Fossil Fuels

How big is Exxon’s gamble in Kurdistan? (Answer: BIG)

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Has ExxonMobil — the annoyingly prissy schoolboy who always obeys the teacher — risked weakening one of its distinguishing pillars in order to break into a single oil patch? And if so, could that shake up the global oil market along with geopolitics?

We are referring to the news, indiscreetly disclosed by a Kurdistan official last week, that the northern Iraqi region has signed an oil exploration agreement with Exxon. The reason this is a problem is that Kurdistan has been in a long-standing turf war with the folks in Baghdad over how to divide the spoils from its hydrocarbon riches.

The Energy Return on Investment threshold

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Hall and Day (2009) report that the Energy Return on Energy Invest (EROI) for coal might be as high as 80 and that for hydropower, EROI is 40. Does this mean that coal is twice as ‘good’ as hydro? The answer is no, and in this post I will discuss how this relates to the idea of an EROI Threshold

Fracking Gas = Climate Crash

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For years, governments, industry, and TV ads told us natural gas is the safe bridge fuel while we move away from dirty coal and oil. Cornell University scientist Robert Howarth wondered “Is that true?”…Program includes 27 minute speech by Professor Robert Howarth of Cornell at ASPO USA 2011, November 2nd in Washington D.C. recorded by Carl Etnier of Equal Time Radio, Vermont…Then a follow-up interview this week with Robert Howarth, to fill in his hurried climax of the speech…that methane emissions, when calculated over 20 years…could add up to at least 44% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the United States!

The peak oil crisis: a report to remember

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In the last few years the IEA’s annual report has come to recognize that the next 25 years are unlikely to be anything like the last 25 and the report has become much more nuanced. Gone are the extreme predictions that the world will be consuming 50 percent more oil 25 years from now. In their place are forecasts that global oil production will depend heavily on what alternative policy paths are taken by major governments and how much ($38 trillion is necessary) will be spent to find and exploit fossil fuel resources in the coming years.

Is it really possible to decouple GDP growth from energy growth?

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In recent years, we have heard statements indicating that it is possible to decouple GDP growth from energy growth. I have been looking at the relationship between world GDP and world energy use and am becoming increasingly skeptical that such a decoupling is really possible.

Community resilience, Transition, and why government thinking needs both

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After my talk in Norwich last week, I met a local authority emergency planner, who said that he had found the talk, and the Transition take on resilience, very illuminating. He pointed me in the direction of the latest “Strategic National Framework on Community Resilience”, the latest “national statement for how individual and community resilience can work”, published by the Cabinet Office in March of this year. It is a fascinating document, and is indeed the first official government document on community resilience that refers explicitly to the Transition movement, and as such deserves a post reflecting on it. It also offers a tantalising glimpse into what a government response to peak oil, climate change and economic contraction might look like if anyone had the imagination to create one.