Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
When it comes to China policy, is the Obama administration leaping from the frying pan directly into the fire? In an attempt to turn the page on two disastrous wars in the Greater Middle East, it may have just launched a new Cold War in Asia — once again, viewing oil as the key to global supremacy.
“I want to go to war with China,” said presidential hopeful Rick Santorum in a recent GOP debate, showing the cavernous lack of any good sense that has become his trademark. Nonetheless, Santorum was probably speaking for many Americans who fear that China may soon overtake the US as the world’s single great power. By contrast, many of those same Americans probably think of Saudi Arabia, whose obliging princes seem always at the ready to pump extra crude onto the world market to temper oil price spikes, as the American motorist’s best friend. But what if the tables were turned, and the kingdom became the scourge of the American infidel while the People’s Republic was set to be our biggest ally? That’s the geopolitical premise of R. Michael Conley’s new peak-oil thriller Lethal Trajectories.
Saudi Arabia recently announced that it had halted a $100 billion oil production expansion plan to raise capacity to 15 million barrels a day by 2020. At this point, the country claims to have capacity of 12 million barrels a day. What does this mean for its future? Let’s take a look behind the figures.
Mortimer Zuckerman, the chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report, announced on November 25, 2011 that America’s energy problems are over thanks to the shale gas revolution. Unfortunately, this is not really true.
A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-Sanctioning Iran
-Europe on hold
-Exodus from Iraq
-Quote of the week
-Briefs
– Keystone XL Isn’t Dead Yet
– Gas exports soar, keeping U.S. price at pump high
– Cairn’s $600 Million Greenland Oil Campaign Ends in Failure
– A Shadow Climate Regime
– Powering the Future: A Nobel-Prize Winner Takes a Look Deep into the Energy Future
– Global warming, population growth, and food supplies: When will Americans finally “get it”?
– Feminism, Finance and the Future of #Occupy – An interview with Silvia Federici
– The Tailor of Ulm – a look at the Italian Communist Party
– Bill Clinton joins Obama to champion Washington energy saving strategy
– Obama’s Push for Better Mileage: This Is a Big Deal (Thomas Friedman)
– Report highlights Obama’s broken environmental promises
– Hans Noeldner: Spending the Middle Class out of existence
– Rotating blackouts possible in Texas this winter
The primary contributor to the US becoming a net exporter of refined products and the primary contributor to the decline in US net oil imports is declining consumption in the US, as the US and many other developed countries have been forced, post-2005, to take a declining share of a falling volume of Global Net Exports (GNE), which are calculated in terms of Total Petroleum Liquids.
The WSJ reporters are taking a symptom of Peak Exports, i.e., declining US oil consumption, and presenting it as a positive story.
– Chris Nelder: Why energy journalism is so bad (good article!)
– The myth of renewable energy
– Renewable Power Trumps Fossils for First Time as UN Talks Stall
– Fukushima and the inevitability of accidents
Evidence that the oil price is killing the economy came by the tanker-load this week. The FT reported that the cost of oil imports to the EU has increased from $280bn in 2010 to $402bn this year. Meanwhile the newly created Office of Budget Responsibility for the UK named oil prices as a key factor in a drastic downward revision of its economic and fiscal outlook released this week…
A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week
