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Peak Oil
Cartoon: “And so, while the end-of-the-world scenario will be rife with unimaginable horrors…”
Yahoo!Finance
(19 August 2005)
Free ‘Peak Oil’ presentation made available online
press release, PowerSwitch (UK)
PowerSwitch, a group campaigning to raise awareness of the imminence of the terminal decline of the rate of global oil production, have made available for free an online presentation by Dr. Colin Campbell about the phenomenon known as ‘Peak Oil’.
By combining slides with the audio file from Campbell’s speech at the Peak Oil UK conference in Edinburgh in April 2005, PowerSwitch have created a Flashmedia file that presents very clearly the causes and consequences of ‘Peak Oill’. It starts by looking at exactly how oil is formed then looks at the reality of oil discovery and oil depletion in action before moving on to the devastating consequences. It is an all-encompassing talk
…To view the presentation in full go to tinyurl.co.uk/blgp and for further information on ‘Peak Oil’ visit www.PowerSwitch.org.uk
(19 August 2005)
Other Energy Issues
Indonesian outage leaves 100m without electricity
Shawn Donnan, Financial Times
Some 100m Indonesians were without electricity on Thursday as power outages hit the country’s main grid, leaving office workers in Jakarta trapped in elevators and the state-owned power monopoly struggling for an explanation.
Perusahaan Listrik Negara said power was last night being restored across most affected areas after a failure hit the Java-Madura-Bali inter-connection system at 10.23am, causing outages across the main island of Java and nearby Bali.
But Eddie Widiono, PLN’s president, warned that yesterday’s problems highlighted the fragile state of an electricity grid that almost half of Indonesia’s 220m population relies on.
(19 August 2005)
Politics and Economics
Wall Street giants see oil rising
BBC
Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch have revised upwards their predictions for the price of oil.
…Look to the long-term, however, and there is a divergence of views on what will happen to the price of oil.
Goldman Sachs expects that a barrel of US light crude will still cost close to $60 at the end of the decade. While Merrill’s global energy team also raised its forecasts for long-term US crude prices by 40%, it sees a more manageable price of $42 a barrel by 2009.
The difference in outlook is based on how they view investment by oil companies in coming years and how successful that spending will be on finding new fields and easing refinery bottlenecks.
“In our view, recent strength has been driven by short-term supply disruptions and renewed geopolitical tensions,” Merrill’s global energy team said. “Longer-term, we believe $60 a barrel oil is unsustainable and expect prices to retrace.”
US commodities guru Jim Rogers has told Reuters that oil will prices will soar upwards to $100 a barrel. “I don’t know about the next quarter or even next year…but it will go to over $100 a barrel,” he said. Mr Rogers, who sees strong oil prices as being based on strong demand and shortage of supply, pointed out there have been no great oil discoveries in “more than 35 years”.
In the current environment, however, any easing of prices seems likely to be short-lived. After dropping on Wednesday following the publication of robust US stockpile figures, oil prices started climbing again on Friday after a blaze at a major Venezuelan refinery.
(20 August 2005)
Cebu plans ban on private cars amid oil crisis
Jhunnex Napallacan, Philippine Daily Inquirer
CEBU CITY–Local officials and businessmen have come up with their own energy conservation program in the wake of a looming oil crisis.
One of the measures was the plan of Mayor Tomas Osmeña to ban private cars from all jeep routes during rush hours for at least an hour each in the morning and afternoon.
(19 August 2005)
War of the Future
Oil Drives the Genocide in Darfur
David Morse, TomDispatch via Znet
A war of the future is being waged right now in the sprawling desert region of northeastern Africa known as Sudan. The weapons themselves are not futuristic. None of the ray-guns, force-fields, or robotic storm troopers that are the stuff of science fiction; nor, for that matter, the satellite-guided Predator drones or other high-tech weapon systems at the cutting edge of today’s arsenal.
No, this war is being fought with Kalashnikovs, clubs and knives. In the western region of Sudan known as Darfur, the preferred tactics are burning and pillaging, castration and rape — carried out by Arab militias riding on camels and horses. The most sophisticated technologies deployed are, on the one hand, the helicopters used by the Sudanese government to support the militias when they attack black African villages, and on the other hand, quite a different weapon: the seismographs used by foreign oil companies to map oil deposits hundreds of feet below the surface.
This is what makes it a war of the future: not the slick PowerPoint presentations you can imagine in boardrooms in Dallas and Beijing showing proven reserves in one color, estimated reserves in another, vast subterranean puddles that stretch west into Chad, and south to Nigeria and Uganda; not the technology; just the simple fact of the oil.
This is a resource war, fought by surrogates, involving great powers whose economies are predicated on growth, contending for a finite pool of resources. It is a war straight out of the pages of Michael Klare’s book, Blood and Oil; and it would be a glaring example of the consequences of our addiction to oil, if it were not also an invisible war.
…
David Morse is an independent journalist and political analyst whose articles and essays have appeared in Dissent, Esquire, Friends Journal, the Nation, the New York Times Magazine, the Progressive Populist, Salon, and elsewhere. His novel, The Iron Bridge (Harcourt Brace, 1998), predicted a series of petroleum wars in the first two decades of the 21st century.
(18 August 2005)
Politicians Have Little to Offer To Ease Anguish of Gas Prices
Jim VandeHei, Washington Post
President Bush and members of Congress are facing an uncomfortable political reality this summer: They have little to offer Americans to ease their pain at the pump.
With gasoline prices nearing or topping $3 per gallon in some cities, Bush and lawmakers would be thrilled to call for steps big and small to quickly take the pressure off motorists financially — and themselves politically. The president’s advisers cite high gasoline prices as one reason for Bush’s sagging approval ratings, while lawmakers home for the August break are feeling the heat from anxious constituents.
But the prices are an economic and political problem for which Washington has few, if any, policy remedies that would be effective or practical in the near term, according to many energy experts and elected officials.
(19 August 2005)
The lack of analysis by both Democratic and Republic parties is stunning. All the proposals are irrelevant (opening ANWR to oil drilling, investigating oil companies for price-gouging) or counter-productive (opening the US Strategic Oil Reserve, lowering gas taxes).
