Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Despite constant growth in oil prices and projected record demand, many companies working in the industry are experiencing a tough start to the year and face “uncertainty over project costs and expected returns.”
Energy crisis imminent (2011): DOE refused to comment on its own hypothesis
– Will toe-to-heel air injection extend the Oil Age?
– Arctic oil drilling threatens Norway government
– Playing with Peak Oil awareness (video game)
– The energy policy morass (conservatives recognize peak oil)
A weekly review including:
– Production and prices
– The volcano
– Update on the droughts
-Ritter OKs bill on natural-gas power plants
-Three themes emerge from Algeria’s gas exporters’ meeting
-Gas exporters push for prices to be linked to crude
-A contrarian makes another call – this time, natural gas
-UK natural gas storage: The politics, and the pundits
Earth Day Network is organizing a huge event on the Mall in Washington D.C. on April 25. The goal is to demand tough, effective climate legislation and a swift transition away from 19th century energy sources.
The slide presentations have been posted from the recent symposium on Climate and Energy: Imperatives for Future Naval Forces, sponsored by Johns Hopkins University and the Centre for Naval Analyses (March 2010). This review examines three of the presentations which focused on oil supply problems.
In this animated dialogue, natural resource analyst Sean Brodrick provides a sharp-eyed perspective on what may be coming in this precarious economy and how to prepare for it.
The bottom line of the last few weeks is that there will be many more factors shaping the end of the oil age than a simple geologic reduction in the amount of oil that can be pumped. We already know about “above ground factors” such as wars, nationalism, lack of investment, and their affect on global oil production and the price of oil products. It is now becoming apparent that Mother Nature in the form of droughts, earthquakes, hurricanes and erupting volcanoes is likely to have a significant voice in how the oil age ends too.
-Are policymakers, economists and peak oilists starting to speak the same language?
-Demand for oil to outstrip supply within two years
-A ‘watershed month for the truth about peak oil’
Last week none of us had ever heard of an Icelandic volcano called Eyjafjallajokull, and still even now, very few of us can actually pronounce its name. The volcanic dust spewn forth across Europe as a result of its spectacular eruption has had a remarkable effect, leading to, among other things, the total grounding of the UK’s aviation fleet for several days until this morning….But perhaps rather than seeing it as the ‘misery’ most news broadcasts labelled it as, we might see it as good practice for the near future.
We currently live within an integrated complex globalised economy. We have framed the process in which this occurs as a catastrophic bifurcation, driven by a series of reinforcing positive feedbacks. The final point will be a de-globalised (localised) economy of much reduced complexity.
We know that emerging issues are emerging because they have a social form. Art gives us clues about the changing meanings of the future.
