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A battle for oil could set the world aflame
Will Hutton, Observer (via Common Dreams)
International powers will do everything to protect their access to dwindling resources. We are mad not to have an alternative strategy
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…The chief driver of today’s higher oil price is China, which is now the world’s second largest oil importer after the US and whose demand is growing exponentially. Supply cannot keep up. Although oil experts argue passionately about whether the peak of world oil production is three or 30 years away (with most agreeing around 10), it is clear that there is limited scope to increase oil supply.
More and more of the world’s great oil fields are running down. Saudi Arabia’s Ghawar field, for example, far and away the world’s largest, is officially recognised to be more than half-depleted. Again there is disagreement, with some insiders saying it is 90 per cent used. Time is up for the oil economy.
…If Europe and Britain want secure long-term Russian oil and gas supplies, then it had better allow Russian companies the right to buy up European companies and not expect reciprocity. Last week, state-owned Gazprom did a deal with the Germans and Blair ran up the white flag, saying it could buy Centrica, owner of British Gas.
It’s a new world. Henry Kissinger thinks that the 21st-century struggle for oil reserves will match the 19th-century fight for colonies. The dangers are obvious. Britain in all this is the doe-eyed Bambi, bleating its faith in market forces in a world of predators. We should urgently slow down the depletion rate of North Sea oil and gas and establish a British strategic reserve and, with that protection, begin determinedly to build an economy that is not dependent on oil and gas. We should get serious about energy efficiency for solid environmental and strategic reasons. We should tax aviation fuel. We must accelerate our investment in renewable energy. We must research how to burn coal cleanly. And we must commission new nuclear reactors.
We have to move on all fronts fast. The case is usually made in terms of climate change, but it is more than that. Unless we confront and change the emerging balance of world power, the consequent oil conflagrations could make the conflicts of the 20th century look tame.
(30 April 2006)
Interview with co-author of Army Corps of Engineers report (AUDIO)
David Room, Global Public Media
GPM correspondent David Room talks to Donald Fournier, co-author of the report Energy Trends and Their Implications for U.S. Army Installations (pdf).
(4 April 2006)
For background on the Army Corps of Engineers report, see EB’s US Army: Peak Oil and the Army’s future.
John Howe on The End of Fossil Energy (AUDIO)
Jason Brenno, Global Public Media
GPM correspondent Jason Brenno talks to retired mechanical engineer John Howe about his book The End of Fossil Energy and the Last Chance for Survival, his five percent plan and his solar powered tractor.
(16 March 2006)
Peak Oil for Saudi Arabia?
Ryan McGreal, Raise The Hammer
At yesterday’s Peak Oil presentation to Hamilton City Council, Richard Gilbert mentioned a little-reported event that may mark the day that the earth tipped past its oil production peak.
Amazingly, a search of news reports turned up virtually nothing. I eventually tracked down the original report from Platts Oilgram News: Saudi Aramco announced on April 10, 2006 that Saudi Arabia’s mature oilfields “are expected to decline at a gross average rate of 8 percent a year without additional maintenance and drilling.”
The Aramco spokesperson explained that the company is attempting to offset those declines with “remedial activities” including drilling new wells in existing fields and opening up new fields.
But get this: the spokesperson went on, “This maintain potential drilling in mature fields combined with a multitude of remedial actions and the development of new fields, with long plateau lives, lowers the composite decline rate of producing fields to around 2 percent.”
The last time I checked, a two percent decline is still a decline. If this is correct, then Saudi Arabia may be past its peak in oil production. Saudi Arabia is responsible for approximately one eighth of the world’s oil; as Saudi Arabia goes, so goes the world.
(29 April 2006)
EB posted a link to the story April 13, but as reader WM reminds us — it hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves.
Heading Out (The Oil Drum) and James Hamilton on the radio
Professor Goose, peakoil-dot-com
Half hour interview with Heading Out of TOD and James Hamilton of Econbrowser on peak oil, alternative fuels, economics, etc., etc., with the Northern Alliance Radio Network.
A direct link to the discussion can be found here (mp3 alert).
(30 April 2006)
The end of the banquet
James Howard Kunstler, Clusterf*ck Nation
I try to avoid the term “peak oil” because it has cultish overtones, and this is a serious socioeconomic issue, not a belief system. But it seems to me that what we are seeing now in financial and commodity markets, and in the greater economic system itself, is exactly what we ought to expect of peak oil conditions: peak activity.
After all, peak is the point where the world is producing the most oil it will ever produce, even while it is also the inflection point where big trouble is apt to begin. And this massive quantity of oil induces a massive amount of work, land development, industrial activity, commercial production, and motor transport. So we shouldn’t be surprised that there is a lot happening, that houses and highways are still being built, that TVs are pouring out of the Chinese factories, commuters are still whizzing around the DC Beltway, that obese children still have plenty of microwavable melted cheese pockets to zap for their exhausting sessions with Grand Theft Auto.
But in the peak oil situation the world is like a banquet just before the tablecloth is pulled out from under it. There is plenty on the table, but it is about to be overturned, spilled, lost, and broken. There’s more oil available then ever before, but also so many people at the banquet table clamoring for it that there is barely enough to go around, and the people may knock some things over trying to get it.
(1 May 2006)
ASPO Portugal publicly presented on May the 8th
lads, peakoil.com
Next Monday, May the 8th, the Portuguese branch of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas – ASPO will be publicly presented in Évora. ASPO Portugal is an effort ot gather the several people trying to raise awareness on the subject of Peak Oil in the country. For now it will be an informal association built around the Portuguese members of ASPO International: professor Rui Namorado Rosa and professor Manuel Collares Pereira.
The event will be held at the University of Évora with the title “Seminar on the Hydrocarbon Age”, in which lectures will be given by Carlos Cramez (President of H.E.A.T. Consulting, Switzerland), Jean Laherrère (former head of TOTAL Exploration techniques, ASPO & ASPO France) and Pedro Prieto (Crisis Energetica, ASPO-Spain).
The website of ASPO Portugal will be presented as well as the DVD of the IV International Conference on Oil & Gas Depletion, held in Lisbon in May of 2005.
For more information please visit: www.cge.uevora.pt/hydrocarbonage/
(1 May 2006)
