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Peak Oil
Campbell’s depletion is well known to US officials
Eugene Marner, energyresources Yahoo group
Recently I organized a talk by Richard Heinberg in Oneonta, NY. Beforehand, we invited the local pols and business pooh-bahs to come to a reception with Richard or to the lecture.
A few days before the event, I got a phone call from Sherwood Boehlert, who is the Congressman for Oneonta and the Chairman of the House Science Committee (of which Roscoe Bartlett is also a member). He apologized for being unable to come to the reception or the lecture but talked for a while about how informing our fellow citizens about Peak Oil is the most important etc. etc.
I told him that he has to give ordinary folks like me credibility by attaching his name to the words Peak Oil. He said that he is doing that and had recently made a Special Order presentation with some colleagues, including Roscoe Bartlett, on the floor of the House. I asked him to educate his colleagues about Peak Oil and he replied that THEY ALL KNOW BUT IT IS POLITICALLY INCONVENIENT TO ACKNOWLEDGE OR DEAL WITH.
I guess I was a little intoxicated by getting a phone call from a Congressman, because I came away from the chat with the notion that we can get through to our representatives. When I thought about it later, however, I realized that he had told me that we are on our own. I think I knew that all along which is why I’ve been trying for years to get people to do something about rebuilding local economies and community solidarity on the grounds that state and federal governments won’t do anything, but Boehlert’s remark was a grim reminder.
(20 November 2005)
U.S. racing the clock to find alternate fuels
Greg Gordon, Star Tribune
WASHINGTON – Former CIA Director James Woolsey paints a dire scenario: A terrorist attack causes a months-long, 6 million-barrel reduction in Saudi Arabia’s daily petroleum output, sending the price of oil skyrocketing past $100 a barrel.
Industry banker and author Matthew Simmons says the kingdom’s oilfields are deteriorating anyway. And a recent New York Times story cited an intelligence report suggesting the Saudis lack the capacity to pump as much oil as they boast they can.
Even if nothing disrupts the projected flow of Middle East petroleum, Energy Department consultants warned earlier this year that “the world is fast approaching the inevitable peaking” of global oil production — a problem “unlike any faced by modern industrial society.”
They wrote that the United States and other nations are in a race with the clock to find alternative sources for oil, “the lifeblood of modern civilization,” and avoid potential economic disaster.
After years — or even decades — of sitting on the fringe of the world oil debate, the issue of what to do when production dwindles is starting to get attention in Congress.
Last week, a bipartisan group of eight U.S. senators, including Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman, proposed legislation to accelerate the nation’s shift to new energy sources in the nation’s transportation sector, which guzzles 14 million barrels of oil each day.
(23 November 2005)
Also at Common Dreams.
The Peak Oil Crisis:
Solutions – a First Cut
Tom Whipple, Fall Church News-Press
After a thorough airing of “whether” and “when”, the Denver peak oil conference moved to the murkier issue of “So, what do we do about it?”
The current answer, of course, is to keep drilling. Do whatever it takes — cut taxes, forget air quality, drill in the parks, drill on the seacoasts, drill in the arctic, drill everywhere there is a hint of more oil. As the “more drilling” policy has limited prospects, the Denver conference explored the four major alternatives that could produce large quantities of liquid fuel— shale, tar sands, coal to liquid, and biomass.
(24-30 November 2005 issue)
One hates to quibble with Tom Whipple and his great series on Peak Oil, but … doesn’t conservation deserve a mention? I’ve seen a pattern in the talks I’ve attended. The speaker says that conservation is the cheapest and most effective solution, but then ignores it for the rest of talk about energy sources. -BA
Sustainable Fossil Fuels
Don Cayo, Vancouver Sun
Sun Business columnist reviews new book by Mark Jaccard.
Can the world assure sustainable energy for the century ahead by turning its back on oil, gas and coal? Can we conserve enough of the massive amounts of fuel we squander, and create most of what we really need from renewables like sun, wind and water, or from clean-burning hydrogen, or even nuclear fission or fusion? Not likely, says Mark Jaccard, a professor of resource and environmental management at Simon Fraser University.
Jaccard argues in Sustainable Fossil Fuel: The Unusual Suspect in the Quest for Clean and Enduring Energy that, as the title suggests, the best path for the future is a variation of the one the world is already on. Oil, although increasingly from unconventional sources, will continue to play a big role, while the use of natural gas and coal will more than double. …
Jaccard still sees a growing role for conservation and all of the renewable technologies. But he sees no chance they’ll come close to displacing hydrocarbons as the prime energy source.
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(23 November 2005)
