Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
The Ultimate Race: Global Warming vs Peak Oil
Luke Cyphers, Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN)
WHICH WILL END THE WORLD FIRST: GLOBAL WARMING OR PEAK OIL?
There are two schools of thought on how civilization will destroy itself. Al Gore’s polar bears have gotten most of the pub, but coming up fast is Peak Oil, which says petroleum production is only going downhill with disastrous repercussions. We thought it might be fun to run the two doomsday scenarioshead to head, based on a mostly random reading of current events. What can we say? We like competition.
THE STARTING LINE: FEBRUARY, 2008
Last year at this time, Global Warming looked unbeatable, like the Patriots in October. An Inconvenient Truth was weeks away from an Oscar, the early ski season had been wiped out by 60-degree temps and a golf-course-killing drought was asserting itself in the South.
By the end of 2007, though, Peak Oil was on a roll like, you guessed it, the Giants. Thanks to a cold(ish) December and issues involving the crude supply chain that we don’t really understand, not only did oil prices touch $100 a barrel (up from $25 in 2003!), Bode Miller had great conditions to dominate the World Cup!
(22? February 2008)
Fossil fuel costs to grow
Editorial, Halifax Chronicle-Herald
THE WORLD still has plenty of oil. What humanity is running out of is cheap oil.
That fact’s unlikely to change, ever. Which means that historically high costs for crude oil – and, by extension, more expensive prices at the gas pumps – are here to stay.
There will, however, always be fluctuations. The latest, rapid rise in oil prices, up from less than $90 US a barrel in early February to more than $100 US a barrel last week, is a perfect example. What drove the increase? Paradoxically, some of the same fears that temporarily drove prices down.
… World demand for oil is increasing year over year. While North American consumption continues to grow, rapidly rising demand from China, India and other developing countries – a relatively new phenomenon – has enormously sharpened the global appetite for crude. Crude not only fuels economies’ key sectors of transportation and manufacturing, it is a vital component of the production of everything from plastics to fertilizers.
At the same time, world oil production has been steady in recent years. With rising demand and supply stagnant, crude costs were bound to rise.
The fact that production has plateaued, however, doesn’t mean the world is running short of oil supplies. As the price of crude goes up, oil that was previously uneconomical to exploit becomes feasible to extract, whether from tar sands, deep underwater, hundreds of kilometres offshore, or from synthetic sources. But that new oil will, necessarily, be more expensive to consumers.
Although the world’s not running out of oil quite yet, the fossil fuel era, by definition, cannot last forever. As the famed U.S. Shell Oil senior geologist M. King Hubbert said about a half-century ago, the world’s current oil, coal and gas consumption spree – which is but a blip in the long history of mankind – can only happen once. As supplies are depleted and demand keeps increasing, costs will inevitably continue to rise. Cheap oil is now history.
The long-term challenge for humanity – beyond the key economic considerations – is to find alternative energy sources before fossil fuels run out. That won’t be within our lifetimes, but the work must be done now. In the meantime, get used to higher prices.
(24 February 2008)
Contributor CP writes:
A locally-owned small town newspaper renowned for its lack of intestinal fortitude and unquestioning support of business as usual. The fact that it finally has raised this issue on its editorial page is probably evidence we are well past peak.
BA:
From outside Nova Scota, the newspaper’s editorial seems pretty impressive — far ahead of the NY Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times which have yet to do any in-depth reporting on peak oil. Someone in Halifax has been doing their homework.
UPDATE (Feb 26) Contributor Larry Hughes writes:
In your summary, you write “Someone in Halifax has been doing their homework.” Quite true, the editorial staff have been following the energy security work of the Energy Research Group quite closely [you’ve mentioned it on occasion over the past few years]: lh.ece.dal.ca/enen
Interestingly, the Halifax Chamber of Commerce has also picked up on our work and has made energy security one of their policy issues: www.halifaxchamber.com/chamberdocs/EnergySecurityPolicy.pdf
This is all “good news” — however, the provincial government hasn’t woken up to the possibility of energy shortages yet, they are still hoping that the mother of all natgas fields exists offshore. Failing that, there will be a rush to place wind turbines throughout the province. Amazingly, almost all of this energy is intended for export to the US. Nuts? You’d better believe it.
Since Nova Scotia imports about 90 percent of its energy, we will be hitting the wall long “before fossil fuels run out” as stated in the editorial.
Larry Hughes, PhD
Professor
Energy Research Group
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Dalhousie University
Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3J 2X4
Canada
Oilwatch Monthly – February 2008
Rembrandt, The Oil Drum: Europe
Latest Developments:
1) Total liquids – In December world production of total liquids increased by 745,000 barrels per day from October according to the latest figures of the International Energy Agency (IEA). Resulting in total world liquids production of 87.20 million b/d, which is the all time maximum liquids production. For the third consecutive month world production has increased significantly. The IEA figures result in an average global production in 2007 of 85.26 million b/d, more than the average 2006 production of 85.00 million b/d and the average 2005 production of 84.10 million b/d. The EIA in their International Petroleum Monthly puts the average global 2007 production up to November at 84.53 million b/d, slightly lower than the average 2006 production of 84.60 million b/d and the average 2005 production of 84.63 million b/d.
2) Conventional crude – Latest available figures from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that crude oil production including lease condensates decreased by 202,000 b/d from October to November. Total production in November was estimated at 73.17 million b/d, which is 518,000 b/d lower than the all time high crude oil production of 74.30 million b/d reached in May 2005.
A selection of charts from this edition:
(22 February 2008)
We’re Headed Over A Cliff Our Leaders Want To Ignore
Tom Whipple, The Day (Connecticut)
Energy, economic issues need attention from leaders – now
—
Last week oil closed above $100 a barrel for the first time. To make matters worse, wholesale gasoline and heating oil jumped 11 cents a gallon in a single day to their all-time highs. A lot of bad news triggered the increase of nearly $14 a barrel in the last two weeks. A refinery in Texas blew up and may take months to repair; floods, snowstorms, and power outages have the world’s coal markets breaking records; and to top it off OPEC is threatening to cut oil production, either officially or unofficially, because stockpiles crept up a bit in January.
When you can get $100 for every barrel exported you might as well save some for the grandchildren, because you sure don’t need the money.
Then there is the economic news.
Tom Whipple is a retired CIA analyst and the editor for the daily Peak Oil News and the weekly Peak Oil Review published by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil.
(24 February 2008)
Tom Whipple, whose work regularly appears in Energy Bulletin, seems to be breaking into the mainstream press. -BA
Renowned Peak Oil Expert Addresses Dubais Business Leaders
Dubai City Guide
Matthew R. Simmons, a prominent expert on the issue of peak oil and the author of the controversial book, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, is in Dubai this week to host a luncheon with the UAE’s business leaders from the oil and gas, banking and investment industries.
Mr. Simmons is the Chairman and founder of Simmons & Company International (SCI), one of the largest investment banking practices serving the energy industry. He is a strong proponent of the dangers of peak oil and believes the peak oil issue is poorly understood and the world’s data on production, demand and inventories is alarmingly inaccurate.
“Peak oil is probably now past tense and the world is desperately in need of a sustainable series of new energy sources and urgent adoption of conservation measures to wean “us” all from a chronic addiction not just to oil, but all three forms of fossil fuels,” said Matthew Simmons.
According to Mr. Simmons one of the most critical questions facing the global energy market is whether key oil producing nations can increase oil production to meet the current and future growth in world demand. He warns that with the rapid population growth, improved economies and subsequent increase in vehicles the world’s demand for oil can only continue to multiply.
… Mr. Simmons sees the Middle East Region as pivotal to the future security of world energy supplies. “The Middle East Energy sector, once able to grow with little capital expenditures, has now undergone a sea-change as the super giant oil fields aged and the cost to add new productive capacity soared”.
During his visit to Dubai Mr. Simmons is also a featured speaker at the second annual National Oil Companies (NOC) Conference being hosted by Marsh, the UK’s leading insurance broker and advisor.
(25 February 2008)
Peak Oil Task Force Submits Report to Brattleboro (VT) Selectboard
Brattleboro Regional Peak Oil Task Force, Vermont Peak Oil Network
“There is a factual basis to Peak oil and, in fact, there is reason to believe that Peak Oil may have already occurred.”
This was the conclusion of the town-appointed Brattleboro (Vermont) Regional Peak Oil Task Force in its initial report to the Brattleboro Selectboard on Tuesday, February 19, 2008, completing the first phase of its mandate. Inspired by a similar endeavor in Portland, Oregon, the Task Force is a first of its kind municipal body, not only in Vermont, but, perhaps, in the rest of the eastern United States as well. It was first proposed to the Selectboard last May by Post Oil Solutions, a Brattleboro-based citizens group that has initiated a number of projects designed to build greater sustainabilitity and community in the Windham County region ( www.postoilsolutions.org ).
The report is archived on the Vermont Peak Oil Network Community Pages: ( vtpeakoil.net/community/document.php?id=231 )
(22 February 2008)
Submitted by Annie Dunn Watson
