+
The famous Danish physicist Niels Bohr once humorously observed, "Predictions are very difficult, especially about the future." And so, as the world considers yet another rosy oil supply forecast, this time from the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), it is worth reviewing the agency's record.Back in the year 2000, the IEA divined that by 2010, liquid fuel production worldwide would reach 95.8 million barrels per day (mbpd). The actual 2010 number was 87.1 mbpd. The agency further
[…]
+
U.S.-based industries and utilities that consume a lot of natural gas have been trying to figure out just how to respond to proposals in Congress to allow expanded natural gas exports, a move that could significantly raise the price of one of their chief inputs.But, there is one segment of U.S. industry that ought to be cheering for such an outcome--though I doubt that its leaders will be offering their support in anything above a whisper. The renewable energy industry would benefit from higher
[…]
+
Maybe it's the gloomy Seattle weather that has made investment manager Jim Hansen and his son and partner, Kevin, at Ravenna Capital Management immune to oil and gas industry hype about the supposed U.S. shale gas "revolution." More likely it is thorough research focused on making their clients money and keeping that money out of harm's way.The Hansens are patient contrarian investors whose time horizon is generally several years. They can't help you if you want advice on next week's or next
[…]
+
Okay, I'm going to give you the shortest course ever in energy abundance: Energy abundance depends entirely on the RATE of energy flow. Let me say it again: Energy abundance depends entirely on the RATE of energy flow.
Now, here is what it does NOT depend on: supposed, but often unverified, fossil fuel reserves in the ground; hypothetical, sketchy, guesstimated, undeveloped, undiscovered resources imagined to be in the ground by governments or by energy companies and often deceptively referred […]
+
Each morning when I release my cat from the basement where he sleeps, he rushes to the upstairs bathroom to drink water from a bowl placed there for him. He appears to have a 'religious' belief that the water in this bowl is far superior to that in the bowl sitting alongside his food in the basement. So far as I can tell, there is no discernible evidence available to him to make this distinction. I take his preference then as a matter of faith rather than evidence. The water upstairs is holy.
[…]