Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Confidence provides strengths for a society, but only when coupled with clear vision. Unfortunately modern America too-often too often sees the future only in terms of doomsters’ pessimism and advocates’ optimism. Here we have a case study of the latter. Coal-to-liquids will not be cheap oil. It’s one part of the solution for the next several generations. Not the largest part, and certainly not a panacea.
– Peak oil: We are asleep at the wheel
– TIME: Have Saudis Overstated How Much Oil Is Left?
– Wikileaks Hysteria Meets Peak Oil
– I’ve Got to…Keep…Control: Dancing the Time Warp to Explain Away Peak Oil (Sharon goes after Raymond Learsy)
This past week was supposedly the week of the game changer in the world of oil. Leaked U.S. diplomatic cables from Saudi Arabia called into question the ability of the globe’s largest oil exporter to raise production to satisfy a world increasingly thirsty for petroleum. In the United States a technique called hydraulic fracturing–which has seemingly unlocked vast natural gas resources–will now be applied to oil trapped in shale deposits. Are these two developments really the so-called game changers they are claimed to be?
There is no question our food system is incredibly dependent on fossil fuels, and we are not showing any sign of transitioning off of them. Which means that the fossil fuels get more expensive, scarcer, and more importantly, as the climate system changes ever more rapidly, it’s going to clobber agriculture. You clobber agriculture where people get hungry and have nuclear weapons – and you can paint your own scenarios. They are not going to be painted in sky-blue happy colors.
Wikileaks may have told us what we already knew – that Saudi oil reserves are greatly inflated – but the reports also portray leaders of the highly secretive petro-state feeling “under the gun” as they strive to move their economy away from dependence on oil.
Prelude may be the first thriller novel explicitly about peak oil (numberless thrillers concern the nefarious machinations of international oil conglomerates — ultimately those are stories about peak oil too). It follows a short period in the life and career of Cassie Young, an oil industry analyst based in Washington, DC.
Saudi Arabia’s recoverable oil reserves may have been overstated by 40%. That was the warning sent to Washington from its embassy in Riyadh in 2007, according to a cable released by Wikileaks this week. The source was Sadad al-Husseini, former head of E&P at Saudi Aramco, who allegedly told US diplomats in Riyadh that Saudi’s claimed reserves of some 700bn bbls were overinflated by 300 billion barrels of ‘speculative resources’, and that output would peak once the kingdom had produced half of its original proven reserves of 360bn barrels. With 116bn produced so far, the diplomats concluded that on this basis Saudi’s peak could come in the early 2020s.
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Development this week
-Wikileaks
-The Guardian, Wikileaks cables and oil production in Saudi Arabia
-Saudi Reserves
-What did we learn from the Saudi cables?
-Saudi Oil Production and Reserves – Reasons Behind Wikileaks Concerns
-BG warns over demand for gas
-Don’t Count on Natural Gas to Solve US Energy Problems
-Chesapeake’s move brings cheer to gloomy US gas sector
Linguist, philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky talks about the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute and other business lobbies enthusiastically carrying out campaigns to “try and convince the population that global warming is a liberal hoax.”
A senior Saudi Arabian oil official said in 2007 that the kingdom has 388 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil reserves, about 45 percent more than official public estimates. But about the same time, a retired Saudi Aramco executive met with U.S. diplomats in Dhahran, and asserted that Saudi figures in general are wildly overblown, and that his country is headed for a production peak around 2020, followed by a slow decline, according to new Wikileaks cables. The issue is pivotal.
