Fossil Fuels

Address to the ASPO International Conference 2009 (Denver, Colorado)

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I’m happy to have the opportunity to spend the next few minutes sharing some personal thoughts on the subjects that bring us together for this excellent event—thoughts based on my experience, during the past few years, of trying to get the message of Peak Oil out to an ever-wider audience.

Half a trillion barrels more than we thought? (Or, “The Tupi Field, the Pre-salt, and the Very Distant Future”)

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At the end of the first day of the ASPO conference in Denver, we were treated to a fantastic presentation on the oil potential of the sub-salt basins on the margins of the South Atlantic Ocean given by Dr Marcio Mello who presented the evidence for a half trillion barrels of reserves in this new frontier province. So has a new Saudi Arabia been found?

Interview with Sadad al Husseini: Part 2—“A lot of Money = a Little Oil”

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This interview with Dr. Sadad al Husseini was filmed and produced in London on September 21 by ASPO-USA’s Dave Bowden, with Steve Andrews along on his own time and dime to ask some questions. Sadad is a geologist by training and a reservoir engineer—production engineer—by actual work experience. He started with Saudi Aramco back in 1970 and retired in 2004. Most of his time was spent with exploration and production activities but also in project management. Since he left, Sadad has worked as a consultant.

Whither Resilience and Transition? Why ‘Peak Oil’ Has Yet to Outlive its Usefulness

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It’s been a fascinating few days. Early in the week, Nate Hagens and Sharon Astyk were suggesting that perhaps the term ‘peak oil’ has outlived its usefulness, given that we have almost certainly peaked, and that the peak oil movement needs to shift its focus. It echoed something I wrote a while ago, likening ASPO and the wider peak oil movement to a Loch Ness Monster Society, dedicated to establishing the existence of this fabled creature. They organise conferences, scientific searches of the loch, write papers and journals, and then one day, an entire, intact Loch Ness Monster washes up on the shore. Then what? They have no reason to exist any longer, their whole raison d’etre vanishes overnight.

The Speech Obama Needs to Give (…in which he renounces Industrial Civilization)

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What if Obama told us the truth about our civilization? …In one illuminating sense, our civilization’s future is a probability distribution. Unfortunately, a host of not-so-nice futures are more probable than others at this point. …So trouble’s a-comin’ in what will likely be a many-act play headed downward over the next few decades — it just remains to be seen what costume it’ll be wearing in each scene. At some point the general public may be told the truth about our predicament — but maybe not. I suspect the revealing of the truth would be a sort of last-resort for those in power to try to keep things together. This speech is my take on “telling the truth.”