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Citizen groups urge U.S. Congress to address PO
Global Public Media
SF Informatics and Global Public Media urge members of U.S. Congress to join Rep. Roscoe Bartlett’s broad-based effort to address the impending shortfall of global energy resources.
The two groups applaud Rep. Bartlett’s plan, announced yesterday, to distribute a new energy-information poster to members of the U.S. House and Senate. Entitled The Oil Age, the poster was created by SF Informatics and marketed through a partnership with Global Public Media, a non-profit subsidiary of MetaFoundation.
The poster presents data from industry experts that indicate an all-time peak in global oil production may be just a few years away. With oil and gas prices surging to historic highs, this data-rich chart offers a comprehensive framework for understanding the global energy situation.
“The time has come for our elected leaders to confront the global energy shortfall head on,” said Dave Menninger, co-creator of the poster. “I am concerned that until recently only one member of Congress–Rep. Bartlett–was publicly discussing global oil depletion and working to address its impacts.”
Julian Darley, director of Global Public Media, said that Bartlett’s longstanding efforts to raise awareness of peak oil “begs the question of other lawmakers: ‘What actions are you taking now to address and mitigate the imminent global oil peak?’”
Copies of The Oil Age poster can be viewed or purchased at www.oilposter.org. Sales help fund the no-cost distribution of the poster to high schools, universities and non-profit institutions worldwide. Proceeds will also support the development of teaching guides and other educational tools to be used in conjunction with the poster.
For more information about the Rep. Bartlett’s distribution to members of Congress, contact Lisa Wright at 202.225.2417.
(19 October 2005)
The new energy mercantilism
Jeff Vail, A Theory of Power (“critique of hierarchy and empire”)
In the past century of growing energy supplies, the non-zero-sum economics of globalization and free trade has spread to the farthest reaches of the earth. But the next century will be defined by finite and decreasing supplies of oil and gas–a reality that will transform our non-zero-sum world into a zero-sum game: The New Mercantilism.
Mercantilism is the economic strategy of zero-sum environments: in a zero-sum world, if you have something then I don’t have it, so I need to try to take and wall off as large a share of the pie as possible. This strategy dominated European trade from the solidification of the territorial state after the Treaty of Utrecht, and was a motivating factor to the inward-focus of many historical East Asian powers. It reached its pinnacle during the European grab for African colonies between 1850 and 1939, and the vagaries of geography, timing and leadership that resulted in Germany and Italy being late to joining the race led to a century of conflict between those who have and those who want.
After a brief interlude of non-zero-sum potential, driven by seemingly endless energy reserves and the ideology of global free trade, we are quickly returning to a mercantilist world where finite energy supplies are fueling a new resource grab. All complex societies require energy surpluses to meet their structural need for growth; in the past this surplus was met with colonies, with their surplus of land and people, but today’s economies depend on the high energy surplus of petroleum products to maintain growth. As a result of the slowdown and reversal of growing petroleum supplies, there is no longer plenty for everyone…the uneven geography of petroleum distribution will be the defining factor in the new century’s “Race for Africa.”
(20 October 2005)
Residents bracing for an oil crisis
Louisville group urges conservation
Martha Elson, Louisville Courier-Journal (Kentucky)
To save gas, Kristin Matly Dennis walks two miles from the Highlands in Louisville to her job as an English teacher at St. Francis High School downtown. Her husband, Jonathan Dennis, rides his bike nearly everywhere he goes — and in all kinds of weather.
The couple are among a growing number of people in Louisville who are doing more than just complaining about high gas prices. And they are trying to persuade others to follow their lead.
They’re members of the Louisville Peak Oil Discussion Group, one of more than 40 “oil awareness” groups worldwide, mostly in larger U.S. cities including Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Minneapolis.
…Most scientists believe the concept [of peak oil] is correct — oil production worldwide will begin to decline in the not-too-distant future, while demand is still going up.
“We found that even if the optimists are right, we’re probably in trouble anyway,” said Roger Bezdek, a Washington, D.C., oil consultant. He was talking about the findings of a recent study he co-authored for the U.S. Department of Energy called “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation & Risk Management.”
“We did not try to predict an exact date” of the peak, Bezdek said. “But if it occurs any time within the next 15 or 20 years, it’s almost too late already to avoid serious economic problems.”
Robert Hirsch, an oil consultant and engineer who has worked at the Department of Energy and Arco Oil and was the lead author of the report, said that cutting back on driving to the grocery store and other conservation measures are good for the environment, but they won’t make any real difference in the oil supply.
“We’re talking about a problem that is so much bigger than any of us,” he said from his home in Alexandria, Va.
“Because our whole system operates on oil, it’s like blood in your body. If you drain a significant amount of blood out of your body, you’re not going to perform very well in a whole lot of ways. If you keep draining it out, the situation gets worse and worse.”
Hirsch said the only hope for avoiding economic upheaval would be to quickly start building facilities on a massive scale to produce alternative fuels for vehicles, or “trash half the vehicles out there.”
(20 October 2005)
Note the quotes from Robert Hirsch (co-author of the Hirsch Report). -BA
Congressional Speech on PO led by Rep. Bartlett (VIDEO, AUDIO)
Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, Global Public Media
Congressman Roscoe Bartlett led a group of six Republican colleagues, including the Chairmen of the Intelligence and Science Committees in a one-hour Special Order speech before the U.S. House of Representatives discussing the urgency of the U.S. government responding to the threats to the U.S. economy and national security posed by global peak oil. Congressman Bartlett was joined by Congressmen Gil Gutknecht, Wayne Gilchrest, Peter Hoekstra, Sherwood Boehlert, and Vernon Ehlers.
(19 October 2005)
Oil forecasting legend discusses peak oil, share price
Michael J. DesLauriers, Resource Investor
TORONTO — When Henry Groppe shares his opinion about the oil patch, investors would be well advised to pay attention. Groppe has 55 years experience in the business and his list of clients includes not only some of the biggest oil companies in the world, but governments as well. Groppe, Long and Litell are known to be among the most accurate forecasters of oil and natural gas prices in the world. … In a recent interview Henry Groppe shared some of his views on the major issues surrounding these key commodities.
Unlike some other well-followed thinkers on the subject, Groppe doesn’t see prices exploding to over $100 a barrel, nor is he quite so concerned about the reserves of OPEC members such as Saudi Arabia.
Groppe believes that, “we are at the point where production is peaking and the price required to restrain consumption to match this future available supply is in the 50-60 dollar range on an annual average basis…This or next year might very well be the all time peak year in world liquid petroleum production.”
His view is that, “it’s going to be essential to achieve reductions in consumption because we’re forecasting no continual increase in total world oil supplies in the future.” Groppe estimates that, “a price range of $50-$60 a barrel is going to be required in order to in effect cause no growth in total world oil consumption. That we think will be the composite of continuing but slower growth in transportation fuel use of oil, because that consumption grows essentially with the vehicle population in the world. With higher prices there will be pressure toward more fuel efficient vehicles and we’ll see actual consumption decreases in fuel oil where all you’re after is a source of heat, and that’s the way the system will balance itself.”
Groppe finds himself sort of in the middle in terms of the prevailing views on the future, both optimistic and pessimistic. He stated that, “Matt Simmon’s view is that we’re just on the verge of seeing very significant depletion decline rates and total world oil production will then decline precipitously and were approaching the end of the world economy as we’ve known it. Major oil companies take the view that it will be relatively easy to continually expand oil production, specifically, they all agree that world oil production can be expanded 50% in the next 25 years and we disagree very strongly with both of those viewpoints. We think there will be a flattening of total oil supply and the high prices needed to constrain consumption to match that available supply.”
…“We have six major exporting countries in the world today: Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela, Iraq, Iran and Nigeria. Together they account for over 40% of total world oil supply and security and stability concerns are growing continuously in everyone of those. Its impossible to predict when disruption might occur and in which country but I think that they’re equal risk across the board and all of my comments about future oil prices are based on the assumption there are no disruptions, the probability is high that there will be.”
(19 October 2005)
Matt Simmons’ terrifying world of peak politics
Peter Foster, National Post
Celebrity energy doomster Matt Simmons was in Toronto this week peddling his theories on “peak oil,” a bogus but fashionable issue that I addressed skeptically here two months ago. I was subsequently assailed by several outraged non-economists who accused me of both mental and moral shortcomings. I was accused of lack of concern for the environment and for our children’s future, of being “in denial,” of acting as a cardboard-brained huckster for the “mainstream media.” I was told that I favoured a world in which there would be nothing to eat but “twenty dollar bills and bond yields.” I was also informed that I had been unfair to Mr. Simmons. However, upon hearing him address his fellow Harvard alumni at the National Club on Tuesday, I now believe Mr. Simmons to be not merely misguided but downright dangerous.
Mr. Simmons is a Texas investment banker who is often described as an “energy advisor to George Bush.” In fact, his views are closer –much closer — to those of Al Gore.
…There are only two possible solutions to the “resource problem.” We can look to the great diversity of human knowledge and ingenuity informed by market prices and projections and induced by the prospect of profits, or we can look to a forced political response. The latter is Mr. Simmons preferred route, and his list of recommendations is positively terrifying. He wants to mandate the means by which goods are moved, to stop workers from commuting, to force people to eat local produce rather than bringing it round the world, and to stop globalization, which allegedly depends on “sweatshop labour.” This is an agenda that would be recognized as radically “left” were it not coming from a Houston investment banker.
(20 October 2005)
The Cornucopian point of view, but with some delicious phrases: “celebrity energy doomster” and “cardboard-brained huckster”, for example. Also, one has to be in awe of anyone who takes the leap in logic to see the views of Matthew Simmons (and Al Gore for that matter) as “dangerous,” and “radically leftist.” -BA
