Oil

The NCSL’s Energy Summit – The good, the bad, the missing

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Every year the National Conference of State Legislators (NCSL) holds an annual conference where legislators from all over the US gather for updates on major public policy issues facing the nation. This year the organization found that issues surrounding our country’s future energy supply were becoming of such paramount importance to state governments that it set up a task force to study the issues; produced a report on meeting the energy challenges; and devoted a whole day prior to the annual meeting to an ―Energy Policy Summit‖ where some 15 speakers gave presentations on various aspects of energy.

ODAC Newsletter – Aug 6

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There was an almost audible sigh of relief this week in the US as BP and the White House proclaimed the ‘static kill’ procedure on the Macondo oil well a success. With elections approaching the Obama administration will be keen to draw a line under the oil spill and focus on other issues, as reflected by a surprisingly upbeat press conference on Wednesday in which officials announced not only the plugging of the well but also the apparent disappearance of 75% of the spilled oil…

Peak oil and gas prices and supplies – Aug 6

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-Independent Study: Oil Shale Is a Poor Energy Source
-Scientists Cast Doubt on Claims BP Spill’s No Threat to Gulf
-Ecuador pledges no oil drilling in Amazon reserve
-Deepwater oil drilling moratorium job-loss picture is getting clearer
-We Fight for the Oil We Need to Fight for the Oil
-Oil company, law enforcement block media access to public sites hit by Michigan oil spill

Different takes on peak oil, same result – price spikes predicted

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Two must-read interviews with energy market investors both point to a coming demand-driven spike in oil prices, despite professing differing views on peak oil.

Rick Rule, founder of Global Resource Investments, Ltd., speaks of “sharply higher world oil prices in the next 5 years,” and Charles Maxwell, senior energy analyst for Weeden & Co. that “oil will reach at least $150 a barrel around 2015.” It’s interesting that, despite professing different takes on the concept of peak oil, they end up at remarkably similar conclusions about demand outstripping supply within the next few years.

Cleaning up

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This essay this isn’t about bitterness. It’s about the decisions we make in light of an ambiguous future. One of the costs of making moral choices is breaking the strong emotional ties to a prior life. My own future, if I have one, is necessarily rooted in the past. For the better part of a decade, I was the model professor, if only from the standpoint of university administrators.

After BP: Climate progress?

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It is “morally unconscionable” for the fossil fuel industry, and the politicians who carry their water in Congress, to stand in the way of action on climate change, says Climate Progress blogger Joe Romm. A Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and former US Department of Energy official, Romm says California voters have an opportunity this November to defeat the forces seeking to delay action on climate change by rejecting an attack on AB 32…

Hollow men of economics

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Left unaddressed during the past 3 years in most of the debates between economists has been the problem of energy. The reason is simple: post-war economists don’t do energy, except as an ever-expanding resource that the credit system and technology makes available. For the post-war economist, the supply curve of energy–save for brief lags–is always coming back into rough equilibrium with the economy.

What will it take to convince people about the dangers of peak oil?

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I find myself these days especially attentive to people talking about their preparations for a post-peak oil world. I am partly learning and partly measuring myself against their level of preparation. If they are, in my evaluation, further along than I am, my focus is even more intense. That has turned out to be an important clue for me about what it will take to convince the public about the dangers of peak oil.