Energy Policy

A House committee voted on Wednesday to expand U.S. daylight-saving time by two months to help reduce energy consumption, but rejected a plan to shave total U.S. oil demand by 1 million barrels a day.

What we cannot see is whether this expansionary phase [will be] stifled by an oil squeeze, by a more general burst of inflation, by a loss of confidence in the markets, or conceivably by a trade war. What we can see is that oil at over $50 a barrel is an amber light, and were it to rise to over $100, the light would flip to red.

A widely reported briefing by US investment house Goldman Sachs alerted markets to the possibility of an oil price superspike – a spike as high as $105 per barrel.Yet the full report, obtained by Aljazeera.net, paints a more complex and volatile picture.

Congress begins work Tuesday on a bill to boost production and conservation.

[UPDATE APR 9 – new date for next speech] On the 14th March Republican Congressman Roscoe Bartlett made a presentation on Peak Oil to the US Congress. Online video of the presentation and a text version with graphics are now available. Rep. Bartlett will be giving a second presentation on solutions in about a week.

When the Labor backbencher Andrew McNamara rose from his seat in the Queensland Parliament in February to state a few home truths about falling world oil supplies, he expected, at most, a few catcalls from the Opposition benches. Instead, the speech by the provincial solicitor from Hervey Bay “bounced around the world”.

What will cost $3 a litre, require car-pooling, the permanent military occupation of Iraq and oil drilling on the Great Barrier Reef? Petrol, according to experts who have been contemplating its future in an oil-poor Australia.