Peak Oil Barrel

Open Thread Non-Petroleum, September 4, 2025

Ovi

Comments not related to oil or natural gas production in this thread please. Thanks

Ovi

35 responses to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, September 4, 2025”

  1. John+Norris

    FAO [global] Food Price Index virtually unchanged in August…

    FAO_Sep_25

    1. kolbeinih

      JN

      It says a lot about where we are currently. Still not in a critical situation, since food prices correlates to a high degree with energy prices. They are kept low worldwide at the moment. More access to land in places that did not use modern agriculture methods could probably counteract a scarcity scenario. Not an expert on everything agriculture, but I notice wheat prices keep trending downwards (a robost crop).

    2. John Norris

      Yes K, for the last 12 months cereal prices (including wheat) are down. Also sugar. Vegetable oils, meat, dairy are all up…

      FAO_Sep_2

    3. Iver

      John

      If GFPI is 150 for dairy what does that actually mean for us in the shops?

  2. WeekendPeak

    First population decline in the US ever?

    https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Immigration-Policy-and-Its-Macroeconomic-Effects-in-the-Second-Trump-Administration.pdf?x85095

    That is going to be interesting……
    rgds
    WP

  3. hightrekker

    There is just one hope of repulsing the tyrannical ambition of civilization to conquer every niche on the whole earth. That hope is the organization of spirited people who will fight for the freedom of the wilderness.

    BOB MARSHALL

  4. Andre The Giant2

    Alimbuquated (sp??),

    I like your opinions and agree with much of what you say about AI and Data Science.

    LLM’s have been around since the nineties, NLP (Natural Language Processing) since the dawn of Computer science.

    “Large language models (LLMs) work by using deep learning techniques to analyze vast amounts of text data, allowing them to understand and generate human-like language. They predict the next word in a sequence based on the context of previous words, utilizing a structure called a transformer to process and generate text efficiently”

    Deep Learning = Neural Networks (Graph Theory) with lots of layers.
    and
    Probablities (Blaise Pascal, Fermat, etc) from the 16th and 17th century.

    My point was it will take an Einstein Relativitly Level breakthru to improve these things (adding a new dimension or something)…

    The data centres make them unprofitable because you cannot BLINDLY TRUST THE RESULTS. Someone has to review and fact check them!!!!!

    Again, I mostly agree with you. Thanks for your response.

    1. THOMPSON

      People point to the fact that the programs don’t actually add anything substantial to the well being of societies, but I disagree with this. In an energy starved future a lot of what they call BS jobs will naturally go; call center staff, offices full of mouse pushers, retail clerks, marketing and sales jobs, lawyers even. AI can fill such niches well and therefore we’ll enjoy continuity of service as these staff are liquidated.

    2. Ralph

      And what happens to those staff? Would that be liquidated as in Soylent Green?

    3. Andre The Giant

      I think AI will make personal face to face relationships more valuable in the work force.

      Atleast in Sales, Marketing, Consulting for high dollar complex transactions.

      Humans like to buy stuff from people they like, trust and emotionally connected to.

      Its in our tribal genetics.

    4. THOMPSON

      Ralph- “what happens to those staff?”
      The same that’s happening to them now, they go into the unemployed class and live as best they can. Many are offered large packages as they go, if they can leverage this money in a a reduced carbon footprint, say living in a yurt somewhere, they will be fine. Obviously we can’t keep living profligate oil based lifestyles when the oil is diminished. It not a matter of morals, it’s a matter of science, physics and geology. Indonesia; Bangladesh, Myanmar, these and many others are already making the adjustment as they lose access to oil. I know it’s not a pretty sight, but it is what it is. Do you have any solution to house and buy cars for all the unemployed currently in the nation?

    5. THOMPSON

      Ralph-
      The same that’s happening to them now, they go into the unemployed class and live as best they can. Many are offered large packages as they go, if they can leverage this money in a a reduced carbon footprint, say living in a yurt somewhere, they will be fine. Obviously we can’t keep living profligate oil based lifestyles when the oil is diminished. It not a matter of morals, it’s a matter of science, physics and geology. Indonesia; Bangladesh, Myanmar, these and many others are already making the adjustment as they lose access to oil. I know it’s not a pretty sight, but it is what it is. Do you have any solution to house and buy cars for all the unemployed currently in the nation?

    6. Alimbiquated

      Andre–

      The data centres make them unprofitable because you cannot BLINDLY TRUST THE RESULTS.

      What is “them” in this sentence referring to?

  5. THOMPSON

    Some good news for East coast Australia if it pans out. We have enjoyed cooler temps due to La Nina for 4 years now, and lots of rain, one study points to the fact that this could be a perminant climate shift.

    – We found the collapse of this system – called the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation – would shift the Earth’s climate to a more La Niña-like state. This would mean more flooding rains over eastern Australia and worse droughts and bushfire seasons over southwest United States. East-coast Australians know what unrelenting La Niña feels like. Climate change has loaded our atmosphere with moister air…
    https://theconversation.com/a-huge-atlantic-ocean-current-is-slowing-down-if-it-collapses-la-nina-could-become-the-norm-for-australia-184254

    The article focuses on the negative of floods but these effect only a very small set of knows areas, what it fails to point out, and what I know from personal experience, is that the Summers have been a lot cooler and the Winters milder. On a warming Earth this is a Godsend.

    1. Paul Pukite (@whut)

      Models of all the climate indices:
      https://climate.pukite.com

      Interesting that the variable sea-level height readings also map to the same (common) model, such as the Ft. Denison site in Sydney harbor.

  6. LeeG

    Yikes! POB has had a makeover.

    1. Andre The Giant

      Aye Caramba!!! couldn’t agree more.

      Great work by Ovi and Dennis as always….miss the edit feature….

    2. LeeG

      I’d like a little more bold in my font.

    3. D C

      Andre the Giant,

      The editing feature has been added.

  7. Mike B

    The POTUS is a fruitcake. From his social media account:

    https://crooksandliars.com/files/imagecache/full_800/primary_image/25/09/chipocalypse.jpg.png

    1. THOMPSON

      I think he exemplifies the nation myself, and has much in common with the average man in the street.

    2. LeeG

      The insanity of that image speaks volumes. The presidency is a troll seeking negative attention. He’s portraying himself as an unstable military officer reveling in the anticipation of burning the enemy/Vietnamese/Chicago. In what world would ANY president post such an image? It’s all a reality show. His supporters storming the Capitol on Jan 6 is entertainment. Masked federal police gathering up laborers at work is entertainment. Ashli Babbit dying for Donald is entertainment.
      All it takes is enablers and fixers.

  8. Andre The Giant

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvsU4p0Gsas

    Neil Degrasse Tyson (astrophysicist) meets with NSA insider about UAP / UFOs.

  9. Alimbiquated

    The site looks great.

  10. Alimbiquated

    Diamond prices continue to decline.
    https://qz.com/natural-diamonds-industry-tariffs-lab-grown-consumers

    1. THOMPSON

      lol, Diamonds are forever lol. The meme has been in movies forever, the cartel had a lot of money to throw around. I read years ago how that women never used to get engagement rings, then the marketing boys at De Beers cooked up the “If you really love here” pitch and equated Love to a months salary. The racket never would have got as far as it did without the avid participation of jewelers, the average markup being 300~500%. Owning them for investment is beyond the pale.

  11. hightrekker

    “It’s worth to have, unfortunately, some gun deaths every year, because at least we can keep the second amendment”

    Charlie Kirk

  12. THOMPSON

    Tesla Admits That Its Cars May Never Fully Drive Themselves
    So FSD actually stands for Full Supervised Driving
    I think you call that a Grift
    https://futurism.com/tesla-self-driving-fine-print

    1. Alimbiquated

      Meanwhile Waymo is already selling a million trips a month with a driverless taxi.

      https://www.thedriverlessdigest.com/p/waymo-stats-2025-funding-growth-coverage

    2. Bob Nickson

      Zoox should pull a flex and contract with Las Vegas to run driverless shuttles inside the LV Boring tunnel.

    3. THOMPSON

      We’re aware of that Alimbiquated. That’s what you get for over $200K, a completely different system based on different technology. It’s solid transport technology, though it is limited to specific and well mapped geofenced areas. Waymo employs lidar as well as cameras for viewing the vehicle’s surroundings. Laser pulses to measure distances to objects. Musk tried to do it on the cheap, he’s is always trying to grab the limelight and he doesn’t care if he has to tell lies to get it. This latest failure just confirms that. But he has his fan-club and they love him regardless.

      If I was him, and thank God I’m not, I’d model an AI chatbot to mimic myself, he could ask almost any price for it and millions would Que up to download Elon in the pocket.

    4. THOMPSON

      Australia has employed autonomous trucks in it’s mines for years.
      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgej7gzg8l0o

    5. Lloyd

      From Wikipedia (’cause I’m lazy):”Waymo’s Level 4 autonomous system, the “Waymo Driver,” relies on a remote human “fleet response” team to handle ambiguous or rare situations. The vehicles operate fully independently in their defined operational domains, but when they encounter an unusual event they cannot resolve, they can contact a remote operator for assistance.”

      They don’t publish intervention frequency statistics.

    6. THOMPSON

      Good find Lloyd, Humans behind the scenes teleoperating. I have always maintained, there is no such thing as Artificial Intelligence, it’s merely a brand name to sell very fast computers with ‘smart’ algorithms. Thousands of poorly paid IT types sat at screens for untold hours clicking on dogs and cats and children and bicycles in every shape and size and from every angle. The data was fed into the algorithms so they could try and identify what human intelligence does on the fly. The cars mimic human responses, just chess computers in a sense.

      The IT bubble, the replacement for the EV bubble. Biden was the enabler for the later, Trump is the enabler for the former. Trillions more wasted on pointless technology that will never live up to it’s claims.

  13. Ovi

    A new Open Thread Non-Petroleum has been posted.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-september-11-2025/

    An update to World and Non-OPEC Oil Production has been posted.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/may-world-and-non-opec-oil-production-flat/

Featured Post

  1. WTI since January 2023 Companies that were producing 1 Mb/d on December 16, 2025 are making an extra $35 M/d…

  5. US oil producers are rushing to lock in higher prices by hedging. Is this raising production? I’m surprised that prices…