Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
For Global Public Media, Chris Skrebowski, author of the important Oilfields Megaprojects Report for the UK Petroleum Review, explains to Julian Darley why 2005 will be a critical year for global oil.
BHP Billiton and BP Plc are among petroleum companies that may commit this year to spend more than A$5 billion ($3.9 billion) in Australia, mostly to produce natural gas as oilfield discoveries decline.
But even if [Cornucopian economists] are right about the miraculous and timely appearance of oil substitutes, are they right that the things we would do as a global society to prepare for world peak oil production are a “waste of resources?”
Treasurer Peter Costello has delivered a blunt warning that Australia is running out of oil as existing fields near the end of their productive lives.
So if the head of San Ramon’s ChevronTexaco is prepared to gamble more than 16 billion bucks on oil prices staying at stratospheric levels, I’m ready to give him the benefit of the doubt.
And reading between the lines, that means only one thing.
Peak oil.
We’re basically there.
Oil company BP’s existing oil and gas fields are posting production declines of about 3 per cent, Tony Hayward, the company’s chief executive for exploration and production, said on Wednesday.
Text of speech “We can’t leave this to central government. They are not interested. The structure of Central government is such that they will not respond to Peak Oil until it is too late.”
Audio interview with David Holmgren, co-originator of the permaculture concept, and Barry Jones of the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association (APPEA).
A House committee voted on Wednesday to expand U.S. daylight-saving time by two months to help reduce energy consumption, but rejected a plan to shave total U.S. oil demand by 1 million barrels a day.
World grain yield fell for four successive years from 2000 to 2003, bringing reserves to the lowest in thirty years… The Independent Science Panel (ISP) and the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) are launching a Sustainable World initiative to engage with all sectors of civil society to make our food production system truly sustainable.
What we cannot see is whether this expansionary phase [will be] stifled by an oil squeeze, by a more general burst of inflation, by a loss of confidence in the markets, or conceivably by a trade war. What we can see is that oil at over $50 a barrel is an amber light, and were it to rise to over $100, the light would flip to red.
The peak oil idea – which says that world oil production will go into irreversible decline sometime in the next decade or two – is quickly morphing into conventional wisdom.
