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Report from 33d Intl. Geology Congress in Norway
Charles Hall, The Oil Drum
Below is an email sent by Professor Charles Hall from SUNY-Syracuse detailing his recent trip to an international Geology conference in Norway. Though written for his friends and colleagues, I thought the details and insights he shared from his trip to Norway would be worth sharing with the TOD readership, particularly the comments on peak oil and climate change.
… 6) I went to excellent (although perhaps predicable, although for this “new” audience that is fine) papers by Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere, and spent a lot of great time with them at the meetings and dinners. I was pleased to see how relaxed and funny Jean was, something I had not seen before. To my amazement here was Colin Campbell, maybe with one of the world’s most important geological ideas, and only 30 people were at his session! Likewise Jean. The general community of geologists do not have a clue about peak oil. They may not have their head stuck in the sand, but they do appear to have their head stuck in the rocks!
… 8) The second really impressive presentation for me was by Paul Nadeau. I was sitting next to Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrere and Colin said “Watch this, this will be great” and afterwards Jean said “That was truly wonderful (as did Charlie). His paper was about the “golden zone”, a layer in the earth characterized by temperatures of from 60 to 120 degrees C within which 90+ percent of oil has been found and 80 plus percent of gas. But this layer is found at different depths, deeper (?4000 meters) in the North Sea and shallower at (1000 M ) off of, for example, Mumbai, India. Most of the exploration and test drilling near Mumbai (or Bombay) was at the wrong depth, too deep! (Although I don’t know why they did not hit oil on the way down). This shows clearly that we have explored most of the “sweet spots” in the earth — not by understanding the golden zone concept but empirically– and is I think further evidence that we are unlikely to find too much additional oil by e.g. drilling deeper where we have already found oil. The paper was clear, critically important, extremely interesting and I though beautifully presented.
9) The plenaries, especially the climate session and somewhat the energy sessions, were designed for a more general scientific audience. They tended to be moderately interesting, optimistic about resources and technology and often extremely contentious. About two thirds of the presenters and question-askers were hostile to, even dismissive of, the IPCC (International panel on climate change) and the idea that the Earth’s climate was responding to human influences. This was rather shocking to me who knows of several other such scientists but had no idea there were so many.
(24 August 2008)
Raymond James Warns Any ‘Meaningful’ Oil Disruptions Will Cause ‘Significantly Higher’ Prices (Pt. 2 of 2)
Energy Tech Stocks
“The world now has a precariously balanced oil market that cannot withstand any meaningful oil supply disruptions without significantly higher oil price implications,” warns a new report from Raymond James & Associates, the investment banking firm.
This precarious balance is due to both geopolitical factors and a lack of oil supply growth in non-OPEC countries, Raymond James’ Houston-based energy analysts said. Geopolitically, Raymond James said the Russian threat to the oil pipeline running through Georgia must be added to the existing conflicts between Iran and the West and between Turkey and Iraq. Each is an oil “hotspot” that could cause oil prices to rise. “Additionally, increasing demand from Caspian countries for a bigger piece of the oil profits may continue to delay and push back some of the larger projects scheduled to come online over the next five years,” the report noted.
(22 August 2008)
An interview with energy expert Chris Nelder on peak oil and cleantech opportunities
Chris Morrison, VentureBeat via The Industry Standard
While covering cleantech on VentureBeat, we write often about individual technologies, but rarely about the driving forces behind the market. Global warming is an oft-cited reason for developing renewable energy, but there’s also peak oil – the idea that some day we will hit the maximum possible production of oil, and that supplies will thereafter decrease as the world’s reservoirs diminish.
Author Chris Nelder has been writing on the subject for years, and believes that we may have already hit peak oil. The book he co-wrote with Brian Hicks, Profit from the Peak, is ostensibly written for investors, but spends much of its time exhaustively arguing for peak oil, with much of its first half reading like a condensed form of years of studies on industry blog The Oil Drum, the source of much of the in-depth material on the subject.
According to Nelder, we’re on the verge of a years-long upward trend in oil prices, which, without replacement energy sources – especially for transportation fuels – spells serious trouble for the world economy.
(22 August 2008)
Past Its Peak
Michael Klare, London Review of Books
Unlike the oil ‘shocks’ of the 1970s, the current energy crisis is almost certain to be long-lasting. None of the quick fixes proposed by pundits and politicians – drilling in protected wilderness and maritime areas, curbs on commodity speculators, pressure on members of Opec to increase output – is likely to have much impact. In 1973-74 and again in 1979-80, events in the Middle East led to a sharp reduction in the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf, causing a contraction in global supplies and a rise in energy prices, and thus sparking a global recession. But when equilibrium of a sort was restored to the region, the oil began to flow again and the crisis passed. Now, however, the imbalance between supply and demand is largely due to factors inherent in oil commerce itself – and so is less easily solved.
The oil crisis is the product of three developments: an unexpected surge in demand, much of it from Asian countries; a slowing in the growth of world supply; and a shift in the centre of gravity of production from the global North to the global South. But the situation has been made far worse by the 1994 decision by Jiang Zemin’s government to make car production and ownership a ‘pillar’ of the Chinese economy; and by the Bush administration’s National Energy Policy of 2001, which backed the continued production and consumption of oil rather than the development of alternative sources of energy. Both policies ensured that the global demand for oil would rise just at the moment when the industry’s capacity to boost supply was beginning to falter.
(14 August 2008)
The new black (oil influences fashion)
Jocelyn K Glei, The National (United Arab Emirates)
As designers debuted their autumn 2008 collections on the runway earlier this year, a trend towards conservatism and the use of sober colours – including an overwhelming predilection for black – rapidly emerged. Now, as the season approaches and clothes land on showroom floors, a new undercurrent is welling up: echoes of the energy crisis are rippling through the fashion world, resulting in a raft of oily-finish fabrics from shiny-treated silk to liquid latex, glossy vinyl and other synthetics.
… Like it or not – oil is on everyone’s mind these days. With record-breaking international petrol prices sparking fear of energy crises in Europe and the US, it’s no surprise that fashion designers are starting to convey a heightened awareness of the value of “black gold,” fetishising the most precious of our fossil fuels.
The San Francisco-based art and design collective Citizen:Citizen was one of the first to foretell the rise of fashion-forward fuel. In 2006, the group collaborated with the New York artist Cory Ingram to produce a limited-edition fragrance called Crude, which featured “50ml of crude oil exquisitely packaged and branded”. Sold for $280 (Dh1,030), the product essentially imagined a world where petrol cost $900,000 a barrel.
(23 August 2008)
