Fossil Fuels

Global oil supplies as reported by EIA’s International Petroleum Monthly for September 2010

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My post is mainly an update to OPEC’s Spare Crude Oil Capacity – Will it Disappear by the End of 2011?, based on data which the EIA reported in the past few days. I will also briefly present updates to recent developments in OECD and Non OECD oil supplies/consumption.

Interview with Bob Hirsch on his team’s new book—“The Impending World Energy Mess”

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Robert L. Hirsch, Roger Bezdek and Robert Wendling have coauthored a new publication, this time a book called “The Impending World Energy Mess: What It Is and What It Means to You,” a book to be released by publisher Apogee Prime late this month…He has spent his entire career working in the energy realm, from the oil sector to numerous forms of electric power generation. In 2005, this team published “The Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management.” Steve Andrews caught up with Bob Hirsch last week for Steve’s last interview and final work with the Peak Oil Review.

ODAC Newsletter – Sep 10

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Wednesday saw the release of BP’s Deepwater Horizon Accident Investigation report – the company’s version of the events that led to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. BP admits responsibility for some of the list of technical and human failures which it says led to the disaster, but also heaps blame on both the rig owners Transocean and contractors Halliburton…

Trend break in oil supply

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The enthusiastic professionals in Paris report that: “Global oil supply fell 250 kb/d to 86.8 mb/d in August, as non-OPEC output dipped to 52.4 mb/d on seasonal maintenance in Canada, the UK and Russia.” As often, the agencies don’t completely agree on what’s going on, with OPEC now seeing July as only a partial restoration of production cuts in June, but the IEA still seeing it as taking production to a higher level. But both concur that August is now below the level of February.

Politics in the Great Transition

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Someday there will be thousands of scholarly books on how political systems coped or failed during the transition from fossil fuel-sustained civilizations to that which is to come. For now, however, there are practically none as only a relative handful of the 6.7 billion on earth today have even a glimmer that the great transition is underway.

Lines of defence (I): The thin brown line

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There’s a palpable sense of expectation as we cruise down the canal. Two dozen people and barely a word passes between us. It’s not the roar of the triple outboard engines, nor the forced camaraderie of strangers thrust together, with only their environmentalisms in common. Rather, it’s the sense that we’re travelling towards something—not a place, but a phenomenon, an event—whose name we know but whose face we have not yet seen.