Oil

Deepwater Horizon: Lessons from Petroleum Engineering and the Roman Empire

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Why did the Deepwater Horizon blow up last year, kill 11 workers, and cause the massive oil eruption into the Gulf of Mexico? You’re likely to get different answers if you talk separately to a petroleum engineer or an anthropologist. When they team up, it gets really interesting. Anthropologist Joseph Tainter (author of The Collapse of Complex Societies) and petroleum engineer Tad Patzek talk about the new book they’ve co-authored: Drilling Down: The Gulf oil debacle and our energy dilemma.

A psychological carbon tax

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There’s plenty of understanding that efficiency measures can sometimes (often) fail if they fall victim to Jevon’s Paradox. The common response is that we need to couple efficiency measures with a carbon tax or similar policy that give people both the means and the incentive to decrease energy consumption. But let’s look at the underlying goal of a carbon tax: to change behavior. How does it change behavior? By penalizing undesirable behavior (financially). The downside to a carbon tax is that it requires overcoming many political hurdles that don’t seem likely to be overcome anytime soon. What are the alternatives?

Deconstructing “ethical oil”

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EthicalOil.org is a defense of the Canadian oil sands industry. The argument it makes is that because human rights standards are much better in Canada than in many other oil exporting nations, Canada should be considered a more “moral” source of oil. In fact, the oil from the oil sands is touted as a “fair trade choice.” Once I’d read through the site, it was hard to imagine why the oil sands industry would even want it online. If these people were working for me with the express mission of defending the oil sands, I would fire them.

ODAC Newsletter – Dec 9

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OPEC head Abdullah El-Badri warned European leaders on Wednesday against imposing sanctions on Iranian oil, stating that the 865,000 barrels a day which goes mostly to Southern Europe would be difficult to replace. Global supply is already tight and oil prices remain stubbornly high despite the chronic Euro-crisis…

World Petroleum Congress in Doha, Qatar – ExxonMobil: ‘Technology to beat Peak Oil’ and Total pulls itself into line

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Before the World Petroleum Congress in Doha, Qatar the newspaper Gulf Times wrote in an article that, “A highlight is the keynote speech that will be delivered by Total’s President and CEO, Christophe de Margerie on the theme: “Peak oil – ahead of us or behind us?” on December 7”. The fact that Peak Oil is the theme for one of the seven main presentations at the congress shows that Peak Oil is now an important topic of discussion in the international and national oil industries. Earlier, Total had indicated that they believed Peak Oil could occur before 2030 so it was with some suspense that we awaited the message from Total and their managing director de Margarie.

Behind the Durban Blame Game

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Why did the Durban climate talks fail? Ultimately, the culprit is the near-universal pursuit of economic growth. All the major players want growth: the US, because it’s still pulling out of a recession; China, because it knows 10 percent annual growth can’t go on forever, but is trying to avoid a hard landing; Europe, which is trying to pull out of its sovereign debt spiral. The US and China, in particular, know that fossil fuels have given them growth in the past, and are especially reluctant to give them up now.

Thoughts on why energy use and CO2 emissions are rising as fast as GDP

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In a recent post, I discovered something rather alarming–the fact that in the last decade (2000 to 2010) both world energy consumption and the CO2 emissions from this energy consumption were rising as fast as GDP for the world as a whole. This relationship is especially strange, because prior to 2000, it appeared as though decoupling was taking place: GDP was growing more rapidly than energy use and CO2 emissions. And even after 2000, many countries continued to report decoupling.

A course to keep you from crashing

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Economists never told us the story of financial inequity. It took the Occupy movement to do that. And many economists still continue to tell us reassuring fairy tales about how economic growth must and will return.

So, who are you going to trust? Start with Chris Martenson, one of the lay financial analysts who did predict the banking collapse in fall 2008.

What Peak Oil Looks Like

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One of the perennial themes of peak oil discussion over the last decade or so has been what the world will look like once the age of cheap abundant energy comes to a close. While the arguments are ongoing, the answer may already have arrived. With a tip of the hat to green economist Herman Daly, the Archdruid explains.