Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
In this post I present a retrospective look at my prediction from 2012 published on The Oil Drum (The “Red Queen” series) where I predicted that Light Tight Oil (LTO) extraction from Bakken in North Dakota would not move much above 0.7 Mb/d.
It’s likely that the Saudis are encouraging a fall in oil prices. In the face of what looks like declining demand, rather than cut production to maintain prices as they have done in the past, they’ve decided to maintain their market share worldwide by cutting prices.
Oil prices plunged to a four year low of just $85 per barrel this week – down from around $115 as recently as mid-June.
The price plunge which began in mid-June when New York oil futures trading around $105 a barrel continued this week with oil touching $80 on Wednesday before recovering to close at $81.78.
Faced with the prospect of losing market share to tight oil producers in the US, OPEC has simply taken the most prudent business decision. Keep the taps open.
Mid-Week Update. Energy prices continued to fall this week with New York futures trading below $87 a barrel on Wednesday and London oil falling to a close of $91.37.
A weekly update including, -Oil and the Global Economy -The Middle East and North Africa -Ukraine -Quote of the Week -The Briefs
Last July the government agency, which has collected mundane statistics on energy matters for decades, quietly revealed that 127 of the world’s largest oil and gas companies are running out of cash.
It is a testament to the psychological power of financial bubbles that people who know and trust me and generally accept the analysis I’ve put forth in my writings over the last decade are jumping into the stock market again with a pledge that they are in for the long term–no matter what.
Academic researchers Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have become famous for their book This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly and their earlier paper This Time is Different: A Panoramic View of Eight Centuries of Financial Crises. Their point, of course, is that the same thing happens over and over again. We can learn from past crises to solve our current problems.
With diminishing returns, the economy is, in effect, becoming less and less efficient, instead of becoming more and more efficient.
At the Age of Limits Conference, I gave a talk called Converging Crises, talking about the crises facing us as we reach energy limits. In this post, I discuss some highlights from a fairly long talk.
