Exploration

- Peak Oil Scare Fades as Shale, Deepwater Wells Gush Crude
- Oil, Food, Water: Is Everything Past Its Peak?
- Fulsome Fossil Fuels And The 'Peak Oil' Myth
- Peak Oil--No Longer the Right Question
(Note: several of these articles actually concede most of the points made by peak oilers.)

The history of revisions to oil and gas resources has heretofore been one of increases. For the first time, we are now seeing not just downward revisions in estimated natural gas resources, but drastic downward revisions.

President Obama exuberantly embraced America’s new oil and gas frontier this week in his State of the Union address. Clearly aiming to steal some Republican election thunder, he pledged to open 75% of potential oil and gas resources, and repeated claims that the US is sitting on enough natural gas to last for 100 years (see insightful commentary on the numbers behind this from Chris Nelder, and more on gas prospects from David Strahan.

The prominent scientific journal Nature has just published an article that supports what we in the peak oil world have been saying for years.

James Murray of the University of Washington and David King of the University of Oxford say that global oil production peaked in 2005 at about 75 million barrels a day.

The "supply of cheap oil has plateaued," said King. "The geologists know where the source rocks are and where the trap structures are," according to Murray. "If there was a prospect for a new giant oil field, I think it would have been found."

(Excerpts from news articles about the article.)

Fears of an EU recession gained ground this week with news that the German economy shrank in Q4. In oil markets this dunked oil prices to a New Year low – though they quickly recovered on Thursday in response to renewed concerns of supply disruption. In Nigeria unions threatened to escalate nationwide strikes to the oil production sector at the weekend if the government fails to reverse recent cuts in fuel subsidies.

- The Networked Era: An Interview with Michael Nielsen
- New Bill Would Put Taxpayer-Funded Science Behind Pay Walls
- The writer who made millions by self-publishing online

- Oil will decline shortly after 2015, says former oil expert of International Energy Agency
- World Pays Ecuador Not to Extract Oil from Rainforest
- 'Terrible' and Plenty of It: The Oil That Comes in from the Cold

-E.P.A. Links Tainted Water in Wyoming to Hydraulic Fracturing for Natural Gas
-Shale gas drilling's dirty secret is out
-Encana throws cold water on EPA report
-Ex-oil worker blasts shale gas industry
-No U.S.-style shale gas boom in EU: E&Y
-Petrochina says new shale gas find tough to develop

- Keystone XL Isn't Dead Yet
- Gas exports soar, keeping U.S. price at pump high
- Cairn’s $600 Million Greenland Oil Campaign Ends in Failure
- A Shadow Climate Regime

- Investment firm to encourage Arctic drilling
- Climate change: there is no plan B
- Battle to Save an Unsung Fish Critically Important to Ocean's Ecosystem (menhaden)
- Obama Re-election Strategy Is Tied to a Retreat on Smog
- BBC drops Frozen Planet's climate change episode to sell show better abroad

A few weeks back, I made the case that relying on space to provide an infinite resource base into which we grow/expand forever is misguided. Not only is it much harder than many people appreciate, but it represents a distraction to the message that growth cannot continue on Earth and we should get busy planning a transition to a non-growth-based, truly sustainable existence. To prove what a distraction it is, I will distract myself again this week with another space post. This time, true to the brand, I will do the math on why the infinite resources of space appear to be of questionable use to our human enterprise.

If one can’t rely on Daniel Yergin for soothing reassurances about the state of the global oil market, who you gonna call?

Since 2005, Yergin and his associates at CERA have massively reduced their projected rate of increase in Global Total Liquids “capacity.”

- New York Times: The Arctic and the Lessons of the Gulf
- Sen. Murkowski: U.S. Must be a Leader in Offshore Oil Production
- Putin’s Russia will lead a ‘new era of Arctic industrialisation’

Both the IEA and OPEC cut their oil demand forecasts this week for 2011 and 2012 on the worsening economic outlook...