A Free-Market Energy Blog

Predicting New Oil Field Discoveries: Institutional Realism over Simple Extrapolation

By -- April 16, 2018

“The top-down approach by many [Peak Oil] analysts tends to ignore the explanatory variables behind oil supply trends. [They] merely extrapolate recent trends, especially if they are declining. Oil prices, fiscal regimes, and other factors that influence investment and supply trends are ignored….”

“While it is true that the success of any given wildcat cannot be predicted, you can forecast that discoveries will continue to occur and that a certain percentage of exploratory wells will find oil. And where the resource base has a history of exploration, the confidence about discoveries grows, especially in terms of the success rate.”

Abstract: The presumption that the inability to predict a given oil field discovery translates into an assumption of no discoveries is a primary factor behind neo-Malthusian pessimism about oil supply.  Given data for a basin, it can be safely assumed that a certain level of discoveries will continue.

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Attack on Tom Stacy: “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished” (anti-wind effort smeared by crony environmentalist)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 11, 2018

“Mr. Anderson and the Energy and Policy Institute marginalize themselves by assuming what must be debated. Thinking persons want to know about tradeoffs: economic and environmental. And what about the fact that Tom Stacy has been and mostly is a volunteer for his cause, unlike Anderson who gets a nice full-time, six-figure salary for his?”

It is strange to read a perfectly normal, accurate biography of someone only to realize that the other side is using facts to try to smear someone for doing a sensible thing.

And for Tom Stacy, that “thing” is pushing back at the grassroots level against monstrous industrial wind turbines that are environmentally invasive, anti-consumer, and anti-taxpayer.

Yet mainstream environmentalists, favoring high prices and less reliability for the master resource of energy, not to mention environmental energy sprawl, pretend that there is an inherent social good in renewable energies that are inferior in every which way.…

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China’s Coal-for-Coal Substitution (CERA’s Zhou explains what the US press does not)

By Robert Bradley Jr. --

“China’s new strategy is to rely mostly on a switch from ‘dispersed coal’ to clean coal, bolstered by generous doses of natural gas and all of the above—and more natural gas storage.” (Xizhou Zhou)

Last month in conjunction with CERAWeek, the Wall Street Journal published a Special Advertising Feature by Xizhou Zhou, “How China’s Anti-Smog Campaign Triggered a Natural Gas Crisis and a Switch to ‘Clean Coal’,” (March 7, 2018).

It was an article that contradicted the mainstream media story about how China energy policy is all about going ‘green giant’ in renewable energy (such my criticism of Amy Myers Jaffe). Donn Dears, too, jumped on Zhou’s piece in “The Truth About Coal, China, and Smog.”)

Basically, China is going clean coal, as in applying modern pollution control technology to reduce real pollutants (CO2 is not a pollutant in the classic sense). …

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Deep Ecology Applied to Hydraulic Fracturing (Nikiforuk goes strange, again)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 10, 2018
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California Energy Reform: Shellenberger’s One-Fourth Loaf

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 9, 2018
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Update: ‘Is DOE Leading Us Astray?’ (A 1999 analysis revisited)

By -- April 5, 2018
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Business History Scholarship: Jack High Interview (Part II)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 4, 2018
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Business History Scholarship: Jack High Interview (Part I)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- April 3, 2018
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Energy & Environmental Newsletter: April 2, 2018

By -- April 2, 2018
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On Energy Cost Trends (applying caution to the big talk of energy transformation)

By -- March 29, 2018
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