Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
“For the next 20 years, growth in the world economy is going to raise demand by oil and oil equivalents from something on the order of 65 to 85 million barrels a day, to 330 million [barrels], which is a huge, huge number. It’s like eight Saudi Arabias.”
U.S. election-year pledges by both presidential candidates to wean the nation from its foreign oil dependence have vote-winning potential but may be just a pipe dream, energy experts say.
Lurking behind the historically high price of oil now placing a damper on our entire economy is the real problem: the sheer volume of oil that we have to import from other countries to keep our wheels turning.
While demand is expected to increase, however, Pickens and others also say world production has or will soon peak, meaning the world’s producers will be unable to recover more than the current 82 million barrels a day.
Dependable? Uranium is a finite natural resource, just like fossil fuels. Safe? The Nuclear Regulatory Commission exists simply because nuclear technology is flat-out dangerous.
The significance of the US/Venezuela oil connection is worthy of note. The proximity of this source of imported oil to our Gulf of Mexico oil portals gives them major “ace in the hole” status.
The possible consequences of peak oil are gigantic and involve nothing less than a forced, massive, radical and sustained change in our way of life as we transition to alternative energy sources and the economic/political order they support. Our current oil fed, growth based, globalised industrial civilisation will not survive the transition, something new must take its place.
What’s in the ground isn’t dead — there’s a complex system of checks and balances.
Caryl Johnston is writing a semi-humorous novel about the Oil Crash. Here is Chapter Ten.
We can still have all the electricity we want in 2020, says Paul Brown. But we need to learn to love renewables
The U.S. ethanol industry set an all-time monthly production record in June of 222,000 barrels per day (b/d), according to recent information released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
Britain has set Iran a two-month ultimatum to suspend all activities linked to the production of a nuclear bomb or face a demand for United Nations sanctions, the British press said Thursday.
