Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries signalled a significant tightening of oil markets towards the end of this year, warning on Wednesday it would have to pump close to its maximum capacity next winter to meet rising demand from China against the backdrop of slowing Russian production.
The world – and of course the US – now faces an epochal predicament: the global oil production peak and the arc of depletion that follows. We are unprepared for this crisis of industrial civilization. We are sleepwalking into the future.
A new organization is being founded this month in cities across the Midwest – Oil Addicts Anonymous – modeled after the multitude of successful 12 step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous.
In the past week, oil prices have regained about US$3 a barrel after hitting a low of $45. Apart from the perennial US weather factor, positive sentiment was reinforced by IEA (International Energy Agency) data revising previous forecasts for world oil demand growth in 2005 by 80,000 barrels per day.
Transneft president says, “Beyond 2005 we will probably reach the ceiling in [Russian oil] output. The period of easy oil extraction is over and to boost output further we need serious capital investment and more time.”
OPEC, producer of more than a third of the world’s oil, and the European Union plan to hold twice- yearly meetings to discuss how to maintain a stable oil price acceptable to producing and consuming countries.
But many Caspian estimates proved to be unrealistic, at least in the short term. Experts now say the Caspian should in coming years pump some 4 million to 5 million barrels per day, on par with Iran.
The Australian federal government is pushing for Australia to be a major supplier of LNG to Mexico and the west coast of the US.
Although the United States has long consumed the lion’s share of the world’s resources, this situation is changing fast as the Chinese economy surges ahead, overtaking the United States in the consumption of one resource after another.
British manufacturers’ raw materials costs rose at their sharpest pace in four and a half years in January as the price of crude oil and imported goods surged.
China will rely on oil for more than half of its energy by 2010, when net imports will rise to between 180 million tons and 200 million tons of oil a year, a Chinese official said.
The skeptics think that it is already too late. Isn’t time to get serious about peak oil and global warming? About navigating The Bottleneck? About imminent global societal collapse?
