Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth and is home to remote Indian tribes. It also sits atop a billion barrels of oil. Now, Ecuador and the United Nations are forging an ambitious plan to walk away from drilling in the park in exchange for payments from the international community.
My post is mainly an update to OPEC’s Spare Crude Oil Capacity – Will it Disappear by the End of 2011?, based on data which the EIA reported in the past few days. I will also briefly present updates to recent developments in OECD and Non OECD oil supplies/consumption.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-The Macondo well
-Briefs
-NYT: German Military Braces for Scarcity After ‘Peak Oil’
-Defense Energy Resilience: Lessons from Ecology
-Deepwater Horizon Oil Remains Below Surface, Will Come Ashore in Pulses, Expert Says
Robert L. Hirsch, Roger Bezdek and Robert Wendling have coauthored a new publication, this time a book called “The Impending World Energy Mess: What It Is and What It Means to You,” a book to be released by publisher Apogee Prime late this month…He has spent his entire career working in the energy realm, from the oil sector to numerous forms of electric power generation. In 2005, this team published “The Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management.” Steve Andrews caught up with Bob Hirsch last week for Steve’s last interview and final work with the Peak Oil Review.
-Smart cities are (un)paving the way for urban farmers and locavores
-Dwindling Fossil Fuels and Our Food System
-Students imagine new possibilities in intensive summer agroecology program
-Egg Co-ops Take Community Gardens to a Whole New Level
-UK Bee Industry Abuzz With Mite Resistant Breed
Wednesday saw the release of BP’s Deepwater Horizon Accident Investigation report – the company’s version of the events that led to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. BP admits responsibility for some of the list of technical and human failures which it says led to the disaster, but also heaps blame on both the rig owners Transocean and contractors Halliburton…
The enthusiastic professionals in Paris report that: “Global oil supply fell 250 kb/d to 86.8 mb/d in August, as non-OPEC output dipped to 52.4 mb/d on seasonal maintenance in Canada, the UK and Russia.” As often, the agencies don’t completely agree on what’s going on, with OPEC now seeing July as only a partial restoration of production cuts in June, but the IEA still seeing it as taking production to a higher level. But both concur that August is now below the level of February.
Ms. Pelosi and other politicians may pay lip service to the obvious environmental constraints [of tar sands] but the US really doesn’t have many alternatives as long as it is addicted to oil.
Two think tanks, on different sides of the world, published peak oil reports earlier this month – generating very different levels of media and web coverage. It would be a pity if the Australian version is overlooked, as it provides a remarkably balanced overview of the whole peak oil debate.
A midweek roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Prices and production
-The BP report
Someday there will be thousands of scholarly books on how political systems coped or failed during the transition from fossil fuel-sustained civilizations to that which is to come. For now, however, there are practically none as only a relative handful of the 6.7 billion on earth today have even a glimmer that the great transition is underway.
