Reckoning Arrives for Cash-Strapped Oil Firms Amid Bank Squeeze
From Bloomberg Business:
Sabine Oil & Gas Corp. became one of the first companies to warn investors that it faces a cash shortage from a reduced credit line, saying Tuesday that it raises “substantial doubt” about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern. About 10 firms are having trouble finding backup financing, said the people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the information hasn’t been announced.
---SNIP---
“If they can’t drill, they can’t make money,” said Kristen Campana, a New York-based partner in Bracewell & Giuliani LLP’s finance and financial restructuring groups. “It’s a downward spiral.”
More at the link
Now about those ubiquitous TV adds telling us the U.S. is the new world's leading energy producer...
[font size=1](Oh, and 1984's chocolate ration will be increased from 30 grams to 20 grams.)[/font]
= new reply since forum marked as read
Sorry... I missed this later reply.
To be clearer... what I actually said was that the "peak oil has already come" claims were nonsense. Peak oil as a concept is a truism (that is... oil supplies are finite and there absolutely will come a day when we can no longer produce as much as we did yesterday)... but that isn't what the "peak aware" crowd has been saying for the last couple decades. When we talk about "Peak Oil" (capitals)... we're talking about the claims that the peak occured in 2005 (or would occur any day now).
The problem is that the peakists weren't looking at reality from an economic perspective, they were just a recycling of the age-old malthusian nonsense that always sees the peak right around the corner (if not already in the rearview mirror). Their perception of reality was then tainted by that misperception and economic criticism was always ignored as "cornucopian" pollyannaism.
We're well past the point where the most recent generation of peakists have been shown to be wrong. There's a reason why sites like The Oil Drum have shut down. They committed the cardinal malthusian sin of making clear predictions and giving specific timelines. Then it's just a question of waiting to see whether they knew what they were talking about.
Here's a classic from just six years ago.
I remember debating with Matt Simmons and a number of regulars at the site. KSA was clearly post-peak (with 2005's 9.6 mbpd representing the peak). They would clearly never produce 9mbpd again and were just about to cross the 8mbpd line never to see it again. Gwahar was watered out and all of their new projects combined couldn't come close to matching the decline rate that was inevitible. If the peakists were WAY off in their predictions, at most it would slow the rate of decline in the 2020s.
Take a look at the prediction and compare it to reality. Today, KSA should be staring the 6mbpd line in the face (and barely over 5mbpd by the end of the decade). Yet somehow KSA set a new record level last month of 10.3 mbpd - all in an environment of collapsing prices due to a supply glut. That wasn't a peak... nor was it an "undulating plateau".
Can't get very far in correcting malthusian errors before they'll pull out the old straw man that you must believe that the supply of oil is infinite.
I was beginning to worry. 
As I said.... we're well past the stage where "it's just an undulating plateu" could be true. We're well above the prior peak and producers are fighting for market share to stop what they fear will be even more new production. The market has shifted from being constrained by supply to being constrained by demand. If production falls at this point, it will be due to unwillingness to produce at lower prices, not the inability to produce even at much higher prices. That simply isn't the mode of the back end of an undulating plateau. That model only sees production rise slightly with outsized upwards price moves... and downward with demand destruction.
In that case, what, exactly, is the point you are trying to make?
That you can't artificially constrain the debate to "Peak oil is here... or there never will be a peak". The peak will eventually arrive, but that statement was just as true a century ago as it is today. There isn't a reason to believe that it's imminent, and we're well past the point where we know that it didn't pass a decade ago.
Throwing the slur "Malthusian" around so freely does not make you seem clever.
When did it become a slur? Is there something about their philosophy that you're willing to refute? I mean... come on Binkie... if you're going to claim that the clown shoes don't fit, stop wearing them.
Your prior posts certainly seem to place you in the John Michael Greer / David Delaney / etc... "Malthus was an optomist" camp. If that's wrong, I'm happy to be corrected.
