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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
ASPO-USA Conference Notes Are Available
Dave Cohen, ASPO-USA
Chris Nelder, an editor and frequent contributor at Energy & Capital, sacrificed his body for the ASPO-USA team at the Houston conference by taking extensive notes on each speaker’s presentation. The notes are very useful for those studying the peak oil issues.
These notes are now available here (pdf file). [47 pages]
Thanks, Chris!
(28 October 2007)
Also posted at Chris Nelder’s website, as pointed out by Prof. Goose at The Oil Drum.
On the other side of the mountain
No name, Guardian (News blog)
Is the British government doing enough to prepare for a future of diminishing oil production both internationally and in the North Sea? It seems a timely question as oil reached another record price of $92 yesterday, creeping closer to $100 a barrel.
This week, German-based researchers claimed that global oil production peaked last year and that it could fall by half as soon as 2030.
The British government says there is no reason to panic and that global oil supply is sufficient for the foreseeable future. But critics point to the fact that renewables in the UK generate only about 4% of the country’s electricity and 2% of its overall energy needs.
…Some dismiss the “peak oil” theorists as doom mongers and conspiracy theorists, while those anxious about oil running out fear governments are burying their heads in the sand and making poor progress on developing alternative energy strategies.
A future collapse of living standards to pre-industrial revolution levels and wars for vanishing resources form some of the warnings of those worried at how we will live after peak – on the other side of the mountain.
Personally, I have been slightly terrified of the fallout from peak oil – and its possible calamitous effects in several decades’ time, just as climate change could be wreaking devastation – ever since watching the documentary A Crude Awakening last year.
It is chilling when you realise that some very clever people who are thinking about alternatives to oil are quite pessimistic about any of the contending technologies. And that governments just don’t seem worried enough about this.
(27 October 2007)
I didn’t see any name for the author of this blog entry at the Guardian. Presumably, it is a Guardian journalist. -BA
Countdown to $100 oil (50) – it’s not ‘oil’, it’s ‘liquids’
Jerome a Paris, European Tribune
…rather than focusing on the most recent prices, I’d like to flag a distinction that Michael Klare, in an excellent article over at the Nation (Beyond the Age of Petroleum) makes:
This past May, in an unheralded and almost unnoticed move, the Energy Department signaled a fundamental, near epochal shift in US and indeed world history: we are nearing the end of the Petroleum Age and have entered the Age of Insufficiency. The department stopped talking about “oil” in its projections of future petroleum availability and began speaking of “liquids.”
One of the arguments that the cornucopians (or peak oil deniers) have used to dismiss the “peak oil” theory is that oil has been increasingly supplanted by new sources with equivalent or quasi-equivalent use.
…One of the main arguments of peak oil skeptics is to say that peak oil is irrelevant, because we keep on finding new sources to complement old ones. Thus, peak “oil” is not relevant because other liquids are successfully taking up the slack and are boosting overall production numbers. Some of the early prognoses of peak oil did not take into account such new sources, and when they did update their work to incorporate them, they were dismissed as ddomsayers, always promising the peak a few years from now – whereas the reality is that production is increasing as needed.
In fact, the reality is that production IS stagnating, even taking into account all new kinds of liquids (see the graphs at the above link, in particular this one) and, moreover, that the predictions of peak oil, using traditional definitions of oil, are correct.
Or, to keep it simple: oil is getting scarcer, the other “liquids” are dirty and expensive, and the White House would rather go to war to solve that rather than focus on demand reduction.
(27 October 2007)
Also at Daily Kos.
Australia: The Place To Be (Part 1)
David Clarke, The Oil Drum/ANZ
…This is the first of three articles in which I will talk about:
1. Where are we, how did we get there, what’s in our immediate future? The next 5 years in Australia.
2. Scenarios and threat analysis. Australia out to 2020.
3. Social solutions and personal preparations.
So here is Part 1 – an introduction to our situation here in Australia, and an overview of the next 5 years.
For most readers of TOD there will be no surprises, but I would like to highlight that it is not all bad news – there is plenty of good news as well. Let’s finish with the upbeat shall we? So, Bad News first:-
(28 October 2007)
Big Gav writes:
This is a guest post by David Clarke. David has worked as a consultant analyst for almost 30 years, spending the last 15 years consulting mainly in IT. David has owned and sold an IT startup, but now prefers the pampered life of a manager in one of the Big 4 Accounting firms. He has close friends in the energy industry and blames them for introducing him to Peak Oil, and bursting his happy bubble. You might occasionally encounter him on TOD as aeldric.
