Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Two regular contributors clash: oilpatch engineer Martin B. Payne and long-time peak oil activist and writer, Jan Lundberg, publisher of Culture Change. In this article, Martin Payne steps back and gives full voice to “the enlightened fossil fuel professional.” Interestingly, the dividing line between activist and oilman is not as sharp as first appears.
BP has reported that its latest attempt to cap the leak at its Macondo well has stopped the flow of oil into the ocean. The news has so far been greeted with cautious optimism while integrity testing on the cap continues. The development comes at the end of another torrid week for BP…
-Germany targets switch to 100% renewables for its electricity by 2050
-Report sees need for 500 additional biofuels plants
-No link between wind turbines and health: report
-Residents reject wind farm health findings
-Locally Owned Wind Power: Quaint it Ain’t
– FT: Wall St and peak oil
– BP and the peak: delusions of oil grandeur persist
– ASPO-USA vs Lovins: Optimism, harsh realism, and blind spots — 10 years later
– The Nation: Kicking the oil habit
A midweed roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-The Oil Market Report
On July 12th, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar issued a “Decision memorandum regarding the suspension of certain offshore permitting and drilling activities on the Outer Continental Shelf.”
At just before 10 p.m. on Tuesday, April 20, 2010, the Transocean Ltd.-owned and BP Plc.-operated floating oil rig Deepwater Horizon was boring an exploratory well in the Macondo Prospect—about 40 miles southeast of the Louisiana coast and nearly a mile underwater—when it exploded without warning from a well blowout. …BP has tried repeatedly to stop the flow, to no avail. (As of this writing on Tuesday evening, July 13, it remains to be seen whether the well cap installed last night, a Band-Aid pending completion of the long-awaited relief wells next month, will actually work.) The spill’s magnitude has beggared description or belief.
First off, Canada is not now, nor is it ever likely to be, an “Energy Superpower”. This term was first used by Prime Minister Harper on the eve of the 2006 G8 meeting.
Europe is finally starting to think about its longer-term energy issues, and how they affect transportation plans. To try to deal with these issues, a new European Energy Consultation was set up, specifically to look into these issues. The European Energy Consultation asked for interested individuals to provide their input.
-Science and The Gulf Spill – Scientists Gauge The Impact of Oil
-Review of questioned IPCC report says conclusions ‘well-founded’
-Prehistoric Humans Caused Climate Changes, Too?
-A Climate Change Corrective
-Wanted: Some Journalists With Guts to Take on the Government and BP!
-Out in the Oil with Captain Dave
-Obama admin imposes new freeze on deepwater drilling
When most people think of fossil fuel supplies, they think in terms of barrels of oil, cubic feet of natural gas and tons of coal. But in evaluating how much energy in the form of finite fossil fuels the world has left, these are no longer adequate measurements.
