Fossil Fuels

BP: Running the odds during the planning stages

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This pair of items will illustrate BP’s extraordinary confidence during its planning for the Macondo well. The first item consists of selected quotes from BP’s Initial Exploration Plan (Feb. 2009). The second item is a review of the recent presentation by two veteran drilling specialists from Shell. The primary purpose of their presentation was to contrast the differences between the way Shell designs its deepwater wells and the way BP designed the Macondo well. An underlying theme of both items is the fact that the various aspects of the BP plan were conducted under the oversight of senior industry administration and federal regulators.

Are we happy yet?

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Even if the good times were going to roll again, in the sense of our having more consumables, how well has that worked as a formula for happiness? And if it turns out that we have even less stuff in the future, can we find a source of felicity other than the mall? The good news is that alternatives are available. The more challenging news? Alternatives may emerge not where we normally look, but as the hidden complements of some of our dominant virtues.

Big Oil makes war on the earth: The Gulf Coast joins an oil-soiled planet

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If you live on the Gulf Coast, welcome to the real world of oil — and just know that you’re not alone.  In the Niger Delta and the Ecuadorian Amazon, among other places, your emerging hell has been the living hell of local populations for decades.

Lloyd’s Sustainable Energy Security White Paper – Some hits; some misses

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Lloyd’s hired Chatham House to prepare a white paper on the risks of peak oil called Sustainable Energy Security: Strategic risks and opportunities for business. It seems to me that this new report gets quite a few things right, but it misleads in the direction of thinking things are better than they really are, when it comes to timing and alternatives.

Thinking in straight lines

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Let’s face it, we, the civilized, educated, enlightened part of humanity like things to be straight. Let primitive tribesmen live in picturesque and practical round huts–we require abstract boxes of steel and concrete clad in plate glass, with plenty of nice straight lines, true vertical and horizontal planar surfaces and lots of ninety-degree angles to please the eye.

Oilpatch engineer replies to peak oil activist

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Two regular contributors clash: oilpatch engineer Martin B. Payne and long-time peak oil activist and writer, Jan Lundberg, publisher of Culture Change. In this article, Martin Payne steps back and gives full voice to “the enlightened fossil fuel professional.” Interestingly, the dividing line between activist and oilman is not as sharp as first appears.

The ways of the Force

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Luke Skywalker had to master the ways of the Force to save the galaxy. We face a similar challenge — mastering the ways of energy, which are surprisingly counterintuitive to people raised in current ways of thinking — in order to make use of the limited options still open to us in an age of declining energy supplies.