Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
A goal of mine has been to contact individuals in
various positions that may have first hand information that may shed more light on the energy situation. Today was one of those days. I had an interesting discussion with a senior level executive of one of this country’s reputable energy firms.
Saudi Arabia failed to provide the United States with any new promises or assurances over oil supplies ahead of a key meeting between Crown Prince Abdullah and George W. Bush at the president’s ranch in Crawford, Texas on Monday.
UK oil depletion awareness organisation PowerSwitch.org.uk officially launches free forum for people concerned about the imminent peak in global oil production and the consequences for the UK to meet, talk and work locally to raise awareness.
Oil production could peak next year, reports John Vidal. Just kiss your lifestyle goodbye. [Long serious piece in a major UK newspaper, featuring Collin Campbell, Chris Skrebowski, etc.]
…there’s a sense in which it’s advantageous if the oil peak is earlier. The reason why is it will compel the world, primarily the U.S. here, to move toward something like sustainable energy.
If there’s unbounded amounts of hydrocarbons, we’re just going to destroy the environment for human life or most biological life, so the earlier the peak is, in some respects – yes, it could be catastrophic, it could also be beneficial.
Britain’s former Energy Minister Brian Wilson will address Peak Oil, and argue that Britain’s current energy policy is “ripe for review”, at a conference in Edinburgh on Monday, 25 April.
Say you shake a bottle of champagne before opening it, and champagne sprays around and everyone is cheerfully soaked. But if you then put the bottle down, you would see that the gas pressure in the wine, has only pushed out about a third, or less, of the wine out of the bottle. That is, sort of, what happens with an oil well.
It is more than a year since oil prices doubled, but what are the oil companies doing? Some exploration continues but little net increase in refining capacity is planned and most of their effort seems to be going into mergers and takeovers. What do they know that they haven’t told us?
So just who is this super-spike man, and what in the world was he thinking? Well, his name is Arjun Murti, and he’s a veteran oil analyst and a managing director at Goldman. Press-shy by nature anyway, the poor guy was so unsettled by the reaction to his report that he refused all interview requests—until, that is, I was able to persuade him to take my call.
A number of unpublished agreements purportedly signed between the governments of Ukraine and Turkmenistan for the purchase of natural gas have inflamed the conflict between Kyiv and Moscow over natural-gas deliveries from Turkmenistan.
For those wanting to know about the situation in Saudi Arabia or wanting an advance look at Simmons’s book “Twilight In The Desert” or what will likely be his presentation in Edinburgh, this PDF presentation will be of key interest.
“I think they’re [the Saudis] near capacity, and so we’ve just got to get a straight answer from the government as to what they think their excess capacity is,” Bush said, adding that he would not characterize the Saudi production as “flat-out” yet. (updated 21 April)
