Four Takes on Global Oil Demand, Supply and Disruption

Four major oil- and energy- related reports emerged this week: the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) Oil Market Report (OMR); BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy 2007; the Short-term Energy Outlook (STEO) from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA); and the EIA’s 2007 Outlook for Hurricane Impacts on Gulf of Mexico Crude Oil & Natural Gas Production.

Water for the World

A $3 gadget that promises to quench a user's thirst for a year without spare parts, electricity or maintenance.

Companies will 'buy' their way out of polluting

Big European companies will be able to buy their way out of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, an environmental watchdog claims today.

India snubs West on climate change

India will not curb its greenhouse gas emissions as long as the West continues to treat it as a 'second class global citizen' with less right to pollute than the developed world, a senior Indian environment official has said.

Businesses accused of green hypocrisy

At a "summit" on the issue organised by the Guardian in London, Tony Juniper, executive director of Friends of the Earth, accused Shell of sponsoring the event in a bid to align itself with green issues while failing to clean up its own act.

Stay cool without overheating your wallet

Is your home equipped to handle the heat waves many areas experience in the summer months? Even though you may not be able to control the weather outside, there are still simple steps you can take to keep your home cool and comfortable and reduce your utility bills at the same time.

John Michael Greer: A depopulation explosion?

In the examples [ibn Khaldun] surveyed, agricultural societies were conquered by new ruling classes of nomad origin, who saw their subjects as cash cows but failed to realize that cows have to be fed. Revenues needed to maintain vital infrastructure were thus diverted into unproductive uses, sending societies into a downward spiral of economic collapse and depopulation from which they rarely recovered.

In the the twilight of the industrial age, ibn Khaldun’s insight is likely to be worth close attention. There aren’t a lot of nomads at the edges of today’s civilizations, but too many members of the political class in the modern world have no more sense of the importance of infrastructure to survival than the nomad rulers ibn Khaldun critiques, and the malign neglect so often visited on infrastructure in the US and elsewhere may be a foretaste of worse to come.

World Energy Patterns Showed Evidence of Shifting in 2006

The year 2006 was another year of high and volatile energy prices. But despite high prices, world energy consumption growth remained above average, continuing the trend of recent years

Energy use is also increasingly shifting away from OECD countries and becoming more carbon-intensive.

Three Triggers for Higher Oil Prices

After hitting a nine-month high last week, oil took a shellacking. I guess that means we can all breathe easier and go out and buy HUMMER H3s, right? Not so fast!

Securing the future - An oil company perspective

Tony Hayward, BP's group chief executive, gave a speech that discusses some of the 21st century challenges the world faces in the matter of energy and what we as an industry might do to meet the challenge.

Report says biofuel puts developing countries' water at risk

Increasing agricultural output for biofuels is further expected to put more pressure on water resources, says a new report from India-based research company RNCOS.

Maize of Deception: How Corn-Based Ethanol Can Lead To Starvation and Environmental Disaster

As the Bush administration continues to push its alternative fuels agenda, it has become increasingly evident that corn-based ethanol could be as much the global villain as a boon to society. Instead of improving the environment and moderating oil prices, corn-based ethanol could result in mass deforestation, strained land and water resources, increased food prices, augmented poverty and swarms of farmers uprooted from the land.

Spain Farmers Root out Biofuel Myth

The current increase in biofuel production is threatening livestock, and leading to a rise in the prices of cereals, chicken, pork, and beef, the Spain s Union of Small Farmers (UPA) warned on Monday.

Biofuel is gold rush of the 21st century, says FAO

The worldwide upsurge of interest in biofuels can best be described as the "Gold Rush of the 21st Century", said Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) deputy regional chief for Asia and the Pacific Hiroyuki Konuma.

Japan: Govt eyes boosting domestic biofuel output

The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry plans to introduce new legislation to establish measures to boost domestic biofuel production, according to ministry sources.

Beijing dispatches energy-saving cops

Quick, check the thermostat -- the energy police are on patrol.

Businesses in Beijing will have to be more aware of their energy use after the city formed a team to monitor energy-saving practices in response to the central government's calls to cut consumption in big cities, state media reported.

Opec rigidity will bleed oil markets - IEA

Oil markets risked tightening later this year if Opec was inflexible over supply, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said yesterday as it sharply raised its estimate for world oil demand.

The IEA pointed to unexpectedly strong demand in big emerging economies, a sharp supply fall last month and another crimping of supply this month because of routine maintenance on infrastructure outside the Opec zone.

Bills rise as China gets a taste for milk and honey

The cost of the weekly food shop is being forced upward by global demand for cereals and dairy products.

Higher standards of living in China and India are driving inflation in food prices as a move to a more Western diet has led to a greater demand for meat and milk.

...The problem has been exacerbated by severe drought in Aus-tralia and the United States and a growing trend for farmers to grow crops for fuel instead of food, which has caused a worldwide shortage of cereals and milk.

Palestine: Gas reserves and the national energy system

The discovery of off-shore gas reserves in Palestinian territorial waters alters Palestinian energy policies dramatically and may have repercussions on relations with Israel, currently the Palestinian National Authority’s principal commercial and energy partner. The drilling activities of British Gas in Palestinian territorial waters seem to open new opportunities to a country strongly dependent on the importation of petrol (in particular for the production of electricity) and at the same time open new political questions and frictions with the Government of Tel Aviv. The results of negotiations regarding the use of the gas reserves will be conditioned by parallel negotiations (currently suspended) between Palestinians and Israelis.

Pakistan: Energy crisis may go from bad to worse

The country may witness an aggravated energy crisis in the years to come as the proposed thermal power house at Chichuki Maliyan with a capacity to generate 500 megawatt electricity is in the doldrums, as the project has been withdrawn from Wapda in a strange development, The News has learnt.

Thailand to build first nuclear plant

AFP reports that Thailand’s largest energy utility said it will invest US$6 billion to build the country’s first nuclear power plant, expected to start operations in 2020.

Experts cautious on Malaysian oil pipeline

Oil industry players have given only cautious approval to Malaysia's multi-billion-dollar northern pipeline project, citing slowing oil demand in the Asian region and cost concerns.

Senate bill would hike fuel economy

As motorists face near record gasoline prices, the Senate took up an energy bill Tuesday that would raise auto fuel economy standards for the first time in nearly 20 years and make oil industry price gouging a federal crime.

Honda aims to bring green diesel cars to Japan soon

Japanese carmaker Honda Motor Co. said Wednesday it plans to introduce vehicles with low-pollution, fuel-efficient diesel engines in Japan and North America within the next few years.

Dem claims meddling in waiver request

The Transportation Department acknowledged Tuesday encouraging members of Congress to weigh in with the EPA on California's request to implement global warming controls on automakers.

California officials criticized the intervention by one executive branch agency with another as improper and possibly illegal, but a Transportation Department attorney said it wasn't.

John Edwards wants U.S. to back G8 on climate change

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Tuesday said the United States should join the Group of Eight in a call to cut global warming gas emissions in half by 2050.

Colleges make green commitment

Colleges and universities are hardly the worst offenders when it comes to producing the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. But with about 17 million students, they are massive energy consumers — and some schools say they consider it a moral responsibility to be at the forefront of the green movement.

Scientists to Canada: clean your dirty snow

Even Canada's thinly populated Arctic regions can play a role in curbing global warming, by reducing soot from dirty, old cooking stoves which are blackening snow and making it melt faster.

It's one problem on a list of many outlined by researchers at the universities of California and Colorado. They urged Canadians to filter smoke stacks, reduce ship traffic and burn fuels out in their entirety to minimize dirty waste.

High Oil Prices, Looming Deadlines Spur Brazilian Exploration

Brazilian and foreign oil companies reported 33 new oil discoveries in the first five months of 2007 as companies rushed to meet the minimum drilling requirements of exploration contracts and boost reserves as oil prices remained high, industry experts told BNamericas.

From Hiroshima to Iraq, 61 years of uranium wars

The “peak oil” scare is a hoax, which any geologist knows because it recycles every 20 years to boost oil prices. His Excellency Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Saudi oil minister from 1962 to 1986, believes that the oil age will end not for lack of oil but because of technology: “(T)he oil prices were destined to crash in the long term and the world would never use up the last drop of oil, because it would not need to: ‘The Stone Age did not come to an end because we had a lack of stones, and the oil age will not come to an end because we have a lack of oil.’”

Alex Petroff's Congo project gains momentum

After graduating from Hampshire College last year, Petroff returned to the Democratic Republic of Congo to start building a village, patterned after his 80-page senior project that proposed self-sustaining, oxen-powered agrarian villages as a mode of economic development.

..."It's a model that we may all need to adopt as peak oil becomes more and more of a reality," supporter Rosalie Paul of Georgetown said of Petroff's plan for a sustainable project.

S-Oil freezes $4bn refinery project

South Korean refiner S-Oil Corporation yesterday put an indefinite hold on its $4bn plans to build a major new refinery, the latest energy project to fall victim to tight contractor markets and soaring costs.

A Saudi Summer Surprise

A little Saudi Surprise or was it just another excuse to buy back into the oil bull market? Monday turned into a big buy back session as the oil came storming back. Traders who dumped positions on Friday seemed to think the market all of a sudden had value on Monday. Yet if you talked to two or three different traders as to their reasoning's to get back long the market, it was hard to find one defining reason.

Without much in the way of news the crude oil rally was larger enough get back a big chunk of what they gave back on Friday. Some traders thought that the rally came about because Saudi Aramco the state run oil company announced that it will cut crude oil exports to Asian refiners for the ninth straight month. Of course that shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone who has been following the situation. All the comments coming out of Saudi Arabia make it quite clear that they have no intention of raising oil production and that they would be complying with their agreed upon production cuts at the last OPEC meeting.

Nigeria: End the Energy Crisis Now!

The other day in Abuja, President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua gave stakeholders in the Nigerian Energy sector a marching order: Enhance the supply of electricity immediately or risk the declaration of state of emergency. Rightly so. If there is any aspect of national life that needs urgent, combative attention, it is power.

Philippines pays off nuclear power plant

The Philippine government has finally paid off the Bataan nuclear power plant almost 32 years after started on what became one of the country's biggest follies.

The final payment of $US15 million was settled in April, but the plant has never produced a single watt of electricity.

Millions could have been better spent

Dr. Helen Caldicott, the author and Nobel Peace Prize nominee, is an English MD/scientist who has done a superb job of research. Her findings clearly show that nuclear is not the way to go.

First, uranium is scarce and therefore becoming expensive. Costs of new power plants is prohibitive. Note that the French built their plants mostly in the 1970's when materials and labor were cheaper.

Official: Ethanol goal to be hit early

A top official with the National Corn Growers Association said Tuesday he expected 15 billion gallons of ethanol to be produced annually in the United States much sooner than the group had once predicted.

Alberta's era of abundant natural gas coming to an end

Age is overtaking the top money earner that paid off the provincial deficit and fuelled budget surpluses as energy prices rose since 1999.

After more than half a century of growth as the Canadian supply mainstay Alberta natural gas production has peaked and entered a decline that will continue no matter how much drilling is done, the province's industry watchdog agency says.

BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2007: World has enough oil for forty years; Growth in emissions from fossil fuels tripled to annual average of 3.4% in 2001-06

BP says that the world still has enough proven oil reserves to provide 40 years of consumption at current rates, in spite of a slight fall last year.

Russia Considers Increasing Coal Use to Facilitate Gas Exports

A series of deadly incidents has dealt Russia's coal industry a serious blow, as the sector's safety standards apparently remain low. Nonetheless, the Russian government is still considering long-range plans to increase the use of coal in power generation in order to reduce natural gas consumption and maximize gas exports.

Big oil companies cancel expansion projects

Instead of expanding their refinery capacity – which could drive fuel prices down – big oil is canceling expansion projects, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Russia's new oil order

Over the past decade, Russia's oil and gas companies have held two big lures for investors. The first was their privileged position in a country brimming with oil and gas. The second was the silver lining of decades of Soviet mismanagement. By applying western methods and technology to existing, poorly developed sites, Russia's majors could milk them for cash with less need to invest in exploration.

Intel and Google's energy drive

Web search leader Google Inc. and semiconductor maker Intel Corp. launched a broad-based program on Tuesday to introduce more energy-efficient personal computers and server systems to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Ben Stein's perfect portfolio

What do you recommend for a portfolio distribution in light of the collapsing dollar and peak oil?

Chris Skrebowski: How close to peak oil are we?

My conclusions at very best

● Supply will remain tight and prices high barring a major economic setback
● Oil supply will peak in 2011/12 at about 92-94 million barrels/day
● There will be supply shortfalls in winter before Peak
● Oil supply in international trade may peak earlier than the oil production peak
● Aided by CERA's optimism we are still in denial
● There are huge challenges and huge opportunities