Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
When I began writing about peak oil professionally in 2006, it was generally considered a tinfoil hat theory. The notion that oil production might peak around 2012, plus or minus, was only taken seriously by a few analysts who were considered extremely pessimistic.
-Dash for Poland’s gas could end Russian stranglehold
-Natural-Gas Data Overstated
-BP fights to limit controls on shale gas drilling
Peak oil – arriving or already arrived – is placing a tremendous strain on the world’s economy. Because of this strain, the kind of money used for maintaining roads is quickly disappearing and the result is the return of unpaved roads. … in the coming years we’ll see more and more roads returning to gravel, as it was commonplace in the Western World up to about 50 years ago.
A weekly review including:
– Production and prices
– China shifts on Iran
– A busy week in Washington
– World Energy Conference
– Quote of the Week
– Energy Stat of the Week
– Briefs
Last week President Obama announced that he would open [some] federal waters to oil and gas exploration and development… A stated objective of this move is to reduce United States dependence on foreign oil. Implied within the objective is that opening these offshore areas to oil drilling will lead to a long-term increase in the U.S. oil production rate. The possibility of that happening is zero. The best that can be hoped for is a slight decrease in the annual decline rate of U.S. oil production.
– Officials Wake Up to Peak Oil
– TOD’s Dave Murphy on “This Week in Energy”
– What’s driving up oil prices again? Wall Street, of course
– Oil and gas ads target ‘energy industry taxes’
Could it be so that one of Sweden’s most popular sportsmen knows about Peak Oil?
A newly available graph of projected oil supplies prepared by the U. S. Energy Information Administration shows us exactly how much faith it takes to practice faith-based economics. To be a true believer one has to wager the entire future of our oil-dependent civilization.
Review of two recent additions to the post-petroleum literary canon:
– Julian Comstock by Robert Charles Wilson
– Crossing the Blue by Holly Jean Buck.
World Energy ministers met this week in Cancun for the latest session of the International Energy Forum. The meeting resulted in a declaration committing its 66 signatories to an “enhanced global producer-consumer energy dialogue”. As if on cue, the oil price reached its highest point in 2010 on Wednesday at over $83/barrel…
It was with some fear and trepidation that Alexis Rowell, a Camden Borough councillor and the author of the upcoming Transition Guide to Local Authorities (LA), and I arrived in a deeply conservative part of the country, Norfolk, to do a day with them on peak oil, climate change and the Transition town model and practice.
A weekly round-up including:
– Prices and production
– Venezuela’s Power Crisis
