Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Dr. Joe Duarte Some traders are handicapping the possibility of the U.S. tapping the Strategic Oil Supply. With one week to go before the election, and with long-term problems now being fully catalogued, the scenario becomes possible. The United State’s supply of oil is in tatters due to underwater mudslides caused by Hurricane Ivan.
The old homestead – and not just the kind with seven baths – is increasingly filled with multiple refrigerators, plasma TV sets, and lap pools. The result is that this year’s energy woes, more than ever, are hitting the American middle class and upper middle class as well as the poor.
New Zealand is not preparing for the petroleum energy decline because, like most governments, it relies on the speculative theoretical forecasts produced by (non-geologist) economists of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Total output rose 1 percent to the equivalent of 3.91 million barrels of oil a day as Chief Executive Officer Lee R. Raymond added production from the $3.4 billion Kizomba A project in deep waters off the coast of Angola. Other projects began producing in the past year in the North Sea and off Equatorial Guinea.
The impact of new projects was almost outweighed by a 14 percent drop in U.S. gas output, asset sales and production- sharing contracts under which the company gets fewer barrels of crude from certain fields as prices rise.
Motorists may groan, but the times of $2-a-gallon gasoline could look like the good old days before the decade is over. The problem is that global demand for oil is rising briskly, and at the same time, production in old oil fields is declining and new fields are increasingly hard to find.
The Green Festival, a two-day party intended to accelerate the emergence of a new economic paradigm that values life, will be host to an unofficial peak oil mini summit. The official program for Saturday November 6th features Peter Camejo, Richard Heinberg, and Julian Darley speaking about oil depletion and the implications.
“From what we see now we are about to peak on oil,” Oluf Ulseth, Norway’s Deputy Minister of Petroleum and Energy, said of Norway’s 3.2 million barrels a day of crude output.
The Green Party of New Zealand is enthusiastically welcoming the intent and content of the Government’s Sustainable Energy report, but says it still lacks a sense of urgency. A key example is Peak Oil. Some sections acknowledge that global oil production is going to peak in the foreseeable future. Yet it still appears to accept oil price forecasts that many experts think are way too optimistic.
The Russian government is moving to tighten its grip on the country’s lucrative hydrocarbon and energy sectors, trying to consolidate all of the government’s energy assets under one roof.
Claude Mandil, executive director of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, presented a reassuring assessment today of the prospects for global energy supplies, but drew attention to serious concerns about energy security, investment, the environment and energy poverty. He called for more vigorous action to “steer the global energy system onto a more sustainable path”.
“Nuclear power has run out of steam.” That was prime minister Göran Persson’s conclusion earlier this month when the government announced the decommissioning next year of the Barsebäck 2 nuclear plant. A survey has now shown that most Swedish people think that Sweden should continue to use the nuclear power plants currently in use.
The Spanish wind industry is planning to grow up to 20 to 30,000 MW installed power and they are seeking for offshore platforms, a possible indication that the best fields are reaching a peak in the country.
