Recently in Peak oil Category

Just a couple of years ago, this prediction for US oil production would have sounded preposterous. But Tudor Pickering Holt's chief energy strategist now thinks the number could grow from the current level of 5.7 million b/d to more than 7 million b/d in the near future.  He actually said it out loud recently in an interview with Platts Oilgram News.

A few notes from this year's Americas Assembly of The Oil Council in New York.

(Unfortunately, no media breakfast this year; the prior two were interesting affairs that you can read about here and here.)

(With contributions from Platts staff members Sheela Tobben and Leslie Moore Mira.)

The peak oil debate has spurred a tremendous amount of debate. Now it's spurred a book.

The author, Kurt Cobb, is described by his publisher this way: Kurt Cobb is an author and columnist who speaks and writes frequently on energy and the environment. His column appears on the Paris-based science news site Scitizen, and his work has been featured on Energy Bulletin, 321energy, Le Monde Diplomatique, The Oil Drum, Common Dreams, EV World, and many other sites. He is a founding member of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas--USA, and he serves on the board of the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions. He maintains a blog called Resource Insights.

Seen as the fringe and "out there" wing of the energy world, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas-USA shows signs of finding its inner nerd as its sets its sights on making a bigger policy footprint.

This year the group held its sixth annual conference within spittin' distance of the Capitol in Washington, DC. Recent past conferences have been in California, Colorado and  Texas.

Some random musings on a Friday, halfway through the summer:

• It is truly astounding just how fast the noose is tightening around Iran's gasoline supplies. Sanctions are not even fully implemented by the west; the details remain murky; conventional wisdom holds that sanctions are always futile; and yet the reports continue roll in that Iran's supply of gasoline continues to get squeezed. Platts reported today that Turkish refiner Tupras, one of the few remaining visible companies in the world to keep supplying gasoline to Iran, has had to offer for sale on the open market gasoline earmarked for Iran because it has been unable to fix vessels to take the oil to the Islamic Republic. As we reported Friday, "Tupras has encountered reluctance from shippers to call at Iranian ports and has had to put to tender several cargoes that were to have been delivered to Iran. One shipping source said, 'The majority of shipowners are refusing to go to Iran at the moment.'" A small trading company with little concern about international sanctions might often be a company likely to break any sort of ban, but shipping companies are different. They need their boats to be able to call in ports all over the world, and do not need to be seen as sanctions-busters.

Looks like Americans are revving the engines early this year.

The Mastercard data, which we've written about before, is one of many imperfect ways of trying to measure US gasoline demand. It's based on credit card swipes, and it comes out weekly. 

Anyone following recent Platts news feeds like Oilgram News and Global Alert now knows that US oil production is rising again at a fairly significant level and shows signs of holding above the 5 million b/d mark for the next 10 years.

As the journalist responsible for compiling the data that substantiates those results and the interviewing of experts to explain the reasons, however, I have a confession to make here in the blogosphere.

The world of oil is in for a roller-coaster ride over the next few years if Deutsche Bank analysts are right, with oil demand set to peak in just seven years' time as crude spikes again, this time to $175/barrel, before falling into long-term decline.

It won't be a case of oil running out, however. Rather, the world will become much more efficient in its use of energy. But in the next few years, Deutsche predicts, we will see a lot of volatility and even more chronic under-investment in production capacity.

A session with a leading Peak Oil supporter can always be a sobering experience. That was certainly the case May 28 at the "New Challenges for Crude Oil" conference in Geneva, where the president of main international Peak Oil group spoke.