Oil

No number crunching in Alan Kohler opinion piece on premature peak oil death

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An awe-inspiring takedown of a sloppy story on the death of peak oil.

Alan Kohler, who is known for his excellent financial graphs on the ABC TV (Australia) 7 pm News came out with an opinion piece on peak oil which does not display the level of research expected from him. Almost no statement in his article can be supported by statistical evidence. No numbers are shown to prove that shale oil can compensate for oil decline in maturing oil fields around the world.

What’s worse, the fight over oil in and between Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries due to peaking in key countries is completely forgotten. The EIA estimates that despite increasing unconventional oil production the dependency on OPEC oil will not be reduced. Reserves and resources are mixed up and those vast gas reserves are neither used to replace coal nor oil (as transport fuel). The CO2 from an assumed unconventional oil and gas boom will cook us alive.

The problem with such articles is that they contribute to further delay the real transformation away from oil (and fossil fuels in general) which can only be done by massive rail projects and preserving oil where it will be needed most: in agricultural production and transport of food to the cities.

Oil, Iran and the peak – March 8

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– Stop blaming oil speculators and start listening to them: A war with Iran would devastate the economy
– We Can Live with a Nuclear Iran
– Oil creeps toward top of Asia’s economic worry list
– 10th ASPO-International Conference in Vienna May 30 – June 1
– Ölreserven: Der “Doomsday” war gestern

Review: Petroplague by Amy Rogers

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We have a brand-new entrant to the oil-eating-bug-runs-amok tradition: the self-published novel Petroplague. It’s a Crichton-esque thriller written by microbiology professor-turned author Amy Rogers, who says she aims to “blur the line between fact and fiction so well that you need a Ph.D. to figure out where one ends and the other begins.” The plot involves a batch of experimental, oil-hungry bacteria inadvertently loosed upon Los Angeles, which proceed to wreak a near biblical swath of destruction. Part ecology lesson and part cautionary tale, Petroplague is an entertaining entrée into the subject of oil depletion and its implications for society, human health and the environment.

The peak oil crisis: East Coast refineries redux

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Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy issued a detailed report on what could happen to the availability of oil and prices in the event the third and largest of the three Philadelphia refineries in question be forced to close down this coming July. Given enough time, the markets and the infrastructure will rebalance, but for now it looks as if the Northeast may be in for some abnormally high gasoline and diesel prices in comparison to the rest of the country.

Why high oil prices are now affecting Europe more than the US

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This time around, Europe, and in particular the Eurozone, is the area of the world getting hit the hardest by high oil prices. Part of this has to do with the relative level of the Euro and the US dollar.

In the end, it may not matter which countries were first and most affected by limited oil supply and high oil prices. It will be all of us that feel the impact.

Forget the ‘golden age’ of capitalism: there’s no return, and our future can be better

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Not only are high levels of growth an undesirable goal and an utterly insufficient rubric for assessing the ‘common wealth’, it is also simply not possible to return to the annualized GDP growth of the post-war ‘golden age’.

Seussian paradigm shift

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I was thinking of Seuss this morning, because my children are anxious to celebrate his birthday, but also because it strikes me that the world-turned-upside-down qualities of our present situation are in some ways Seussian. And how surprising is that, when so many of us were formed by his writing? I suspect, thinking about Seuss’s endings and stories, that maybe we owe him more than we think – some measure of our ability to process reality, rather than fantasy, may come precisely from the fantasy creator.

I got the power!

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Personal powerdown within Transition brings a subtle force into everything you do that is hard to quantify. It means that when you talk of energy descent action plans for your community, you know what it takes on the physical and emotional levels, because you have done that descent yourself. You did not “change your behaviour” because you wanted to salve your conscience, or increase your well-being. You made those radical moves because one day you woke up and realised the storm was coming.