Fossil Fuels

ODAC Newsletter – May 21

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Oil prices fell below $70/barrel this week before recovering slightly. The drop reflected market nervousness about the gravity of the Euro crisis and its potential impact on the global economy, coupled with continued high US crude oil stocks. In the meantime all eyes continue to be focused on the Gulf of Mexico where challenges to BP’s estimate of the size of the oil spill is further damaging the credibility of the company…

Singularity > Climate Change > Peak Oil > Financial Crisis

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While lying awake late at night worrying about what kind of world my children will inherit, I find it helpful to come up with schemas for the most obvious and inevitable of the large societal problems.  It makes them seem slightly more manageable to place them in order of importance, or time.  Further, being clear on what are the biggest and most important problems is an essential prerequisite to thinking about solutions: these problems all interact, and solutions to the smaller of them may not be radical enough to address the larger of them.

What caused the Deepwater Horizon disaster?

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The blowout and oil spill on the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico was caused by a flawed well plan that did not include enough cement between the 7-inch production casing and the 9 7/8-inch protection casing. The presumed blowout preventer (BOP) failure is an important but secondary issue. Although the resulting oil spill has potentially grave environmental implications, recent efforts to limit the flow with an insertion tube have apparently been effective. Continuous efforts to slow or stop the flow include drilling two nearby relief wells that may intersect the MC 252 wellbore within 60-90 days.

The Peak Oil Crisis: The Deepwater Horizon

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Recommendations stemming from the recently announced independent Presidential Commission on the tragedy will likely have much influence on the course of deepwater drilling and thus the availability of oil in the future. Should the Commission conclude that much tougher regulation is necessary, it is difficult to see how the oil industry, even with its considerable clout in the Congress, can resist the calls for reform. Oil might just become far scarcer and more expensive five years from now than most of us think.