The IEA’s World Energy Outlook in 6 charts.
Here is our pick of top charts from the IEA’s latest annual World Energy Outlook (WEO), as promised in our earlier post. These are about the big trends that we (mostly) agree with. In yet another follow-up post we will also write about that the…
It’s the shale (aka. tight) oil, stupid. Despite all reports to the contrary, the unconventional oil boom implies rising output outside of OPEC, and OPEC will produce much less than previously expected.
Fatih Birol, IEA's Chief Economist announced the new Outlook. Picture: Shale world…
A gadget which is supposed to decrease your electricity bills by 75%. Bullshit. Still, a recent EU-wide scam raises some interesting comparisons: where do they charge more for the same ‘product’?
Last week, we (as well as many others) got a Facebook ad: ‘If you buy our gadget, and simply…
It is a Saturday night in 2023. Despite the inconvenient hour, the Tel Aviv-Shiraz EasyJet flight is full of expectant Israeli and American backpackers, Iranian traders and the odd oilworker expat family based in Iran returning from a long weekend of sightseeing…
Sounds completely unrealistic?…
What do dead cows, Native American warriors and Snow White have in common? At first glance, not much. Yet these are just some of the many random names given to oil and gas fields.
While most exploration and production (upstream) blocks are named after their geographic location, or just assigned a…
If a Martian landed on Earth, it would be greatly surprised that the US is an ally of Saudi Arabia and an enemy of Iran. History is the explanation, but fundamentals have a tendency to reassert themselves in the long run…
By István Zsoldos and Diána Szőke
Saudi Arabia, where women are…
How high would oil prices climb if there was a fallout in Syria's or Egypt's production? Or if the crisis escalated and Iran, for example, stopped producing? Or if it blocked the Strait of Hormuz? In our interactive chart you can play around with your assumed oil supply shocks, too.
As we have…
What’s such a big deal about a self-driving car, when you even have to give up control of the vehicle? Exactly that. You might not need to own a car at all, and still get everywhere like you had a chauffeur. And it may even change how much your house is worth, for example.
A self-driving car…
The world is either going to be constrained by the high price of energy, cook itself or it will use a lot of gas, barring a revolution in renewables.
In our earlier post we showed some enduring energy trends. In this one we take a look at what happens if these trends broadly continue. This is…
Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur behind PayPal and Tesla, recently unveiled his plans for a new, superfast transport system, which generated a lot of hype in the media. But the plans are still somewhat vague. We show how passengers could look like while covering the distance between Budapest…
Or: the adventures of oil markets as pictured on past covers of The Economist.
We wonder what might come next, and judging by the usual frequency we only have to wait a couple of years...
Good wine doesn’t necessarily take… a barrel. At least not always. Rolling Barrel exclusive summer edition. Because we said right from the start that we wouldn’t only write about energy…
I tasted a few wines produced in amphorae during a trip to Georgia. Wine, but not as we know it… The…
What emits more CO2 – 1 kg of French fries, or 1 kg of gasoline? And what does all this have to do with the EU? Find out in our post below.
Last week the European Union approved adding several other industries to the list of those threatened by so-called “carbon leakage” (see box), which…
A bit more than 4 barrels of oil. Or about 700 liters. That is how much oil the average person uses each year globally. And it has been the same for the past 30 years.
BP recently published its annual data deluge regarding energy markets. We calculated some interesting ratios and present them in…
Every country has a stake in the conflict one way or another. But that won’t stop the bitter war of attrition from grinding on.
The old joke used to go like this:
“Question: What is globalization?
Answer: Princess Diana’s death.
An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend…
Many people think that a slowdown to say 4% growth in China would be unimaginable. But how about minus 4%?
By István Zsoldos and Péter Simon Vargha
It has always been a question of when, not if. China’s per capita GDP has grown almost 6 fold in the past 20 years, a compound annual…
The US chemical industry would rather export the natural gas in the form of plastics, the greens would not export it at all, and the foreign policy lobby regards gas exports as a tactical weapon against the Russians. The jury on exports is still out, literally.
By András Bácsi-Nagy. András has…
This is not as crazy as it sounds. Actually the technology already does exist.
In our earlier post we argued that we do not have much time in terms of climate change – it is very likely that the carbon budget will be exceeded in 20 years or less, and that the temperature increase will…
There’s only a 1% chance your plane will crash. Enjoy your flight!
There’s no way around it: climate change is happening. Even if it’s unusually cold in June. And you don’t need to be a climate scientist to be convinced by the evidence. As some of our readers requested, we gathered the…
The EU is getting worried about the high energy prices paid by European companies. Well, maybe they should have thought of that earlier.
Another EU summit was held last week, where energy issues were discussed (among other topics). However, the issue of tax avoidance and tax fraud seems to have…
In what does Europe beat the world, and what does America excel in? We were also inspired by the world map that went viral on the net last week: more people living inside of a circle than outside of it… We made a couple versions for the energy industry too.
The following mind-blowing map came…
Mainly in large metropolises, and primarily in the US. But their numbers are growing in China too.
Wealthinsight recently published a list (which we found on the Alphaville blog in Financial Times) that ranks cities by the number of billionaires residing there.
New York ranks first, followed by…
There is not a long time left to come up with a technological breakthrough to get rid of CO2 emissions. The other option is crocodiles in Scandinavia if we remain on current emission trends.
Recently, there has been a lot of media attention on atmospheric CO2 concentrations reaching 400 ppm…
We could well see oil prices spike to new records. But the average price in the next decade is likely to be lower than in recent years.
In our previous piece we have shown that Saudi Arabia may not be able to cut production to stabilize oil prices much longer, if needed. In this post we are going…
Bluff, empire-building or no better project?
Will South Stream “West” be built, and will Gazprom shoot itself in the foot? Or will the current plans be scrapped? We’re rooting for the former…
In our previous post on the Nabucco pipeline, we explored the factors (basically everything)…
