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Opec warns oil could reach $200
BBC
Opec, the oil producing cartel, has warned that the price of crude could keep rising to reach $200 a barrel.
Opec president Chakib Khelil blamed the falling value of the US dollar, which makes other assets, including oil, more attractive for foreign investors.
His comments came as oil prices hit a fresh high, just below $120 a barrel.
Prices were lifted by a strike at a UK refinery that disrupted North Sea production, and supply problems in Nigeria due to pipeline attacks.
(28 April 2008)
Even Amid High Oil Prices, Troubling Signs in Production
Jad Mouawad, New York Times
As oil prices soared to record levels in recent years, basic economics suggested that consumption would fall and supply would rise as producers opened the taps to pump more.
But as prices flirt with $120 a barrel, many energy specialists are becoming worried that neither seems to be happening. Higher prices have done little to attract new production or to suppress global demand, and the resulting mismatch has sent oil prices spiraling upward.
“According to normal economic theory, and the history of oil, rising prices have two major effects,” said Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the International Energy Agency, which advises industrialized countries. “They reduce demand and they induce oil supplies. Not this time.”
A key reason that supply is not rising to meet demand is that producers outside of the OPEC cartel – countries like Russia, Mexico and Norway – have been showing troubling signs of sluggishness.
(28 April 2008)
It’s Happening
Richard Heinberg, MuseLetter #193 via Global Public Media
My book-in-progress on future coal supplies is going well but slowly at the moment (two more sections of the draft of Chapter 1 are included here).
Also in this month’s MuseLetter are my May column for The Ecologist magazine (“What Car do You Drive?”), a Foreword that I’ve written for the new edition of Mat Stein’s brilliant book When Technology Fails, and a brief blog for the Post Carbon Institute website.
How Coal Reserves Are Estimated
… Assembling national reserves figures into a composite global picture is therefore a task of enormous complexity. One might expect that this would be the work of teams of data analysts working for the International Energy Agency or some well-funded, prestigious institute. Surprisingly, the task is actually carried out by a husband-and-wife team-Alan Clarke and Judy Trinnaman, whose company, Energy Data Associates, is headquartered in Dorset, England. Clarke and Trinnaman send a questionnaire annually to every nation in the world. According to Clarke, about two-thirds of nations reply, but only about 50 of these replies typically are useful. Some reported data must simply be disregarded as unrealistic. No effort is made to verify reported national reserves figures through independent geological surveys.
The figures from Energy Data Associates are then taken up in the triennial report of the World Energy Council, and are subsequently republished by the IEA, USGS, BP, etc.
Clarke and Trinnaman do the best they can with the information available to them, but given the nature of their data collection methods the results could hardly be regarded with a high level of confidence.
… Foreword to
When Technology Fails
by Matthew Stein, second edition
… Many people think of modern technology as if it were a magical, autonomous entity capable of overcoming our ancient net-energy constraints. In reality, modern technology has merely increased our exposure to collapse. We should stop assuming that just because we’re smarter than the ancient Romans and Mayans, we can’t be brought down by analogous system failures.
Once we begin to come to terms with all of this, what should we do?
Start by identifying tools that are not dependent on the systems most likely to fail. In other words, find tools you can rely on that don’t require fossil fuels or an operating electricity grid system.
Re-learn the skills that enabled our ancestors to thrive without fossil fuels. Get in touch with others who are similarly interested in surviving collapse, and work with them to create community resilience.
Not all of the tools and skills that are likely to be helpful to us are ancient. A good solar cooker, for example, can enable us to heat food cheaply and conveniently without natural gas or electricity-and the solar cookers available today are far more effective than anything that might have been used by tribal peoples in ages past. In other instances, though, we are likely to find ourselves treading well-worn paths, developing ever more respect for how people in traditional societies intelligently solved life’s persistent problems.
… It’s Happening
There is a surreal quality to the experience of seeing the unfolding of unpleasant events that one has predicted. Plenty of times over the past few years I’ve said, “I want to be proven wrong!” Who in their right mind would wish to see economic collapse and famine? But it was obvious that, given the direction our society is headed, these must be the consequences.
Now, with oil at $117 a barrel, the US economy teetering, and food riots erupting in Haiti, Egypt, and Asia, one could perhaps gain some satisfaction in saying “I told you so.” But what faint compensation that would be. We are all going to have to share the bitter fruits of our society’s century-long growth binge, whether we have criticized it or participated wholeheartedly.
The only silver lining is the possibility that now, at last, as the trends (Peak Oil, the failure of growth-based economics, the failure of industrial agriculture, climate chaos, and so on) are becoming so starkly clear, policy makers will begin seriously to contemplate a Plan B (or C, as Pat Murphy insists).
For those of us who have been lobbying in that latter direction for some while, this is no time to let up, but rather the ideal moment to redouble our efforts.
(May 2008)
Also at Heinberg’s website.
The explanation of how a husband-and-wife team are the ones who assemble global coal esitmates – incredible. -BA
Ben Bova: What has changed since last gas crisis?
Ben Bova, Naples News (Florida)
… In a keynote speech at the first annual California Clean Innovation Conference recently, Caltech chemistry professor Nathan S. Lewis spelled out quite clearly the world’s current – and future – energy situation.
… One possibility is that we in the industrialized nations get poorer. As the demand for oil soars, prices will continue to rise. We will cut back on our energy consumption. There will be some savings from conservation, but mostly we will simply not use as much energy. We won’t be able to afford it. As our energy consumption decreases, so will our freedom to travel and to live where we want to. Our standard of living will go down.
A second possibility is that the growing global consumption of energy will hasten a global climate crash. …
The third possibility is new technology that can produce the energy we need without polluting the atmosphere to the point of calamity. Nuclear, solar, hydrogen fuels – we know what’s needed. No one technology will solve the problem, but a broad advance across the entire front of energy technology may avert the coming disaster.
Thirty-four years from now, will we be fighting wars over oil? Or freezing in the dark? Or benefiting from new, clean energy technologies?
Don’t count on your political leaders to bring us the desired change. Not unless you hold their feet to the fire and force them to.
Naples resident Ben Bova is the author of more than 115 futuristic novels and nonfiction books. His Web site address is www.benbova.com.
(26 April 2008)
