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Group calls for action on energy
Report suggests opening areas to drilling, increasing fuel efficiency standards
David Ivanovich, Houston Chronicle
Warning that the world faces “hard truths about the global energy future,” a government advisory group this week is expected to urge policymakers to adopt a multipronged strategy to boost energy supplies and reduce demand.
The U.S. government should raise fuel mileage requirements, throw open areas off-limits to drilling and assume a leadership role on greenhouse gas emissions, all of which would help ensure global supplies keep up with demand, the National Petroleum Council argues.
According to a draft copy of a report to be presented to U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman on Wednesday, the council, chaired by former Exxon Mobil Corp. Chief Executive Officer Lee Raymond, assured government leaders “the world is not running out of energy resources.”
But it warned the risks associated with supplying energy “are now accumulating and converging in new ways.”
…About 350 people participated in the study, although the leadership was still clearly dominated by members of the oil industry. Besides Raymond, leaders of the study group included Chevron Corp. CEO David O’Reilly, and Schlumberger Ltd. CEO Andrew Gould.
Still, the report’s discussion of ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions represented a real evolution in thinking at the National Petroleum Council.
Daniel Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates and one of the leaders of the study, expects when people read the report “there will be some surprises” and predicted the study will “shift the framework of the policy debate in the United States.”
Deron Lovaas, an energy analyst with the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council who worked on the study, said the report reveals real tension, with some portions containing “impressive ways to break our carbon and oil addiction,” while others recommended “the same old, same old … a search for more drilling and higher pollution alternatives.”
Matthew Simmons, chairman of Houston-based Simmons & Company International, has long voiced concerns that the world oil and natural gas production will not so easily keep up with demand.
Simmons called the report, with its assurances that there will be enough energy resources, a “codification of energy conventional wisdom.”
(16 July 2007)
Report: Demand to outpace crude supplies
H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press
Conventional crude oil supplies won’t keep up with growing global demand in the next 25 years and other fuels from ethanol to liquefied coal and oil from tar sands will be needed to close the gap, says a draft oil industry report.
The draft report by the National Petroleum Council, an advisory group to the federal government, is unusual in its emphasis on the need for a broad range of supplemental fuels and conservation to meet future petroleum needs.
The document, titled “Facing the Hard Truths about Energy,” is to be approved by the 175-member council Wednesday and then presented to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. A copy was provided to reporters Monday.
(16 July 2007)
British MP interviews David Strahan, author “The Last Oil Shock” (Video)
Chris Vernon, The Oil Drum: Europe
British Member of Parliament George Galloway interviews David Strahan, award-winning investigative journalist, documentary film-maker and author of the 2007 book “The Last Oil Shock – A Survival Guide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man”.
(16 July 2007)
The End of Cheap Oil?
Ronald Bailey, Reason
The new cycle of resource nationalism is bad news
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Crude oil prices rose above $74 per barrel this week and Goldman Sachs warned that the world could be facing $95 per barrel oil by this fall. Later this week the National Petroleum Council (NPC), which advises the Secretary of the Department of Energy, will release a new report which will find that conventional oil and gas supplies are not likely to keep up with growing global demand over the next 25 years. Of course, supply and demand must balance, so what the Journal is telling us is that the NPC thinks high oil prices are here to stay.
…Has the peak of world oil production arrived? The IEA report says probably not. The IEA notes that “the concept of peak oil production and its timing are emotive subjects which raise intense debate.” Nevertheless, the IEA acknowledges that its new five-year forecast suggests that non-OPEC production “appears, for now, to have reached an effective plateau, rather than a peak.” Let’s put aside the question of how a plateau differs from a flat peak. The IEA reminds us that much depends on the definition of “conventional” oil production. Offshore oil was once unconventional and depending on technology and economics ultra-deep sea oil and tar sands may become conventional sources of crude. In addition, the IEA, while noting hydrocarbon supplies are finite, argues that the chief barrier to increasing medium-term production is access to reserves and the underinvestment in production infrastructure.
The resurgence of resource nationalism bears a good bit of the responsibility for the glum oil supply projections-what I’ve previously called “political peak oil.”
(17 July 2007)
The Round-Up: July 17th 2007
Stoneleigh, The Oil Drum: Canada
North American integration is making the news again on both sides of the border, and on the other side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, another large Canadian company – Alcan – becomes the subject of a takeover some describe as a symptom of Canadian economic suicide. The natural gas drilling crash affects Baker Hughes, the Chinese feel unwelcome in the Alberta oil patch and concerns are raised over the safety of LNG terminals in Québec.
In the US the subprime credit market problems are beginning to snowball, while the folly of relying on sophisticated risk analysis models based on the ‘data’ from ‘liar’s loans’ becomes apparent. Wall Street’s ability to value assets is called into question, the lawyers begin to get in on the act and the US tries to sell mortgaged-backed securities to China.
(17 July 2007)
Headlines and excerpts from energy-related articles related to Canada.
Study of World Oil Resources with a Comparison to IPCC Emissions Scenarios (PDF)
Anders Sivertsson, Department of Radiation Sciences, Uppsala University (Sweden)
Our society today is very dependent on oil and gas, almost 65% of the total primary energy consumption in the world is produced from oil and gas. Due to the vast amounts of oil consumed every year, discussions occur regarding whether we will, or will not, run out of oil in the future.
Another topic of discussion is the amounts of CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
The purpose of this M.Sc. thesis work was, firstly, to upgrade a substantial database on world oil and gas resources, including annual discovery and production. An estimate is also made about how much more oil and gas that will be discovered and produced. Secondly, the oil and gas production is compared to the production predicted in IPCC’s 40 emissions scenarios.
The result from the updated database shows that the ultimate amount of crude oil to be discovered in the world is 1900 Gigabarrels (Gb). Including the year 2002, 1713 Gb is already discovered, which leaves 187 Gb to be discovered in the future. Furthermore, 891 Gb of crude oil had already been produced at the end of 2002, which leaves 822 Gb to be produced in the future.
The result from the comparison between the updated database and IPCC’s oil production numbers in their 40 emissions scenarios shows big anomalies. The whole range of IPCC’s 40 scenarios on primary energy production from oil and gas between 1990 and 2100 is higher than what the updated database shows as possible. In most of IPCC’s 40 scenarios the oil and gas consumption between 1990 and 2100 is more than twice as large as what the updated database shows possible.
Note that the purpose of this M.Sc. project work is to quantify the resource base used in the IPCC emissions scenarios, it does not evaluate whether climate change is, or will be, a problem.
…This M.Sc. Thesis Work was supervised by Prof. Kjell Aleklett, Department of Radiation Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala Sweden, and Dr. Colin J. Campbell, Ballydehob Ireland. Examiner was Prof. Allan Hallgren, Department of Radiation Sciences, Uppsala University. The M.Sc. Thesis Work was financed by the Swedish Energy Agency and is a part of the ongoing research performed at the Department of Radiation Sciences, Uppsala University, by Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group (UHDSG) on world oil and gas depletion.
(2004)
Recommended by environmental scientist Jeremy Wilkinson.
