Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
It may have come as a surprise to many (particularly market analysts) that the price of oil didn’t just magically stop at US$40 a barrel. As we push beyond the $50 per barrel barrier the G-7 finance leaders seem to have given up demanding the impossible – that OPEC deliver oil at $30 a barrel or less.
The world’s oil refiners are unimpressed by Saudi Arabia’s boost to production capacity that would only swell supplies of sour, high-sulfur crude while they hanker for sweet oil.
The Peak Oil message board asks questions of Dr. Ali Samsam Bakhtiari, one of the few experts from an OPEC country to speak out on Peak Oil. Dr. Bakkhtiari is Senior Expert attached to the Director’s office in the Corporate Planning Directorate of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC).
David Goodstein, the Caltech professor of physics and applied physics, who remembered all too well the upheaval caused by short-term oil crises in 1973 and 1979, immediately began to wonder how an ill-prepared world would cope with an irreversible fuel shortage in the near future. The self-evident answer: Not very well.
Adaptation of a talk by Caltech vice provost and professor of physics and applied physics David Goodstein, author of Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil (W. W. Norton) // Sidebars on global warming and on Goodstein are included.
TEN years ago China was a net oil exporter. Today it is the world’s third largest oil importer, behind the USA and Japan, and the second largest oil consumer. Ten years ago China produced around 250,000 cars per year. Last year the country churned out more than three million. Committed factory expansions and developments will take capacity to five million cars next year.
Crude oil futures hit $US50 in electronic after-hours trade in New York, setting a new record as supply worries intensified.
The country and the world will have to adjust to declining oil supplies by switching to other energy sources and pursuing efficiency. The sooner that transition occurs, the less wrenching it will be. Instead, oil consumers are driving toward a cliff with their foot on the accelerator, with Americans in the lead.
The Peak Oil message board questions Richard Heinberg, educator and writer on Peak Oil
Well, no. Oil’s startling price surge this year has actually driven many traders to the sidelines as wild intra-day swings magnified by powerful speculative funds confound traditional trading strategies, market sources say.
India’s crude oil imports jumped by 23.3 % in July this year on increased demand for oil products, a senior Petroleum Ministry official said.
Russia and China agreed to terms for Russia’s membership in the World Trade Organization during top-level talks in Moscow on Friday, but both sides left unanswered questions about whether Russia was ready to guarantee stable oil supplies and boost oil and gas deliveries in the future to its energy-hungry neighbor.
