Raise the Hammer
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Andrew McKillop is a writer and consultant on oil and energy economics. Since 1975 he has worked in energy, economic and scientific organizations in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and North America. These include the Canada Science Council, the ILO, European Commission, Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries, the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and South Pacific, and the World Bank. He is a founding member of the Asian chapter of the International Association of Energy Economics. He is also the editor, with Sheila Newman, of The Final Energy Crisis (Pluto Press, 2005).
Email: xtran9@gmail.com
Oil: The 75 Dollar Floor Price - If oil exploration and production spending declines from its current high rates (probably above $350 billion per year), even maintaining current global oil output will be difficult. Published October 01, 2012 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Oil Supply and 'Peak Oil' Price Drivers - Any growth of world oil demand at even 1.5% a year for more than three or four years is impossible to satisfy, because this would create a permanent Peak Oil context. Published May 03, 2012 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Home Run for Peak Oil - There is almost no 'forward ability' or potential for global oil demand to grow at even rates of around 1.5% a year for more than 1 or 2 years before actual physical shortage onsets. Published April 23, 2012 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Libya's Slippery Oil Prize - Western governments (and oil companies) are eager to exploit Libya's oil reserves, while China is actually talking seriously about the reconstruction of Libya's critical infrastructure. Published September 01, 2011 in Special Report: Peak Oil
1979, 1929, or Something Else Entirely? - Should the European Central Bank see the value of its assets fall by less than five percent, its entire capital base would be wiped out. Published July 14, 2011 in Commentary
Exploding the Myth of Nuclear Energy Security - The old-time claim that nuclear power was not only safe and clean, but also cheap and secure was never strong - and is today even weaker. The time for major energy policy change is now. Published April 05, 2011 in Special Report: Peak Oil
The Myth of Saudi-US Mutual Dependence - The bottom line is short and bitter, like the Great Lake carved out of the Suez canal: there was never any real mutual Saudi-US dependence. Published March 25, 2011 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Black Hole For Oil Price Policy - The 2004-2007 petro growth cycle showed that oil prices close to or above $125 a barrel can be absorbed, and these energy prices, with related non energy commodity prices, drive global growth. Published December 06, 2010 in Special Report: Peak Oil
The Coming Nuclear Subprime Rout - With asset leverage able to surpass 250 times the nominal value of an underlying security, the ballooning of paper assets due to the Nuclear Renaissance can quite quickly make the US subprime asset balloon seem rather small beer. Published November 04, 2010 in Opinion
Nuclear Renaissance Poses Threat - More and more nations could take the known and proven civil-to-military route for building nuclear weapons. Published August 11, 2010 in Commentary
Rethinking Security In The New Nuclear Age - Who would or could "step in" during a civil war in a country with sizable nuclear facilities, involving only national participants or communities, to prevent worst-case damage to its nuclear plants ? Published August 03, 2010 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Petro-Apocalypse Revisited - OPEC's spare capacity number is a deep sea monster, like something dark and shimmering in BP's gushing seafloor well. It could be almost nothing; it might be 2 Mbd at best. The only thing people agree about is that the number is dropping. Published July 11, 2010 in Special Report: Peak Oil
BP and the Petro-Apocalypse - The 2010 BP disaster is also a disaster for oil apologists and cornucopians, because it finally opened the public's eyes to the extreme risk that offshore drilling really entails. Published June 16, 2010 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Waste More Want More - In the wake of the highly predictable, not-even-slightly-surprising BP Gulf disaster, we can ask the news media to dust off energy demand management and recycle root-and-branch energy savings from its present "don't talk about that one" status. Published June 11, 2010 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Nuclear Weapons and Proliferation - Are You Kidding? - Obama has called for a "world without nuclear weapons" but the world will continue to develop nuclear energy. This means that risks from accident and error - rather than terror - are the biggest threat from nuclear power. Published May 04, 2010 in Commentary
Rising Energy Transition Scale, Declining Vanity Project Credibility - All the nationalistic talk about green energy vanity projects obscures the basic bottom line that energy prices have to rise, will rise, and could rise very fast by future shock spiraling back from the fantasy future to the tormented present. Published April 01, 2010 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Uncertain Future for Green Energy - When energy prices rise, consumers tend to use less of it, after a little heart-wrenching and soul-searching, and with plenty of collateral damage in the economy. Published March 09, 2010 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Spring Is Coming - Given the laughable incompetence of government level "strategists" piloting us erratically towards the low carbon future, the most legitimate fear is that low carbon economic crash is the likely result. Published March 01, 2010 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Peak Climate and New Energy - Failure of the Copenhagen farce will surely reawaken media and public opinion to the complex trends of both natural and anthropogenic climate change, along with anthropogenic ecosystem disruption, degradation, and destruction. Published December 23, 2009 in Special Report: Climate Change
COP15 Failure or Peak Oil Success - Climate change is too complicated and controversial to form the political basis for worldwide CO2 emissions cuts. The case for peak oil is much clearer and harder to dispute. Published November 18, 2009 in Special Report: Peak Oil
COP-15 Risks: Moving The Goal Posts Too Far - Not only real world realpolitik, but also energy-economic facts and figures militate against a Happy Ending in Copenhagen for climate change mitigation. Published October 26, 2009 in Special Report: Climate Change
The Challenging Incongruity of Cheap Oil - Expecting or wanting oil prices to be "low or moderate" is at best incongruous, and at worst naive in the current economic, financial and political context. Published October 05, 2009 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Energy Security and Climate Change - Adding the many complex uncertainties together, the Keynesian quest for low carbon energy, supposedly to save the world from climate catastrophe, could intensify global energy economic volatility with surprising results. Published September 22, 2009 in Special Report: Climate Change
Transition to Low Carbon Urbanism: The Energy and Economic Challenge - Under resource-constrained circumstances and in economic uncertainty, the most economically efficient, sustainable urban development options will be selected and prioritized. Published September 09, 2009 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Rome Falls While The Sun Shines - Discussing the end of population growth is as politically incorrect as saying the simplest solution to peak oil and climate change is to use less fossil energy, starting with the most oil and fossil energy intense economies and societies. Published September 01, 2009 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Making World Cities Sustainable - Unleashing and channeling the forces of change, after a long period of imposed, uniform and standardized economic and social choices, is a key opportunity for achieving democratic, voluntary and sustainable change. Published August 15, 2009 in Special Report: Peak Oil
How OPEC Can Save the World Economy - Facing the double reality of resource depletion and climate change - needing a global response in which the energy exporter countries must play a leading role - makes global cooperation for Energy Transition a new obligation. Published May 27, 2009 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Oil: No Supply Side Answer to the Coming Crisis - Rather soon, we have to find mechanisms and processes to ensure an orderly and permanent annual reduction in world oil demand at least equal to expected net loss of supply as we come out of the 'undulating plateau'. Published April 06, 2009 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Peak Natural Gas is On the Way - How fast we arrive at Peak Gas, or a permanent decline in net total gas production and supply, will depend on how gas/oil tradeoffs are made. Published December 13, 2006 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Peak Oil and Commodity Pricing Fundamentals - Andrew McKillop explains how peak oil and peak natural gas will affect commodity pricing. Published November 23, 2006 in Special Report: Peak Oil
A Sensible Alternative Part 2: Toward an International Energy Transition Plan - We need international and multilateral institutions and measures to deal with the terminal crisis of cheap fossil energy. Published October 06, 2006 in Special Report: Peak Oil
A Sensible Alternative: Toward an International Energy Transition Plan - We need international and multilateral institutions and measures to deal with the terminal crisis of cheap fossil energy. Part One of a two-part series. Published September 20, 2006 in Special Report: Peak Oil
Peak Oil And Darwinism: The New Denial Industry - Deliberate confusion and disinformation have, as ever, taken the driver's seat in a non-debate now dominated by slogan trading. Published May 05, 2006 in Opinion
Black Gold and 21st Century Monetarism - Monetarists won't let the evidence get in the way of a good, old-fashioned, economy-busting interest rate hike. Published April 21, 2006 in Opinion
Energy Philosophy For Entropic Times - Change has to come and will come. Peak Oil means we are going somewhere else where we could or might do better. Published April 09, 2006 in Opinion
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