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Energy crisis imminent: the U.S. Department of Energy refused to comment on its own hypothesis
Matthieu Auzanneau , Oil Man (blog), Le Monde
Must we run into a wall in order to recognize that there is one?
—
Neither the Energy Secretary Steven Chu, nor any official in the Department of Energy (DoE) U.S. wished to respond to the possibility of a fall in global oil production starting 2011. The hypothesis had been made by the principle DoE analyst in an exclusive interview.
It took 14 days for the DoE press office to decide not to answer me …
According to the article published here on March 23, Glen Sweetnam, head of economic analysis within the DoE admitted that “there is a chance that we may experience a decline” in world liquid fuels between 2011 and 2015 if investments are lacking.
… An official in the DoE testimony said, under cover of anonymity:
1 – Steven Chu cannot challenge Sweetnam’s analysis, seeing as Sweetnam is his main analyst, 2 – Chu also does not comment, since responding to a forecast so laden with consequences would be to recognize the strength of it, and could trigger a financial panic. So 3 – the DoE responds with a “no comment”. It’s crazy, but they have no choice!
… My report has been widely copied on the Internet. But so far, only the Guardian and the Financial Times have cited it. Le Monde itself (which hosts this blog) up to now prefers to keep its distance.
A supply crisis would have dire consequences (as demonstrated by the riots that took place when a barrel of crude oil reached almost $ 150 in 2008). …
(21 April 2010)
French version: Choc pétrolier imminent : le département de l’énergie US refuse de commenter sa propre hypothèse
Google translation of the French .
Amazing to see what a gutsy French journalist can do by reading the documents and asking officials hard questions. U.S. journalists, please take note. -BA
Will Toe-to-Heel Air Injection Extend the Oil Age?
Kurt Cobb, Scitizen
When the oil optimists say that new technology will extend the oil age for at least several more decades, they almost never discuss the limitations of technology, practical or financial. Nor do they like to discuss possible side effects that could render such technology unusable. But the discussion around a new method of heavy oil extraction called toe-to-heel air injection includes mention of both limitations and side effects. For that reason I give the patent holders a much better chance of developing a technique that could make a significant contribution to oil supplies while addressing environmental objections that could doom other methods.
… The THAI process has yet to be proven on a large scale. And, there may be many unforeseen problems that could limit its usefulness. But based on what I know about other methods, THAI strikes me as a very promising technique for recovering bitumen and heavy oil that might otherwise be left in the ground. Should the THAI process be broadly successful, I still don’t think it will shift the world peak in oil production (which I believe is near). But it could serve to cushion significantly any decline and therefore help make the transition to a post-oil society a little less traumatic.
(21 April 2010)
Arctic oil drilling threatens Norway government
Gwladys Fouche, Reuters
A classic battle pitting the oil industry against environmentalists and fishermen in Norway’s Arctic seas is set to intensify on Thursday when the most thorough environmental study of the project to date is released.
(13 April 2010)
Playing with Peak Oil awareness
Suraj Kumar, Live Journal
I wrote a game to illustrate peak oil and christened it “Oilsville”. My hope is that people will now be able to grasp the phenomenon of peak oil – how any finite resource (or even a renewable resource stripped faster than it is being replenished) will peak with increased extraction and eventually start declining, no matter what improvements in technology are made.
The premise of the game is simple: There is a new oil field to be exploited. You got a rig (with configurable “size of the straw”) which will start pumping out oil. Every well will start yielding lesser and lesser over time as the underlying geology dictates that the pressure must decrease. Larger sized rigs, as with reality, requires larger amounts of energy to operate and are also costly to operate. The only way to ramp up production is therefore to drill more. But the catch is… the more you drill, the closer you are to peaking production and you’d eventually reach a point where no matter how big your rig is, you cannot increase production! But given this is Oil Money, rest assured you’ll be a millionaire oil tycoon!
Feel the frustration as you ramp up your fight against Entropy! 🙂
Here is a screenshot:
I wrote this in perl (“sorta” Object Oriented Perl) using SDL for the graphics. This is available for free download as a source tarball as well as a deb. The deb is perhaps easiest to install. I’m GPL’ing the source.
We needs your help!
I’m seeking volunteers, code contributors and hackers for the following things: …
(18 April 2010)
The Energy Policy Morass
Steven F. Hayward, American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
… The chief reason for the lack of a coherent or serious energy policy is that we’ve never been able to decide exactly what problem we are trying to solve. At the time of the first “energy crisis” in the early 1970s, the chief concern was the purported scarcity of oil along with worry about securing an adequate supply of electricity for future population and economic growth. The Arab oil embargo of 1973-74 that helped plunge Western economies into recession highlighted the geopolitical risk of dependence on the Persian Gulf for oil. But there was another new force that arose coincident with the awareness of geo-political risk: environmentalism. In the early 1970s we were getting serious about reducing air pollution, predominantly the byproduct of fossil fuels, although the harmful effects of mining and oil exploration on land and oceans were also prominently on the mind of environmentalists and added to their animus against fossil fuels. So from that very early moment the energy debate has broken down along the familiar fault line of whether to emphasize production (more supply) or conservation (less use), with a dollop of “alternative” or “renewable” energy romanticism thrown in.
… Here emerges one of the most glaring insincerities of the energy debate: While it is neither realistic nor sensible to attempt to produce all of the oil we need from domestic sources (more on this in a moment), we could easily produce enough additional domestic oil to replace all of our current imports from the Persian Gulf, i.e., the “people who hate us,” probably from new fields in Alaska alone. Expand production from the outer continental shelf, and we could nix imports from Venezuela (currently about 10 percent of our oil), too. Drilling opponents often argue that oil from Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) would amount to only six months’ worth of U.S. oil consumption. This is superficial logic, akin to arguing that the farms of Iowa only produce six weeks’ worth of food for American consumers, so why bother planting. While no one knows how much oil may be located in ANWR until serious exploration is undertaken, even a “six-month” field would be substantial. The average oil field may represent only a few weeks worth of total oil consumption, but oil fields aren’t produced all at once. Rather, they are pumped out over several decades.
We’ve done it before. The surge in North Slope oil in the early 1980s enabled us to reduce oil imports by 2 million barrels a day. Oil imports from the Persian Gulf plummeted from 2.2 million barrels a day in 1978 to a low of 311,000 barrels a day in 1985.
… One remarkable fact is that American oil consumption has remained virtually flat over the last 30 years. Today, we use only slightly more oil than we did in 1978, even though the economy has more than doubled in real terms. This is testimony to the steady improvement in energy efficiency over the last generation, including–yes–our cars and trucks. Since 1975, energy consumption per dollar of economic output has fallen 50 percent. Though efficiency and conservation measures are beloved of environmentalists, it is doubtful any of the government’s manifold mandates, tax incentives, or direct subsidies have made a significant difference in the overall trend of energy efficiency in the United States. The basic market drivers–higher energy prices and expanding profits through resource efficiency–account for most of the improvement.
… Of course, global warming came along as a handy new reason for opposing fossil fuel use. Although the Supreme Court doesn’t get it, carbon dioxide is not analogous to conventional air pollutants that are byproducts of fuel combustion, and it can’t be reduced through similar technological means. Confusion about this basic point lies at the heart of the enthusiasm for cap and trade legislation soon to be introduced in the Senate. A favorite cliché of the cap and trade boosters is that because cap and trade worked well to reduce sulfur dioxide (this is actually overstated, but never mind), it will work the same way for carbon dioxide. It was possible to reduce SO2 emissions without reducing fuel use, through scrubbers or the switch to low-sulfur coal. But CO2 is the product of complete fuel combustion. There is no such thing as “low-carbon coal,” and there is no economically available CO2 “scrubbing” technology, though the coal industry is happy to try to come up with it as long as the government will provide subsidies. It would surely be cheaper to switch from coal to natural gas or nuclear power than to carbon capture from coal.
The point is, unlike conventional air pollution, which was reduced without any constraint on fuel use, the CO2 in the atmosphere can be reduced only by the use of massively less coal, oil, and natural gas. But even if the case for catastrophic global warming weren’t in free fall, the energy ambitions of the climate campaign remain so extreme as to make King Canute blush.
… For all of the bipartisan talk of developing new energy sources, we’re going to exploit most of our available hydrocarbons sooner or later. And one reason this is likely to happen is the nation’s fiscal catastrophe. Some estimates of potential government royalties from opening up more fossil fuel production top a trillion dollars. At some point in the future, even liberals will be forced to decide whether they really want to back environmentalists on locking up domestic fossil fuel production and forgo this revenue while finding other means of propping up the welfare state.
Before conservatives and Republicans revive their “drill, baby, drill” chant, however, there needs to be some clarity about the goals of sensible energy policy. Conservatives are not alone in advocating “energy independence”–a phrase that polls well and hence has been invoked by every president since Richard Nixon. But meant literally as energy self-sufficiency–supplying 100 percent of our energy needs from sources within the four corners of U.S. territory–it makes no more sense than total self-sufficiency in textiles, food, autos, or timber.
… Another reason not to overemphasize the potential for increased domestic oil production is that it will not have a significant impact on world oil prices, chiefly because of surging demand from China and other developing nations. Although the “peak oil” panic is probably overestimated, the era of cheap oil is over. Between rising global demand and higher production costs, a diversification of primary energy sources makes sense. Of course, higher global prices will make possible the economic development of America’s vast oil shale deposits–as much as 800 billion barrels worth.
Stephen F. Hayward is the F. K. Weyerhauser Fellow at AEI.
(26 April 2010)
Better analysis on energy than most of current conservative thought. An excellent guide to what the future talking points of official conservativism and big business will be. For example, note that peak oil is now officially admitted: “Although the “peak oil” panic is probably overestimated, the era of cheap oil is over. ” -BA
