RIP The Oil Drum  

The Oil Drum has announced it will be closing it's doors after 8 years of operation - An End to Eight Years of The Oil Drum.

While it has been a number of years since I contributed anything to the site (or even regularly checked what has been posted there), I'm sorry to see it go. I really enjoyed the years where I was actively posting there - the comments (even though frequently blighted by trolls and doomers) could be enlightening and entertaining and the audience reach I had there was far greater than anything I ever achieved at Peak Energy alone, with tens of thousands of readers for some posts.

I'll be writing a farewell post for TOD at some post at over the next month.

Dear Readers of The Oil Drum,

A few weeks ago the ISEOF board (The Institute for Energy and Our Future that facilitates The Oil Drum), Euan, Super G, JoulesBurn, and Myself, met to discuss the future of The Oil Drum. A discussion we have had several times in the last year, due to scarcity of new content caused by a dwindling number of contributors. Despite our best efforts to fill this gap we have not been able to significantly improve the flow of high quality articles.

Because of this and the high expense of running the site, the board has unanimously decided that the best course of action is to convert the site to a static archive of previously published material as of 31st July 2013. We will continue to post articles up to this date. Afterwards any articles will be held as a public archive into the foreseeable future, so that others can continue to learn from the breadth and depth of knowledge published by our many authors, over the 8+ history of this remarkable volunteer effort.

We sincerely thank everyone who has been part of the TOD community - authors, staff and especially commenter's and readers - for contributing to the success of the site. It is unusual for a site which is based primarily on volunteer effort to continue this long.