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Kuwait: Oil reserves ‘report is not accurate’
Gulf Daily News
KUWAIT CITY: A senior Kuwaiti oil official has cast doubt on the accuracy of a report by industry newsletter Petroleum Intelligence Weekly (PIW) that the Opec producer’s oil reserves are only half those officially stated.
‘I have no idea where they got this figure from … I don’t think it’s accurate,’ Farouk Al Zanki, the chairman of state-run Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) said in Kuwait City.
(22 January 2006)
Beyond the Oil Peak (PDF)
Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute
When the price of oil climbed above $50 a barrel in late 2004, public attention began to focus on the adequacy of world oil supplies—and specifically on when production would peak and begin to decline. Analysts are far from a consensus on this issue, but several prominent ones now believe that the oil peak is imminent.1
Oil has shaped our twenty-first century civilization, affecting every facet of the economy from the mechanization of agriculture to jet air travel. When production turns downward, it will be a seismic economic event, creating a world unlike any we have known during our lifetimes. Indeed, when historians write about this period in history, they may well distinguish between before peak oil (BPO) and after peak oil (APO).
The peaking of oil production is approaching at a time when the world is facing many challenges, such as rising temperatures, falling water tables, and numerous other damaging environmental trends. Adjusting to a shrinking oil supply is part of the economic restructuring needed to put the economy on a path that will sustain progress.
…the world is also looking to other sources of energy. Although nuclear power has been getting some press attention as an alternative to fossil fuels, electricity from nuclear power plants is costly. On a level playing field with no taxpayer subsidies, nuclear power is dead. If utilities pay the full costs of nuclear waste disposal, of insurance against an accident, and of decommissioning plants that are worn out, the expense of nuclear power will take it out of the running. And with international terrorism on the rise, the Beyond the Oil Peak 39 vulnerability of nuclear power plants to attack combined with their use by countries as a steppingstone to the acquisition of nuclear weapons virtually eliminates nuclear fission as a future energy source.64
The relative abundance of coal makes it an attractive energy source in some quarters, but it is likely to soon become a victim of mounting public concern about climate change. This means a future of renewable sources of energy, including wind energy, solar cells, solar thermal panels, solar thermal power plants, geothermal energy, hydropower, wave power, and biofuels.
In the coming energy transition, there will be winners and losers. Countries that fail to plan ahead, that lag in investing in more oil-efficient technologies and new energy sources, may experience a decline in living standards. The inability of national governments to manage the energy transition could lead to a failure of confidence in leaders and to failed states.
National political leaders seem reluctant to face the coming downturn in oil and to plan for it even though it will become one of the great fault lines not only in recent economic history but in the history of civilization. Trends now taken for granted, such as urbanization and globalization, could be reversed almost overnight as oil becomes scarce and costly.
Developing countries will be hit doubly hard as still-expanding populations combine with a shrinking oil supply to steadily reduce oil use per person. Such a decline could quickly translate into a fall in living standards. If the United States, the world’s largest oil consumer and importer, can sharply reduce its use of oil, it can buy the world time for a smoother transition to the post-petroleum era. What the world needs today is not more oil, but more leadership.
(January 2006)
This is a short excerpt from a chapter in Lestor Brown’s recently revised book: “Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble” issued by the Earth Policy Institute. Jamais Cascio has a post on WorldChanging about the book. The entire book is available online, in PDF and HTML formats.
Countdown to 100$ oil (21bis) – long term vs short term worries
Jerome a Paris, Daily Kos
This is an updated version of a diary front paged yesterday on the European Tribune (Countdown to 100$ oil (21) – 8-page extravaganza in the Independent: ‘we’re doomed’). Given the most recent news on the oil markets (restatement of reserves in Kuwait, unrest in Nigeria, tensions over Iran), it is not surprising that prices are coming, again, very close to their record highs (in fact, they are higher than at any time other than in the immediate aftermath of Katrina), but the article discussed below makes a compelling case that, in fact, oil prices do not reflect the underlying worries about peak oil.
(23 January 2006)
Long piece analyzing recent developments.
Deffeyes: The Peak of World Oil Production: Thanksgiving Day, 2005 (AUDIO)
Kenneth Deffeyes’, Global Public Media
Kenneth Deffeyes’ December 1, 2005 Lauritsen Lecture at the California Institute of Technology, entitled The Peak of World Oil Production: Thanksgiving Day 2005″. Audio recorded and provided by the LA Sound Posse.
“The methods which M. King Hubbert used to predict the peak of United States oil production can now be applied to world production. Dr. Deffeyes’s analysis places the world oil production peak on Thanksgiving Day, 2005. Severe consequences are to be expected for transportation and for agriculture. It may be too late to arrange for a soft landing; the consequences of a hard landing are not cheerful to contemplate.”
(1 December 2005, just posted on GPM)
Paul Mobbs: Energy Beyond Oil
David Room, Global Public Media
Paul Mobbs, author of the new book Energy Beyond Oil, talks about the book in depth with GPM’s David Room. Included is Mobbs’ critical analysis of nuclear, as well as a comparison of the results of a “burn everything” vs. “radical conservation” strategy
(29 September 2005, just posted on GPM)
Kunstler: Two peckerheads
James Howard Kunstler, Clusterf*ck Nation
I’m fond of saying that I’m allergic to conspiracy theories. Behind our country’s dismaying governance, cluelessness really rules, not plotting or scheming. Take, for example, these astounding remarks made Friday by former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich on NPR’s “Marketplace” show:
“As China grows — at the current rate it’s growing, in twenty or thirty years — and becomes the number one largest economy in the world, I think China may become our nemesis.”
One would think that Mr. Reich is a pretty smart guy — former Rhodes Scholar (same class as Bill Clinton), Harvard faculty, cabinet secretary. Now, why on earth would Mr. Reich believe that China can possibly keep behaving the way it does for another two or three decades? China faces energy starvation along with the rest of the world. China has less oil left than the United States (and the US would have roughly four years worth of oil if we were deprived of imports — 26 billion barrels used at the rate of 7 billion a year).
There is no way that China can put another one half percent of its population behind the wheel of a car without sending its army and navy out to seize foreign oil fields — let alone continue manufacturing toasters and Christmas tree ornaments for Americans. And Americans are not going to have the the cash to buy those things, whether or not we are actively engaged in a war for the world’s remaining oil. And all this trouble is going to play out in the next decade, not in “twenty or thirty years.”
(23 January 2006)
Recently online is Kunstler’s: review of the movie Syriana.
Peak Oil event with Richard Heinberg in Ukiah, CA
Greater Ukiah Localization Project (G.U.L.P)
Panel discussion on a sustainable localized Ukiah economy
Jan 24 7 p.m. Ukiah City Council chambers
How do we build the local Ukiah economy?
The Greater Ukiah Localization Project (GULP) is kicking off a series of regular meetings to discuss the future of Ukiah’s economy in the Peak Oil era. Our first meeting with be a panel discussion featuring panel members Richard Heinberg, internationally renowned peak oil expert and author of “The Party’s Over” and “Powerdown”, Els Cooperrider, local business owner and Measure H champion, Jason Bradford, founder of Willits Economic Localization, and Anne Oliver of Ukiah Valley Smart Growth Association.
(January 2006)
