Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The guys on the campaign trail keep trying to ig nore the trillion-pound rhinoceros in the room. But soaring oil prices thunder the obvious: America had better prepare for a possible fall in world oil output if it doesn’t want to be left without affordable energy options.
The University of Calgary has recruited two international heavy oil experts to chase some oil sands dreams, notably ways to refine raw bitumen underground as “Canada cannot sustain for … more than probably 20 years the use of natural gas and diluent to produce bitumen.”
OIL at more than $50 a barrel concentrates the mind. What looked like a spike in prices is now taking on an air of permanence. Even when the price subsides, as it will, it will remain higher than seemed likely even a few months ago.
Renewable energy works almost solely on the basis of using local resources, and can’t contribute efficiently to a grid in the quantities desired. What Amory Lovins knows, deep down, is that the peak of oil extraction globally will not allow for a transition to a less-intensive energy diet. His plan would have made sense three decades ago, perhaps, when global warming seemed just a theory.
IT’S often said that truth is the first casualty of war. During a presidential campaign, that may be more apt than ever. Consider a seemingly simple question: What is the cost of the Iraq war to the United States?
….If not already aware of all this, readers of The Nation should be on notice that both the imminence and the timing of peak oil matters–big time….
If this scenario [of an early peak] is even somewhat credible, American and international leaders should drop whatever else they are doing and devote their full attention to preparing the world for post-peak petroleum.
The renewable energy expert Harald Rostvik has warned of an imminent collapse in the oil and gas industries as supplies run dry.
Thomas Gold, before his death, proposed that the origins of oil may be abiotic (non-biological) – arguments now repeated by many to suggest that there is no danger of oil peaking. The following is a scientific dialogue critiquing Gold’s work, not easy reading for the layperson, but important nonetheless.
Scores of Iraqi oil workers have been killed or maimed since last year’s invasion after they defied death threats and remained in their posts, Oil Minister Thamir al-Ghadhban says.
Pressed for time, Ahmad Hussein refuses to spend hours queuing for petrol at one of Baghdad’s teeming gas stations so he takes his car to a street vendor where it costs six times as much to fill up.
Crude oil prices are likely to stay near the record $55.33 a barrel reached this week in New York because global supplies of the raw material are peaking, Dallas oil investor Boone Pickens said.
As the world’s known deposits of fossil fuel are being run down, not least because of the growing demand of economies such as China’s, the day may come when the big consuming countries will have to fight – literally, in the worst case scenario – for supplies. But it does not have to turn out that way if the far-sighted in Asia can persuade their countrymen to put aside the past and work together to ensure energy security for all.
