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Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
ODAC newsletter now online
Douglas Low, Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (ODAC)
A newsletter from the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (ODAC) is now available to the public. The newsletter contains items of interest relating to Peak Oil / oil depletion. No attached files, all contained in an e-mail.
Rather than receive a daily e-mail, readers can view the same info on the ‘News Archive’ menu option on the ODAC website.
The Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (ODAC) is an independent UK-registered educational charity working to raise international public awareness and promote better understanding of the world’s oil-depletion problem.
(22 May 2006)
The ODAC website has other good material online, including back copies of all the ODAC newsletters. -BA
Summer Fun
James Howard Kunstler, Clusterf*ck Nation
The summer driving season officially kicks off Friday with the Memorial Day weekend and, as gasoline prices prompt more families to stay home, a lot of Americans will be stuck in their oppressively boring suburbs wondering about the meaning of it all. The failures and disconnections of the living arrangement most Americans have been induced to choose will at last become manifest.
They will discover that a luxurious private realm, with more bathrooms per inhabitant than any other society, will not compensate for a public realm that has been reduced and impoverished into a universal automobile slum. The children will be relegated to their TVs and video game terminals. The only other option will be trips to the mall — except that credit cards maxed out on gasoline fill-ups will put the kibosh on recreational shopping, too, and the public will make the additional discovery that malls have little else to offer non-spenders, except a keener awareness of their hopeless debt levels. The adults will blame George W. Bush.
It seems to me that as the weeks advance into the hardcore vacation zone, the price of gasoline is only likely to go higher. (Duh. . . .) It will be a strange interplay between increased competition (or growing scarcity) of global oil resources and weakness in the US dollar itself — and it may not be so easy to tell which is the chicken or the egg. The dollar’s loss of value against other currencies will force the federal reserve to keep bumping up interest rates so that all the foreign holders of US debt paper will not dump it.
(22 May 2006)
Energy Futures
K.C. Golden, TomPaine.com
The signs of a new, brighter energy future are everywhere.
Wind and solar power are the fastest growing electricity sources. NASDAQ just launched a clean energy index. Leading venture capitalists are making big bets on low-carbon energy sources. Auto dealers are carrying more hybrid and flex-fuel vehicles. Forward-looking communities are planning a future around people instead of cars. Farmers, entrepreneurs, investors—they’re all planting seeds for a cleaner, more secure energy future.
But they’re going too slow. Promising solutions are emerging, but our addiction to fossil fuels is getting worse and it’s killing us. War, climate disruption and economic insecurity are among its symptoms.
Now that we can see real pictures of the post-fossil fuel future—since it seems so tantalizingly possible—what can we do to accelerate it?
We can start by squaring up to a simple truth, fossil fuels are very costly. We pay some of the tab at the pump and in our utility bills. But we pay much more in the form of chronic national insecurity due to dependence on oil. We pay in the form of climate disruption—more intense storms, water shortages, ocean sterilization. We pay through the nose, through our lungs and through our declining standing in the world.
The price of oil may cycle down again—after all, suppliers don’t want to price us out of our addiction. “Peak oil ” may be more like a long ridge, with lots of price volatility to keep us guessing. The people who have the most control of oil prices also have the greatest incentive to discourage investment in alternatives—so don’t expect a smooth ride up the price curve. But when the price drops, it’s lying.
No matter how energy prices spike or plunge, fossil fuels are exorbitantly expensive.
K.C. Golden is the policy director of Climate Solutions, which is devoted towards working for practical solutions to global warming and a new, sustainable prosperity.
(22 May 2006)
Early New Field Production Estimation Could Assist in Quantifying Supply Trends (PDF)
Rafael Sandrea, Oil & Gas Journal
Comments on the article by submitter Jeffrey J. Brown:
The article uses the “Hubbert Linearization” logistic technique to estimate peak production from a group of oil fields currently being developed. However, the kicker is toward the end of the article, where the author provides his logistic based reserve estimates for the world and for various regions, which are as follows (presumably for crude + condensate, in billions of barrels, or Gb, through 2004):
World:
Total Recoverable Reserves: 2,000 Gb; 1,043 Gb Remaining; 48% depleted.
US:
Total Recoverable Reserves: 225 Gb; 40 Gb Remaining; 82% depleted.
Russia:
Total Recoverable Reserves: 195 Gb; 44 Gb Remaining; 77% depleted.
Saudi Arabia:
Total Recoverable Reserves: 165 Gb; 64 Gb Remaining; 61% depleted.
Final comment at the end of the article: “There is a need for a fast track development plan. At current rates of project slippage, depletion will continue eating into discovery gains.”
Note that the author’s estimate of ultimate recoverable conventional world oil reserves exactly matches Kenneth Deffeyes’ estimate (also 2,000 Gb).
(22 May 2006)
