The Oil Drum seeks to facilitate civil, evidence-based discussions about energy and its impacts on the future of humanity, as well as serve as a leading online knowledge-base for energy-related topics.
Energy is back in the public consciousness and perhaps higher up political priority lists than at any time since the summer of 2008. Disruptions in…
The OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report and IEA Oil Market Report both came out on Tuesday last week and allowed us to see how events…
Oil importing nations have long treated Saudi Arabia as an infinitely deep well of crude oil supplies. In 2005, Matt Simmon’s book Twilight in the…
Conventional production agriculture relies heavily on fossil fuels, particularly in its ability to provide high yields at low labor costs. However, the uncertain future of…
Yesterday, I believe, will go down in history as one of the most significant for mankind. Whilst most citizens of the developed and developing world…
There are reports that the unrest in the Middle East has spread to the Sultanate of Oman. While at the moment there have been only…
The scramble for alternatives is on. High oil prices, growing concerns over energy security, and the threat of climate change have all stimulated investment in…
Everyone knows that it takes energy to produce anything. The energy used in mining, transport, processing, manufacturing, delivery, and disposal is “embodied” in every product…
The impacts of the disruptions in the Middle East are now starting to become evident as supplies no longer flow into the delivery pipelines that…
Libya is a relatively new country, having declared independence in 1951. For the last 39 years, the country has been ruled by a single man,…
I have a special emotional relationship with Telemaco Signorini's painting "The Riverbank." The area shown in the panting has changed very little from the time…
Current events in Egypt and throughout the Arab world have captivated world attention and with good reason — in 2009, Arab nations exported approximately 17…
The current economic distress has invigorated the discussion about jobs creation as a way to incubate new growth. Alternative energy advocates who previously have been…
The Hubbert model says that, within a reasonably large region, oil production should follow a bell shaped curve. When the model is applied to worldwide…
The dramatic fall of Mexican oil production, and its largest field Cantarell, is often cited as a signature example of the problems facing Non-OPEC supply.…
Lately there has been a mild, but growing, level of hype about the coming epoch of peak world coal extraction. As with any other non-renewable…
It is easy to become befuddled by the current discourse on peak oil. Peak oil is defined generally as the point at which the flow…
In this post an overview is given of electricity prices in a large number of countries, mainly members of the OECD. This shows how prices…
According to the BP statistical review of world energy 2010, the big six Middle East OPEC oil producers (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Unite Arab…
There has been a growing trend toward predicting an imminent peak to the production of coal. Just this last week Nature carried an article that…