Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
On this Independence Day, I’m celebrating the ways my family’s lifestyle is becoming more independent from the mainstream. This means our lifestyle is becoming more independent from oil for long-distance transport of goods, more independent from carbon emissions, more independent from the Industrial Growth Paradigm, demanding less earth resources, and thus much more resilient.
A new narrative reverberating in right-wing political circles blames the Deepwater Horizon disaster on a favorite scapegoat: the federal government.
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-Deepwater Horizon
-Exclusive: Was disregard for industry standards on BP rig worse than we thought?
-Deep Water Oil The Final Frontier
-Senate Panel Ends Liability Limits for Offshore Spills
At last report BP was making progress on the relief wells that are being drilled to plug the runaway well in the Gulf. The London Times reports that BP hopes to penetrate the casing of the leaking well and start pumping in well-sealing mud in about two weeks. Let’s hope something works.
The race is on: can we extract the last remnants of Western oil from such unlikely places as the ocean floor before the global economy picks up enough to test out the hypothesis that supplies have already peaked?
A roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Deepwater Horizon
-Venezuela continues nationalizations
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Josh Fox’s film Gasland has stirred up a lot of controversy over the environmental damage caused by shale gas drilling. Shale gas reservoir rock lies many thousands of feet below the surface, with the depth depending on the location. In order to get the gas to flow up to the wellhead, operators drill down to the shale rock layer, and then apply a process called hydraulic fracturing to “open up” the rock.
The IEA’s latest medium term report on oil and gas presents a rosier outlook than before. The supply-demand balance will be easier than previously forecast, the Agency now says, as continuing economic weakness dampens demand growth, and stronger oil prices encourage more investment in production capacity. But the report hedges its optimism, warning that potential geopolitical eruptions, and ripple effects from the Deepwater Horizon disaster on offshore drilling remain as risks…
Natural gas is regarded as a relatively environmentally friendly way of generating electricity. Gas burns cleanly without many of the problems associated with coal.
A midweek roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-Deepwater Horizon
As the global economy goes, so goes oil demand. If the outlook for the global economy is not so good, oil consumption will stagnate or increase very slowly. If oil demand grows slowly or not at all, consumption will remain below the world’s productive capacity, as measured in millions of barrels-per-day. If oil demand remains below the available supply, there will be no oil price shock.
