Tom Whipple is one of the most highly respected analysts of peak oil issues in the United States. A retired 30-year CIA analyst who has been following the peak oil story since 1999, Tom is the editor of the daily Peak Oil News and the weekly Peak Oil Review, both published by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil-USA. He is also a weekly columnist on peak oil issues for the Falls Church News Press. Tom has degrees from Rice University and the London School of Economics.
Articles / Blogs
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The Peak Oil Crisis: A Reality Check
For the last four or five years, we have been bombarded with a stream of stories about the “shale revolution.” Horizontal drilling and fracking, mostly in the U.S., were said to have released oceans of new oil and a...
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The Peak Oil Crisis: It‘s All Around Us
Ten years ago peak oil was assumed to be a rather straightforward, transparent process. What was then thought of as “oil” production was going to stop growing around the middle of the last decade. Shortages were going to occur;...
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The Peak Oil Crisis: When?
For those following the world oil production situation, it has been clear for some time that the only factor keeping global crude output from moving lower is the continuing increase in U.S. shale oil production, mostly from Texas and...
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The Peak Oil Crisis: Iraq on the Precipice
The daily newspapers are now full of stories predicting that Iraq, as we know it, will soon disintegrate into three or more warring states. In the last two weeks Sunni insurgents led by the extremist ISIS have routed a...
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The Peak Oil Crisis: The Monterey Shale Debacle
Last week the LA Times ran a story saying that the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is about to reduce “its” estimate of the amount of shale oil that can be recovered from the Monterey Shale under California by...
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The Peak Oil Crisis: Parsing 2014
Some 15 years ago when the current concept of peak oil was posited, it was all going to be simple. Somewhere in the early part of the 21st century oil production was going to reach a peak and...
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The Peak Oil Crisis: Our Harsh Winter Continues
Two weeks ago we discussed the impact that the polar vortex was having on our natural gas supplies and noted that our stocks of natural gas were already 500 billion cubic feet below where they should be for this...
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The Peak Oil Crisis: A Winter Update
As the years go by, those studying peak oil are beginning to develop a better understanding of what has been happening since the concept of limits to oil production came to widespread attention. First of all, it is important...
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The Peak Oil Crisis: California’s Bubble Pops
There was an important study released by the Post Carbon Institute last week that gives us an insight into how long our great shale oil bonanza —or more likely, bubble— is going to last. As you might suspect, the...
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The Peak Oil Crisis: Looking at 2013
We are only a few weeks into the New Year and already the shape of the next 11 months is starting to form. To start, the U.S. Department of Energy sees two good years in front of us, with...
Reports
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Peak Oil and the Great Recession
The year 2008 will be remembered as a major turning point in industrial history, for it was the first year when the world got a taste of the unpredictable price spikes that come from inadequate oil supplies. The first half of the year was marked by a steady increase in the weighted average
Books
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The Post Carbon Reader: Managing the 21st Century’s Sustainability Crises
John Kaufmann, Daniel Lerch, Bill Sheehan, Anthony Perl, William Rees, Tom Whipple, Stephanie Mills, Peter Whybrow, Michael Shuman, David Orr, Cindy Parker, Chris Martenson, Brian Schwartz, Richard Gilbert, Warren Karlenzig, Wes Jackson, David Hughes, Rob Hopkins, David Fridley, Gloria Flora, Joshua Farley, Hillary Brown, Michael Bomford, Asher Miller, Zenobia Barlow, Sandra Postel, Richard Heinberg, Erika Allen, Bill Ryerson