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What if calamity were predictable?
Michael S. Abraham, Roanoke.com (Virginia)
What would you do if you knew? What if you lived in New Orleans last summer, and you knew through some inexplicable cosmic convergence of education, premonition and intuition, that something big was going to happen, sooner rather than later, lasting rather than temporal, avoidable rather than inevitable? Something that would change everything? Who would you tell and how? Would they believe you and would they prepare? Could you prepare yourself?
I’ve been on a strange and sensational journey for the last couple of years. Join me and see how I became a Peak Oil Alarmist, the official Doomster of Southwest Virginia, the kind of guy people politely but purposefully sidle away from at dinner parties and chamber of commerce banquets. Welcome to my angst-filled world.
(1 Feb 2006)
Natural gas supply issue fuels debate with experts
Chuck McCutcheon, The Patriot-News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania)
Homeowners faced with high heating bills this winter might wonder if the world is running out of natural gas. The short answer is no, energy experts say.
The natural gas industry argues that today’s shortages are driven by constraints on production, transportation and storage. Plenty of supply remains, they say, if only they can go after it.
But some theorists, drawing on the debate over “peak oil,” believe U.S. demand for natural gas is outstripping our ability to extract it efficiently from traditional supplies in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
“It looks like sometime in the last three or four years that North American natural gas production has peaked,” said Julian Darley, founder of the Post Carbon Institute, an Oregon-based environmental think tank. “By the end of 2006, I think we’ll be completely sure.”
Stephen Andrews, co-founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas-USA, a Denver research group, agreed.
“Natural gas prices have gotten a lot of ink, but the fact that we have peaked in North America in natural gas production is not drawing the same level of attention as the peak oil discussion,” he said.
(1 Feb 2006)
The peak oil crisis: global warming
Tom Whipple, Falls Church News-Press
A number of stories appeared in the press last week suggesting a discussion of the relationship between peak oil and global warming is in order. Most scientists believe that burning fossil fuels is the culprit behind global warming and if we don’t get carbon emissions down soon, a lot more places will be under water by the end of the century.
Some believe peak oil and the resulting drop in liquid fuel consumption will be good for global warming. Others fear in the panic that will ensue from ever-higher oil prices, every environmental regulation on the books will be junked and a massive increase in the uncontrolled burning of coal will occur. Many are talking about the world going over a “tipping point” which would lead to the earth becoming barely habitable for thousands of years.
However, another way of looking at the relationship between global warming and peak oil is to ask what effect increasing temperatures might have on how soon peak oil comes and what happens after depletion sets in.
(2-8 February 2006)
Interview with William R. Clark author of “Petrodollar Warfare” (AUDIO)
Electric Politics
William R. Clark, author of Petrodollar Warfare, has gained a significant amount of recognition for his original work connecting the dots between Peak Oil, geostrategic maneuvering over oil supplies, and the role of the dollar as the international reserve currency. He’s won two Project Censored awards, and his arguments are increasingly cited by alternative news analysts. This podcast runs about an hour.
(1 February 2006)
To access the interview, look for February 1 article on the right side of the screen. Electric Politics also has an interview with Guy Caruso, “currently the Administrator of the Energy Information Administration, an independent statistical and analytic branch of the Department of Energy, is essentially the Federal Government’s top energy economist.” See “World Oil Disruptions 101” (January 24, 2006).
We’re not running out of oil says record-breaking Shell
Christopher Hope, Business Telegraph
Royal Dutch Shell yesterday shrugged off suggestions from US president George W Bush that America should lose its addiction to oil, adding that the world was nowhere near to running out of black gold.
Jeroen van der Veer, Shell’s chief, said: “President Bush has to run America and we have to run Shell, but there is a huge energy challenge in the world. We have plenty of opportunities. This is not about proved resources, but hydrocarbon resources.”
Shell was feeling “very good” about the prospect of finding plenty of oil and gas, by developing hitherto untouched parts of the globe.
World oil and gas production was nowhere near peaking because of the potential of untapped reserves made economic by the higher oil price.
He said: “There is the theory of ‘peak oil’ – that the big discoveries have all gone. But we don’t know where the peak will come with oil sands. With oil shale, we have not yet started. There will be many peaks in many time frames.” … Shell stuck to a target of averaging a “reserve replacement ratio” of more than 100pc, a figure it last surpassed in the 1990s.
(2 Feb 2006)
No quote in this article backs up the headline. In fact, the emphasis on ‘hydrocarbon resources’ rather than oil, and re-directing the Peak Oil issue towards oil shale and tar sands reads much more like a confession that convention oil discovery prospects are bleak. -AF
Shell president forced to address ‘peak oil’ theory
Adam Porter, Resource Investor
…[At the Shell’s press conference, author David Strahan] asked what van der Veer thought of the idea of peak oil and whether or not Shell had looked at the situation itself.
“I asked whether Shell had done any detailed modelling on this question,” said Strahan. “Mr. van der Veer replied that his argument basically was that the world will not [arrive at a peak oil situation]. He said that peak oil is correct as applied to regional areas of production like the North Sea, Texas or the Lower 48, but does not apply to the world as a whole.”
Van der Veer’s actual reply to Strahan on Shell’s webcast was “That is a great question it is much more complex than many people think. That (peak oil) is not how we will go. Because peak oil theory itself is correct, if one takes easy oil close to the markets. If you look at West Texas the oil has gone, or even the North Sea…but if you look at oil sands you don’t know where the peak will come…if you think about coal…there are huge reserves. If you assume we can develop clean coal technologies, [then] there will not be one peak.”
“So there is no one peak. There will be many peaks [for different fields, regions and fuels] and they will be in many different time frames and how that will develop, we don’t know.
We think [for prices] that it is prudent for our company to evaluate projects in a very [many] differing pricing scenarios.”
(3 February 2006)
Indian oil production declines accelerate in 2005
India Infoline
“Crude oil production registered a negative growth of 8.1% in December compared to (-) 0.6% in December a year earlier. Crude oil output shrank by 5.9% in the first nine months of FY06 compared to 2.8% in the same period of 2004-05. “
(30 Jan 2006)
Rep. Udall: What peak oil means to every American
Declaring energy independence
Rep. Tom Udall (D-NM), Tidepool
…A crisis looms if we do not begin preparing for the day when world oil production peaks. And that day is coming, most likely within four to eight years. Peak oil is a fact, not a theory, and the logic is simple. World oil production has been increasing for more than 140 years. But you have to discover oil before you can produce it. Global discoveries peaked 40 years ago, so the production peak will necessarily follow. Oil production in 33 of the 48 largest oil-producing nations in the world has already peaked.
…So what do we do? A few years ago, Vice President Cheney said, “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.” He could not be more wrong. Our future prosperity now depends on a rapid increase in energy conservation. Conserving energy is patriotic; indeed, it’s one of the most patriotic things any of us can do.
The storm is gathering. There’s a lot of work to do and not much time to do it. We’ve got to replace 200 million vehicles with far more efficient ones. If we are smart about this, we can rebuild Detroit, now rapidly going broke, in the process. We’ve got to own up to the fact that transporting goods and people by rail is at least five times more efficient than cars and trucks. Therefore, we must revive and reinvest in our passenger and freight rail systems. We must accelerate our deployment of wind and solar power, while launching a massive, long-term investment in advanced energy research.
President Kennedy challenged the nation to reach the moon in less than a decade, and we did. If we are serious about defending the nation and preserving our prosperity, energy security and energy conservation must be our new watchwords, our new space program.
(2 February 2006)
Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., is a senior member of the House Resources Committee. In October, 2005, he founded the Congressional Peak Oil Caucus together with Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.). For more, see the Peak Oil section of his website.
Peak Oil Netherlands Foundation – 1st newsletter (PDF)
Rembrandt Koppelaar, Peak Oil Netherlands Foundation
In this first edition we take a look at the future production in non-OPEC countries for the long term, the amount of time the Dutch people can profit from Dutch Natural gas, what the outlook is voor OPEC production in 2006, a detailed analysis of English offshore oil production and finishing with a bookreview of Jeremy Leggett his latest book, “Half Gone – Oil, Gas, Hot air and the global energy crisis.”
(4 February 2006)
