 | The Book | The Oil Drum | Peak Oil Update - January 2007: Production Forecasts and EIA Oil Production Numbers |  |
DrumBeat: January 15, 2007
Posted by threadbot on January 15, 2007 - 10:05am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Michael T. Klare: Is Energo-fascism in Your Future?
Unlike Islamo-fascism, Energo-fascism will, in time, affect nearly every person on the planet. Either we will be compelled to participate in or finance foreign wars to secure vital supplies of energy, such as the current conflict in Iraq; or we will be at the mercy of those who control the energy spigot, like the customers of the Russian energy juggernaut Gazprom in Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia; or sooner or later we may find ourselves under constant state surveillance, lest we consume more than our allotted share of fuel or engage in illicit energy transactions. This is not simply some future dystopian nightmare, but a potentially all-encompassing reality whose basic features, largely unnoticed, are developing today.
Book review: Hell and High Water
Joseph Romm's Hell and High Water may be the most depressing book on global warming I've ever read.He writes of a "Planetary Purgatory" [UPDATE - by the 22nd Century], where sea level rises 20 feet, many coastal cities are subject to such frequent hurricanes they are abandoned, and most of the Greenland ice mass melts. What are today considered heat waves become normal summers, with more and more forest and agricultural land lost to fire and drought.
Here's the really bad news: this is not what Romm is trying to avoid, but what he hopes to settle for.
EU defends leadership in 'world war' on climate change
'A war economy is needed' to reduce global warming emissions, according to the EU's environment chief who said new measures will be tabled 'shortly' to tackle car pollution and expand the carbon trading system.
Oil, The Elites, And The Commons
The preservation of secured sources of abundant energy has long been a priority of the American elites and their European counterparts. The Euro-Atlantic Community or "Axis" -- the First World -- has pursued similar policies for over 100 years, through either soft or hard power. The abundance of energy is the indispensable lubricant to run our economic engines. Until the 1970s, energy was cheap and plentiful, but in spite of a few ups and downs in the market, experts were forecasting the end of abundance. We were imperceptibly entering an era of energy scarcity. No sooner had the Soviet Union joined the dustbins of history did the Euro-Atlantic Axis take a strong stance to secure the energy realm of the future. It began with the first Gulf War and the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, and it led to the scenario that befuddles us now.
I represent the 5% of the world's population that require 25% of the world's oil to survive. I'm one of twenty people at a party, with 4 pies to be shared, and I claim one entire pie for myself.
From the Left and Right: It's time to get Political
Peak Oil, if you have never heard of it before, is a term meaning the point at which the global flow of oil supply, from the Earth's crust to the market, reaches it's maximum amount, and can thereafter only decrease. Because oil is the most fundamental resource to modern economies, the implications of it's supply beginning to decrease are so profound, that - from food supplies to financial markets - almost no aspect of your life would be untouched.
Texas report to maul BP management
BP management will be sharply criticised in a report to be published tomorrow by the former US secretary of state James Baker into the fire at its Texas City refinery two years ago which killed 15 workers and injured hundreds more.
Gazprom Free to Buy Up Russian Gas Producers
Gazprom is finally free to buy any Russian gas producing enterprises after it has succeeded in reversing the state competition watchdog’s regulation. There are now no obstacles for Gazprom to set up monopoly not only on exports but also on the whole gas production in Russia. Experts say that oil companies will remain the only alternative gas suppliers in Russia. Many of them, however, are already selling their gas business to Gazprom.
Kurt Cobb: Deluded
As long as Americans and their leaders believe that there is plenty of oil to be had; that getting access to it is really only a matter of applying military force and market principles; and that national security isn't inextricably bound up with the way we think about and use energy, the country will fall further and further behind in making an energy transition that is being forced upon us by the limits of fossil fuels themselves.
Wind Power on the Rise in South Korea
South Korean government announces new plan to increase renewable energy use from 2% to 9% by 2030.
EU Eyes Climate, Energy, Trade in New China Talks
The European Union will urge China to do more to cut greenhouse gas emissions and cooperate on energy security next week when it launches negotiations on a broad new strategic partnership with Beijing.
China, Australia to set up work panel on clean coal
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Australian Prime Minister John Howard agreed here on Monday to set up a Sino-Australian clean coal work group in order to promote effective utilization of coal resources and tackle the global problem of climate changes.
Raymond J. Learsy: Saudi Arabia's Oil? Sovereign Resposibility Trumps Sovereign Rights!
The oil under Saudi Arabia's suzerainty is being made available to the world at large virtually without consideration as to need nor equity. Not only that, but Saudi Arabia breached their fiduciary trust and has delivered this vast and important resource into the grip of the larcenous OPEC cartel in order to extort the maximum possible lucre irrespective of the enormous economic distortion it creates, wresting the means to build Palaces and Yachts from the backs of the miserably poor in the Asian subcontinent, Africa, and throughout the world. Riches attained by adding no real value other than the serendipity of finding themselves with 'Sovereign Rights' over one of the world's key economic engines.
Surging toward the holy oil grail
Washington's successive divide-and-rule tactics - facilitating a possible genocide of Sunnis, contemplating a mass slaughter of Shi'ites, betting on a regional Sunni/Shi'ite war - never for a second lose sight of the riches of Iraqi. For Big Business, an Iraq eaten alive by Balkanization is the ideal environment for the triumph of Anglo-American petrocracy.
Cairn Energy resolves pipeline differences with Indian oil firm - Dispute had delayed production
U.S. denies British rumors on Bush climate change
A U.S. official on Sunday denied a British newspaper report that President George W. Bush was preparing to announce a dramatic policy shift on global warming in his State of the Union speech this month.
Americans have personal bonds with cars
When people talk about their strong feelings for their cars and trucks, they mention dependability, time spent maintaining them and the freedom that comes from cruising on the open road.
Connecting the Global Warming Dots
If thought of as a painting, the scientific picture of a growing and potentially calamitous human influence on the climate has moved from being abstract a century ago to impressionistic 30 years ago to pointillist today.
Gore: Japanese business can lead climate campaign
"The Japanese business community, because of the respect with which you are regarded, can have a powerful influence on the shaping of opinions within the U.S. business community," Gore told executives at the Keidanren (Japanese Business Federation).
Nigerian president calls for international action on climate change
"We have to do something about [Lake Chad] so that about 10 million people will not be out of water," Obasanjo warned.
Partly by accident I have been without a car for well over a year.In the summer of 2005, about the same time Katrina was shutting down gulf production, I was stagnating in an office designing circuit protection equipment for the utility industry – a job that obviously wasn’t preparing me for things to come. As I described earlier, it was a bumpy road for me arriving at a functioning level of Peak Oil awareness.
Saudi Aramco: Khursaniyah oil project on track
State oil firm Saudi Aramco said the deadline for its Khursaniyah project to add 500,000 barrels per day of crude had not been pushed back and was originally scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2007. An Aramco spokesman said a June, 2007 deadline was for water-injection facilities and not for the whole project.
High-powered entrepreneur: Crisis of 2000 led Blue Point Energy founder to design generators that recycle their own heat
During the 2000 California energy crisis, most people just saw high electricity bills.Guy Archbold saw daylight.
"To me, it was a glimpse of what the future would hold," he said.
East Asian Leaders To Vow To Promote Biofuels Amid Energy Crisis
Arctic Sea Ice decline in the 21st Century
Last month a paper I co-authored received considerable media attention. Headlines read "Experts warn North Pole will be 'ice free' by 2040", "The Big Melt: Loss of Sea Ice Snowballs", and "Arctic Clear for Summer Sailing by 2040: Models Predict Rapid Decline of Sea Ice''. The story also reached NPR, BBC, CBC, the Discovery channel, and Fox News, among others. Dr. Marika Holland, the first author of the paper, was inundated with media attention. About a dozen journalists contacted me too. I was impressed by the questions they posed -- questions that probably reflect what the public most wants to know. However, after giving lengthy interviews, I would read the resulting article and see my explanations boiled down to a few lines. In this essay, I'd like to explain the science in the paper and give my answers to the most often asked questions.
Scary article and very likely a true glimpse of the future....
Is Energo-fascism in Your Future?
The Global Energy Race and Its Consequences (Part 1)
By Michael T. Klare via TomDispatch.com
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=157241
Yes, this article should be read carefully by all, who think that the US military quest for energy started with Bush and the neocons and will end with them.
It contains some dubious facts (like that Uranium will peak as soon as NG) but unfortunately I have to agree the basic premise that we are entering an era of increasingly totalitarian states, competing for the scarce energy resources. And judging from history this has nothing else to end with but a world-scale disaster...
LevinK...you are right that all this did not start with Bush II...and probably not the Carter Doctrine either...and both Republicans and Democrats have supported this agenda over the years...what is different about Bush II is how far, fast, and brazen he is willing to protect this agenda...this to me shows either the delusions of a madman or that there is serious reason to believe it is necessary at this time.
Neither reason to justify Bush II's behavior are appealing to me.
And furthermore, the link they give about Pentagon future scenerios, which is:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=155031
Should be read in totality - pure brain candy, and much of it is possible. Palm-sized "smart networking spying rocks"? Sure, no problem, easy to implement. Teeny spy mosquito-planes? I've always been skeptical but they're making good progress, hell the things are easier to make work than real planes, because of scaling laws. Robots? I "schpit" on robots, progress is uber-slow because it's hard to get stuff to run reliably in the physical sphere, but progress is being made. Best way to keep up with that stuff is to go to RoboNexus each year, for a nice view of the mechano-cornucopian view of the world and how modern middle class kids are being brought up to believe they have a right to energy-guzzling mechanical slaves.
Pray for Peak OIl.
Nice energy-facists link BTW.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070112/ts_alt_afp/usinsuranceenvironment_0...
Governments and businesses must act now against climate change, and the United States needs a bigger public debate about its risks, the chairman of the Lloyd's insurance market said.Outcome - like how Fission civilian power needs the protection of government laws because no insurace firm would touch 'em (price-anderson), or how the RIAA (formed to MAINTAINING CONSISTENCY BETWEEN PITCH AND DEPTH OF AN LP AUDIO RECORDINGS. per http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070112/090306.shtml#comments) needs laws to protect its business model, there will be drafted a new set of laws where the government will give cover to the corps which become 'uninsurable' due to their conduct.
Re: Americans have personal bonds with cars
I've never understood this sentiment. I think it is a form of brainwashing. I don't feel free when I am trapped in a vehicle. I have to stop when the light says stop, go when it says go. I have to be on my guard constantly for danger. I'm at significant risk of serious injury or death. I wait in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
Hiking in the woods or taking a walk along the beach- now that's what gives me a sense of freedom.
The freedom of a car is the ability to go just about anywhere, at any time, for any reason. If I wanted to, I could get in my car right now and be hundreds of miles away in very little time. That is a freedom, one new to the history of the world, and only available to a small fraction of the current world population.
While I hate many things about cars, they do give a power to the average person that even the greatest kings and wealthy men of 200 years ago couldn't even dream about. I think that is something pretty darn special.
Agreed. I've lived more of my life without owning a car than with, and there are times when I can still hardly believe the power and the freedom. No begging my parents to drive me someplace, or hitching a ride when they decide to go to town. No borrowing a car from a roommate or boyfriend. No arranging my schedule around the train or the bus. It makes spontaneous travel possible.
Don't forget that while this may be true in the US, in other places, that actually have public transport, it's a whole different story. Many Europeans travel faster by train than by car. It's not a general truth, that freedom, it's site specific.
Also, what the car gives you in freedom, it takes away from others. Like the freedom to breathe freah air, or to walk through a town or cross a road without having to avoid being killed, on a constant basis.
Cars have robbed children in many urban settings from just about any freedom they ever had. Can't move, can't breathe. Asthma and video games.
Not really. Cities like Boston and New York have excellent public transportation, and finding a place to park is often difficult and expensive. Yet...people still have cars, if they can afford them. It's not easy to do things like grocery shopping or taking the cat to the vet via the T. And if it's raining, you can forget about getting a cab.
Oh, I know that. My point is that there's good reason for people to love cars. They aren't going to give them up without a fight. And people who don't have cars have good reason to want to acquire them.
As a midwesterner, whenever I spend time in Boston or NYC, it always seems so much more beautiful, interesting and cosmopolitan than the drab car-oreinted midwest. I often think I'd be much happier in a more urban environment- came very close to moving to Portland OR. Just can't talk my wife into it. But you're probably right- after a few months the novelty would wear off and I'd miss my car even though I only put about 1000 miles a year on it.
I own a car in an eminently walkable neighborhood. I considered doing without one (feasible but not always convenient) before buying my 1982 Mercedes 240D. Evacuation was the deciding factor in favor of car ownership. I help neighbors without cars out once or twice a month.
The Key is NOT ownership but miles driven
I drive 150 to 180 miles/month and could reduce that to 30 to 75 miles/month. At 31 mpg city, this is sustainable deep into post-Peak Oil. I could drive a Hummer and still be more sustainable than many Prius drivers.
Best Hopes for less driving,
Alan
The single most important determinant of car use is car ownership.
Seven hundred Americans will die in road crashes this week. Over 52,000 will be injured. Many of these will never walk again.
Children in NA spend 95% of their time enclosed. The car is their mobile jail cell.
Quite the social experiment.
It's not easy to do things like grocery shopping or taking the cat to the vet via the T. And if it's raining, you can forget about getting a cab.
In Europe and Asia they have a fairly good answer to that too. It's called "mixed-mode" transportation. For routine trips, that don't require taking luggage (e.g. commuting) people generally take mass transit or simply walking. For all the rest - most people still have cars. They just don't drive then like here to everywhere.
As an european, the lack of any alternative to cars in US is simply killing me... consider for example how much it costs to recover if/when your car breaks down (and you can not afford 2 cars). Towing, rent-a-car, repairs... it can get you in the thousands. In my home city you would still have to repair your car eventually, but nothing will be pressing you and in the meantime you can be perfectly ok with a 5 euro weekly mass transit card (in Western Europe it is more pricy but no more than 20-30 euro AFAIK). An additional effect of this mode is that since the car is not that essential, servicing it is not such a financial burden - as happens to be with maintainance and repairs in the US.
Monthly transit pass prices I know of are San Francisco area: about $125 a month, I think allows bus, and light rail, maybe BART which is passenger train.
Honolulu: $45 a month, ride DaBus all you want.
Consider a place like Venice. They have road and rail connections to the main island, and water transport between the islands, but as far the day to day necessities, you carry the stuff and/or use a small wheeled carrier.
We had dinner one night at a fabulous restaurant, Al Covo (specializing in fresh, local food), which took me a couple of days to track down. The restaurant is owned by a Italian/American couple (he's from Italy; she's from the US). She heard me talking and came over and asked where I was from (Surprise: West Texas). She gave me a big hug and said she was from Lubbock Texas. (It turned out that I probably knew her brother, we probably played high school tennis at the same time.)
In any case, she said that she raised three kids in Venice. When we asked her how she did it, she showed us her biceps--lots of muscles, hauling kids and "stuff" around Venice for 20 years.
After she left to take care of other customers, I told a UK couple we were having dinner with that you cannot imagine two more radically different places than Lubbock, Texas and Venice, Italy.
In about three weeks in Italy, the only cars we were in were taxis on a handful of occasions. Otherwise, it was foot, bus or train. (That is the premise of the Untours program. They set it up so that you live as Europeans live.) But you can see how the Europeans only use about half as much energy per capita as Americans. We also ate like pigs and lost weight. It's amazing what walking miles per day does to your waistline (and what not walking miles per day does to your waistline).
Use your car to make a living for a while. Anything from truck driver to drug mule will depress your need for driving.
I actually drive very little. But it's awfully nice to have the option.
I did give serious consideration to going car-free, but came to the conclusion that it is simply not safe around here. Due to traffic, weather, and, er, socioeconomic factors.
Just that word choice - "car-free" - is significant. Didn't you hear? Having that car is freedom.
Type "carfree" into Google and find the carfree movement, they seem to have evolved on their own with no help from M. King Hubbert, which makes them to me even more admirable - oil regardless, they find the car-centeric culture unhealthy.
The difference between having a car and not for me is, with a car I can do things following a serial topology, while with a bike or scooter I'm stuck with a star topology. This is not to say I might not get rid of the Prius and its insurance and payments, and piece together a solution based on bicycle and scooter, a rented car or truck at times, and building a small "rickshaw" type thing to use walking to the post office with a load of shipping.
It's very hard to say..... the ease of hopping into the car and taking a trip here or there where I find and buy X for resale, pays for the car and then some. And while the Prius is trendy, it's also essentially a small station wagon, can carry mucho stuff and I plan some camping out in it this summer.
Mainly I am planning to get out of needing to own STUFF to make a living. I want to be a bum when I grow up.
Yea, I know you're right. Maybe I'm just still bitter about having grown up a cul-de-sac prisoner. Typical, ugly suburban neighborhood, with absolutely nothing for a kid without access to a car to do.
Absolutely nothing within walking distance- no store, no library, not even a park. My friends and I were so bored we resorted to petty vandalism as entertainment.
A car can whisk someone to a remote place unserved by other transport options, but the vast majority of car trips taken could easily be achieved by other means.
In my neighborhood in Chicago, most folks drive their cars 1 block to go shopping at the local supermarket. Once people have paid the enormous fixed costs of car ownership the incremental costs of using the car to do all these short trips are slight and thus folks use their cars in ways terribly inappropriate.
It is natural and healthy for us to use our own power to move ourselves about. People who never walk farther than the length of a parking lot and who will circle for minutes to find a parking spot closer to the door to avoid a 30 second walk from across the lot have not been empowered. They are enslaved.
dream on!
Pretty darn special, and pretty much ephemeral
I understand because that is how I used to feel growing up as a cul-de-sac kid in a rural/suburban area. The car was freedom, and so people revered their car. When we turned 16 the guy or girl with the car was the most popular, cause they determined who would not be trapped at home. I used to wax mine up every weekend practically. Now that I live somewhere where my favorite shops and restaurants and movie theatres and most importantly friends are all within walking distance, my car is just an appliance. Often an expense and a pain in the ass appliance. But, I still do like it for driving out to the mountains. Driving is still a lot of fun, cranking the tunes and speeding like a maniac, I love that. But its getting harder to "get out on the open road" these days since there are so many people out there with their own cars.
I grew up in a town where I was walking freely to school and basically from one end to the other without any problems. And now I understand how lucky I have been with that... The way kids are being locked home here and their eventual car dreams remind me of the joke for the guy who was hitting himself with a hummer. When asked "Why do you do that?", he responds: "Do you know what a joy it is when I stop?" :)
CNN interviewed John Walsh (a famous missing child advocate), in relation to the story about those two boys who were kidnapped and covered - one four days later, one four years later.
Walsh, who lost his own child to a pedophile, said that the way those boys were kidnapped is the latest trend among pedophiles. They go to rural areas. Because kids in rural areas tend to have long walks home from the bus stop, and there are a lot fewer cops there. He warned that parents should not let their children walk home from the bus stop if they could help it.
This is almost impossible to happen if the streets were full of people, walking around even in the very late hours.
But unfortunately the victums of pedophilia in Bulgaria seem to be increasing in recent years... and there was a time, we hardly knew what this is. The causes I find mostly in poorer police coverage and that a lot of known mentally ill people are simply released... no money for treatment.
A similar line of reasoning is used by parents that drive their children to school: "It's much too dangerous with all those cars on the road!"
Sadly, that's true. I walked to school by myself as a kid, and looking back, I was too young. At six years old, I really wasn't mature enough to deal with the heavy traffic in the area.
In third grade, one of my classmates was killed by a car, as she crossed the street in front of her own house, heading for the school bus stop.
My memories are of growing up in the 40s and 50s in a mid size city neighborhood. I lived on my bike--spent whole days on it, navigated to other parts of the city, to rural parks, to the zoo, the museum, library, tennis court--you get the idea. No one worried about kid-snatchers. No one questoned my independence. It was total freedom. Too bad kids today can't have that.
It is too bad. And it's the result of hysteria promoted by a sensationalistic media. There is no increasing trend of "stranger danger."
I don't think it's so much "promoted by a sensationalist media" as the result of smaller family size. We have fewer children now, but we expect each one to live to adulthood. Hence child safety seats, bicycle helmets, etc., that generations of kids grew up without.
Children's birthday parties today rival the weddings of previous generations. I came across this article today, about parents who are trying to scale back.
We don't have to worry so much about the big things, so we worry more about the little ones. Or unlikely ones.
90% and more of child abuse (fill it all in, all types, including murder) is, and always has been, implemented by family members or very closely associated persons.
‘Stranger danger’ has always been minor in comparison, and since say 1920 has sunk in the West, due to education/social services/medical networks; more stringent laws / policing / more efficient catching and jailing of offenders; parenting practices, that have become more invasive or controlling, or caring, that is in the eye of the beholder; less freedom for children. Social or cultural evolution, promoted the perception of children as beings that needed better nurturing and protection, who should be shielded from ‘evil’ adults. Economic development, smaller families, safer housing, individual transport, etc. all played a role.
Your comments make me think of Bill Bryson's latest book, about growing up in Des Moines in the 50's and 60's. It's a rather nostalgiac look back, of course. "The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid", something like that. Not great, not bad.
some people are reported to have personal bonds with their Nike sneakers, and will kill for them.
I believe that people can be branded to anything -- you just need to push the right buttons.
A question for the oil men on this list.
What does this term mean? "Average Productivity Index (BOPD/PSI)"
The northern tip of Ghawar (Ain Dar) has an average productivity index of 141 while the southern tip (Haradh) has an average productivity index of 31. What is the significance of this vast difference in these two figures?
http://www.gregcroft.com/ghawar.ivnu
Ron Patterson
i know is shouldnt answer you because you have been such a butthead in the past, now that that is out of the way : the "psi" in the PI refers to pressure drawdown ( "average" reservoir pressure minus wellbore flowing pressure) PI is just a general representation of the productivity of the well, an indication of the permeability of the rock, fluid viscosity, thickness of the pay zone and completion efficiency. so PI is the production rate divided by the pressure drawdown. a concept originally proposed by d'arcy for analysing water wells. (and the unit for permeability is the darcy after d'arcy)