In this week’s Off The Cuff podcast, Chris discusses:

• We’re Polluting & Depleting, For No Real Gain
• Why Shale Oil Reflects Our Wrongheadedness
• Time Is Fast Running Out Before The Real Consequences Arrive
• But There Are Many Ways To Do Things Better

This week Chris looks at the big picture: the planet’s resources and humanity’s mad dash to consume them. We are depleting millions-year-old treasures — which will never renew in our species’ future — while leaving poison and pollution behind in the effort.

Even if we only prioritize the well-being of those currently alive (screw those pesky future generations!), time is running out on us. Our current trajectory is having increasing negative repercussions, which will only intensify over the coming decades.

The silver lining to this is that we *can* be doing things better. We already have plenty of models for living regernatively. We just need to embrace them. But will we?

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In this week's Off The Cuff podcast, Chris and Art Berman discuss:

• Is the Ghawar oil field truly in decline?
• If so, what are the implications?
• What other important revelations does the Saudi Aramco prospectus contain?

In the light of the huge surprise contained in the recent Saudi Aramco prospectus, that Saudi Arabia's massive Ghawar “crown jewel” conventional oil field is in decline (currently at a maximum output of 3.8 million barrels per day vs the previous estimate of 5.8mbd), we rushed to interview seasoned petroleum geologist Art Berman on the news.

Is he as concerned about the revelation as we are?

Yes. In fact, he suspects the 3.8mbd is likely still an overly-exagerrated figure, and that the field's true max output is even lower.

In his estimation, the fiction the world has been telling itself — that Peak Oil isn't real — is about to be rudely disproven. The recent (and much more expensive) shale bonanza will prove to be a short-lived distraction, and we'll soon be face-to-face with the predicament of how to power the global economy with less net energy.

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Really big news hit this morning. And today is April 2nd, so we can't dismiss this as an April-fools prank.

I explain it all with context below. But the summary is this: we're well on track for the oil supply shortage(s) and price spike(s) that I’ve been writing about for the past few years. It will all hit sometime between now and 2022 is my latest projected timeframe.

This will be a before-and-after story. Before the coming price spikes, so much seemed possible. After they hit, so much less will be. The transition from Easy to Hard is now fully underwaym and you need to be eyes wide open about the data.

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In this week's Off The Cuff podcast, Chris and Charles Hugh Smith discuss:

• The Crashing Treasury Curve
  • Interest rates are on the move
• Get Ready For Interest Rates To Start Rising
  • The end of a 30-year downtrend
• When Rates Rise, Prices Will Fall
  • Bonds, stocks, housing — nearly everything
• What's Next For Bitcoin?
  • We're witnessing a historical moment

Charles and Chris discuss the implications to anticipate should interest rates indeed start rising. The quick summary? It will change everything…

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Executive Summary

• How bad will "bad" get?
• What will happen to world supply and prices?
• Who is most vulnerable?
• How quickly could this occur?

If you have not yet read Part 1: Why The Shale "Miracle" Is Becoming A "Debacle" available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

How to Position Yourself

Okay, here’s the summary so far.  The shale companies are burning cash and they’ve done so every year. At every oil price point. And there’s nothing in the data to suggest that will change this year, or next.

So the first question to ask is: When will investors wake up and stop funding these companies?

This should be immediately followed by: How much financial and economic damage will then result? And how soon afterwards?

Well, if the companies stop drilling because their funding dries up, the decline rates of the various shale basins would translate into the immediate and sudden loss of a huge amount of oil production.  

How much?

According to the EIA the decline rates each month for the three biggest shale fields would be between 53,000 and 158,000 barrels per month.

Taken together, one month of not bringing any new wells online for these three fields would result in a drop in oil output of -314,000 barrels.  And a similar (but slightly smaller) drop the next month.  And the month after that, the same thing.  And so on.

After just 3 months the US would be down more than -1,000,000 barrels per day when all the other shale fields are taken into account. 

Now that’s extreme, and it’s very unlikely that drilling would just suddenly stop one day. But the point here is that…

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