Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
BBC on peak oil (audio)
Andrew Walker, BBC Radio World Service
Record high oil prices have given a new edge to a debate in the industry – is the world at or close to the peak oil production?
Chris Skrebowski, Richard Miller (retired BP), and others are interviewed.
(13 June 2008)
Europe: Oil’s Brave New World
William Pentland, Forbes
If you want to see the future of oil, look at Europe.
Since 1999, Europe has increased oil imports more than 20%–just slightly less than the amount consumed by Germany in 2007–to compensate for declining domestic production. In other words, Europe is running out of oil and scrambling to secure new supplies to fill the losses.
And those losses are coming more quickly than predicted, primarily in the once-prodigious oil fields of the North Sea. After peaking in 2001, production in the North Sea, Europe’s largest reserve of oil and gas, plunged. In 2006, after six years of consecutive declines, the North Sea produced nearly 2 million barrels of oil per day less than it had six years earlier, roughly equivalent to the amount France consumes annually.
Disruptions in supply are more critical to Europe than to the United States.
(13 June 2008)
New Matt Simmons Presentations
Matthew Simmons, Simmons & Company International
●Quo Vadis Energy? (Will Dawn Follow Darkness As Twilight Of Energy Fades?)
●The Unknowns In 2008: “Is $120 Oil A Blessing Or A Curse?” And Has Oil Peaked
●Oil And Gas “Rust”: An Evil Worse Than Depletion
(June 2008)
Oilwatch Monthly – June 2008
Rembrandt Kopelaar, The Oil Drum: Europe
The June 2008 edition of Oilwatch Monthly can be downloaded at this weblink (PDF, 1.42 MB, 21 pp).
A summary and latest graphics below the fold.
Latest Developments:
1) Total liquids – In May world production of total liquids increased by 490,000 barrels per day from April according to the latest figures of the International Energy Agency (IEA). Resulting in total world liquids production of 86.60 million b/d. Average global production in 2007 was 85.41 million b/d according to the IEA. In the first five months of 2008 an average of 86.82 million b/d was produced. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) in their International Petroleum Monthly puts average global 2007 production at 84.55 million b/d and the first three months of 2008 at 85.70 million b/d.
2) Conventional crude – Latest available figures from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that crude oil production including lease condensates decreased by 134,000 b/d from February to March. All time high crude oil production now stands at 74.63 million b/d in February 2008.
(15 June 2008)
Charts at original. The Oilwatch Monthly is a 21-page PDF from ASPO-Netharlands.
Learning From the Oil Shock
Robert J. Samuelson, Newsweek
… Do not underestimate oil’s fallout. As a practical matter, the world may have arrived at Peak Oil: that condition when dwindling oil reserves no longer permit much, if any, annual increase in production. This may not be literally true; estimates of vast undiscovered oil reservoirs imply that Peak Oil is decades away. But governments that control 75 percent or more of known oil reserves are behaving as if Peak Oil is already here. They’re hoarding a scarce commodity by limiting new exploration projects. Meanwhile, production at some old fields is dropping rapidly. Spare capacity has been depleted, as demand outruns new supply.
High prices close the gap. The grim price outlook by Rubin and others presumes that this situation persists. Of course, they could be wrong if higher prices cause demand to drop sharply and supplies increase unexpectedly (might Iraq surprise with large gains?). In the United States, prices have already led to less driving.
… What to do? How can we retrieve some of our lost power? The first thing is to get out of denial. Stop blaming oil companies, “speculators” and other scapegoats for a situation not of their making. Next, we need to expand oil and natural-gas drilling in the United States, including Alaska. No, we can’t “drill our way” out of this problem. But we can augment oil supplies and lessen price strains on global markets. It might take 10 years or more, because new projects are huge undertakings. But delay will only aggravate our future problems, just as past errors aggravate present problems.
Finally, we need to let high prices work. Aside from encouraging fuel-efficient vehicles and disciplining driving habits, they may also stimulate development of new biofuels from wood chips, food waste and switch grass.
(23 June 2008)
Localizing a global oil problem
Rod Dreher, Dallas Morning News
You’ve heard it said that the world is flat – that today, all economics is global. Time to rethink that in light of the global energy crisis. The world is being rerounded, its horizons shrinking. Localism is the new globalism.
Cheap, abundant and accessible fossil fuels allowed us to create a world in which we are relatively unconstrained by geography. That era is passing into history, and it is not likely this process can be reversed.
There is simply not enough oil being extracted quickly or inexpensively enough to meet global demand – nor, in all likelihood, will there be again. This is called peak oil. Last week, economic analysts said Americans have never before spent a greater portion of their income on energy costs. The sooner we come to terms with this reality, the sooner we can begin taking serious steps to adapt.
By this fall, chances are John McCain and Barack Obama will be talking more about energy than any other issue. They’ll have to. That would be a real change from now.
Peak oil is a far more urgent crisis than climate change, yet its economic and social effects are not even on the candidates’ agendas.
… No question, it’s going to be tough to change. We have no choice, and we have little time. It took the 20th century to build a way of life wholly dependent on cheap and available petroleum. The ground is rapidly giving way beneath our feet. The head of the Russian petro giant Gazprom said last week that he foresees demand driving oil to $250 a barrel by next year.
Our nation is living through a paradigm shift. Ordinary citizens are not waiting for official action and are already working on ideas at the grass roots (www.relocalize.net). We still need imaginative politicians who get what’s happening and who can lead, rather than be led by events they scarcely understand.
Rod Dreher is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist.
(15 June 2008)
