Fossil Fuels

Commentary: Peak Oil: Yes, still a serious issue

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The director of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) will be delivering a lecture titled “U.S. Energy Outlook: Whatever Happened to ‘Peak Oil'” at Indiana University on February 6. The description of the lecture provides some background: “Not long ago, the public heard much concern that the nation and the globe had reached or was about to reach the point of peak oil production and would be on a downward trajectory due to declining resources. Despite growing demand for energy, however, fossil fuel resources have never been higher.”

ODAC Newsletter – Jan 27

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President Obama exuberantly embraced America’s new oil and gas frontier this week in his State of the Union address. Clearly aiming to steal some Republican election thunder, he pledged to open 75% of potential oil and gas resources, and repeated claims that the US is sitting on enough natural gas to last for 100 years (see insightful commentary on the numbers behind this from Chris Nelder, and more on gas prospects from David Strahan.

Oil prices, exhaustible resources, and economic growth: report extract

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This chapter explores details behind the phenomenal increase in global crude oil production over the last century and a half and the implications if that trend should be reversed. I document that a key feature of the growth in production has been exploitation of new geographic areas rather than application of better technology to existing sources, and suggest that the end of that era could come soon. The economic dislocations that historically followed temporary oil supply disruptions are reviewed, and the possible implications of that experience for what the transition era could look like are explored.

Commentary in Nature: Can economy bear what oil prices have in store?

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Stop wrangling over global warming and instead reduce fossil-fuel use for the sake of the global economy.

That’s the message from two scientists, one from the University of Washington and one from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who say in the current issue of the journal Nature (Jan. 26) that the economic pain of a flattening oil supply will trump the environment as a reason to curb the use of fossil fuels.

The “tipping point” for oil supply appears to have occurred around 2005, says James W. Murray, UW professor of oceanography. The commentary concludes: “This will be a decades-long transformation and we need to start immediately. Emphasizing the short-term economic imperative from oil prices must be enough to push governments into action now.”

Article in Nature: “Oil’s tipping point has passed”

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The prominent scientific journal Nature has just published an article that supports what we in the peak oil world have been saying for years.

James Murray of the University of Washington and David King of the University of Oxford say that global oil production peaked in 2005 at about 75 million barrels a day.

The “supply of cheap oil has plateaued,” said King. “The geologists know where the source rocks are and where the trap structures are,” according to Murray. “If there was a prospect for a new giant oil field, I think it would have been found.”

(Excerpts from news articles about the article.)

What’s so radical about caring for the Earth and opposing Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline?

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Caring about the air, water, and land that give us life. Exploring ways to ensure Canada’s natural resources serve the national interest. Knowing that sacrificing our environment to a corporate-controlled economy is suicide. If those qualities make us radicals, as federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver recently claimed in an open letter, then I and many others will wear the label proudly.

Obama falsely claimed U.S. oil production at an all-time high

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Giving false hope, Obama claimed several times last year that U.S. oil extraction was at an all-time high, when actually it’s in a long-term decline. Whatever people say about the future, at least I hope we can be honest about the past, and put our current position in a long-term perspective. That’s not too much to hope for, is it?