. In 2008, the world pumped 31 billion barrels of oil but discovered fewer than 9 billion barrels of new oil. […]

90 months and counting

This piece was written for The Guardian by Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation in Britain. Ten months have passed since pointing out that we have, at best, 100 left before a new, far more dangerous phase of global warming begins. The “chatter” of concern is getting louder. But at the same […]

Has Obama saved Detroit from itself — or is that simply impossible?

You’re all gonna own a part of GM, so please, fellow owners, let me know what you think! Readers of Climate Progress understand two inescapable realities that the overwhelming majority of policymakers, the status quo media, and the car companies (with one exception) do not: Peak oil is inevitably going to drive up gasoline prices […]

Why Obama’s bank bailout could be bad for the environment

Back to the future?Photo: Julep67The Obama administration’s plan for reviving the banks is predicated on the idea that the “toxic assets” weighing down balance sheets aren’t really all that toxic at all; that the banks, in other words, aren’t actually insolvent, but  just the victims of temporary investor panic. If that logic proves true, then […]

Non-OPEC production has likely peaked, oil output could fall by 30 million bpd by 2015

You might think that the recent collapse in oil demand would put off the peak. But the price collapse and global credit crunch mean the reverse is true:

Non-OPEC crude oil production may have already peaked and international oil companies faced the prospect of both younger and older oil fields declining steeply, the firm said in the report released on Wednesday.

Merrill said "the cumulative decline of global oil production from today could amount to 30 million barrels per day by 2015." What does world need to do going forward?

Steep falls in oil production means the world now needed to replace an amount of oil output equivalent to Saudi Arabia's production every two years, Merrill Lynch said in a research report.

This matches what the normally conservative and staid International Energy Agency has been saying in recent months (see "Science/IEA: World oil crunch looming? Not if we can find six Saudi Arabias!" and "IEA says oil will peak in 2020").

The global economic recession has cut funding for investment in oil production around the globe. Ironically -- or tragically -- the only thing that can save the world from a return to soaring oil prices by 2010 or 2011 is if economic slowdown turns into "a multi-year event where global oil demand was pushed down structurally for the next five years."