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Investing: another peek at peak oil
Robert Aronen, Motlety Fool
Brian Gorman recently took a look at BP’s big investment in alternative energy. He suggested that the driving factors behind this investment are the desire for energy independence, consumer consciousness, and government support for alternative energy. From my perspective, when I see a major oil company investing $8 billion outside the oil patch, I think of peak oil.
Over the weekend, I read Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert’s Peak by Kenneth S. Deffeyes. The book is a sequel and an update to his previous work, Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage. If you can’t tell from the titles, Professor Deffeyes believes that the world’s production of conventional crude oil has peaked and will now decline forevermore. In fact, he predicts that Thanksgiving Day 2005 was the official “peak oil day.” Put a fork in it: The age of oil is done.
Well, perhaps I exaggerate. But not too much.
I will say that the evidence is pretty compelling.
…The great thing about investing in the future of energy is that there is little reason to gamble. Many of the companies likely to benefit from alternative-energy consumption are already profitable, sport price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios below the market average, and in some cases even pay dividends. With that in mind, let’s take a look at potential alternatives for the next five years that will use the existing infrastructure, blend with existing fuels, and power existing vehicles.
(30 November 2005)
We don’t usually run investment advice, except when an analysis helps illuminate the energy picture. This article is significant for having appeared on the widely read Motley Fool investment website. There’s a discussion about the article at peakoil-dot-com. -BA
The peak oil crisis:
Washington stirs
Tom Whipple, Falls Church News-Press
Until recently, the phrase “peak oil” was among the last elected and appointed official in Washington wanted to hear or see in print. Should there be any doubt as to the correctness of their position, one only has to look at what happened when President Carter donned a cardigan sweater and told us how one day we were going to run short on oil and how we should start sacrificing now to prepare for it.
… Last week this pattern was broken, or at least shaken a bit, by two stories appearing in select newspapers. The first was published by USA Today and has all the earmarks of an administration leak to a friendly journalist.
The story, which appeared on November 24, reported that on October 5, the Secretary of Energy wrote to the National Petroleum Council (NPC) asking “for a study of the industry’s ability to produce enough oil and natural gas at prices that won’t cripple the economy.” Craig Stevens, an Energy Department spokesman, amplified the letter by saying “He’s asked them to take a big-picture look out several years… He wants to get some definitive information.”
Of even more interest is that the letter is reported to contain a reference to the “peak oil debate.” After telling us of the administration request, the USA Today story discusses the peak oil debate in much detail giving the arguments for “imminent” and “decades away”.
A day after the USA Today story, a second story appeared in the administration-friendly Washington Times, on, of all things, peak oil. The story, which was keyed to a talk the Chief Economist for the International Energy Agency gave to the Council on Foreign Relations the previous week, was supposed to express optimism – there is plenty of oil in the ground so that the “market” with the help of “technology” will sort things out without any serious dislocations. Between the lines however, a careful reader could detect a warning all may not be well.
What is going on here? Is there some major policy shift in the offing or is the Administration just asking for another group to justify the current policy of unhindered drilling?
(1-7 December 2005)
Added links to the two articles mentioned by Whipple.-BA
Scientist urges world to get serious about oil crisis
Stuff (NZ)
The world’s politicians should act decisively to help reduce the wasteful use of oil, as a growing gap looms between demand and supply, Swedish physicist Kjell Aleklett says.
Speaking yesterday at the trans-Tasman Solar 2005 energy conference hosted by the University of Otago, Professor Aleklett of Upssala University, Sweden, who is president of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, warned that big problems would result from the peaking of world oil production .
A combination of declining supply from existing oil fields, and rising global demand for oil meant there was already a potential shortfall of about five billion barrels of oil a year. Beyond 2008, a growing gap between supply and demand was likely to be felt, he said. Many nations faced a “democratic dilemma” over dwindling oil supplies.
What was now needed was for politicians to warn about potential problems, and to advise that things might be even worse unless necessary changes were made. …
Prof Aleklett will address a commission considering peak oil matters at the US House of Representatives in Washington DC on December 7.
(30 November 2005)
See the original press release for a little more on the other presenters.
Peak Oil Is Happening Now
Sarah Grillo, The Vermont Cynic
Have you ever looked back on some culturally significant, devastating era in history-the Great Depression, lets say-and wondered what you yourself would have done had you lived through such a time? What if you lived through it with knowledge twenty years prior that such a catastrophe was some day going to take place? How would you prepare?
I ask these questions because they are questions I have been asking myself lately. They are, indeed, questions that any number of Vermonters, my family included, have been asking of themselves. No, I don’t belong to a doomsday cult. What I want to address is very real. What I am talking about is Peak Oil. …
Is there anything we can do about this? Yes. We can all prepare. My family, for example, is planning on building a passive-solar home and a greenhouse. Of course, the majority of Americans do not have the time or money to do this. What we can do, on a local level, is prepare by becoming more energy-efficient today.
We can encourage our community to provide effective means of mass public transportation. We can support local agriculture so that when it comes down to it, we will not be reliant on large agribusiness to supply us with food.
We can talk to members of our community and politicians about seriously considering alternative, clean forms of energy-wind production, for example.
I hope people take this issue very seriously. I believe it is in everyone’s best interests that you do.
(29 November 2005)
Syriana and Iraq
Mark A. LeVine, History News Network
Critics have been hailing “Syriana,” George Clooney’s latest film to take on the policies of the Bush Administration, as a cinematic tour de force that has “compelling real-world relevance” and is “unsettlingly close to the truth.” But what is the truth “Syriana” supposedly approaches? Put briefly, the plot describes the ramification of a bungled CIA-authorized assassination of a Middle Eastern leader who decided to sign a major oil deal with China instead of an American oil company with close ties to the US Government.
(26 November 2005)
{{spoiler warning}} LeVine argues that the movie Syriana ‘hits closer to home than most politicians on either side of the aisle would care to admit’, backed up with a good set of dot pointed supporting facts including a references to the Cheney Energy Task Force and Peak Oil. -AF
