Peak oil – Aug 27

August 27, 2007

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

Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage

Peak Oil – less Govt revenue

Mary King, Trinidad Express
Prime Minister Manning, supported by experts at the last petroleum conference in Port of Spain, claimed in his Budget presentation that the Ryder Scott comment that at the present production rate of natural gas we have but 12 years left of gas, is simply an industry indicator that we have to go looking for more gas. He also garnered support for this view from the fact that the same Ryder Scott gave a figure of eight years in 1974 when we were at the start of our natural gas based industry – gas then was a flared waste product and a vehicle for oil-gas lift.

In a producing area the proven reserves are not discovered all at the same time, will be reduced by production and increased by continuing successful exploration. Also it is an industry phenomenon that is the cheapest to explore and produce resources are the first exploited. A corollary is that as the production area matures it becomes increasingly costlier to explore and produce the petroleum resource – drilling in deeper waters and more expensive production techniques.

Governments like ours, that depend generally on taxes from Big Oil for their revenues to support the county’s economy, then have to give more and more incentives to encourage Big Oil’s exploration. Countries with the Dutch disease are caught in a Catch 22 situation since the exploitation of and returns from the natural resource are the unique drivers of the economy.

The revenues due to government, that reflect the new exploration and increased production costs funded by further incentives, will be consequently reduced. Peak Oil/Gas is reached then for such governments when change in revenue from taxes etc, with respect to corresponding change in production (i.e. marginal returns to government on production) is inconsequential.
(27 August 2007)


ODAC News – Sunday 26 Aug

Douglas Low, Oil Depletion Analysis Centre
Economics
1a/ Record numbers face debt meltdown (The Telegraph, Thu 23 Aug)
1b/ Brace yourself for the insolvency crunch (The Telegraph, Thu 23 Aug)
1c/ Shares Slump and Credit Crunch: Passing Peak Oil (Phil Hart, Fri 17 Aug)
1d/ Financial crises: Lessons from history (BBC News, Sun 26 Aug)

OPEC and Oil Supply/Demand Balance
2/ Opec File: Ready to Fill the Gap [but not for long] (Energy Intelligence [Energy Compass], Fri 24 Aug)

Food Prices/Stocks
3/ Harvest fears trigger rise in wheat prices (Financial Times, Fri 24 Aug)

Energy Crisis in Argentina
4/ Argentine Industrial Output Growth Slowest in 5 Years (Update2) (Bloomberg, Fri 24 Aug)

Oil Exports Russia – Germany
5/ Russia cuts oil supplies to Germany (Financial Times, Fr i24 Aug)

Canadian Tar Sands
6/ Tar Sands: The Oil Junkie’s Last Fix, Part 1 (Energy and Capital, Fri 24 Aug)
(26 August 2007)


Petroleum: Prospects and Politics: Symposium at University of Chicago
(Audio and visual)
Various speakers, University Channel
The University of Chicago hosted a symposium on oil for students, faculty, the general public, and the press in May 2007.

* Session 1
Introduction: Robert Zimmer, President, University of Chicago

“United States Government Perspective on Global Energy Security:” The Honorable Alan S. Hegburg, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy for International Energy Policy

* Session 2: “Securing the International Oil Supply”
David Goldwyn, President of Goldwyn International Strategies LLC; Senior Fellow in the Energy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; former Assistant Secretary of Energy for International Affairs;

Scott Nauman, Manager of Economics and Energy in Corporate Planning for ExxonMobil Corporation;

Michael Klare, Five College Professor of Peace and World Security Studies

Moderated by Roger Myerson, The William C. Norby Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago

* Session 3: “United States Energy Policy and Oil Alternatives”
James Bartis, Senior Policy Researcher at RAND Corporation; former Vice President, Science Applications International Corporation; Cofounder, Eos Technologies

Roger H. Bezdek, President of Management Information Services, Inc.; former Special Advisor on Energy in the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury

Vito A. Stagliano, Director of Research at the National Commission on Energy Policy; former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy for Policy

* Session 4: Petroleum Technology Presentation
Brian C. Gahan, Energy Consultant; Chair of the Chicago Section of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers; former Senior Scientist and Manager of E&P Technology Development at the Gas Technology Institute

* Session 5: “Democracy, Governance, and War in Oil Exporting Nations”
Terry Lynn Karl, William and Gretchen Kimball University Fellow and Gildred Professor of Political Science at Stanford University

Miriam R. Lowi, Visiting Research Scholar at Princeton’s Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia; Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science of The College of New Jersey

Kevin K. Tsui, Assistant Professor of Economics at Clemson University

* Session 6: “Venezuelan Government Perspective on the Future of Petroleum”
His Excellency Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the U.S.

(May 18 and 19, 2007)
The video/audio files for Sessions 4, 5 and 6 don’t seem to be online. In Session 2, Scott Nauman presents the Exxon corporate point of view (e.g. skeptical of peak oil), whereas Michale Klare presents a case for peak oil and international political instability.

UPDATE: Transcripts, biographies and slides are available at Conference Proceedings
Slides for
“Securing the International Oil Supply” panel
“United States Energy Policy and Oil Alternatives”
“Democracy, Governance, and War in Oil Exporting Nations”
Petroleum Technology Presentation
Venezuelan Government Perspective on the Future of Petroleum


Frontlines: Fuel of War
(war game)
Kaos Studios
Oil was running out.
It’s what we grew up in.
Post middle east,
Post peak oil,
Post everything.
What they call the long emergency.
It started slow.
Little things at first.
Lines at the pump,
that hot summer of 2008 when the blackouts started lasting weeks.

They said it would get better.
Something would save us.

Biofuels, solar power, cleaner nuke plants, maybe.

The depression hit in 2012
Africa ran out of food, then we did too.

People stopped trying to do anything about the problem and just tried to survive.

We watched them starve for 40 years and it just didn’t seem real. But pretty soon the scenes we used to watch on the news were happening just down the street.

It’s been happening for years. Now we’re at a tipping point.

I was 16 when the Chinese and the Russians figured out they’d rather fight us than each other. We didn’t waste time forming the coalition.

Now, we’re staring each other down over the last wells of the Caspian.

… This is where it’s going to happen, in towns too small to have a name, built in two weeks by oil contractors.

It’s 2024, the 21st century. People ask we how we let this happen. I tell them we always knew.

The storm is coming.

Wikipedia says (on August 27): Frontlines: Fuel of War is set 20 years in the future in the midst of a global energy crisis. As supplies of oil and natural gas wane, diplomatic relationships between the East and West were strained, causing new alliances to be formed. The two major alliances in the Frontlines era are the Western Coalition, consisting of the United States and the European Union, and the Red Star Alliance, made up of Russia and the People’s Republic of China. As the last oil fields start to go dry, the countries move to secure what resources are left, leading to several small outbreaks that turn quickly into full scale war.

(27 August 2007)
Contributor wagdog wrote:
The game intro sequence can be viewed on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdaMM6akPXU
There is also a community site: www.frontlineswar.com/

BA:
This publicity from the game manufacturer shows how peak oil has entered the popular culture. The scenario manages to pack in most of the peak oil nightmares: government fecklessness, famine, civil disorder, and oil wars. Only the intro seems to have anything to do with peak oil, though. The game itself seems to be the usual shoot-em-up.


Tags: Fossil Fuels, Geopolitics & Military, Oil