Stories tagged with "above ground factors"

Geopolitical Disruptions #1: Theory of Disruptions to Oil & Resource Supply

The peak and gradual decline in world oil production is beginning to spawn a set of geopolitical positive-feedback-loops that seem likely to exacerbate depletion and accelerate the effective rate of decline of world oil production. Rather than isolated incidents, these geopolitical feedback loops are the direct result of geological peaking in oil production. Unlike geologically driven peaking, however, the effective rate of decline caused by geopolitical feedback loops has the potential to continually accelerate. This post will lay out a theory to better understand the impact of this system of geopolitical phenomena.

While geological peaking presents a significant challenge (black line = geologically determined oil production rate), it also acts as a catalyst for a system of geopolitical feedback loops that may catastrophically exacerbate the situation (red line = potential impact of accelerating geopolitical feedback loops on oil production rate)