I think prices will respond erratically, but they can't climb into the stratosphere -- prices need to lie in the Goldilocks zone, affordable to consumer uses and high enough for producer costs+profits. High prices might induce a little new discovery & supply, but unless that high price can be sustained in the economy, it will fall back because of recession. Marginally higher prices might induce more imports, taking from less well endowed nations.
Regardless of the absolute price of oil, the amount of money spent on it, relative to everything else, will increase inexorably. Like B, I am skeptical that "the electrification of everything" can happen fast enough to substitute for oil as global exports decline. Our global market economy has been built to be entirely dependent on fossil fuels, of which oil is the most important.
This means that oil will always remain essential to the functionality of modern cities. Discretionary purchasing will rapidly decline as economies deteriorate, while key sectors responsible for keeping people in cities fed, watered and sheltered will still need lots of purchased oil. There are minumum levels of food calories, water consumption and home heating that must be supported with oil, the use of which will take priority over everything else.
The energy sector, including oil, will become a larger and larger component of every country's economy. Whether absolute prices increase in an inflationary context, or decrease in a deflationary context, won't matter that much. Getting enough energy, and how to pay for it, will be on everyone's mind every day.
Yes, and those wars will produce one of the most dangerous times in human history. We've always had resource wars, but the coming wars will be the first between antagonists having nuclear weapons.
Joe, there are 10 calories of fossil fuel in 1 calorie of food, and that’s excluding transportation. Through the use of fossil fuels we (humanity) have changed from being naturally omnivores to being detritivores. Without fossil fuels agriculture cannot feed 8+ Billion of us, the result will be a great simplification. Apart from the lights going out countries that import large amounts of their basic foods stuffs will be the first to suffer starvation.
Kurt Dahl’s view as depicted in his book “An American Famine”
— In the shadowed years from 2028 to 2048, as America's fragile empire crumbles under the weight of insatiable consumption and ecological ruin, “An American Famine” unleashes a nightmarish chronicle of societal disintegration that claws at the soul. What begins as an insidious downward spiral. Supply chains fracturing, farmlands withering into dust, and cities swelling with the desperate and the destitute; escalates into a cataclysmic year of 2038, where the grid fails, marauding gangs descend upon the starving masses, and the veneer of civilisation shreds to reveal the primal beast within humanity. Through a mosaic of shattered voices; widowed mothers clawing through rubble for scraps, once respectable men turned cannibals in the flickering light of burning suburbs, and hollow-eyed survivors bartering their last shreds of humanity. Kurt Dahl paints a harrowing tableau of anarchy's embrace, where famine doesn't just empty bellies but devours the very essence of the American dream, leaving only echoes of screams in the endless, barren night.
typo in 1st sentence in italics, "US will be no EXCEPTION"
More substantively, this is a 2018 piece that explores similar ground. Pietro looks at each oil producing country's data to find those Post-Peak, and those not yet. He also looks at domestic demand, projecting when (declining) production and (rising) domestic demand will intersect. This analysis does not consider the detail of your "net import/export" analysis, it treats all barrels as equal. Pietro's point is to explore when individual producer countries will be unable to provide any exports, and also to consider if nuclear-capable nations will compel exports from others.
From all this, what I get is the thought that the post-peak world, and its contraction, will be uneven. Oil collapse will come in from a periphery: weaker, less well endowed nations will encounter oil austerity first.
"How major players like China or the US would respond to a drop in their import volumes, at the same time when their domestic production is already falling and there is not enough oil to be found in international markets either, is another matter." Pietro (above) suggests we look to the nuclear-capable nations to see who might be winners and losers in the scramble for remaining supplies.
What is interesting about Turiel's work is its longitudinal nature, we see it forecast and then arrive. I suspect we in the West are not seeing lack of diesel supplies biting because of our relative ability to import either diesel or its precursors, pushing the shortage on to other nations. Again, an uneven collapse, originating in weaker/poorer countries.
You're welcome! For the record, this also applies to every Substack blog. Just add /feed to the blog name. This, for example, is the RSS feed of my own Substack blog: https://mfioretti.substack.com/feed
When I look at John's chart, my focus is on when Blue (production) intersects Red (Discoveries). A linear extrapolation makes that happen in just a few years (2030?). I don't think it will be linear in fact, I expect that various factors will bend production toward horizontal (diminished supply) before supply equals discoveries.
"China and India, on the other hand, could find themselves at a hot war fought over access to Middle Eastern oil..."
"At"?!
Prepositional slip-ups aside. These future possibilities may explain why India is so guarded, and in the end — regardless of the public posture — ultimately reluctant, when it comes to "declaring independence" from the USA.
B is not a native English speaker, but he still writes in English extremely well. Every post of his has a few minor errors, but the meaning is always clear in context.
Love to see more people thinking about the Export Land model. It was a very popular component of theories in the 00s and early 10s before dwindling away and being undeservedly forgotten.
Sometimes I see ethanol tossed out as a way to get around dwindling diesel/gas supplies. I’m guessing it’s wishful thinking, but has this been addressed here before?
Also, I get the point about rising costs of resources extraction being a problem, but isn’t this more of a free market issue? What’s stopping, for instance, a dictator from nationalizing the oil/natural gas/mining industries and paying workers to keep extracting the stuff for essential domestic use, profits be damned? Sorry if this point has been raised/addressed before.
It’s hard not to predict massive global war breaking out over seizing control of remaining oil sources. B abounds, as usual, with thoughtful solutions and scenarios for how all this could be managed with a minimum of apocalyptic bloodshed, but I doubt our technocrat utopian ruling class cares about that. They’re Theilite assholes who expect to live a posthuman luxurious Epstein Island existence while what remains of everyone else is reduced to a Stone Age lifestyle. I suspect they’re in for a rude awakening when they’re the first to get eaten alive by their servants.
Current ethanol production comes from corn raised by diesel equipment and oil- based fertilizers. Unless there's another way to make ethanol on a major scale, I don't see it being a major player. Thoughts, anyone?
Yeah, that’s about what I figured. Mass scale industrial farming is pretty destructive and unsustainable itself (cue Wendell Berry) so “just power everything with ethanol!” feels like a pulling yourself up by the bootstraps situation, doesn’t it?
Edwin, there are 10 calories of fossil fuel in 1 calorie of food, and that’s excluding transportation. Through the use of fossil fuels we (humanity) have changed from being naturally omnivores to being detritivores. Without fossil fuels agriculture cannot feed 8+ Billion of us, the result will be a great simplification. Apart from the lights going out countries that import large amounts of their basic foods stuffs will be the first to suffer starvation.
Kurt Dahl’s view as depicted in his book “An American Famine”
— In the shadowed years from 2028 to 2048, as America's fragile empire crumbles under the weight of insatiable consumption and ecological ruin, “An American Famine” unleashes a nightmarish chronicle of societal disintegration that claws at the soul. What begins as an insidious downward spiral. Supply chains fracturing, farmlands withering into dust, and cities swelling with the desperate and the destitute; escalates into a cataclysmic year of 2038, where the grid fails, marauding gangs descend upon the starving masses, and the veneer of civilisation shreds to reveal the primal beast within humanity. Through a mosaic of shattered voices; widowed mothers clawing through rubble for scraps, once respectable men turned cannibals in the flickering light of burning suburbs, and hollow-eyed survivors bartering their last shreds of humanity. Kurt Dahl paints a harrowing tableau of anarchy's embrace, where famine doesn't just empty bellies but devours the very essence of the American dream, leaving only echoes of screams in the endless, barren night.
Most of these countries are also net food importers, with Japan and China both completely dependent on large fractions of their food coming from overseas...No country in Africa can feed itself now...So the pressure will be on American, Canadian and Brazilian farmers, along with a number of others including Russia and the Ukraine, to grow that food..And farmers' demand for diesel will be highly inelastic....Interesting times ahead, particularly in the US, as ordinary consumers will be forced to cut back pretty drastically at some point...
Having worked for a large energy company, I suspect that Russia's unexploited resources in Siberia and the Arctic are much greater than these estimates...The big energy companies seem awfully eager to participate in Russian oil projects, which suggests that they have some knowledge in this area that isn't public.....
Incidentally, has anyone ever come across an elevator pitch for explaining the importance of oil? Any attempt I make is usually met with a version of "wont we just use something else?" (the exact words of my last CEO - tech industry of course)
The number of humans subsisting on this planet, over the past 10-14kyrs, has increased 3,000 times our current 8.2 B and so has our consumption of nonrenewable natural resources, thus we are already over the collapse brink of the Seneca curve. Still we continue to act like drunken 19th century sailors. In the end it has always been about sequestered carbon based fuels, starting with sedentary agriculture and now ending with fossil fuel exhaustion. What none of the climate collapse "experts" will ever tell us that climate collapse is due to our liberating the heat energy stored in those depleting "fossil" fuels. So, enjoy your lovely afternoon drive to see the last of the Fall Colors. Have a blessed day.
I would never trust a word from the oil and gas industry. They are far too wiley for that. All my life I have heard that oil is finite but some discontinued wells are producing again. I heard that oil is made from "fossils" but some scientists declare that it is abiotic.
When my husband worked for BP on one of their offshsore exploration rigs, he was part of the team which discovered two major fields (Magnus) in the Arctic Circle, only one of which has been exploited. That rig then went south of the Falklands and found the Sea Lion field which triggered a minor war with Argentina in 1982. That field remains untouched.
BP is waiting for the rest of the world to deplete its resources and then they will call all the shots.
what sort of effect do you think all this will have on oil prices?
I think prices will respond erratically, but they can't climb into the stratosphere -- prices need to lie in the Goldilocks zone, affordable to consumer uses and high enough for producer costs+profits. High prices might induce a little new discovery & supply, but unless that high price can be sustained in the economy, it will fall back because of recession. Marginally higher prices might induce more imports, taking from less well endowed nations.
Regardless of the absolute price of oil, the amount of money spent on it, relative to everything else, will increase inexorably. Like B, I am skeptical that "the electrification of everything" can happen fast enough to substitute for oil as global exports decline. Our global market economy has been built to be entirely dependent on fossil fuels, of which oil is the most important.
This means that oil will always remain essential to the functionality of modern cities. Discretionary purchasing will rapidly decline as economies deteriorate, while key sectors responsible for keeping people in cities fed, watered and sheltered will still need lots of purchased oil. There are minumum levels of food calories, water consumption and home heating that must be supported with oil, the use of which will take priority over everything else.
The energy sector, including oil, will become a larger and larger component of every country's economy. Whether absolute prices increase in an inflationary context, or decrease in a deflationary context, won't matter that much. Getting enough energy, and how to pay for it, will be on everyone's mind every day.
As we see waning oil production causing worldwide economic havoc, we can also expect more resource wars. It's always been that way.
Yes, and those wars will produce one of the most dangerous times in human history. We've always had resource wars, but the coming wars will be the first between antagonists having nuclear weapons.
Indeed RB, but those who recognise this are ignored as an inconvenient truth-tellers: https://austrianpeter.substack.com/p/the-financial-jigsaw-part-2-51-next?r=hhrlz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
Joe, there are 10 calories of fossil fuel in 1 calorie of food, and that’s excluding transportation. Through the use of fossil fuels we (humanity) have changed from being naturally omnivores to being detritivores. Without fossil fuels agriculture cannot feed 8+ Billion of us, the result will be a great simplification. Apart from the lights going out countries that import large amounts of their basic foods stuffs will be the first to suffer starvation.
Kurt Dahl’s view as depicted in his book “An American Famine”
— In the shadowed years from 2028 to 2048, as America's fragile empire crumbles under the weight of insatiable consumption and ecological ruin, “An American Famine” unleashes a nightmarish chronicle of societal disintegration that claws at the soul. What begins as an insidious downward spiral. Supply chains fracturing, farmlands withering into dust, and cities swelling with the desperate and the destitute; escalates into a cataclysmic year of 2038, where the grid fails, marauding gangs descend upon the starving masses, and the veneer of civilisation shreds to reveal the primal beast within humanity. Through a mosaic of shattered voices; widowed mothers clawing through rubble for scraps, once respectable men turned cannibals in the flickering light of burning suburbs, and hollow-eyed survivors bartering their last shreds of humanity. Kurt Dahl paints a harrowing tableau of anarchy's embrace, where famine doesn't just empty bellies but devours the very essence of the American dream, leaving only echoes of screams in the endless, barren night.
Don’t have nightmares🤔
A "word" spanning military empire. I think you meant "world" I believe we're already seeing the effects of what you wrote, not that you'd disagree ;)
Excellent article, great research and actual data.
typo in 1st sentence in italics, "US will be no EXCEPTION"
More substantively, this is a 2018 piece that explores similar ground. Pietro looks at each oil producing country's data to find those Post-Peak, and those not yet. He also looks at domestic demand, projecting when (declining) production and (rising) domestic demand will intersect. This analysis does not consider the detail of your "net import/export" analysis, it treats all barrels as equal. Pietro's point is to explore when individual producer countries will be unable to provide any exports, and also to consider if nuclear-capable nations will compel exports from others.
From all this, what I get is the thought that the post-peak world, and its contraction, will be uneven. Oil collapse will come in from a periphery: weaker, less well endowed nations will encounter oil austerity first.
https://www.15-15-15.org/webzine/2018/10/10/a-practical-exercise-suggestion-for-peak-oil-sceptics/
"How major players like China or the US would respond to a drop in their import volumes, at the same time when their domestic production is already falling and there is not enough oil to be found in international markets either, is another matter." Pietro (above) suggests we look to the nuclear-capable nations to see who might be winners and losers in the scramble for remaining supplies.
Russia seems to have resilience: https://austrianpeter.substack.com/p/the-financial-jigsaw-part-2-58-playbook?r=hhrlz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
Antonio Turiel has been publishing on Peak Diesel for over a decade. The most recent is here. He writes in Spanish, but Google Translate does a fine job converting to English for me. https://crashoil.blogspot.com/2024/01/el-pico-del-diesel-edicion-de-2023.html
What is interesting about Turiel's work is its longitudinal nature, we see it forecast and then arrive. I suspect we in the West are not seeing lack of diesel supplies biting because of our relative ability to import either diesel or its precursors, pushing the shortage on to other nations. Again, an uneven collapse, originating in weaker/poorer countries.
Thanks for the headsup on Turiel's blog, very interesting.
Any idea how to subscribe to his updates?
Strangely enough I can't seem to find a subscribe-button anywhere on his blog.
Subscribe to his RSS feed: https://crashoil.blogspot.com/rss.xml
Thanks!
You're welcome! For the record, this also applies to every Substack blog. Just add /feed to the blog name. This, for example, is the RSS feed of my own Substack blog: https://mfioretti.substack.com/feed
Ah, good to know.
I feel the Substack notifications can be a bit vague, so just installed an RSS reader app and now adding the RSS for your blog there too. :)
"True discoveries are not enough to replace even one tenth of the amount of oil consumed every year." John Peach has shared a graphic of discoveries, reserves, and production. https://scontent-sea5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/559144444_24637029549311455_3945587713985808954_n.jpg?_nc_cat=103&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=aa7b47&_nc_ohc=zkGrCYnrLmcQ7kNvwEh__9V&_nc_oc=AdkDCvpJ1kwAQEXaeCHJfFMROq1XOtKdOajFzrgnP0mObxYvEvYtR440ti-A7ttYxBw&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-sea5-1.xx&_nc_gid=f3eKrmjgtO1PLBJb6v_uHw&oh=00_AfiD00P56D-dwSm8RUf5bKdANunRtDK_wpLejhK0jInTDQ&oe=691FB1F6 (you may need Facebook to see this)
When I look at John's chart, my focus is on when Blue (production) intersects Red (Discoveries). A linear extrapolation makes that happen in just a few years (2030?). I don't think it will be linear in fact, I expect that various factors will bend production toward horizontal (diminished supply) before supply equals discoveries.
John's most recent report is here: https://www.wildpeaches.xyz/blog/2025-10-03-energy-review-2025, and the Github repository is: https://github.com/XerxesZorgon/World-Energy-Review-2025.
"China and India, on the other hand, could find themselves at a hot war fought over access to Middle Eastern oil..."
"At"?!
Prepositional slip-ups aside. These future possibilities may explain why India is so guarded, and in the end — regardless of the public posture — ultimately reluctant, when it comes to "declaring independence" from the USA.
B is not a native English speaker, but he still writes in English extremely well. Every post of his has a few minor errors, but the meaning is always clear in context.
Love to see more people thinking about the Export Land model. It was a very popular component of theories in the 00s and early 10s before dwindling away and being undeservedly forgotten.
Back to canals? https://austrianpeter.substack.com/p/the-financial-jigsaw-part-2-55-russian?r=hhrlz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
Sometimes I see ethanol tossed out as a way to get around dwindling diesel/gas supplies. I’m guessing it’s wishful thinking, but has this been addressed here before?
Also, I get the point about rising costs of resources extraction being a problem, but isn’t this more of a free market issue? What’s stopping, for instance, a dictator from nationalizing the oil/natural gas/mining industries and paying workers to keep extracting the stuff for essential domestic use, profits be damned? Sorry if this point has been raised/addressed before.
It’s hard not to predict massive global war breaking out over seizing control of remaining oil sources. B abounds, as usual, with thoughtful solutions and scenarios for how all this could be managed with a minimum of apocalyptic bloodshed, but I doubt our technocrat utopian ruling class cares about that. They’re Theilite assholes who expect to live a posthuman luxurious Epstein Island existence while what remains of everyone else is reduced to a Stone Age lifestyle. I suspect they’re in for a rude awakening when they’re the first to get eaten alive by their servants.
Current ethanol production comes from corn raised by diesel equipment and oil- based fertilizers. Unless there's another way to make ethanol on a major scale, I don't see it being a major player. Thoughts, anyone?
Yeah, that’s about what I figured. Mass scale industrial farming is pretty destructive and unsustainable itself (cue Wendell Berry) so “just power everything with ethanol!” feels like a pulling yourself up by the bootstraps situation, doesn’t it?
Edwin, there are 10 calories of fossil fuel in 1 calorie of food, and that’s excluding transportation. Through the use of fossil fuels we (humanity) have changed from being naturally omnivores to being detritivores. Without fossil fuels agriculture cannot feed 8+ Billion of us, the result will be a great simplification. Apart from the lights going out countries that import large amounts of their basic foods stuffs will be the first to suffer starvation.
Kurt Dahl’s view as depicted in his book “An American Famine”
— In the shadowed years from 2028 to 2048, as America's fragile empire crumbles under the weight of insatiable consumption and ecological ruin, “An American Famine” unleashes a nightmarish chronicle of societal disintegration that claws at the soul. What begins as an insidious downward spiral. Supply chains fracturing, farmlands withering into dust, and cities swelling with the desperate and the destitute; escalates into a cataclysmic year of 2038, where the grid fails, marauding gangs descend upon the starving masses, and the veneer of civilisation shreds to reveal the primal beast within humanity. Through a mosaic of shattered voices; widowed mothers clawing through rubble for scraps, once respectable men turned cannibals in the flickering light of burning suburbs, and hollow-eyed survivors bartering their last shreds of humanity. Kurt Dahl paints a harrowing tableau of anarchy's embrace, where famine doesn't just empty bellies but devours the very essence of the American dream, leaving only echoes of screams in the endless, barren night.
Don’t have nightmares🤔
It can't really be "managed" except for some temporary period. Eventually, it will be impossible to sustain a modern economy at all.
Most of these countries are also net food importers, with Japan and China both completely dependent on large fractions of their food coming from overseas...No country in Africa can feed itself now...So the pressure will be on American, Canadian and Brazilian farmers, along with a number of others including Russia and the Ukraine, to grow that food..And farmers' demand for diesel will be highly inelastic....Interesting times ahead, particularly in the US, as ordinary consumers will be forced to cut back pretty drastically at some point...
Having worked for a large energy company, I suspect that Russia's unexploited resources in Siberia and the Arctic are much greater than these estimates...The big energy companies seem awfully eager to participate in Russian oil projects, which suggests that they have some knowledge in this area that isn't public.....
"This is why even techno-optimist organizations, such as Rystad or the EIA, had to present their audiences with reality."
Did you mean to say "IEA" in this sentence?
Another insightful piece, thank you.
Incidentally, has anyone ever come across an elevator pitch for explaining the importance of oil? Any attempt I make is usually met with a version of "wont we just use something else?" (the exact words of my last CEO - tech industry of course)
Did you ask any of them what will replace oil? That might be an... interesting... conversation.
The number of humans subsisting on this planet, over the past 10-14kyrs, has increased 3,000 times our current 8.2 B and so has our consumption of nonrenewable natural resources, thus we are already over the collapse brink of the Seneca curve. Still we continue to act like drunken 19th century sailors. In the end it has always been about sequestered carbon based fuels, starting with sedentary agriculture and now ending with fossil fuel exhaustion. What none of the climate collapse "experts" will ever tell us that climate collapse is due to our liberating the heat energy stored in those depleting "fossil" fuels. So, enjoy your lovely afternoon drive to see the last of the Fall Colors. Have a blessed day.
Not so new under the oily sun, as this has been well described in this report made in 2020 already: https://theshiftproject.org/en/publications/oil-depression-2030/
I would never trust a word from the oil and gas industry. They are far too wiley for that. All my life I have heard that oil is finite but some discontinued wells are producing again. I heard that oil is made from "fossils" but some scientists declare that it is abiotic.
When my husband worked for BP on one of their offshsore exploration rigs, he was part of the team which discovered two major fields (Magnus) in the Arctic Circle, only one of which has been exploited. That rig then went south of the Falklands and found the Sea Lion field which triggered a minor war with Argentina in 1982. That field remains untouched.
BP is waiting for the rest of the world to deplete its resources and then they will call all the shots.
How very British of them.
https://francesleader.substack.com/p/big-oily-lies