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‘Energy Project’ Resolution in US Congress
Thomas Legislative Information, Library of Congress
“Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States, in collaboration with other international allies, should establish an energy project with the magnitude, creativity, and sense of urgency that was incorporated in the `Man on the Moon’ project to address the inevitable challenges of `Peak Oil’.
Whereas the United States has only 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves; …
Whereas the United States has approximately 250 years of coal at current consumption rates, but if that consumption rate is increased by 2 percent per year, coal reserves are reduced to 75 years:
Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that–
(1) in order to keep energy costs affordable, curb our environmental impact, and safeguard economic prosperity, including our trade deficit, the United States must move rapidly to increase the productivity with which it uses fossil fuel, and to accelerate the transition to renewable fuels and a sustainable, clean energy economy; and
(2) the United States, in collaboration with other international allies, should establish an energy project with the magnitude, creativity, and sense of urgency of the `Man on the Moon’ project to develop a comprehensive plan to address the challenges presented by Peak Oil.”
109th CONGRESS, 1st Session, H. RES. 507
(24 October 2005)
Pipeline mercantilism
Jeff Vail, A Theory of Power (A Critique of Hierarchy & Empire)
It’s a slippery subject: How does a freely-exchange-traded commodity become subject to mercantilistic influences? Well, here’s one example:
Russian and China Agree to Pipeline Project
How is this mercantilsm in action? Well, oil only goes where the infrastructure exists to ship it. Market forces will fund capital projects to build infrastructure to ship it where there is demand–but the key is that this pipeline project is not operating under the auspices of market forces, but is instead being subsidized by the two respective governments. So these government subsidies are intentionally directing market forces–this is subsidy mercantilism. It certainly isn’t new, but we are definitely seeing more of it with regards to energy. So far almost all mercantilistic efforts have focused on negative barriers–making it cheaper for oil to flow the direction that a government wants it to, for example.
The more dangerous phase in energy mercantilism will come with the increase in positive barriers–legal or financial barriers that make it more expensive for oil to flow any direction OTHER THAN the route desired by a given government. The critical difference here is that any nation willing to spend money can lower barriers through subsidy. Only nations with either 1) oil on ther own territory (or that must pass through their territory), or 2) sufficient military force to exert control over oil that does not directly flow through their territory. So the transition from creating negative barriers to creating positive barriers to oil flow is the “tipping point” between peaceful energy mercantilism and non-peaceful energy mercantilism.
At some point it is more expensive to create negative barriers than it is to erect positive barriers. At that point the global game of energy mercantilism will turn violent.
(3 November 2005)
This blog entry seems to be a continuation of a previous entry: The New Energy Mercantilism.
Other recent postings by this stimulating writer:
Inefficiency of Social Isolation
Maps of Time (thermodynamics of civilization)
-BA
Dynamic Sharon Stone dazzles at Italian energy conference
Hello Magazine
Since she comes across as being pretty unstoppable these days, it’s perhaps no surprise that Sharon Stone is currently attending an energy conference in Italy.
The dynamic Hollywood star, who has recently signed up alongside Anthony Hopkins and Lindsay Lohan for a movie about the assassination of US politician Robert F Kennedy, has been showing both sides of her public persona: passionate speaker and glamorous belle of the ball.
The 47-year-old Basic Instinct actress is in Italy at the invitation of the Pio Manzu environmental research organisation and is a guest speaker at the Rimini energy conference.
An impassioned campaigner for several humanitarian and environmental causes, Sharon made nothing of ringing the changes from public speaker by day to red carpet diva by night, displaying her customary eye-catching elegance for an evening gala.
(1 November 2005)
This is the only article I could find on the Web about the important Pio Manzu energy conference that just took place in Rimini, Italy. -BA
The specter haunting Alaska
Peter Canby, New York Review of Books
…The issue of what to drill on the North Slope has in many ways only distracted attention from the larger energy crisis. According to Paul Roberts’s The End of Oil, the amount of new oil being discovered in the United States has been in decline since 1960 and American oil production as a whole peaked in 1970. As Roberts puts it, “Although we will not run out of oil tomorrow, we are nearing the end of what might be called the easy oil.” Not even the Bush administration disagrees with this bleak assessment. The Cheney report, for its part, notes that the United States produces 39 percent less oil today than it did in 1970.
But that’s about as far as the agreement between the administration and its critics goes. Environmentalists argue that declining oil production shows that both conservation and new sources of energy are now more needed than ever. Following the Katrina disaster, the administration has been mentioning both of these; but it still sees the decline as a reason to increase, at all costs, the supply of oil. The drive to lease the wildlife refuge and the parts of the petroleum reserve to oil companies can be seen as a reflection of what one exasperated environmentalist described to me as a general administration policy to “drill it all.”
Such an approach would do very little to solve the energy problem. The United States has only 3 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves yet uses 25 percent of its oil. If the US continues its present rate of consumption it will quickly run through its present reserves as well as any new domestic sources which might be discovered. In any case, the new discoveries tend to be in expensive and high-risk places such as the North Slope or the Gulf of Mexico.
The present energy crisis, moreover, results from a sharp rise in consumption that has outrun a tightening supply. Most of the oil in the United States is used for fueling the cars and trucks that have been almost entirely responsible for the growth in demand over the last few decades. The percentage of US oil used in cars and trucks has risen from 52 percent in 1974, just after the first OPEC embargo, to 66 percent last year. As Jad Mouawad and Matthew Wald recently put it in The New York Times, “The fundamental problem…is that Americans depend almost exclusively on relatively large and heavy private vehicles.” Places such as the wildlife refuge and Teshekpuk Lake are being sacrificed to subsidize our unrestrained addiction to automobiles.
(17 November 2005 issue; article is dated 20 October 2005)
Article gives background on the interconnections between global warming, peak oil and the proposal to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). -BA
Would you rather drive or eat?
Joe Baker, Senior Editor Rock River Times (Rockford, Illinois)
Most attention today continues to be focused on high gasoline prices; but if present trends continue, the time is not too far off when we all may be much more concerned with whether we eat than with whether we drive.
Why so? The effects of Peak Oil not only hit transportation, they also put great stress on agriculture. Skyrocketing costs for fertilizer, fuel, petrochemicals and the cost of shipping crops to market are threatening to prevent many family farmers from normal production next year and the year after.
Jimmy Westerfeld, president of the McLennan County, Texas Farm Bureau, said farmers in his area are very worried. “Many of us will not be able to farm this year or the next,” he said. “The doubling and tripling of fuel and petrochemical prices are the last link in a chain of bad economic events.”
Nat Webb, a wheat farmer in Washington state, commented: “Energy costs that were once one of our lesser expenses have become a major item and threaten our ability to continue farming.”
(2-8 November 2005 issue)
Take a Peak
Grist interviews peak-oil provocateur Matthew Simmons
Amanda Griscom Little, Grist Magazine
Matthew Simmons has been stirring up a lot of angst in energy circles this year. This well-connected industry insider has concluded that the world’s largest oil beds are on the verge of production collapse — and he’s willing to bet his much-vaunted career on it.
Author of the recently published Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy, Simmons is founder of Simmons & Company International, an investment bank that handles mergers and acquisitions among energy companies, and counts among its clients Halliburton, General Electric, and the World Bank. A graduate of the Harvard Business School, he served as an energy-policy adviser to the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign.
Conservative credentials aside, Simmons has been boggling the minds of people across the political spectrum with his recent prediction that the price of a barrel of oil could hit the high triple digits within a few years. To postpone economic meltdown, he says we should be drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other hotly contested spots. At the same time, he’s calling for a massive shift in energy policy, including radical improvements in efficiency, as well as a return to local farming and manufacturing. With his unconventional opinions, he’s single-handedly reinventing the image of the post-oil energy crusader. He talked to Grist from his cell phone while dashing between energy lectures.
(3 November 2005)
Running on empty
Big Gav, Peak Energy (Australia)
In case you’re hungry for MORE energy headlines, the indefatigable Big Gav has a big helping of them today.
(3 November 2005)
