Tag Archives: shale oil

In this week’s Off The Cuff podcast, Chris and James Howard Kunstler discuss:

• The Shale Oil Booby-Trap
  • Fake prosperity that will tank the markets when it ends
• Could The US Government Nationalize The Oil Industry?
  • It very well could
• The Destruction Of Coherent Ideas
  • To fail to plan is to plan to fail
• What Are We Willing To Give Up?
  • A better future depends on abandoning some of our self-destructive luxuries

In this week’s podcast, Chris and Jim tackle a wide range of issues — from shale oil, to Jeffrey Epstein, wokesterdom, the financial bubble, social malaise, and the future of society. One deficit particularly concerning to Jim is our culture’s inability to have coherent discourse.

If we can’t engage in understanding and intelligently debating with one another, how will we ever devise effective solutions to the many challenges we face?

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

• Shale Oil’s Chronic Profit Drought
  • Nearly all companies are cash-flow negative
• Why Drilling US Oil Isn’t Profitable
  • Oil service costs eat your lunch
• Why Drillers Can’t Stop Drilling
  • They need cash to service their debts
• Shale Oil Is A Business Model With No Future
  • When credit tightens, the whole industry will implode

Right now, the US is still producing a record amount of oil, due mostly to shale fields developed within the past decade. But that bonanza won’t last — it can’t last — explains petroleum geologist Art Berman. Nearly every shale driller has been and will remain to be unprofitable. The nature of shale wells and the nature of oil service costs will ensure that.

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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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