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PFC Energy: Global energy markets – worse than you may think
J. Robinson West (interview), Program Brief/The Nixon Center (35-KB PDF)
Speaking at a briefing on global energy markets organized by The National Interest, a leading authority on international energy issues warned that the United States could face an acute energy crisis-including supply disruptions and price increases to $70 per barrel for oil and $2.80 or more per gallon for gasoline-in the next few years.
J. Robinson West, founder and chairman of PFC Energy, one of Washington’s most influential international energy consulting firms, is a former Assistant Secretary of the Interior in the Reagan Administration and a member of the advisory council of The National Interest. Former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft moderated the discussion at The Nixon Center.
Using his essay “The Future of Russian Energy” (in the Summer 2005 issue of The National Interest) as a departure point, Mr. West noted that after 9/11, many were predicting that, to reduce dependence on Saudi Arabia, the United States should increase its reliance on Russia as an alternative source of supply. “I am here to tell you,” he declared, “that Russia is not the key to America’s energy future.” The energy sector is being mismanaged in Russia, he observed, and there is no competent bureaucracy to oversee operations.
…In the end, West said, the real problem is that the Bush Administration is not paying enough attention to energy security.
…West predicted that 2015 could be the tipping point where global demand for oil exceeds supply and urged all the serious stakeholders in the United States to sit down and assess the situation. The current American lifestyle-based on the spread of suburbs and exurbs-depends on cheap credit, cheap land, cheap energy and the Federal Highway Act to build roads. It is not the SUV, West said, but Wal-Mart which is the symbol of this way of life-and Wal-Mart’s earnings are starting to decline. In West’s view, the reliance on cars as a way of life has prevented the elasticity of demand that the current oil price surge should have produced: automobiles are no longer a luxury or just the way people get to work, but an integral and unavoidable part of people’s lives. As a result, an energy crisis will be a “big deal” politically-the suburbs and exurbs are the heart of Red America, and if gasoline prices top $3 per gallon, Social Security will pale in comparison.
(28 June 2005)
The submitter accurately labeled this article: “What Nixonian realists discuss about peak oil.”
‘Once oil’s gone, then what?’
New Zealand conference on sustainable energy options: 28-30 Nov, Otago University
Press release, University of Otago
If the world’s crude oil supply peaks soon and heads into permanent decline, will renewable energy be able to fill the gap in time? How will this transition be managed, and what might this new low carbon world look like?
These are some of the key questions that about 100 participants from New Zealand and around the world will explore at a renewable energy conference to be opened by Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons at the University of Otago later this month.
The conference runs between Monday 28 November and 30th November 2005 at the University’s Castle Lecture Theatre complex.
The annual conference of the Australian and New Zealand Solar Energy Society – Solar 2005 brings together oil depletion analysts and renewable energy researchers “with the aim of creating a useful dialogue between the two groups and a better understanding of the world’s energy situation”, says conference convenor Associate Professor Bob Lloyd of Physics.
(14 November 2005)
Oil prices fuel push for alternatives
The Denver ASPO-USA conference and Alan Greenspan
Diane Carman, Denver Post
The consensus of more than 400 scientists, oil-industry analysts, energy investors, environmentalists and public officials in Denver last week was anything but alarmist. The world is not running out of oil, they said. No way.
In fact, there’s oil in rock right here in Colorado. There’s oil in environmentally sensitive places. There’s oil yet to be discovered. There’s lots of oil. The problem is the world is running out of cheap oil, and even Alan Greenspan, that guru of cold-eyed, free-market capitalism, agrees. At a meeting in Tokyo last month, the Federal Reserve chairman told Japanese business executives that although the global economy has been expanding, “the recent surge in energy prices will undoubtedly be a drag from now on.”
His forecast is based on the concept of “peak oil,” which refers to that inevitable day five years or maybe 15 years from now when world oil production stops increasing at the same rate as demand. When that occurs, two things have to happen to keep the economy humming, Greenspan said. Demand will have to slow and alternative energy sources will have to be developed – quickly. “He broke the taboo,” said Randy Udall, director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency in Aspen and one of the organizers of the Denver World Oil Conference.
…”Our timing was perfect,” Udall said. “The conference was like an oil-depletion Woodstock.” Near as I could tell, though, all the drillers, geologists and conservationists at this lovefest kept their clothes on.
…But most everyone agreed, action from the federal government would be nice. “Washington has been on a long holiday from reality,” Udall said. “We’ve designed our whole world based on $20-a-barrel oil. It’s not suited to $60-a-barrel oil.”
(12 November 2005)
True blue
Mediocrity and peak oil
James Howard Kunstler, Clusterf*ck Nation
Years ago, President Nixon nominated a legal nonentity named G. Harold Carswell for a seat on the supreme court. Derided by the newspaper columnists as “mediocre,” Carswell was defended by a conservative Nebraska senator, Roman Hruska, who said, memorably: “There are a lot of mediocre people in America who ought to be represented.”
Now Hruska has been reincarnated in Senator Charles (“Chuck”) Grassley of Iowa, who said the following a few days ago:
You know what? What makes our economy grow is energy. And Americans are used to going to the gas tank (sic), and when they put that hose in their, uh, tank, and when I do it, I wanna get gas out of it. And when I turn the light switch on, I want the lights to go on, and I don’t want somebody to tell me I gotta change my way of living to satisfy them. Because this is America, and this is something we’ve worked our way into, and the American people are entitled to it, and if we’re going improve (sic) our standard of living, you have to consume more energy.
Like the true-blue mediocre Americans of the Nixon era, American consumers (as we like to call ourselves) have the representative they deserve today in Senator Grassley. He expresses perfectly the dominant thought out there, which is as close to being not-a-thought as any thought can be. And this kind of proto-crypto-demi-thought is exactly what is going to lead this country into a world of hardship.
Instead of preparing the public for changing circumstances that will inexorably require different behavior on our part, our leaders are setting the public up to defend a way of living that can’t continue for practical reasons. The question remains: are our leaders doing this out of cynicism or stupidity, or some other reason that is hard to determine?
…Two weeks ago, …I asked [Matthew Simmons] what he has encountered the time or two that he has had an audience with George W. Bush. Apparently, the president’s reaction to Simmons’ message (which is that we are in big trouble) is a kind of curious incomprehension, as in the old expression, is that so?
(14 November 2005)
U.S. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert on peak oil (AUDIO)
David Room, Global Public Media
Congressman Sherwood Boehlert (R-New Hartford) speaks with GPM’s David Room about peak oil, Dr. Roscoe Bartlett, CAFE standards and the American transportation system.
(13 November 2005)
The prince and the planet
Carl Pope, Sierra Club (blog)
Prince Charles and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, are in Northern California at the end of their first U.S. visit together. The Prince, a serious organic farmer and environmentalist, has framed this part of his trip around issues of sustainability — visiting organic farms in Marin County and speaking to a symposium on “Peak Oil and Global Warming.” It’s striking that he has chosen to make this the focus of his trip. Even more striking is the fundamental unanimity of the panel, assembled by the Business and Environment Program of the University of Cambridge (which Charles created), on what supposedly is a highly divisive and controversial issue. I am the only environmental representative on the panel, which includes two utility companies, the State of California, the biggest public pension fund in the country, representatives of the high tech industry, an urban designer, and a CEO from Australia.
Yet, except for some very minor disagreements around the edges, largely on the prospect of accomplishing the changes we were all advocating, everyone seemed to agree on what work needs doing in the next 15 years. No one thought that peak oil or global warming were myths or anything other than profoundly serious challenges. Everyone agreed that efficiency, renewables, and new technologies were the solutions. And, unanimously, the panel urged that we should stop subsidizing fossil fuels and get the prices right.
So, although global warming seems highly charged and controversial in Washington, California business community is in accord with California’s environmental community — and with the Prince of Wales.
(8 November 2005)
Forget about bird flu – oil supply failure far more dangerous
Dick Winchester, Press and Journal (Aberdeen)
Recent evidence based on US intelligence sources and reported on in the New York Times in late-October suggests that Saudi plans to increase production or at least capacity to produce by nearly 14% in the next four years are not enough to meet global demand. Doubts about the kingdom’s ability to do this are multiplying.
What we can do to cut demand without risking recession? There really isn’t an awful lot of time to make some of these decisions, to make the investment and to implement them. The lack of activity at Government level is really quite astonishing. And the lack of understanding of the seriousness of this issue among the media, the general public and especially the financial world is disturbing. …
Petroleum Review’s latest data set should be compulsory reading for every newspaper business editor. But as far as I’m aware, none of them have actually bothered to comment on it.
Bird flu probably won’t do the damage the tabloids claim it might. But a shortfall in oil will wreak more havoc than anyone can possibly predict.
(9 November 2005)
Mr Winchesters (relatively recent) concern over oil is heartening, perhaps motivated by the UK’s record oil import bill but I have to admit scepticism over his seemingly parrallel enthusiasm for hydrogen. -LJ
Petroleum Armageddon
Why the election cycle is our worst enemy
Rafe Mair, The Tyee
The term “peaked” is an ominous one when used in the energy context. It means that we are consuming more than we are discovering.
…What is the role of government in all this? Is it perhaps to limit the size of cars by legislation? Is it perhaps to tax and tax hard those who buy gas guzzlers? If government is to financially encourage development of alternative fuels, how can they be sure that the money just isn’t poured down a rat hole?
What we do know is this – we are approaching a petroleum Armageddon. What we don’t know is when it will become a world-class crisis.
What we also know, sadly, is that no government sees past the next election so that nothing will be done until the very last moment. Unless plans are made and implemented, when “too late” arrives, it’s not going to be pretty.
(14 November 2005)
PO group in Grass Valley, Nevada
Brittany Retherford, The Union (US)
This time last year, the meaning behind the words “peak oil” was just as foreign to Reinette Senum as it was to many other Nevada County residents.
But following a day-long conference on the topic in May that was organized by Senum, a small, but growing movement has formed. The goal? To educate and inform other Nevada Countians about what they can do locally to minimize the impact of limited world oil reserves – or peak oil.
The movement goes by the name of Apple, which is an acronym for “Alliance for Post Petroleum Local Economy,” and it is comprised of about 20 to 25 residents who have met on a weekly basis for the past six months.
On Nov. 15, the group has planned what Senum calls its “coming out event” at the Center for the Arts in Grass Valley.
Renowned speaker and peak oil educator Richard Heinberg will share views on the topic, including the most recent evidence regarding when oil reserves might peak, the likely consequences, and what can be done both locally and internationally.
(14 November 2005)
Related: More on the Heinberg event.
