Peak oil – Apr 1

April 1, 2008

Click on the headline (link) for the full text.

Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage


Billionaire Cashes In On Offshore Oil Rush

Guy Chazan, Wall Street Journal
With Supply Scarce, His Rigs Are Hot;
$600,000 Day Rate

As a buccaneering oil trader, John Fredriksen shipped crude from trouble spots like Iran and used hardball tactics to build up the world’s biggest tanker fleet. The son of a welder, this modern-day Onassis is now Norway’s richest man, worth at least $7 billion.

He is also one of a new breed of entrepreneurs reshaping the oil business. Mr. Fredriksen has amassed an array of state-of-the-art oil rigs capable of drilling in the world’s deepest oceans. With production declining in mature basins like Alaska, the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico and offshore Brazil and West Africa are oil’s hottest real estate. But the rigs that can drill there are in short supply. That means contractors like Mr. Fredriksen can charge huge premiums for their services.

His success is part of a broader power shift from Big Oil — the Shells, Exxons and BPs of the world — to the oil-field-services sector.

… Helping to fuel their rise is a growing fear that the world’s oil production may be about to plateau and decline. “Peak oil” anxiety has contributed to the steep increase in the price of crude, which has nearly tripled since 2004. Peak theory is now feeding into wider concerns that demand for all the world’s resources — not only oil but wheat, copper and other commodities — is increasing faster than supply, creating new limits to global growth.

Mr. Fredriksen made an early bet many thought was insane.
(1 April 2008)
Also at Moneyweb.


Peak Oil = Transportation Revolution
(text and audio)
Alex Smith, Ecoshock News
This week’s program begins with a quick review of planet-shaking news.

Then, we go to the book launch of “Transportation Revolutions: Moving People and Freight Without Oil”

The authors are Richard Gilbert & Anthony Perl. I recorded that on March 18th, in Vancouver, Canada.

You get the speech by Richard Gilbert, plus some of the Q and A.

Both the talk, and the book, are loaded with real facts and figures on future transpo, and how to get there, sustainably. Finally, some answers.

Are you ready to see U.S. airports shrink from 300 to 30, as the oil runs out? We learn why electric cars will dominate the road. Electric railroads.

Richard Gilbert, an energy expert from Toronto Canada, opens with a speech explaining (a) the inevitability of Peak Oil and (b) what we can do about it – if we start now.

Anthony Perl, a professor at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, Canada – says we don’t need any more road construction. Now that we know about Peak Oil, and ever-increasing oil prices, governments should “hit the pause button” on new highway construction, and airport expansions. We won’t need them!

A great book for students, activists, bloggers, and citizens trying to contain the old-school enthusiasm for building new oil-based infrastructure.
(27 March 2008)
Contributor John writes: “Good Q&A at the end about PO and CC. “
Download of program


M. King Hubbert on the Nature of Growth

M. King Hubbert, Technocracy website
Testimony to Hearing on the National Energy Conservation Policy Act of 1974, hearings before the Subcommittee on the Environment of the committee on Interior and Insular Affairs House of Representatives. June 6, 1974.

My name is M. King Hubbert. I am a Research Geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, but I wish to make it clear that I am testifying as an individual and I am not representing the views of the Geological Survey or of the Administration.

… Instead of discussing the merits or demerits of this proposed legislation, I think that it may be more helpful if I discuss some of the aspects of growth in general in an effort to see the bearing which these relationships may have upon our evolving social system.

… It is not the object of the present discussion to review the world’s energy resources. Therefore, let us state summarily that of the other sources of energy of a magnitude suitable for large-scale industrial uses, water power, tidal power, and geothermal power are very useful in special cases but do not have a sufficient magnitude to supplant the fossil fuels. Nuclear power based on fission is potentially larger than the fossil fuels, but it also represents the most hazardous industrial operation in terms of potential catastrophic effects that has ever been undertaken in human history.

… Returning now to the problem of sustained growth, it would appear that with an adequate development of solar power it should be possible to continue the rates of growth of the last century for a considerable time into the future. However, with regard to this optimistic view attention needs to be directed to other constraints than the magnitude of the energy supply. These constraints may be broadly classified as being ecological in nature. For more than a century it has been known in biology that if any biological species from microbes to elephants is given a favorable environment, its population will begin to increase at an exponential rate. However, it was also soon established that such a growth rate cannot long continue before retarding influences set in. These are commonly of the nature of crowding, pollution, food supply, and in an open system by adjustments with respect to other members of the ecological complex.

… during the last two centuries of unbroken industrial growth we have evolved what amounts to an exponential-growth culture. Our institutions, our legal system, our financial system, and our most cherished folkways and beliefs are all based upon the premise of continuing growth. Since physical and biological constraints make it impossible to continue such rates of growth indefinitely, it is inevitable that with the slowing down in the rates of physical growth cultural adjustments must be made.

One example of such a cultural difficulty is afforded by the fundamental difference between the properties of money and those of matter and energy upon which the operation of the physical world depends.

… Mr. UDALL. My second question is, as one has been right when others were wrong in terms of the availability of petroleum, I understand from your statement here and other information that we peaked in U.S. oil production about 3 or 4 years ago, 1970 or 1971.

Dr. HUBBERT. 1970.

Mr. UDALL. Do you foresee, even with the best scenario, the most optimistic luck offshore, turning to oil shale, these kinds of things, do you think we will ever again exceed the rate of production, domestic production of oil from all sources that we had in 1970?

Dr. HUBBERT. I doubt it. The argument is made, wait until Alaska comes on stream, and all that. More than likely that will merely slow down the rate of decline.
(June 6, 1974, but recently re-posted)
On the Technocracy website. The site has a page on The Connection With M. King Hubbert and Technocracy

Suggested by contributor Mary who writes:
Technocracy, Inc.’s analysis and solutions are being considered more and more and we move into our “terminal triangle” of climate chaos, resource/species extinction, and economic collapse.


Tags: Culture & Behavior, Fossil Fuels, Industry, Oil, Overshoot, Transportation