Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Oil demand this year will rise faster than expected because of cold weather and growing economies in the U.S. and China, straining the ability of producers to keep pace, the International Energy Agency said.
If per capita income in China grows at eight percent per year — a reduction from the red-hot pace of 9.5 percent it has grown since 1978 — it will overtake the current per capita U.S. income in just over 25 years, according to the latest analysis by the Earth Policy Institute (EPI).
The US Deptartment of Energy raised its outlook for oil prices this year to nearly $50 a barrel. This time last year, it predicted a price of only $29.40 in the forecast for 2005.
The first mainstream politican to take a stand on peak oil is in the Queensland Parliament (Australia). Bravo, Andrew McNamara!
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Monday accused the United States of planning to portray his country as a security threat in order to capture its vast oil reserves.
America has a problem bigger than social security, or the price of prescription drugs, or gay marriage. America is heading into a situation in which it will no longer have an economy. The Republicans at least have an excuse for their willful blindness — they’ve already taken the position that the life of extreme car-dependency and everything it implies is not negotiable.
IN TWO years’ time the price of oil could reach $200 a barrel. Farfetched? Maybe. Although estimates of oil and gas reserves vary widely, geologists Anders Sivertsson, Kjell Aleklett and Colin Campbell, of Uppsala University in Sweden, are the latest in a growing group of experts who believe that oil supplies will peak by 2010, if not before, and gas soon after.
OIL-rich Iran has raised the stakes in the standoff over its nuclear program, warning that any attempt to impose sanctions on its activities would lead to an energy crisis in the US and Europe.
There are good reasons to assume that a US campaign against Iran will commence within months and that this will serve to open the next and much expanded phase of what is actually the Global Oil War of the 21st century.
“Waiting until world conventional oil production peaks before implementing crash program mitigation leaves the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit for two decades or longer,” according to a report prepared for the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) by Science Applications International Coporation (SAIC). [Link to the full report mentioned in ASPO Bulletin #51]
INDONESIA’S President plans to visit an island near the Malaysian border after he sent warships there, following Malaysia’s move to award oil exploration rights there, a government official said yesterday.
The Venezuelan president said OPEC could set prices between US$40 and US$50, while the US said its oil imports from the country were replaceable
