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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Green Ink: Forget Peak Oil; Peak Gasoline is Already Here
Keith Johnson, Environmental Capital (blog), Wall Street Journal
Crude oil futures fell below $51 a barrel as the market reacted to the IEA’s bearish oil-demand forecast, Bloomberg reports.
And the demand picture is indeed weak, especially in the U.S., where gasoline demand apparently peaked in 2007 and won’t return. That’s due to a cocktail of higher fuel-efficiency, shifting transportation habits, and the growing role of biofuels, in the WSJ. Speaking of which, the University of Texas boasts what could be the world’s largest collection of algae, suddenly in demand as a biofuel feedstock, also in the WSJ.
Chinese oil companies may partner with Shell to make a bid for oil development in Northern Iraq, the WSJ reports. As well as Kazakhstan—Bloomberg reports China will loan the Central Asian country $10 billion in exchange for a stake in its oil company. The supply outlook is grimmer in the North Sea: Tanking oil prices have led to a steep decline in oil exploration, which could halve the remaining life of North Sea oil reserves, in the FT.
(13 April 2009)
Preparing for a Post Peak Life (video)
André Angelantoni, Post Peak Living
Why should you prepare? And how do you get started?
[26-minute video It includes a succinct explanation of peak oil plus the key events and trends to prepare for and how to start preparing. ]
Notes
Thorough analysis and discussion on oil, energy and adaptation is available at The Oil Drum. A Best of the Oil Drum index is available here.
Slide: What the Next Decade Will Bring
Narration:”…has left the auto and airline industries on their deathbed”
Grim Airline Numbers Fail to Reflect Truly Terrible State of the Industry, March 25, 2009
Narration:”…climate change is happening much faster than thought even two years ago.”
EU: Earth warming faster (April 7, 2009)
Climate change will be much worse than you think
Does peak oil mean we don’t have to worry about climate change? Unfortunately, I don’t think so. See my write up, Peak Oil and Climate Change Q&A, here.
…
As well as cofounding Post Peak Living, André Angelantoni is a co-founder of Post Carbon Marin, an initiative in Marin county to prepare it for peak oil. Trained as a civil engineer at the University of Toronto and founder of Inspiring Green Leadership, Mr. Angelantoni has supported over 35 businesses in the Bay Area of California to obtain the Green Business Certification.
(11 April 2009)
The site has some other useful sections, including:
Peak Oil Primer
The Guide to Post Peak Living
-BA
The 2009 EIA Energy Conference: Day 1
Robert Rapier, The Oil Drum
The Plenary
I covered Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s comments in the previous post. Here, I will cover the rest of Day 1. This is not so much a comprehensive summary as it is a collection of observations and things I otherwise found to be interesting. My notes at times are spotty, so if someone was there and feels like this essay contains an error, please let me know.
Following Chu’s talk, Professor William Nordhaus of Yale gave a talk entitled Energy and the Macroeconomy. I got called out during his talk, so I missed most of it. What I do remember him arguing is that oil embargoes are completely worthless, because oil is fungible. If Venezuela decided not to sell their oil to the U.S., they would end up selling it to someone else, which would displace some other seller, which at some point would end up with someone else selling it to the U.S. I missed the next point, but Gail the Actuary was there and said “a corollary of this is that there is no point in protecting the US oil and gas industry. We can just buy what we need elsewhere.”
Next up was John W. Rowe, CEO of Exelon, which has the largest market capitalization in the utility industry. John speaks very slowly, but he speaks with authority. I took quite a few notes during his talk. Rowe supports cap and trade as a way of controlling CO2 emissions.
(13 April 2009)
Oil Industry Braces for Drop in U.S. Thirst for Gasoline
Russell Gold and Ana Campoy, Wall Street Journal
Since Henry Ford began mass production of the Model T nearly a century ago, car-loving Americans have gulped ever-increasing volumes of gasoline. A growing number of industry players believe that era is over.
Among those who say U.S. consumption of gasoline has peaked are executives at the world’s biggest publicly traded oil company, Exxon Mobil Corp., as well as many private analysts and government energy forecasters.
The reasons include changes in the way Americans live and the transportation they choose, along with a growing emphasis on alternative fuels. The result could be profound transformations not only for the companies that refine gasoline from crude oil but also for state and federal budgets and for consumers. Much of contemporary America, from the design of its cities to its tax code and its foreign policy, is predicated on a growing thirst for gasoline.
(13 April 2009)
