Home
Energy Net's Library tagged → View Popular
It's Official -- The Era of Cheap Oil Is Over
Every summer, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy issues its International Energy Outlook (IEO) -- a jam-packed compendium of data and analysis on the evolving world energy equation. For those with the background to interpret its key statistical findings, the release of the IEO can provide a unique opportunity to gauge important shifts in global energy trends, much as reports of routine Communist Party functions in the party journal Pravda once provided America's Kremlin watchers with insights into changes in the Soviet Union's top leadership circle.
Are we running out of oil? The world in energy statistics | News | guardian.co.uk
The amount of proven oil reserves awaiting to be exploited fell last year for the first time in a decade, according to new figures released today. The amount of crude left in the ground was 1.258trn barrels - 3bn less than this time last year.
These figures, revealed in the BP Statistical Review of World Energy, are probably the result of a slump in drilling activity due to a fall in the price of oil last year - from $150 per barrel to $30.
At today's rate of use however there is still enough oil to last the next 42 years, according to the oil company although those concerned about Peak Oil say we are closer to running out given demand is expected to rise strongly in the short-term.
Cost of Energy » Document alert: The true cost of the US’s oil addiction
Some days you have to wonder if everyone who’s been sounding the alarm about oil issues for years have been right all along, and the rest of the world, including the US power structure, is just now playing catch-up. At least that’s the thought I had when I read BusinessWeek’s U.S. Reliance on Oil an ‘Urgent Threat’:
A group of retired senior U.S. military officers has concluded that the country’s reliance on fossil fuels undermines its capacity to defend itself. Citing a “serious and urgent threat to national security,” the group has urged the Pentagon to take the lead in shifting to a new age in energy.
Peak Energy: A Government still addicted to petrol
Peak oil isn't getting much airtime in the mainstream press lately, but David Strahan has a column in The Independent - A Government still addicted to petrol.
"All targets and no trousers" seemed to be the gist of the reaction from environmentalists to last week's Budget. Greens welcomed the introduction of new, legally binding, carbon-reduction goals but attacked the lack of a clear road map showing how they could be achieved.
Some applauded policies such as the extra subsidy for offshore wind and investment in building efficiency, but attacked overall funding of £1.4bn as miserly in comparison to the enormity of the climate crisis and recent financial bailouts.
Peak Energy: Enjoy the cheap petrol, while it lasts
Articles in the mainstream press about peak oil are pretty rare these days, but the SMH has one on the subject that never mentions the phrase (and flippantly dismisses Iraqi oil on the way) - Enjoy the cheap petrol, while it lasts.
With demand on the rise, existing wells drying up and a dearth of big discoveries, the oil price is only headed in one direction.
IN July 2008, the oil price hit a record high of $US147 a barrel. In its journey from the lows of 1998 to the highs of last year, many reasons were put forward for its ascent. Explanations included a so-called "war premium" , "a terrorist premium", hurricanes and evil speculators - the list of things and people to blame for the rise in oil prices was long.
As the price rose, calls were made by political leaders and interest groups for oil producers to lift production and for a cut in taxes on oil and petroleum. Accusations of price gouging and profiteering by oil companies and producers soon emerged.
The Oil Drum: Campfire | What Do We Tell Our Children?
Given the converging financial, ecological, and energy situations, I often wonder what we should be telling our children about subjects that are a)over their heads and b)potentially 'R' rated or worse. Verbal navigation between hope and reality is difficult enough for our adult network, let alone the generation of young people growing up under our influence. Below the fold is a letter I wrote to the 7 yr old son of a friend of mine who asked his mom 'When will the oil run out?'.
Peak Energy: The future is Amish ?
Energy Bulletin's Bart Anderson has an interview in, of all places, a French cyberpunk journal - The future is Amish, not Mad Max: interview with Bart Anderson of EB.
Laurent Courau: Your site puts forward the concept of "peak oil." Could you begin by reviewing this essential point for the readers of La Spirale?
Bart Anderson: There is a limited amount of petroleum in the earth. After the easy deposits have been exploited, we go after deposits that are more difficult and expensive to develop (e.g. tar sands, deepwater and arctic oil). At a certain point - peak oil - the amount of oil produced reaches a maximum. Afterwards, less and less oil is produced.
In this way oil production follows a more-or-less bell-shaped curve, Hubbert's Curve. The curve takes its name from the Shell Oil geoscientist, M. King Hubbert, who presented the idea in 1956 and predicted the peaking of U.S. oil production, which occurred in 1970.
- The Futility of Alternative Energy in the Midst of Hyper-Population Growth (Connecting the Dots blog) : Denver Post Neighbors
Most Coloradans and Americans plow through their daily lives without a clue as to their future or their children’s outlook concerning America’s energy crisis. However, last summer, a glimpse of the future confronted them. At $4.20 per gallon of gas, they squirmed on their wallets while complaining, “These prices are insane, ridiculous, crazy….”
When a barrel of oil reached $140.00 in August 2008, Americans limited their driving, so much so, they drove 12 million less miles that month. They bought more fuel efficient cars. They carpooled. They clamored for alternative fuels.
“We must move toward wind, solar, nuclear and coal for our energy needs,” screamed our politicians. “We must provide for future generations and keep our economy growing.”
Peak Energy: Peak Oil and Civil Unrest
On the subject of apocaphilia and reversalism, Tom Whipple's latest "peak oil crisis" column in the FCNP is heavy on doom - The Peak Oil Crisis: Civil Unrest. No mention of green new deals or rapid shifts to clean energy sources and transport systems to be found unfortunately - just talk about "involuntary changes" that people will need to make to their lifestyles that seems rather totalitarian to me (did all that time in the CIA make Tom start to think like the Soviets ?). Why not go for persuading people to make the necessary adaptive changes voluntarily ? We'll all end up with a better world in the end (rather than the locked down world of rationing and limited transport that some seem to think inevitable).
The Cost of Energy » Blog Archive » Peak oil still lurks in the shadows
With the stock market, and therefore the retirement savings of millions of US consumers, forcing financial writers to search their thesauruses for yet more synonyms for “unprecedented”, it’s as predictable as it is depressing that peak oil has fallen off the radar screen of so many. Gasoline is now selling at the stunning price of only $1.82/gallon, something few people not confined to a psych ward would have predicted six months ago. More to the point, it’s seen by many individuals as “proof” that There Is No Oil Problem, There Wasn’t and Oil Problem, and There Never Will Be An Oil Problem.
Peak Energy: The Energy Challenge of Our Lifetime
TomDispatch has a new article from Michael Klare on peak oil and America's upcoming energy challenges - America's Energy Crunch Comes Home.
No other major power relies on getting so much of its energy from oil. Making that 40% figure especially daunting is this: the world supply of oil is about to contract. The competition for remaining supplies will then intensify, while most of what remains is located in inherently unstable regions, threatening to lead the U.S. into unceasing oil wars.
Just how much of the world's untapped oil supply remains to be exploited, and how quickly we will reach a peak of sustainable daily world oil output, are matters of some contention, but recently the scope of debate on this question has narrowed appreciably.
Peak Energy: Total: Peak Oil Before 2020
Reuters reports that an executive of French oil company Total expects oil production to peak before the end of the next decade - and wants the company to move into nuclear power in the post-oil age (something Bucky Fuller predicted would be the next step for the oil industry) - Total sees nuclear energy for growth after peak oil.
French oil and gas giant Total (TOTF.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) is targeting nuclear energy to drive growth long after oil and gas output peak, a top executive said on Monday.
"In the future, energy demand will be constrained by tight supply," Arnaud Chaperon, Total's senior vice president for electricity and new energies, said in a presentation to a nuclear energy conference in Qatar. "Oil and gas will still play a big role in the energy balance. But in the electrification of the world economy, nuclear will play a major role, together with the development of solar and other renewables ... That is why Total is very interested in developing nuclear and renewables."
Peak Energy: The Age Of Easy Oil Is Gone Forever
The Economist has a look at some of the factors affecting oil production, warning "Oil prices have plunged. Another spike may be on its way" - Well prepared.
WITH the price of crude mired at half the peak of $147 it reached in July, this may seem like an odd time to invest in oil wells. Despite trimming its output along with other members of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in an effort to prop up prices, that is just what the United Arab Emirates plans to do. Short-term price movements, its oil minister insists, should not distract from the world’s enduring thirst for oil. Indeed the collapse of oil prices, one of the few reasons around for economic cheer, may be setting the stage for another spike.
Just now oilmen are focused on the rapidly slowing demand for their product. Since early October, reckons the boss of BP, a big oil firm, America’s consumption of crude has fallen by perhaps 2m barrels a day, or about a tenth. Sales of cars in America fell even more steeply last month—by 32%. There is also gloomy news from emerging markets, which have been the driving force in the oil markets of late. Demand for oil is growing much more slowly in China and India, for example, and car sales are down in both countries. There is even talk of global oil demand falling next year, for the first time since 1991.
Nine Percent | Post Carbon Institute:
The Financial Times has leaked the results of the International Energy Agency's long-awaited study of the depletion profiles of the world's 400 largest oilfields, indicating that, "Without extra investment to raise production, the natural annual rate of output decline is 9.1 per cent."
This is a stunning figure.
Considering regular crude oil only, this means that 6.825 million barrels a day of new production capacity must come on line each year just to keep up with the aggregate natural decline rate in existing oilfields. That's a new Saudi Arabia every 18 months.
PickensPlan: The Plan: America is addicted to foreign oil
It's an addiction that threatens our economy, our environment and our national security. It touches every part of our daily lives and ties our hands as a nation and a people.
The addiction has worsened for decades and now it's reached a point of crisis.
In 1970, we imported 24% of our oil.
Today it's nearly 70% and growing.
As imports grow and world prices rise, the amount of money we send to foreign nations every year is soaring. At current oil prices, we will send $700 billion dollars out of the country this year alone — that's four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.
Jeremy Leggett: Peak oil is just five years away, and we must start to plan now to avert a truly ruinous crisis | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk
Peak oil is just five years away, and we must start to plan now to avert a truly ruinous crisis
If eight companies across a broad spectrum of UK industry had warned, five years ago, that a ruinous credit crunch would hit the global economy this year, might the government have taken the warning seriously? Might UK leadership in damage limitation have been proactive, rather than reactive? Could a softer landing and a faster recovery have been possible as a result?
The Oil Drum | Worthwhile Videos
What videos have you seen that you think others might be interested in? Here are a few I found:
Peak oil, bailout bunk, and the coming recession | Energy Bulletin
The concept of peak oil started as a geological theory* that went like this: if you knew the amount of oil produced in the past, the rate at which it was produced, and roughly how much oil remained under the earth’s surface, the theory could help you determine when oil production would likely start declining. Over the years however, proponents and critics alike recognized that more factors than just the size of oil resources and the ease of exploiting them would determine when world oil production would peak and plateau.
Peak Oil and Worldwide Economic Recession Soften Oil Prices: Lull Before the Storm | Energy Bulletin
Oil Price Plunges from a Zenith
In the first half of 2008 we saw oil climb to approach $150 a barrel amid the pundits’ warning of oil rocketing to $200 a barrel and way beyond due to the phenomenon of Peak Oil. In the wake of those heady days we have now witnessed the slumping of oil prices to well under $100 a barrel into October.
We have often heard that this is all within the context of declining oil supplies and escalating demand due to the rapid economic development taking hold in large regions and populations of earth, for example like in China and India, in addition to the maintenance of development in the more developed countries like the USA and Europe.
The graph below illustrated this rise and fall of oil prices, and particularly the fall in prices from an all time zenith of a few months ago (Williams, 2008).
Peak Moment: Oil and Gas -- The Next Meltdown? | Global Public Media
Drawing parallels with the current financial meltdown, Matthew Simmons, the CEO of Simmons & Company International, expresses his alarm about gasoline stocks being the lowest in several decades and refinery production down following recent hurricanes. He warns that if there were a run on the "energy bank" by everyone topping off their gasoline tanks, the U.S. would be out of fuel in three days, and grocery shelves largely emptied in a week. In an interview plus excerpts from his presentation at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO-USA) conference on September 22, 2008, Matt highlights the risks and vulnerabilities in the finished oil products system, and answers audience questions.
Selected Tags
Related Tags
Sponsored Links
Top Contributors
Groups interested in peakoil
-
Energy
Findings and facts about th...
Items: 16 | Visits: 27
Created by: Tarmo Toikkanen
Diigo is about better ways to research, share and collaborate on information. Learn more »
Join Diigo