Hubbert's Curve And Peak Oil: An Inconvenient Truth -- Memo For Jane Nielson -- April 1, 2015

Bakken.com is reporting:

The United States hit a milestone last year that hasn’t been accomplished in over a hundred years. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), 2014 was the largest volume increase in oil production (including lease condensate) since record-keeping began in 1900.

U.S. crude oil production increased during 2014 by 1.2 million barrels per day (bbl/d) to 8.7 million bbl/d. On a percentage basis, the EIA stated that output in 2014 increased by 16.2 percent, the highest growth rate since 1940. Major thanks for the increase should go to the hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling operations in the tight oil plays in North Dakota, Texas and New Mexico.

Not exactly Hubbet's curve:

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History Changing In Front Of Our Eyes

The New York Times is reporting that the oil glut is a boon to shippers, history changing in front of our eyes.

What’s happening with prices and distribution is a new chapter in the history of the oil industry. As with most products, the price of oil is based on supply and demand. But rather than any big slump in demand, the plunge in oil prices in the last year is more a result of a growing world supply — mainly from higher output in the United States and OPEC’s reluctance to cut production.

The lower price is in many ways stoking demand — particularly in big energy-importing countries like China and India, which are taking advantage of what may turn out to be a bargain opportunity to top off their petroleum reserves.

And so supertankers these days are making fewer relatively short jaunts from places like Gabon and Nigeria to the Gulf Coast of the United States, which no longer needs as much of their oil. Instead, the ships are making longer — and more lucrative — trips to India, China and elsewhere in Asia. Staging areas like the Malongo Terminal in Angola and ports as far from China as Venezuela and Brazil are also filling tankers that will deliver oil to Asia.

A huge shout-out to Saudi Arabia. Thank you on behalf of the billions of consumers worldwide. 

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... And Harvard?

CNN Money is reporting:

Last week, 2,144 teenagers got the news they'd long dreamed of: they got accepted to Stanford University.

The cherry on top is that Stanford also announced it was expanding financial aid. The university said that no parents with an annual income and typical assets of less than $125,000 will have to pay a single cent toward tuition. The threshold for this aid was previously $100,000.

Stanford also said it will offer free room and board -- in addition to free tuition -- for those making less than $65,000, raised from the previous $60,000 threshold.

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Memories

This is so awful on so many levels, but something brought me here. 

I Can Boogie, Baccara

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Memories

My wife was born in Japan to a 19-year-old Japanese woman, Kathleen (her American name; I don't know if I ever knew her Japanese name) T******.

My wife came to the United States with her Japanese mother and her Hispanic father when she was two. I was unaware, until last evening when she told me, that when she was stationed with her father in Japan again, when she was eight or nine years old, she came in contact with her extended Japanese family again and remembers those days.

But after she returned to the states at the age of nine or ten, she never returned to Japan and never saw any member of her extended family again. Until last week.

I don't know the details but somehow through social networking, the daughter of my wife's mother's youngest brother -- a cousin -- living in San Diego learned that her cousin -- my wife -- was living in San Pedro, south Los Angeles. She contacted my wife this past week, and the two cousins met for the first time again after several decades of separation. My wife remembers that particular uncle as a most jovial/humorous prankster. As she described him, I immediately thought of May's brother who passed away some years ago; very young, and from a very non-descript but lethal viral myocarditis.

It turns out her cousin also married an American military man and eventually moved to the US, being stationed several places before she finally ended up in San Diego. Like many Japanese (and perhaps non-US) brides, she and he divorced. She raised her two (?) daughters and became a very, very successful entrepreneur in the San Diego area. Without mentioning the franchise, she bought into a franchise back in the day for $100; those franchises now cost around $150,000. [The franchise has to do with education, not fast food.]

Her uncle is still alive; he must be 75 years old or so, but he still sings karaoke twice a week. My wife's cousin telephone her husband and my wife and her uncle spoke to each for the first in fifty-some years. He remembered my wife very, very well, and said he "will hang in there, until she visits him in Japan."

I don't know if they Skyped or called the traditional way.

Where Did You Come From, Hot Chocolate