DOE Still Disavows Peak Oil Forecast, Despite New Studies
Julia Harte, solve climate
The U.S. Department of Energy has long disavowed peak oil theory: the notion that annual world oil production will peak, plateau, and then enter a decline. But the agency’s stance appears increasingly at odds with the future predicted by many world energy analysts, including the US military.
In February, the United Kingdom Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security—a group comprised in part by renewable energy companies—published a report warning that global peak oil would probably occur within the next decade.
And in March, the U.S. Joint Forces Command released its Joint Operating Environment 2010 report, a forecast of likely national security challenges. Drawing on several energy information sources, the report concluded that “world surplus oil production could disappear by 2012, and shortages of 10 million barrels per day could be seen as soon as 2015.”
With the BP Gulf oil disaster continuing with no resolution in sight and mounting public concern over the wisdom of offshore drilling, more pressure is mounting on DOE to justify its optimistic forecasts and its belief that the nation will be producing millions of more barrels of oil a day within two decades.
Change in DOE stance?
A few weeks after the joint force report came out, there was speculation that the DOE had endorsed peak oil theory after Glen Sweetnam, former director of the International, Economic and Greenhouse Gas division of the DOE’s Energy Information Administration (EIA), told French paper Le Monde that, “if the investment is not there,” world oil production could enter a “decline” by 2011.
Sweetnam has since left the EIA on a yearlong reassignment: a development unrelated to the interview he gave Le Monde, according to Lauren Mayne, a liquid fuels analyst at the agency.
Mayne clarifies that the EIA does not expect oil production to peak in 2011. When asked if the EIA expects to see oil production ever peak and diminish, Mayne replied that the agency does not anticipate a peak oil scenario resulting from supply shortages: “We do not see a peak, if a peak means a sharp retraction in oil production.”
In fact, Mayne argued, the world’s total projected oil consumption in 2030 “could be met, given current resource estimates.”
That claim is backed up, according to Mayne, by the EIA’s country-by-country estimate of future oil production. “Actual production, of course, will likely differ somewhat, but we do feel from an analytical basis that these production estimates are likely to progress in a way that’s shown” by EIA models, she said.
Those models predict significant production increases in several countries over the next two decades. In a presentation from a round-table of oil economists that Sweetnam presided over in April 2009, several graphs showed estimates of the world’s liquid fuels supply through 2030, and how production would change in the current top 15 oil-producing countries.
But all the estimates of project production were based on a “proprietary database,” according to Linda Doman, another forecaster at the EIA, and the exact numbers behind the charts cannot be released…
(10 May 2010)
Oil industry spent big on Senate panel members
David Morgan, Reuters
Executives from BP Plc (BP.L) and two other companies were appearing before two Senate committees on Tuesday for grillings about the gushing BP oil well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
Thirty-two of the 40 Democrats and Republicans who sit on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Environment and Public Works Committee have collected millions of dollars from BP or other oil and gas interests during election campaigns dating to 1990, public records show.
BP interests alone — including the oil giant’s political action committee and associated individuals — contributed nearly $320,000 to lawmakers who are now scrutinizing the company’s actions. That works out to $10,000 per senator.
Lawmakers who count oil and gas interests as major donors collected $5.9 million from the industry as a whole in just the past five years, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.
The sum includes $2.4 million in industry donations to Republican John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid.
About 80 percent of the industry total went to 14 Republicans. The remaining one-fifth was collected by seven Democrats.
That means oil and gas interests spent $170,000 on each Democrat who accepted major contributions in the past five years, and more than $336,000 per Republican.
The following tables show contributions to committee members. Each senator serves a six-year term. The contributions are measured in two time periods: 2005-2010 and 1990-2010.
All the figures were compiled from public records by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money’s influence in the U.S. political process.
(2X April 2010)
US oil industry watchdog to be broken up
BBCnews
The US is to break up a federal oil industry watchdog – amid conflict of interest fears – following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar unveiled the plans to split up the Minerals Management Service, which both inspects rigs and collects oil royalties.
Oil executives have been passing blame, as they were grilled at a Senate hearing into the spill, amid protests.
President Barack Obama says he is “frustrated” the leak is not plugged.
British firm BP will make a second attempt this week to seal the oil well.
An attempt to drop a huge box on to the leak failed at the weekend and BP will now try to cap it with a smaller box.
The energy giant is also expected to try to plug the well using rubbish like tyres and golf balls.
Oil executives were met by angry protesters as they attended a congressional hearing into the disaster on Tuesday.
Senate energy committee chairman Jeff Bingaman said at the outset it was important to remember the 11 lives lost in the disaster.
He added: “The sobering reality is that despite the losses and damage that have already been suffered, we do not yet know what the full impact of this disaster will be.”
(11 May 2010)
