Category Archives: Peak Oil

BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded on the 20th of April, killing 11 men and losing containment of the well it was drilling. It is what is called a “pressure fed” release. The upper limit of the Exxon Valdez disaster … Continue reading →

Civilisation depends on the availability of increasing flows of concentrated energy. We are on the threshold of contracting flows of concentrated energy and its partial substitution by diffuse energy. It is intuitively obvious that the net withdrawal of concentrated energy … Continue reading →

John Michael Greer, writing today in his ever insightful blog “The Archdruid Report”, reminds us of the real lesson of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption: nature cannot be ignored with impunity. He isn’t talking about volcanoes—he is talking about the turning … Continue reading →

How do we account for our growing inability to reconcile the “business as usual story” with every day facts? A look at the dynamics of academia provides an insight.

Last week, the UK Government held a work shop, entitled “Policy Response to potential future oil supply constraints”. Transition Network’s Rob Hopkins summarises it as “potentially the day when the UK government finally started to ‘get’ peak oil“.[1] As recently … Continue reading →

In some cases, they have been obvious for decades, and yet depressingly, they seem not to have been acted upon. When taken together, the sheer scale of the imminent oil supply crunch, and the extent of missed opportunity and failed … Continue reading →

In January 2006 I was tasked with preparing a briefing paper for the management of my oil company employer on the vexing subject of “Peak Oil”. The briefing was simple: read the literature, condense it into a format suitable for … Continue reading →