Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Nobody’s yet accused Tom Donohue of leading a dark cult to enslave the human race like high priest Mola Ram in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. But Bill McKibben seems to think that Donohue has cast an evil spell over his country’s young ruler in order to make him do his bidding.
I admit it: in the days of mobile internet and GPS, the concept of posting physical signs as a way of generating community may seem “retro” and outmoded. However, signs are all about locality. Finding resources in the course of our normal daily movements is direct, efficient, and full of the possibilities inherent in the manifold layers of existence that engage when we interact with our living immediate environment.
Japan’s oil addiction and nuclear woes have shown the world what the energy status quo doesn’t want ordinary people to see: the social limits of growing energy consumption. Japan is now running on empty. Imported oil not only grows more costly by the day but also buys diminishing economic returns. To pay for imported oil or fund its anointed substitute, nuclear energy, Japan now cultivates a hellish debt load that analysts call a ticking time bomb. Unlike many oil-driven cultures though the Japanese will now fall back on traditions of resilience.
The media, public, and politicians like the optimistic projections by the US DOE/EIA, US Geological Survey (on-shore), and Minerals Management Service (off-shore), but that optimism doesn’t mean their projections and assessments are accurate.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-China continues to grow
-Saudi production
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Does the Saudi oil minister’s statement that the oil market is oversupplied make any sense? Saudi production goes down in the face of rising demand, and prices skyrocket, and that shows the market is oversupplied? Wouldn’t prices have dropped drastically during that period if the market had been oversupplied?
Gas from shale is somewhat more expensive to produce, relative to more conventional natural gas deposits. On the other hand, a domestically available reserve that does not require a nation to expend money on foreign fuels can have considerable benefit, even though it may be comparatively expensive.
In monetary terms, shale gas seems to be a good deal. In EROEI (energy) terms it is probably less good but it may still provide a positive return. It is in environmental terms – in the so called “external costs” that shale gas is a disaster. It may be that society is reacting to scarcity in the wrong way by following a path that is perhaps easing the situation in the short term (getting more energy) but horribly worsening the problem in the medium/long term (global warming).
– Oil Without Apologies: Chevron’s CEO on energy and peak oil
– Japan, Oil and the Fragility of Globalization
– Thinking about peak oil and Transition in Ghana
– While the Saudi elite looks nervously abroad, a revolution is happening
The IEA reported this week that there are preliminary signs of oil demand destruction due to soaring prices. Goldman Sachs underlined this viewpoint on Tuesday by advising its clients to sell oil, copper, platinum and cotton. Prices fell in response, although concern over conflict in the Middle East and Saudi production saw prices nudging up again by the end of the week.
Three years ago, with a flurry of national publicity, billionaire Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens outlined his vision of how to help wean the U.S. off imported oil. The crux of the plan was to build a massive, $1 trillion network of wind farms stretching from Texas to North Dakota, which would replace domestic natural gas used to generate electricity. The excess natural gas would then be used to power millions of American trucks and cars, thus freeing the U.S. from the shackles of OPEC oil.
Instead of Saudi production increasing to compensate for Libya, total world production decreased, and oil prices went up sharply to enforce the necessary conservation on the world’s oil consumers.
