Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The prospect of weaker oil demand in the face of the Euro crisis was balanced this week by warnings from the IEA and Saudi Arabia. Sadad al-Husseini, the former head of Exploration and Production at Saudi Aramco, wrote that “$100 for Brent is quite a correction and it will be a challenge to sustain such a low price beyond the short term”…
-Dump the pump: could peak oil be voluntary?
-Shell’s Majnoon deal highlights Iraq oil target verdict
-Insight – Peak, pause or plummet? Shale oil costs at crossroads
– Can we please just declare the end of ‘peak oil’ and start worrying about something important?
– The U.S. Has A Lot Of Shale Oil, So What?
– Chevron VP: Technology can unlock new fields, curb fears of peak oil
– The Biggest Threat to High Oil Prices
– Amory Lovins: A 50-year plan for energy (video)
– U.S. energy independence is no longer just a pipe dream
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
– Peak oil debate is over, says Total chief
– Oil Falls to 2012 Low on Greek Debt, Saudi Call for Drop
– Reuters global energy and envrionment summit
– WWF Report: Consumption of Earth’s resources unsustainable
– Monthly Review: Marx’s ecology and the understanding of land cover change
– New report from Club of Rome warns about humanity’s ability to survive without a major change in direction
– The Big Fix: documentary exposes BP, U.S. Gov’t on Gulf disaster/Interview: the Tickells, filmmakers
– James Hansen: Game Over for the Climate
-Familiar echoes in shale gas boom
-‘Fracking’ risks found to have been diminished (Report)
-Medical Records Could Yield Answers On Fracking
-Water safe in town made famous by fracking-EPA
-Shale causes rise in waste gas pollution
-Obama Warms to Energy Industry by Supporting Natural Gas
“It’s no pipe dream. The U.S. is already the world’s fastest-growing oil and natural gas producer. Counting the output from Canada and Mexico, North America is “the new Middle East,” Citigroup analysts declare in a recent report.”
Jeffrey Brown responds: The Texas Railroad Commission (RRC) sums the reported production from Texas producers, and it has been doing so far decades, while the EIA apparently uses a sampling approach to estimate Texas production. For annual production in 2011, the RRC shows Texas crude oil production at 1.12 mbpd (million barrels per day), while the EIA shows it at 1.46 mbpd, a gap of 340,000 bpd. The gap between the RRC and the EIA for monthly production is even more pronounced, on the order of about 500,000 to 600,000 bpd.
If the EIA is this far off for Texas, what about the other producing states, and what does it say about the EIA’s global data?
No civilization has ever faced the agricultural challenges confronting us over the coming decades. Ever. And if we can pull it off – wherever we CAN pull it off – it will necessarily be with an agriculture of maximum resilience; an agriculture that can get knocked down and stagger back up again and again and again. So let’s do this.
The leader of the world’s foremost Peak Oil research group is Kjell Aleklett, Professor of Physics at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. He has just published a book on Peak Oil that summarises a decade of scientific research. why would Kjell need a “translator”. It’s a longish story….
Power generation from coal is falling quickly. According to new figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal made up 36 percent of U.S. electricity in the first quarter of 2012 — down from 44.6 percent in the first quarter of 2011. That stunning drop, which represented almost a 20 percent decline in coal generation over the last year, was primarily due to low natural gas prices. As EIA explains, natural gas generation will climb steadily this year, while coal will see a double-digit drop by the end of 2012…
It’s not just that what we generally think of as free energy doesn’t occur in nature, but also that free energy does occur in the everyday lived environments of people in industrial nations, which we might thus say are unnatural. So what are instances of free energy that we experience in our lives, and why do they matter?
