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The age of oil is ending
William Marsden, The Gazette (Canada)
For more than a century, it has been cheaper than coffee and as constant as ocean waves.
—
Some experts, like Normand Mousseau, a physics professor at Université de Montréal who has written a book on the end of oil, say the beginning of the end struck last summer.
“This is why the prices jumped to $147 a barrel,” said Mousseau, author of At the End of Oil: All You Need to Know about the Energy Crisis. “As soon as the economy comes back, they will be right back up.”
Others say the crunch will come in three to 10 years depending on our rate of consumption.
“I hate being an alarmist about it, but our entire lifestyle is dependent on cheap oil and there just isn’t very much left in the ground,” Andrew Miall, professor of geology at the University of Toronto, said in an interview.
Most petroleum geology experts contend that we have already discovered the world’s giant fields and what’s left over will not keep the age of oil alive much longer.
“It’s safe to say we have pinpricked the Earth thoroughly enough that it is very unlikely we have missed any Middle Easts,” Miall said. “There may be another North Sea or two, but nothing that is going to really change the energy scene.”
Matt Simmons, chairman and CEO of Simmons and Company International, which is a private energy investment banker based in Texas, said he believes the world’s oil reserves have already peaked and we are on the downward slide.
“I think basically we are now in the early days of a very serious pending scarcity of oil and natural gas,” he said. “Because we don’t know we are, we are not putting any clamps on demand.”
Simmons has been studying world oil production and reserves for decades. His company helps finance exploration and production.
He predicted – accurately as it turned out – that the North Sea fields would peak between 1998 and 2000. Now he has turned his attention to Mexico, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, warning that their fields also have hit the downward slide.
“All the major oil fields of the world have peaked and we are going to see soon some precipitous collapses,” he said.
(10 January 2009)
Long article.
Peak Oil – Politics, Geopolitics, and Choke Points Video (YouTube)
Gail Tverberg, The Oil Drum
This is a 26 minute video, featuring four speakers at last fall’s ASPO-USA conference in Sacramento. One of them (shown on the opening screen) is our own Jeff Vail, talking about Geopolitics. The others are Morey Wolfson, showing a google earth video of oil’s planetary choke points, an interview with Tom Whipple in which he mentions that oil scarcity is already being felt around the world, and talk by Representative Terry Becker on how to bring peak oil as an issue to a legislature.
… The blurb that goes with the video indicates the following:
Peak Moment 137: These four presentations were taped at the ASPO-USA 2008 conference.
Morey Wolfson shows a stunning Google Earth presentation of oil’s planetary transportation Choke Points, primarily in the middle east.
Jeff Vail discusses how our energy future is not controlled solely by what’s possible economically, technologically and geologically but, equally importantly, geopolitically. He notes we will increasingly produce less because of geopolitical problems–as in Nigeria, Iraq, and elsewhere.
Editor Tom Whipple discusses two significant publications available free on the ASPO-USA.com website and through email subscription: daily Peak Oil News and the weekly Peak Oil Review. He describes how oil scarcity is already being felt in island nations and other less-developed countries.
Connecticut State Legislator Terry Backer provides sound advice on how to get a peak oil resolution through a legislative body: through someone experienced in getting legislation introduced, and by speaking the language of legislators. He succeeded in his state by framing peak oil within economic issues and government’s responsibilities to the people of his state.
DVDs of the entire conference can be ordered through ASPO-USA at http://www.regonline.com/Checkin.asp?EventId=662327 This is the eighth and final Peak Moment Conversation videotaped at ASPO-USA 2008.
(11 January 2009)
This particular video was produced by Peak Moment, which has produced several others videos based on the ASPO conference. Some have been posted at Global Public Media. Peak Moment’s website is http://www.peakmoment.tv/ -BA
Let’s “hope and pray that Hirsch is wrong” about our oil supply
Fabius Maximus, RGE Monitor
Summary: The global recession might push back the arrival of peak oil for three reasons.
1. Less consumption now leaves more oil in the ground for future use.
2. Less investment now in oil exploration and development means less consumption in the next few years (or decade).
3. Alternative energy technology has more time to develop, reducing future oil consumption.
This is a grace period, useful if we make good use of the time. If we squander it, we might find ourselves in more poorly prepared foe peak oil than if the recession had never happened. For example,
1. energy research might fall victim to budget cuts, and
2. programs to develop unconventional and alternative energy sources might be scrapped.
The recession ends 5 years of torrid economic growth, and hence provides a reprieve from peak oil — not a pardon. The following article providess one look into a future we cannot ignore.
(11 January 2009)
The “Cheap Oil Era” is Ending Soon
Jason Simpkins (Associate Editor), Money Morning
… much of Wall Street expects oil prices to average about $50 a barrel in 2009. Some of the firms and their specific forecasts include:
- Deutsche Bank AG (DB), which says oil prices will average $47.50 for all of next year.
- Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. (MER), which predicts that prices will average $50 even.
- Moody’s Investors Service (MCO) also says crude will average $50 a barrel in 2009, but says that average will increase to $55 a barrel for 2010.
- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) is slightly more bearish, predicting that prices will average $45 for all of next year – after falling as low as $30 in the 2009 first quarter. (It’s worth noting that Goldman – just five months ago – predicted oil prices would hit $200 a barrel in 2009).
But analysts also agree on something else: When the recessionary tide finally recedes, all of the factors that drove oil to its record high last summer will once again be exposed, and crude will again soar to record highs.
(10 January 2009)
Julian Cope: ‘It’s time for war’
Eddi Fiegel, Independent
As he arrives at the old-fashioned Indian restaurant in central London where we’ve arranged to meet, the waiting staff manage to look unfazed by the arrival of the six-foot tall, longhaired Julian Cope. It’s been a long time since he was a Smash Hits cover star – today, he’s dressed in shades, leather trousers, a leather sleeveless jerkin exposing his trim, pale white arms (it’s two degrees outside) and a Vietnam-era American army brigadier’s cap. But the waiters have no doubt seen it all before and let Cope choose what he suggests is a suitably “conspiratorial corner” where we can talk undisturbed.
The fact that part of the military regalia he’s wearing could easily be mistaken for Nazi insignia is part of Cope’s mission to jolt people into a reaction – not only to him, but to the state of the world in general.
… Over the course of our lunch, in conversation peppered with references to Jim Morrison, the Norse god Odin, William Blake and the medieval historian Bede, he talks about the key themes to both Black Sheep and his forthcoming Kiss My Sweet Apocalypse release (a gatefold-sleeve double album celebrating alternative heroes including Che Guevara, Yoko Ono and Carl Jung). Namely, his anger at our consumerist society; how capitalism and organised, patriarchal religion pose the biggest threats to democracy; the looming catastrophe of the peak-oil crisis (the anticipated point at which the rate of crude-oil production will not be able to keep pace with demand);
“… We haven’t hit peak oil yet, but it’s very close. We’ve gotta stop flying cos it’s just so gratuitous. What we should be doing is getting used to the guarantees falling, like not having guaranteed pensions any more.”
Cope is a far cry from your average rock star bemoaning the state of the world. Since his pop-star days in the 1980s, in parallel to recording and performing as a solo artist he has developed a secondary career as an internationally respected expert on neolithic stones and written two hugely successful books on the subject (
(11 January 2009)
Photo of Julian Cope at original.
Toyota to build electric town car, plug-in hybrids (cites PO)
Martin LaMonica, Green Tech blog, CNET news
Toyota Motor Sales announced an expanded commitment to electric vehicles on Saturday, disclosing plans to manufacture an all-electric city car by 2012 and a wider fleet of gas-electric hybrids.
At the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit, Toyota showed off a concept car called the FT-EV, a battery-powered four-seat compact car. Although it’s concept car, Toyota said it will release an “urban commuter” electric car in 2012.
… In a statement, Toyota Motor Sales’ group vice president of environmental and public affairs Irv Miller said that even though gasoline prices have dipped substantially in the past half year, the auto industry should focus on fuel-efficiency.
“We must address the inevitability of peak oil by developing vehicles powered by alternatives to liquid-oil fuel, as well as new concepts, like the iQ, that are lighter in weight and smaller in size. This kind of vehicle, electrified or not, is where our industry must focus its creativity,” he said.
(11 January 2009)
