An American Chernobyl
The drawing of parallels between industrial accidents is a dubious armchair sport, but here the parallels are just piling up and are becoming too hard to ignore.
Industry
From the Deepwater Horizon
The Gulf of Mexico “spill” is really a man-made underwater volcano of oil. This accident taps a primeval fear in the human mind. Something dark and uncontrollable rushes out of the Earth, poisoning the global oceans. Could that really happen? Richard Heinberg, Anita Burke, Riki Ott, Antonia Juhasz, and new song “Corporate Catastrophe”.
Peak oil, prices, and supplies – May 6
-Groundhog Day for Oil
-Oil disaster may prove tipping point for world oil production
-Mother of all gushers could kill Earth’s oceans
-Peak Oil and the Return of the Jet Set
-Not So Fast: With Gas Prices Low, A Return To Oil
-Caution Required for Gulf Oil Spill Clean-Up, Bioremediation Expert Says
Let the hollow media optimism sound a warning
Occasionally you come across an anti-peak-oil polemic that’s so self-defeating that it makes you wonder if our problems might not in fact be a lot greater, and more urgent, than you had previously considered.
Industry leaders seem to be showing more openness to energy descent issues
I’ve spent the last two days at the Institute for the Future’s Ten-Year Forecast retreat in Sausalito, CA…At this retreat, I introduced ideas relating to peak net energy, and the possibility of major changes in the years ahead. I found industry leaders much more open than I had expected to listening to and understanding our energy predicament, and talking about what may be ahead. In this post, I would like to tell you about my experience.
Peak oil, prices, and supplies – May 4
-BP Fought Safety Measures at Deepwater Oil Rigs
-Toyota’s Bill Reinert on Peak Oil
-How Bad Is the Oil Spill? Ask the Pelicans
-Asean members try to forge agreement on oil and gas rich Spratly Islands
-Track the Gulf of Mexico oil spill movement in animated graphic
-Response options for BP oil spill
The next oil price shock
A few years ago I made a graph illustrating my view of the timing of future oil price shocks. I’ve updated that graph to reflect the current price, but I haven’t changed my mind about the timing of the next blow-up. Here it is.
Peak oil and the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico
It is amazing that there always has to be a catastrophe before the media will take up an issue even though we researchers showed that there would be a problem already back in 2003. The question is whether the opportunity now exists to make Peak Oil a global political question?
Wind’s latest problem: it . . . makes power too cheap
The dirty secret of wind: utilities don’t like wind not because it’s not competitive, but because it brings prices down for their existing assets, thus lowering their revenues and their profits.
BP’s Thunder Horse to underperform in the wake of the deepwater horizon blowout?
With BP’s Deepwater Horizon blowout in the news, the world’s interest is now focused on deepwater oil production. BP has another deepwater platform in the Gulf of Mexico—Thunder Horse—where it has been working some for some time. My analysis suggests production is not going well as planned at Thunder Horse.
Oil spills — there’s no free lunch
Here we go again. The tragic explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig and subsequent oil spill has stirred up the usual offshore drilling debate in the United States. Apparently, the Halliburton people had just finished completing the well when something went terribly wrong. Such incidents are relatively rare, and it’s not known what the (over) reaction will be yet.
ODAC Newsletter – Apr 30
As oil companies reported sharply increased profits this week, an estimated 5000 barrels of oil a day was spewing into the Gulf of Mexico following the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. This ecological disaster comes just a month after President Obama gave the green light to expand drilling off the US coast, and while the timing of the disaster could hardly be worse for big oil’s PR…
