Kjell Aleklett

On 16 November 2016 the International Energy Agency (IEA) presented its annual ”World Energy Outlook” report (WEO-2016).

During 2008 to 2015 the ratio of GDP growth to increase in debt sank closer to 1:1. This shows that the economic policy of the time was catastrophic. There was no capacity for increasing the wages of the middle class in the USA.

On Tuesday 10 February at 13:00 GMT the IEA released its “Oil Medium-Term Market Report 2015”.

At the beginning of January I was invited to give a presentation and participate in a panel discussion on Peak Oil. Maybe this is not such a huge surprise but what was surprising was that the invitation was to a symposium titled “Peak Oil: Challenges and Opportunities for GCC Countries” that is to be held in Doha, Qatar. The lead organiser of the meeting is the “Arabic and International Relations Forum” and “Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute” that is part of the Qatar Foundation.

“Many small creeks make a large stream” is a Swedish saying that describes well the production of shale oil and shale gas. Equivalent English sayings are, “Many a little makes a mickle”, (that originated in Scotland and then President George Washington used in a text of 1793) and “Many drops make a river”. If one looks at a map of the Bakken showing only the top 20% best producing wells one cannot deny that there are many “drops”. The hearing that the Subcommittee on Energy and Power (US House of Representatives) held on 5 February, investigated whether all these many wells can amount to “American Energy Security”.

The fact that the summer ice is declining in the Arctic means that there is now also the possibility to take ships northwest and northeast of Greenland (seen from Europe) and the famous Northeast Passage goes through Russian territorial waters. Some judge that the risk for conflict there will grow and there are those who love to propose conflict-scenarios between Russia and the USA. Conflict over the demarcation of boundaries and shipping lanes is one possible scenario but all the parties in the area assure each other that everything will be solved peacefully.