Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Production from “enhanced oil recovery” peaked at about 750,000 barrels a day in the early 1990s, and has fallen back slightly, with gas “flooding” now viewed as more economical than thermal methods, while chemical treatments have proved to be too expensive.
SAUDI ARABIA’s oil minister said his country was ready to pump more oil but it could not find buyers as the Kingdom’s high-sulphur crude was being rejected by Western refineries.
With short-term oil prices currently above $50 per barrel and the futures markets predicting long-term prices of around $34 on five-year contracts, signs of a rebound in exploration efforts are suddenly popping up everywhere.
Venezuelan Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Alfredo Toro Hardy writes: Everything seems to indicate that Venezuela is at the end of the tunnel and about to enter into a new period of prosperity.
Derrick Jensen thinks the collapse of civilisation, be it deliberate or through oil depletion or any other means, can only be a good thing for the planet.
Book review of THE HYPE ABOUT HYDROGEN: Fact and Fiction in the Race To Save the Climate, by Joseph J. Romm. (Strong focus in the review on policy.)
The current ‘oil price crisis’ in reality reflects an emerging and permanent supply crisis for oil and gas (which currently provide about 65% of world commercial energy).
This, then, is the future of U.S. military involvement abroad. While anti-terrorism and traditional national security rhetoric will be employed to explain risky deployments abroad, a growing number of American soldiers and sailors will be committed to the protection of overseas oil fields, pipeline, refineries, and tanker routes.
My sense of last weekend’s G7 meetings is that there is an atmosphere of suppressed panic about the oil price, and about the danger of a serious crisis.
Plans by a North Cork based company, D. P. Energy Ltd., to develop a wind energy farm on the picturesque mountainside have been given the thumbs down by An Bord Pleanála, and the communities who fought a vigorous campaign against the project now believe it has finally been consigned to the pages of history.
The report shows the commercial value of oil and gas discovered over the past three years by the 10 largest listed energy groups is running well below the amount they have spent on exploration.
Venezuela aims to ramp up oil production to an average 3.6 million barrels per day in 2005 to generate 5 percent economic growth and build on this year’s oil-driven recovery, according to the government’s draft budget for next year.
