Industry

Lines of defence (I): The thin brown line

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There’s a palpable sense of expectation as we cruise down the canal. Two dozen people and barely a word passes between us. It’s not the roar of the triple outboard engines, nor the forced camaraderie of strangers thrust together, with only their environmentalisms in common. Rather, it’s the sense that we’re travelling towards something—not a place, but a phenomenon, an event—whose name we know but whose face we have not yet seen.

KrisCan interviews energy analyst Chris Nelder

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In this seven part KrisCan interview with energy analyst Chris Nelder, they cover topics ranging from the consequences of the moratorium from the Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico to the legitimacy of Cap and Trade; how U.S. offshore oil drilling will affect domestic oil supply in the coming decade and how policy in America curtails the incentivizing of an energy transition to more renewable sources.

Oil, health, and health care

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The April 2010 oil leak in the Mexican Gulf illustrates the risks being taken to extract oil from inaccessible fields, and in June a Lloyd’s 360° risk insight report said, “we have entered a period of deep uncertainty in how we will source energy for power, heat and mobility and how much we will pay for it.” The reason why such damaging extraction methods are pursued, and why Lloyd’s are telling us we face a “new energy paradigm” rather than normal market volatility, is that oil discoveries peaked 40 years ago, and oil supply is probably at its maximum, with decline soon to follow. This has substantial implications for transport, food, jobs, health, and health care.

 

Steel, cycling and Steeltown

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As the effects of Peak Oil make themselves felt, they will go far beyond gas prices.

The Canadian auto industry employs around a half million people directly and indirectly, almost all of which is in Ontario. This isn’t just building and selling cars – there’s a massive manufacturing empire needed to mine the ore, make the steel and machine the parts that extends well beyond Ford or Toyota. So what do we do with two of the nation’s largest steel mills? …

If cycling is going to catch on as a major means of transportation, somebody’s going to have to start building new affordable and practical bikes. That’s where steel comes in.

A Pearl River tale, power and pride in China

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For a few days last week, global news agencies pursued the peculiar story of the world’s worst traffic jam, which was reported to have lasted for around nine days and stretched across about 100 kilometres of a major highway leading to Beijing. China’s latest instance of leading the world, now in the scale and size of traffic jams, is a direct consequence of the modern uses and abuses of energy.

ODAC Newsletter – Aug 27

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Cairn Energy announced this week that it had found evidence “indicative of an active hydrocarbon system” off Greenland. The news comes in the middle of a bidding round for oil and gas exploration licences there. The US Geological Survey estimated in 2008 that the region contains approximately 90 billion barrels of technically recoverable oil, but producing the stuff would combine the extreme challenges of deepwater drilling, extreme cold, and ice. Any accident would be massively harder to deal with than Deepwater Horizon because of the country’s remoteness…