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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
ASPO-USA Fall 2006 Conference presentations now online
ASPO-USA
Presentations from the recent ASPO-USA conference are now available online (about 26 PDFs at last count).
Six slide presentations are also available. – click on the icon for the conference.
(Nov 2006)
The North American Red Queen: Our Natural Gas Treadmill
Nate Hagens, The Oil Drum
I recently attended the ASPO-USA World Oil Conference: Time for Action – A Midnight Ride for Peak Oil in Boston, MA. Interestingly, the conference organizers appended the acronym ASPO, to represent the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas for this gathering. Indeed, much more time was spent discussing the North American natural gas problem than at any prior Peak Oil conference I am aware of.
Prominent among the presenters addressing this situation was David Hughes of NRCan. Mr Hughes is a senior geoscientist with the Geological Survey of Canada who has been speaking widely on global and North American energy sustainability issues over the past few years to governmental agencies, industry forums and the popular press. He painted a sobering picture of North American Natural Gas Supply – in effect we are trying harder and harder and spending more energy and dollars just to maintain flat production. This post is essentially a summary of David Hughes ASPO NG presentation (he also gave a talk on the Oil Sands) with some added comments and perspective.
… THE BOTTOM LINE
Natural gas is very important. It is also not easily tranportable other than over land. Natural gas in North America is past its peak. It is well past the peak of the easy to get at, environmentally (relatively) friendly, and energetically highly profitable point. To get more, we need more rigs, more holes, more places to drill, and more by unconventional means. Alternatively, we could buttress our treadmill with Liquefied Natural Gas imported from Qatar, Russia, Iran (the vast majority of reserves), or elsewhere – this may or may not come to pass, but will be written on extensively at theoildrum.com.
We have taken the low hanging natural gas apples from the tree and now have to climb the tree. Soon we will require ladders. Eventually large ladders and parachutes. To get that last apple we might need a helicopter and commandos, who eat more than one apple a day in any case. We should take advantage of these mid-tree apples and use them to our best advantage, while trying to replace as many apples in our diet with pears (wind), peaches (biomass), oranges (solar), or a wafer thin dinner mint (conservation).
(9 Nov 2006)
EB interviewed about recent energy stories (audio)
Jason Bradford, Global Public Media
Bart Anderson, co-editor of Energy Bulletin, talks about how the press is dealing with issues such as peak oil, climate change and the social ramifications. Energy Bulletin is an on-line source for news and commentary related to energy, society and the environment. Bart is a trained journalist now specializing in media coverage and the cultural response to peak oil and global warming. Jason Bradford hosts the Reality Report on KZYX&Z in Mendocino County, CA.
(6 Nov 2006)
Links to articles discussed are available online.
Sad news from Michael Ruppert
Michael Ruppert, From The Wilderness
{From The Wilderness] is really screwed up right now. Everybody knows it and I am not going ignore it. I am in bad shape too. I am not going to hide that either. I have been in Caracas for 14-plus weeks and am facing a serious combination of medical symptoms… Both FTW and I need your help although I must tell you that our offices are being vacated next week.
…FTW’s time of usefulness on this planet is ending. Michael Kane offered his resignation last week. Having already lost Stan Goff (due to cash shortages) and Jamey Hecht. No one person can carry it on their own. Kane made the right decision for personal reasons and I support it completely. We remain close and trusted friends with deep mutual admiration and respect for each other. The article that follows is my personal tribute to him and the entire generation of talented investigators, researchers and writers that has arisen since 9-11.
…There is one other person I must specifically thank and that is the angelic, dedicated, and steadfast Jenna Orkin who has researched, blog-managed, and loved me so unconditionally as to affirm my belief in God when all other evidence of Him seemed MIA. To all who have made FTW and its accomplishments possible, whether we parted as friends or not, I offer a gratitude that will endure throughout all time.
We changed the world a little bit.
My time may be over too and I must now turn my attention to that.
…We have jointly decided that the FTW store cease all sales of subscriptions and product immediately, remaining available only for badly needed donations. Those will be used to ship remaining back orders, pay staff save the web site and transfer my personal library to an as yet undetermined safe location – in that order.
Those are the facts. It is too soon to glibly say “let the healing begin”. There is too much wreckage scattered about. But it is certainly time to stop creating any more. Healings will inevitably occur. That is the beauty of life.
At the end of this article I will list options for those who want to help me personally and give FTW the decent end it deserves. I know you’re out there. I am nearly broke and am unable to even purchase a plane ticket if I had another country to go to or a bed to sleep in when I got there. Venezuela has kicked my butt as you will soon see. How all of that happened gave me the “inspiration” for this final FTW essay.
This is my tribute to Michael Kane and to all who have learned from FTW, taken the map we have drawn, and are now reading it for themselves. God bless you. The struggle continues. – MCR
(Nov 2006)
Sad news from one of the most articulate proponents of Peak Oil and 9-11 theories. -BA
Evolution – a matter of community
Michael Ruppert, From The Wilderness
…Living in Venezuela has been an amazing, brutal, and illuminating lesson. It is a truly alien culture that I find simultaneously beautiful, hard, giving, unfamiliar, uncomfortable and definitely self-protecting to the extreme. That is why I am confident that Venezuela, and most of Latin America, will survive the coming crash of Peak Oil better than any other region of the world. I believe it is already starting to protect itself. It doesn’t need me or any outsider to survive. But as a general rule, only those who are native here will be protected by its blessings.
…Another one of my trademarked lines is that Post Peak survival is not a matter of individual survival or national survival. It is a matter of cooperative, community survival. If one is not a fully integrated member of a community when the challenges come, one might hinder the effectiveness of the entire community which has unspoken and often consciously unrecognized ways of adapting. As stresses increase, the gauntlets required to gain acceptance in strange places will only get tougher. Diversity will become more, rather than less, rigid and enforced.
As energy shortages and blackouts arrive; as food shortages grow worse; as droughts expand and proliferate; as icecaps melt, as restless, cold and hungry populations start looking for other places to go; minute cultural and racial differences will trigger progressively more abrupt reactions, not unlike a stressed out and ill human body will react more violently to things that otherwise would never reach conscious thought.
Start building your lifeboats where you are now. I can see that the lessons I have learned here are important whether you are thinking of moving from city to countryside, state to state, or nation to nation. Whatever shortcomings you may think exist where you live are far outnumbered by the advantages you have where you are a part of an existing ecosystem that you know and which knows you.
If the time comes when it is necessary to leave that community you will be better off moving with your tribe rather than moving alone.
Evolution is guaranteed. Useful knowledge gained by ancestors is incorporated into succeeding generations. It may not be used in the same way that it was when acquired. It may lie dormant for years or decades, safely stored in DNA or the collective unconscious. But it is there, and it will always be available should the day come when it is needed.
(Nov 2006)
One of Michael Ruppert’s most eloquent pieces. Scroll down the web page to find the start of the essay. -BA
