Peak oil review – Feb 28
A weekly roundup of peak oil news:
-Oil and the Global Economy
-Replacing Libyan oil
-The Middle East upheaval
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
Fossil Fuels
2008 all over again?
As oil prices reach $100 a barrel for the first time since 2008, many people are wondering whether 2011 will see a replay of crashing car sales, nose-diving airlines, and fuel-starved farmers.
Food: Getting fossil fuels off the plate
My grubby little town was full of young men in big trucks and muscle cars who had come north to make their fortunes in the oil fields. During oil booms they kept the bars hopping and the hookers busy, dropping hundred dollar bills like candy…When the wells ran dry the young men disappeared, shops shuttered their windows, and the town shrank. New oil discoveries brought them back, with all of the goldrush excitement and disarray that accompanied them.
A dirty little oil market secret
The false assessments still flow. It’s tough to refute the fact that decades of false optimism has now been undermined by actual production stat reality. So now the question becomes… Why do we still believe them?
(written by a Big Oil veteran)
The Middle East rises – Feb 28
– Protests in Oman Spread
– The Price of Food is at the Heart of This Wave of Revolutions
– The Arab Democratic Revolt
– Gorbachev: The US Must Take Blame for Fanning Islamic Fundamentalism
– The destiny of this pageant lies in the Kingdom of Oil
– Saudi Arabia: A Brief Guide to its Politics and Problems
When the believers stop believing: Chesapeake dumps shale gas assets
Only two years ago Chesapeake Energy Corp. president Aubrey McClendon was telling us about the limitless future of natural gas in North America. It is a good thing that McClendon, who still runs Chesapeake, isn’t taking his own advice these days.
Energy – Feb 27
– NYT: Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers
– NG industry tried to get “Gasland” doc disqualified from Oscars
– Lower second tier oil producers – Norway, Brazil, Iraq and Algeria
– How the U.S. may win the battery race
– New book from WebHubbleTelescope: “The Oil ConunDRUM”
The shores of Tripoli – Feb 27
– Libya celebrates as Gaddafi’s remote strongholds rise against him
– Building a new Libya
– Britain and Libya: “No line in the sand”
– The Vacuum After Qaddafi
Oil prices – Feb 27
– David Strahan: Oil price set to double if production is cut off
– NYT: A Tipping Point for Oil Prices
– Tverberg: WSJ, Financial Times Raise Issue of Oil Prices Causing Recession
ODAC Newsletter – Feb 25
Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s threat to fight to the death rather than cede power set off a rising tide of violence this week which has seen hundreds, maybe thousands killed. The future of the regime and the country still hangs in the balance. The growing chaos has also spread to Libya’s oil industry as companies shut down production and foreign workers flee.
Libya and beyond: What’s next for democracy?
Social, political, demographic, and other conditions in Libya are significantly different than in Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain or elsewhere, so it is not surprising that the progress of the revolution has differed too.
Geometric progressions: What you *will* learn from an oil shock
What we have learned from past oil shocks (which few people outside the peak oil community have chosen to recognize) is pretty clear and simple – that the effect of oil on the economy, on individual lives, on the world as a whole is dramatically greater than can be expected by a direct arithmetical progression – that is, the effect of oil on whole systems is something like a geometric progression, increasing in complexity and impact well beyond what one would intuitively expect.
