Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
See ‘The End of the First Half of the Age of Oil’
Google Video via PowerSwitch.org.uk
A superb Peak Oil presentation by Colin Campbell from 2005 is now available to view online at Google Video. Click here to view it
This Peak Oil presentation entitled ‘The End of the First Half of the Age of Oil’ by Dr. Colin Campbell, founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas, was part of a 2-day conference entitled ‘Fuelling The Future’, held in Kinsale, Ireland, on the 18th & 19th June 2005. Other speakers included Richard Heinberg, Rob Hopkins, Richard Douthwaite, Rob Hopkins and David Holmgren. For more on this event, visit www.fuellingthefuture.org
(2 Nov 2006)
How I Came to Believe in Peak Oil
Matthew Simmons, ASPO conference via EV World
Houston investment banker and “Twilight in the Desert” author Matthew Simmons talks about his conversion to a peak oil advocate
…EV World recorded some 40 different presentations from the ASPO USA conference, as well as Q&A panels, which we’ll make available to our Premium subscribers in the coming weeks. If you are not a subscriber, we encourage you to spend the $29.00US fee in order to get access to these important talks by some of the world’s top minds.
Non-subscribers can also buy a CD with all of the presentations on it in MP3 format for $89.00US, shipping included.
(31 Oct 2006)
Original contains a video of Simmons talk (also available at The Oil Drum).
Film turns black gold to black death (“A Crude Awakening”)
Mark Oliver, Guardian
Mark Oliver is blogging today and tomorrow from the 13th Sheffield International Documentary Film Festival on some of the dozens of current affairs films that are showing.
“Oil is the excrement of the devil … oil is the bloodstream of the world economy, oil is the blood of the dinosaurs, blood of the earth.”
This is from the opening of A Crude Awakening: the Oil Crash, a Swiss-made documentary, and one of the most frightening films you are ever likely to see.
A parade of oil industry experts, politicians and academics outline in shocking detail just how badly life could be impacted after the world’s oil reserves have peaked – and claim we are just about at the peak now. Standards of living – not just for the developing world but also for the West – could be forced to dramatically shrink.
(2 Nov 2006)
Peak Oil: A View from Planet Talos
First Talosian (Nate Hagens), The Oil Drum
This is a guest post from First Talosian, the senior member of the planetary expedition force from Talos. I am posting the correspondence as we received it, unedited. (there are spelling and grammatical errors). In it he describes his culture’s perspectives on Earth’s history and future with particular emphasis on our energy and ecological intersections. The graphics were not part of his letter but added by me.
– Nate Hagens
The First Talosian of Talos speaks
…The fossil fuels that you have built modern human tribes interactions around, are running out. They started running out the first day you decided to harness them. We knew that one day one of several species on this planet would puzzle out how to access and utilize the highly concentrated forms of energy buried beneath your planets surface- we have had many debates and dreams of how this species (which we now discover is human) would utilize this bounty.
You are still a young species, and your rational, cognitive systems are as yet not strong enough to overcome your emotional urges from hundreds of millions of generations of selection as mammals and more recently the tribal competition and social cooperation that selected for brain expansion during the Pleistocene. With wiring so geared towards sharply valuing the present over the future (what your econo-humans call `steep discount rates’), it was somewhat to be expected that the oil and gas would predominantly be used as quickly as possible once found.
What has surprised us, is how little of this energy has been spent building infrastructure that will sustain your species once the fossil remains fully deplete. Of even more concern to the Talosians on our ship, is how little of this energy has been spent protecting and sustaining the other species that did not win the fossil lottery.
(3 Nov 2006)
Satirical science fiction, which states the situation more clearly than most non-fiction. -BA
It’s not dead yet
Jeff Sanford, Canadian Business Online
So that’s it, then. The Third Great Oil Boom is done. The price of crude has dropped from its recent peak of over $70, and that has a lot of smarty-pants thinking that the oil bubble of the early part of this decade has played itself out.
…Last but not least, the oil industry has come out swinging against Peak Oil theorists, those individuals who think the world is about to hit a peak in terms of fossil fuel production. Apparently all the talk was getting a bit out of hand, so the industry has decided to talk back. Abdallah Jum’aah, the CEO of the big Saudi state-owned firm Aramco, recently stated publicly that the world has 4.5 trillion barrels of fossil fuel reserves, enough to power the globe at current levels of consumption for another 140 years. The CEO of Exxon Mobil Australia told an industry conference in Adelaide that “the end of oil is nowhere in sight,” while here in Canada Clive Mather, CEO of Shell Canada, has pointed out that methane hydrates are so abundant on earth as to make the question of fossil fuel depletion moot.
So, it’s time to sell those overheated energy stocks then? Well, not quite yet. Sure, there may be lots of hydrocarbons in the ground (or under the sea as is the case with methane hydrate), but the question of who is going to have access to those reserves and at what price is still very much up in the air.
…Sure, industry execs may be talking down Peak Oil, but there’s lot of reasons to think the price is still headed higher. It’s worth noting that Bill Clinton recently addressed the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies and urged editors there to focus more attention on the issue of oil reserve depletion. According to Clinton, stats from the International Energy Agency suggest a peak of “recoverable oil” 35 to 50 years out. That’s a long way off, sure, but that’s not the point. The very fact a peak of traditional oil is in the picture elevates the risk of “resource-based wars of all kinds,” said Clinton. “Everybody I know who knows anything about this business believes it’ll be $100 a barrel in five years or less.”
(30 Oct 2006)
