Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Economist Paul Krugman almost addressed the Limits to Growth in his recent article “The Finite World”, but pulled back before reaching the brink of suggesting there may be physical limits to economic growth. A Nobel Prize may await whomever finds a workable model to prosper human welfare under conditions of depleting resources. Will economists solve this problem, or ordinary people who are learning to live better in The Finite World?
I have been searching for methods to bring the basics of peak oil and climate change out of the realm of the abstract, and this is my first public attempt to do just that.
In The Maltese Falcon a character tells detective Sam Spade, “By Gad, sir, you’re a character, that you are! Yes, sir, there’s never any telling what you’ll do or say next, except that it’s bound to be something astonishing.”* I’m telling Bob Hirsch the same thing. There’s no denying the man’s considerable credentials within the energy industry, nor his contribution to peak oil scholarship as principal author of the first major U.S. government report to take the issue seriously. But neither is there any predicting what outlandish thing he’ll propose next in his efforts to spread the message.
As an oil producer, Saskatchewan seems to have it all. The Bakken light oil trend is a play of frenzied activity. So is Cenovus Energy’s carbon injection oil operation at Weyburn (the world’s largest carbon capture and storage facility). But the province’s meat and potatoes – conventional heavy oil production in the Lloydminster and Kindersley areas – are hidden behind these high-profile developments. The province’s first 2010 land sale tells the story, but it’s only clear if you dig deeply into the numbers.
Oil supply optimists often say that the application of enhanced oil recovery techniques to existing and future wells will vastly expand oil reserves and oil production. The trouble is these techniques aren’t new, and they are already being widely applied. That means current oil reserves and production already reflect any effect they have had.
“as mankind proceeded to get bigger and bigger we silently crossed a threshold”
The Saudis are exploring the opportunity to sell their oil on more transparent exchanges in which they feel they have some logical control over production levels and pricing in relation to world demand, and also be paid in currencies outside the anemic US dollar. Such a mover would be a great influence on all of OPEC. This has crucial implications for the US as it could take oil trading from US exchanges and eventually outside the dollar as the currency of trade.
Evolution demands short-term thinking focused on individual survival. Most attempts to overcome our evolutionarily hardwired absorption with self are selected against. The Overman is dead, killed by a high-fat diet and unwillingness to exercise. Reflexively, we follow him into the grave.
“Swesif”, Sweden’s Forum for Sustainable Investment, had invited me to a symposium on “Tar sands – an ethical pitfall?” The reason for the discussion on tar sands is that Norway’s Statoil is going to invest huge amounts into the tar sands and Swedish pension funds are investors in Statoil. My task was to describe the role of Canada’s tar sands in the global energy system and to discuss the significance of tar sands for global energy supply.
If you’ve been following energy news with a discerning eye, then you already know better than to buy into all the hype about the Canadian tar sands…Far from being a panacea for declining supplies of conventional oil, the sands could…leave Alberta resembling “a third-rate golf course in the Sudan”…The quote comes from Andrew Nikiforuk’s new book Tar Sands, a powerful, eloquent litany of horrors associated with North America’s frenzied dash toward tar sands bitumen.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Production and prices
-The Clean Energy & Security Act
-Cuba
-Detroit
-Briefs
Germaine Greer on Dubai
Tar sands boom hits a sticky patch
Gail the Actuary visits Chevron’s Kern River Facility
