Lassú lecsengéssel, nem egy nagy durranással. A végkifejlet kezdetére azonban lehet, hogy már nem sokat kell várnunk… Számolni is alig bírjuk, annyiszor jövendölték már az Olajkorszak végét. És eddig mindegyik előrejelzés hamisnak bizonyult. Persze ez nem azt jelenti, hogy az…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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...

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…

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…

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…

…which would also bring down OPEC There was an interesting piece from Nick Butler in the FT on whether Saudi Arabia can export enough to maintain sufficient revenues underpinning social peace in the face of growing domestic oil consumption and the potential need to cut oil exports to maintain…

Today is Oil Nationalization Day, a public holiday. In Iran. Every country has some strange holidays – Egyptians, for example, celebrate National Police Day.  19th/20th March (depending on the year) marks the anniversary of the nationalization of Iran’s oil industry in 1951. Having an…

‘The United States is on the path to a cleaner and more secure energy future’. But the President does not have much to do with that. President Obama has just unveiled a “blueprint for a clean and secure energy future” for the US. The press reports noted that the controversial Keystone XL…

Due to the unconventional oil and (shale) gas boom in the US, gas flaring in North Dakota and Texas is visible from outer space. In fact, the amount of gas flared would be enough to simultaneously power the cities of Chicago and Washington… Although environmentalists’ concerns are growing…

You may end up doing strange things when you feel cornered. Iran, for example, is even allegedly considering creating a huge oil spill, which would block the Strait of Hormuz and force the West to temporarily suspend sanctions during the clean-up. Let’s hope things don’t go so far: below we…

Prepare for US energy independence and an overshooting climate change The new World Energy Outlook has just come out. This is just a first quick look, we will drill deeper later. At the first sight, the most interesting statement (and one that news portals picked up) is that the US oil…

Thanks to their high per capita oil revenues, certain Middle Eastern countries were able to evade the Arab Spring through higher social spending – so far, that is. But with both break-even oil prices and geopolitical tensions on the rise, simply buying the silence of their citizens with generous…

The national anthem of South Sudan (chosen in a televised competition in 2010) calls upon the “land of great abundance to uphold us united in peace and harmony”. Let’s be polite and say that this is more of an aspiration than reflecting current realities. Subscribe to our newsletter to…

The worse drought in the US in 50 years and sky-rocketing corn and food prices have called attention to the irrationality of biofuels again. But the truth is that ethanol and biodiesel have always been prohibitively expensive even without a drought, and not a good way to reduce CO2 emissions. Now…

Buy ambitious experts from majors, distressed assets from small companies and have lots of luck. This was the recipe of COVE Energy, a junior that started exploring oil and gas only three years ago. It increased its market capitalization over 700-fold and recently was a subject of a bidding war. The…

Oil prices are down 30% from recent highs (and could fall further). Those who say it’s time to celebrate simply miss the point: the cause has been slowing demand, in turn a result of a global macroeconomic slowdown. What they also miss is that at current prices, the world still pays twice as much…

Gas is more abundant and cheaper than oil, and possibly even than coal. It will spread in heating and electricity production. Whether the same happens in transportation is more questionable – electricity may push out oil first. But if not, we may have a “methane economy” in a few decades.…