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Peak Oil Experts Fear Big New U.S. Job Losses, Economic Downturn
Andrew Kreig, ctwatchdog
Washington, DC — Ralph Nader helped conclude a cutting-edge energy conference here Oct. 9 by describing what the public must do to reduce harsh new job losses and similar hardship.
“Deal with public sentiment,” he first told a rapt audience at the annual convention of Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas, USA (ASPO-USA) as he suggested steps to achieve better-informed voters and consumers. “Half the population doesn’t believe in global warming.”
Create a “purposeful Congress,” was the next suggestion from the Connecticut-reared consumer advocate, a native of Winsted, Ct. “It’s the most powerful branch of government [in the Constitution], except it doesn’t like to use its power,” Nader said. “It likes to send it to the White House.” His final recommendation is from his latest book “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!” It’s a novel combined with journalism as he portrays how real-life billionaires could help preserve the world’s economic systems and ecology.
Nader spoke on the last day of an event convening 325 peak oil researchers and others for their first ASPO-USA convention in the nation’s capital. The group argues that after 150 years of oil extraction most major oil exporting nations are well past their supply peaks, defined by scientists as “Peak Oil.” The concept also encompasses export, not simply production peaks, as well as what many experts describe as a current “plateau” in such measures for the past five years.
Former CIBC chief economist Jeff Rubin predicted oil production declines ranging soon from 2 to 6% annually.
(12 October 2010)
White House to Lift Ban on Deep-Water Drilling
Peter Baker, The Caucus (blog), NY Times
The Obama administration on Tuesday plans to announce that it is lifting the moratorium on deep-water oil drilling, after putting in place new rules intended to tighten safety.
President Obama imposed the moratorium after the blowout of a BP well in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20 led to the largest maritime oil spill in American history. But the White House has come under intense pressure from the industry and from regional officials and businesses that have complained about the economic impact.
… The moratorium was supposed to run through Nov. 30, but the administration has been working on changes designed to improve safety, oversight and environmental protection standards. Nearly two weeks ago, the Interior Department issued new rules governing areas like well casing and cementing, blowout preventers, safety certification, emergency response and worker training.
(12 October 2010)
ASPO-USA: New Warnings About the Challenges of Oil Depletion
Press release, ASOPO-USA
WASHINGTON (October 12, 2010): Over three jam-packed days at the sixth annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO USA), a single, coherent picture of a world unprepared to encounter energy limits began to emerge, articulated by an impressive array of experts on energy, economics and the environment.
From across the political spectrum, Rear Admiral Lawrence Rice, former Carter Secretary of Energy Dr. James Schlesinger, and former Green Party Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader offered up remarkably similar accounts of both the timeline for declines in available oil supplies and the global and national challenges that will accompany a nation that has never fully grappled with either liquid fuel depletion or its implications for a highly oil dependent society.
As Dr. Schlesinger dryly remarked, “Can our political process face up to the challenge? I see absolutely no reason for optimism.” All three men expressed concern that our political leadership has thus far failed to grapple with peak oil. Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (Rep., Maryland), leader of the Congressional Peak Oil Caucus, observed that China’s strategic response to energy depletion was considerably more advanced than our own.
There were some signs of hope for a new political engagement with the issue of oil depletion at ASPO’s packed Congressional briefing. Speakers like former CIBC chief economist Jeff Rubin talked about the dangers to globalization and a stable world economy that tight oil supplies represent. Rubin claimed that “peak oil is not a geological issue, it is an economic issue.” Petroleum geologist Art Berman argued that U.S. oil shale reserves may be wildly overstated, and human rights and environmental campaigner Bianca Jagger drew connections between climate change and peak oil. At the Congressional briefing, former U.S. Energy Information Administration Director Guy Caruso noted that peak oil is a top concern at the EIA.
ASPO-USA has historically brought the best of the energy experts together to paint a coherent picture of what we know and don’t know about world oil reserves. Since world reserves are never publically audited, establishing what portion of our fossil fuel legacy remains is absolutely critical. As former BP Chief Petroleum Engineer Jeremy Gilbert observed, geological reality may turn the rhetoric of “yes we can” into the reality of “no, we can’t.”
At a panel on the impact of exports on decline rates, oil analyst Jeffrey Brown used his “export land model” to show how oil consumers in exporting nations are exacerbating declines in oil production. Speaking on topics explored in his new book, The Impending World Energy Mess, Dr. Robert Hirsch warned that we have not adequately considered the implications of a liquid fuels crisis.
Experts on transportation, food and the economy wrapped up the conference, offering evidence to attendees of how oil dependence and depletion affects every aspect of our society. ASPO-International President Dr. Kjell Aleklett of Uppsala University, Sweden, ended with a plea to the audience to take their expanded understanding of what’s at stake in our energy future and to use that knowledge as they make decisions about their own lives, and in their efforts to influence policy makers at the local, national and international levels.
(12 October 2010)
Kurt Cobb’s peak oil novel
Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
Many of my readers already know that I have completed a peak oil-themed novel entitled Prelude. I am now engaged in the final preparations before publication. I expect the book to be available within weeks. If you’d like to follow the progress of Prelude, you can check out the website periodically or you can subscribe to the email updates. Two excerpts from the book have already been posted.
I wrote Prelude in hopes of reaching a much wider audience than is typically possible through blogs, articles and nonfiction books. I believe I’ve produced not only an engaging tale, but also a tool for activists to use to spread the word about the challenges of peak oil.
Naturally, I’ll be posting here and on the book website as developments proceed.
(12 October 2010)
Kurt Cobb is a long-time contributor to Energy Bulletin. He’s promised us an excerpt or essay based on his new novel. -BA
