Peak oil – May 10

May 9, 2006

Click on the headline (link) for the full text.

Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage


Portland and the Oil Crisis

David Cohan, Portland Oregonian
…we do have an alternative to controlling supplies, one that is cheaper, easier, requires no new technologies and can be undertaken unilaterally at the individual and local level: reducing our consumption. Some ways of reducing are obvious — switching from a gas-guzzler to a high-mile-per-gallon vehicle could cut your individual gas consumption in half. Nationally, if we raise fuel efficiency standards by 7.6 miles per gallon, we would yield more gasoline than we now import from the Persian Gulf.

Other ways of reducing demand are less clear because oil permeates our society in often hidden ways. For example, more than 400 gallons of oil equivalent are expended to feed each American each year. About a third of that amount goes toward fertilizer production, 20 percent to operate machinery, 16 percent for transportation, 13 percent for irrigation, 8 percent for raising livestock (not including the feed), and 5 percent for pesticide production. Understanding the many interdependencies between oil and our daily activities is therefore key to creating effective, cost-efficient public policies that complement personal choices.

To that end, Portland Peak Oil, a grass-roots group of citizens concerned about the world oil crisis, has helped draft a resolution that will be presented to the City Council on Wednesday. The resolution would require the city to study the economic and other societal consequences and uncertainty of rising oil prices and to make recommendations about the strategies that the city and its bureaus should follow to mitigate the impact.

What can be done at the municipal level to address this global problem? Policy decisions about housing density, the relationship between commercial and residential zoning, and the role of mass transit directly and often permanently affect how much oil will be used both by the city itself and by individuals.

But equally important is the national leadership Portland can provide by being one of the first cities in the nation to address these issues.

David Cohan is an energy efficiency professional and a member of Portland Peak Oil.
(8 May 2006)
Note that Portland Peak Oil will be presenting the City Council with a resolution this week.


Peak Oil and the Environment – Day 1 (Part 3)

Heading Out, The Oil Drum
… first an admission – they caught me out. Since Dr James Hansen had to be recognized as one of the Time 100 Folk of the Year, later this afternoon, they moved his talk up, and so sadly I missed the first bit. So this is where I put in another plug for the web site (URL corrected here and earlier), to get the Powerpoints. His message, as I caught it, was largely that we can only afford to raise the temperature of the planet one single degree Centigrade, and beyond that the historic record suggests catastrophe. One part of this is the melting of the polar ice caps, and, in this regard he showed the melt pictures and the latest measurements of the weight of Greenland (from one of the satellites). What is interesting in that, is that the last couple of years seemed to have created more of a trend out of the data. He commented (perhaps in response to Dr Crichton) that this may provided more reliable data than models.

Business as Usual (BAU) will give temperature rises of up to five degrees, the icecaps melt and water levels rise 25 m (80 ft) and that will displace around 500 million folk. Long Island becomes Short Island and the White House is under 24 ft of water. It won’t happen tomorrow, but likely over the course of the next century. He suggested phasing out coal after 2020, or at least making sure that all plants no longer generate carbon dioxide, and he also assumes that we do not chase after oil shale and the tar sands. The methane levels in the air, which are apparently worse than carbon dioxide, are stabilizing, but if we go up more than another degree then we can assume we will also see the impact of more methane from the thawing tundra and from the evaporation of the methane hydrates.
(8 May 2006)
Other speakers covered: Lester Brown and William Catton


Author Michael Klare discusses relationship between peak oil and national security
(VIDEO)
OnPoint, E&E TV
Political instability in Nigeria, Iran and other nations is a major factor contributing to the high cost of crude oil. But is U.S. foreign policy to blame for the volatility of some of the world’s top oil-producing nations? During today’s E&ETV Event Coverage, Michael Klare, a professor at Hampshire College and author of the book “Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum,” discusses the history of U.S. oil imports, foreign policy and the use of military force to solve energy-related conflicts. Klare, speaking at the Sustainable Energy Forum 2006, also explains the importance of considering oil as a matter of national security, and why scarcity and high prices will only increase the instability of oil-producing nations.
(9 May 2006)
One of the few times that E&E TV has mentioned the phrase “peak oil”. -BA


Australian TV: Oil supplies set to decline

Tom Iggulden, Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC)
TONY JONES: Billionaire retailer Gerry Harvey said today that if the price of petrol reached $2 a litre, he’d start selling rickshaws. Well he might have to get used to that idea if, as some are predicting, oil prices continue to rise. That’s of particular concern to Australia, which is quickly using up its known oil reserves according to alarming figures released today at an oil conference.

Tom Iggulden reports.

TOM IGGULDEN: When it comes to oil, Australia’s one of the lucky ones. We produce about two-thirds of the 700,000 barrels of oil we consume a day. But our luck may be running out. Australia used to produce about 80 per cent of its demand for oil. Today at a conference on the Gold Coast, it was predicted dependence on foreign oil is in for a dramatic increase.

BELINDA ROBINSON, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, APPEA: Australian petroleum liquids production declined 29 per cent since it peaked in 2000, and by 2015 our production will represent less than 30 per cent of our consumption. In the last year, no liquids finds in Australia exceeded 10,000 barrels. There are massive implications – economic implications – associated with a decline like this, including a potential trade deficit in oil and condensate in excess of $20 billion. To give you some sense of proportion, Australia’s total trade deficit at present is around $19 billion, total.

TOM IGGULDEN: Australia’s dilemma is part of a global problem – ever-expanding demand, and a failure by the oil industry to keep pace. Matthew Simmons is a former vice-chairman of President Bush’s energy task force, who believes the world has reached the so-called “oil peak”.

MATTHEW SIMMONS, FORMER PRESIDENTIAL ADVISOR: We are now out of spare capacity. We used up every scrap of wellhead capacity, refinery capacity, refining capacity, tanker capacity, rig capacity, so now we are really stuck in a jam.
(8 May 2006)


Peak Oil at Linky Dinky

Uncle Url, Linky & Dinky (email)
I’ve added the following lines to bottom of my twice-weekly newsletter as boilerplate. I’m thinking of having it made into a bumper sticker to give out, since the media REFUSES to EVER speak the words.

It’s called “PEAK OIL”, look it up
www.energybulletin.net

(9 May 2006)
From the website:

What’s this all about? Well, our fearless Internauts forage the web each week, looking for useful, bizarre and fun web sites

UPDATE: John Gear writes:

I started a Peak Oil group here in Lansing, MI called the Lansing Post-Petroleum Planning Project. We maintain a listserv. The footnote at the bottom of all traffic sent out by the list is this:
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Read a well-written intro to the problem of “peak oil” here www.energybulletin.net/primer.php
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Plan B From Outer Space (LINKS)

Big Gav, Peak Energy (Australia)
One of the problems with taking a break is trying to absorb all the news when you get back online. So far tonight I’ve got that unpleasant feeling of information overload, but instead of trying to read everything and then post the interesting bits I’ll just have to link to some random samples while I slowly catch up.
(9 May 2006)
BG posts an obscene number of links – more hits for us info-junkies. -BA


Tags: Activism, Geopolitics & Military, Politics