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DrumBeat: June 11, 2008
Posted by Leanan on June 11, 2008 - 9:10am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Fade to black: Is this the end of oil?
For generations, we've taken it for granted. But as prices soar and reserves dwindle, the time is fast approaching when mankind will have to live without oil. Are we ready to confront some really inconvenient truths?...Whereas Campbell's fears once branded him a wacky radical, as the years have gone by he has been joined by a growing band of industry experts who have reached a similarly grim conclusion. One of those was an American investment banker examining "flow rates" – the speed at which oil was being taken out of the ground. After being asked to advise Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush on energy policy during the 2000 election campaign, Matthew Simmons found that more and more oil fields had begun to decline. That was because, though new technology was helping to extract oil faster than ever before, it was also causing the fields to run dry more quickly, too. "All of a sudden there were fields that were declining by as much as 30 per cent per year," he says. "But I didn't call it 'peak oil' – I didn't even know what that was back then."
World has enough oil reserves, says BP boss
The world is not running out of oil and can continue to produce hydrocarbons for the next 40 years provided restrictions are lifted on where companies can operate, the head of BP said today.The Arctic and currently closed areas off the coast of America should be considered for exploration if rising global energy demand is to be met in future, said chief executive Tony Hayward.
He insisted that all other forms of energy, whether clean-tech or otherwise, also need to be developed simultaneously while rising carbon emissions could still be curbed.
Oil Could Hit $400 a Barrel by 2018
That's the forecast from U.S. Navy Admiral William Owens, who sees rising tensions between the U.S. and China as they scramble for energy
Bush doesn't rule out military strike in Iran
MESEBERG, Germany (AP) — President Bush on Wednesday raised unprompted the possibility of a military strike to thwart Tehran's presumed nuclear weapons ambitions, speaking bullishly on Iran even as he admitted having been unwise to do so previously about Iraq.Bush's host in two days of meetings at a baroque castle, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, made clear her views on the saber-rattling — however subtle — without directly countering her guest. "I very clearly pin my hopes on diplomatic efforts," Merkel said, reflecting the deeply held European opinion that military action against Iran is nearly unthinkable.
Move over, peak oil: Toronto-Dominion Bank is running with the idea that the world will soon become more interested in peak oil demand, which should cool the rally in oil prices.
Kuwait plans measures to combat soaring inflation
KUWAIT CITY - Oil-rich Kuwait plans to take a series of measures including increasing subsidies on food items to combat record inflation, the commerce minister told parliament Wednesday.
Nigeria: Oil Installations - Government Beefs Up Security
A security operative who spoke anonymously told Vanguard that all commands have been directed to be on red alert in the wake of the renewed tension in the Niger Delta.
Saudi wants heads of state at oil talks: diplomats
RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia, the top world oil exporter, wants heads of state to attend a June 22 meeting it is hosting of producers and consumers to discuss record oil prices, diplomats said on Wednesday.It was unclear, however, if any leaders would attend the talks in Jeddah, the diplomats said. U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman and the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday they would attend.
Subsidies: a big culprit in high gas prices
Shielding consumers from the real costs of an oil-based economy only makes it more difficult for them to face the coming end of the oil era.
BP Says Russia's Oil Output May Continue to Decline
(Bloomberg) -- Russia, the world's second-largest oil supplier, may continue to experience declining production as the government seeks to lure investment, BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward said.Russia's tax system takes 90 percent of a company's earnings when oil prices rise above $30 a barrel, Hayward said. The nation's crude production will fall this year, according to his estimates.
While $45 trillion is a lot of money, it has to be put in perspective.It would be spread over more than 40 years and across the whole world economy. It would equate to just over 1 per cent of global gross domestic product over that period, the IEA estimates.
And it would be offset by the cost of the fossil-fuel use avoided, which could be of a similar order, the IEA says. As it acknowledges, however, in a world where the oil price can jump $11 in a single day, any estimates of that are "debatable".
The problem for this scenario, it says, is not the cost but the "burden sharing", which is diplomatic language for dealing with free rider problems.
Commodity Futures Trading Commission finds answers to soaring oil prices elusive
It's a time-honored Washington ritual. When the price of oil goes up, so does the blood pressure of politicians. And that means government agencies must do something, even if all they do is offer sympathy.So it was Tuesday for the CFTC -- normally one of the quietest areas of the federal government and an agency traditionally more focused on the price of soybeans and pork bellies than energy.
Want to sell your gas hog? Do the math first
Consumer advocates are urging anxious car owners to slow down and do the math before they race to get rid of that larger vehicle.“People need to think very carefully before they dump their gas guzzlers,” advises Jack Gillis, author of "The Car Book." “It doesn’t make economic sense if you take a loss on the transaction.”
How Less Zoom Zoom Could Power the Future
Hybrids may be the great green hope, but new research shows that improvements to normal cars could reduce the nation's fuel consumption sooner and cheaper."We can absolutely reduce petroleum use and greenhouse gas emissions over the next 30 years," said Anup Bandivadekar of the International Council on Clean Transportation. "But in order to do that, we must halt increases in vehicle size and horsepower."
MADRID (AFP) — Global protests over fuel prices intensified Wednesday as blockades by Spanish and Portuguese truckers heightened food shortages and traffic chaos, and their counterparts in Thailand and South Korea threatened to join them on strike.In Portugal, the strike hit air transport as authorities at Lisbon airport banned planes from refuelling, except those on high priority flights.
"We cannot refuel any planes, except those on urgent, military or state flights," a spokesman for the airport authority, Rui Oliveira, told Lusa news agency.
The Spanish auto plants of Seat, Nissan, Renault, PSA Peugeot Citroen and Mercedes Benz were all forced to either cut or halt production as the strike left them short of parts.
Fuel strikes: last-ditch talks begin in bid to avert panic buying
Last-ditch talks to avert a strike by 641 tanker drivers who supply one in 10 UK petrol stations have begun at a secret location.Despite pleas from Downing Sreet for motorists to stay calm and refrain from panic buying, industry experts believe the move will backfire and that in the next 48 hours before Friday’s 6am deadline for strike action, motorists in parts of the country will rush to the pumps.
There is particular concern that motorists with almost full tanks could exacerbate problems by topping up with 10 or 15 extra litres instead of buying normally.
UK: Flintshire drivers ignore advice and panic buy at the pumps
SIGNS of panic buying at the petrol pumps are breaking out across Flintshire as drivers attempt to beat the planned tanker strike.Despite government warnings that attempts to stock up on fuel in advance would be counter-productive, and could actually cause a shortage of fuel, unusually long queues have been reported on forecourts across Flintshire and North East Wales.
Police escort petrol tankers as truck strike hits hard
MADRID: Police escorted petrol tankers into Barcelona yesterday as a protest strike by thousands of truckers against rising fuel prices caused food and fuel shortages and huge tailbacks on the Spanish-French border.
Fuel shortages in Guinea Bissau and Senegal lead to power cuts
Fuel shortages in the poor West African nation of Guinea Bissau and its bigger neighbour Senegal have led to days of power cuts and disruptions of the water supply, residents reported Tuesday.In the capital of Bissau the seven gas stations have been closed for almost two weeks, a situation that has seen a skyrocketing number of black market fuel sellers.
...The lack of fuel is also affecting water supplies as most pumps to get the water to homes also work on fuel.
In the capital of Bissau women and children carrying bottles, jerry cans and buckets can be seen scouring different neighbourhoods for water.
Power cuts also started in the Senegalese capital Dakar in the last week which officials blamed on problems with getting fuel to electricity company Senelec because of the price hike in oil.
Fuel shortage hits Republic of Congo's transport sector
In the few service stations where there is fuel, ugly scenes of skirmishes have ensued and the authorities have been force to send police and gendarmerie units to intervene and calm the situation before getting out of hand, according to a number of eyewitnesses.
Sinopec refutes "hefty storage behind fuel shortage" report
BEIJING (Xinhua) -- China's leading refiner Sinopec Wednesday refuted a media report that refiners in the country were keeping a high storage amid spreading fuel shortage.Sinopec was not at all piling up oil products and was endeavoring to guarantee market supply, a Sinopec source that declined to be named told Xinhua.
The CEO of Russian oil firm Gazprom, the world's largest energy company, is predicting a huge jump in the price of oil. Could he possibly be right?
'Unethical behavior' to blame for gas prices - poll
62% of survey respondents say record runup in prices is fault of actions by players in the gasoline supply chain.
Gasoline: Shaving off one tax at a time
In this time of high prices, the government is levying a tax on imported ethanol. Is it time for that tax to go?
Oil Leaps To A New Record (audio)
Chris Skrebowski of the UK Petroleum Review, director of PeakOil Consulting and author of the Megaprojects report, speaks with GPM's Julian Darley and offers some unusual analysis of the recent largest oil price rise in history, along with an explanation of the extraordinary run up in diesel prices and how soon we may enter oil decline.
Forget change you can believe in and start dealing with the changes coming at you as fast as the price of fuel makes its way skyward.With gasoline prices headed toward $5 a gallon, more than half the population has, in a matter of a year, become marooned in the suburbs. The economics of housing combined with the lunacies of city planning have left most Americans stranded, miles away from their places of work, their schools, their stores and medical facilities.
The physical plant of the United States for the past sixty years was designed on a premise of cheap energy. This has left much of our population locked into homes and communities they now can ill afford to leave in the morning, come back to at night, heat in the winter or cool in summer. Nor they can sell out and go elsewhere.
Expert: Oil industry at peak production
KUALA LUMPUR: The world’s oil industry has started to reach its peak production rate and every nation now needs to build a “crash mat” to cushion the fall, an expert warned yesterday.Kjell Aleklett, physics professor at Sweden’s Uppsala University, said such a move was important as the world was now already in a phase of transition to an uncertain future with oil getting more difficult and costly to produce.
OPEC Wants `Solution' to High Oil Prices From Saudi Meeting
(Bloomberg) -- OPEC wants a ``solution'' to record oil prices and an examination of the role of energy speculators when governments of oil consuming and producing countries meet later this month in Saudi Arabia, OPEC's Secretary General said.
Nigeria: Ogoni People Jubilate Over Sacking of Shell
Thousands of Ogoni of Rivers State took to the streets of Port Harcourt, Monday, jubilating over the sacking of Shell Petroleum Development Company by the Federal Government from their land, and the resolve to replace the oil giant with another oil prospecting company.The people carried placards with various inscriptions, some of which read "Non violence pays, bye-bye to Shell, no more shell in Ogoni land, justice for Ogoni, justice for all, thank you President Yar'Adua, no more genocide in Ogoni land", among others,
Emulate Japan to cope with oil shocks
With the price of oil rocketing to the unprecedented level of US$130 a barrel and more, there is a talk of another oil shock. Unlike past instances, this one is unlikely to subside and may indeed keep intensifying. The only way out is for Western nations, the gluttonous users of petroleum, to cut their consumption and emulate Japan in its consistent drive for energy efficiency and alternate sources.
As oil rises, Americans rediscover the railroad
BOSTON (Reuters) - As oil prices spike, many Americans are rediscovering the railroad.Amtrak, America's struggling passenger railroad, saw record numbers in May when ridership rose 12.3 percent from a year earlier, and ticket sales climbed 15.6 percent, according to company data.
Hawai`i: Energy 'crisis is here,' Kaya says
HILO, Hawai'i — A former state energy manager is calling for Hawai'i to change its energy habits as costs spiral upward and the Islands maintain a potentially dangerous dependency on foreign fossil fuels."The crisis is here, and it's going to be a long one," said Maurice Kaya, now a strategic energy and management consultant. "We are well beyond the time to act, and business owners need to be pro-active in demanding clean energy at predictable costs from suppliers. We are precariously dependent on oil, but there are some things we can do."
It will take governmental guts to cure America's gas pains
Big Oil's profits far exceed those of the other industries that you used to think needed to be reined in -- Big Pharm, Big Farm, the old Ma Bell. Big Oil's response is short and crude: The world price of crude oil is at record highs. That's why you must pay record prices at the pumps.The notion that the burden should be shared by all -- with you paying less at the pump and oil companies taking lesser profits that, even so, are still higher than those in other industries -- is something big oil considers to be insultingly crude (only this time they pronounce it without the "e").
IBM rolls out 'green' data centers
While consumers are bemoaning the price of filling up the gas tank, big businesses are experiencing their own energy crisis as the cost of powering data centers rises.Armonk-based IBM Corp., in the second phase of its Project Big Green, is today announcing new services, technologies and financing to help its customers cut their energy costs in the data center.
Poor Harvests May Worsen Global Food Shortages
In a year when global harvests need to be excellent to ease the threat of pervasive food shortages, evidence is mounting that they will be average at best. Some farmers are starting to fear disaster.
Top Gulf exporters cut heavy crude prices to lows
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Kuwait and Iran on Wednesday joined Saudi Arabia in slashing the price of their heavy crude exports to the deepest discounts in at least nine years, seeming to support OPEC's view that the world has enough of its supplies.The 35- to 50-cent mark-downs on the differential for July shipments hardly compensates for the surge in benchmark prices -- U.S. light, sweet crude is up $5 a barrel so far this week alone -- but reflects the poorer profits for simple refiners who are unable to convert heavy Gulf crudes into higher-value fuels.
'Future of oil' in focus in Congress
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Experts projected that demand for energy will continue to grow and called for the use of biofuels and other measures to respond to the nation's energy crisis, at a committee meeting in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday."The heat has slowly been turned up on the American consumer and now they are being boiled alive," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. "The same can be said for our planet. A fundamental change is needed in the way America uses energy."
Retailers May Choose Local Suppliers as Oil Rises, PwC Says
(Bloomberg) -- Global retailers may cut orders from China and India and source more goods locally in developed markets because of increased energy and transportation costs, PricewaterhouseCoopers said.Companies from supermarket owner Tesco Plc to jeans maker Levi Strauss & Co. are forging partnerships with local producers to reduce shipping expenses, ease environmental concerns and improve quality, according to ``Global Sourcing: Shifting Strategies,'' a study by the consulting firm released today.
China's oil imports up by double digits in first 5 months
BEIJING, June 11 (Xinhua) -- China's oil imports posted double-digit growth in the first five months of 2008 as global crude prices more than doubled from a year earlier, the General Administration of Customs said Wednesday.The country imported 75.97 million tons of crude oil, up 12.7 percent from a year earlier, with average prices rising 64.1 percent to 689.9 U.S. dollars per ton.
Norway's May oil output rises to 2.11 mln bpd
OSLO (Reuters) - Norway's oil production rose to a preliminary 2.11 million barrels per day on average in May from 2.03 million in April, Norwegian energy officials said on Wednesday.
Indonesia expects to raise oil production
JAKARTA (Xinhua) -- Indonesia is expected to increase its oil production to more than one million barrel per day in the next three years as some companies will start production by the end of this year, chairman of the upstream oil and gas regulator BP Migas Raden Priyono said here Wednesday.
BP and Russian talks break down
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Talks between oil major BP and its Russian partners over the future of its joint venture TNK-BP broke down on Wednesday, sources close to BP told Reuters."BP rejected the ultimatum," a source said, referring to three demands presented to BP by the Russian shareholders, for a 60 percent reduction in foreign employees, a 50-50 representation on all boards and increased power of attorney for one Russian shareholder, German Khan.
Professor Don Aitkin’s recent promotion (PDF 258KB) of the “sceptical” view of global warming and the ensuing heated debates on several web sites bring to the fore the question of what authority attaches to the published conclusions and judgments of climate scientists.Professor Aitkin, who is not a scientist, is in no doubt himself that the more outspoken climate scientists have a “quasi-religious” attitude. That is the mild end of the spectrum of opinions of sceptics/denialists/contrarians.
Most of the media and many politicians seem to have the view that scientists are just another interest group, and that scientists’ opinions are just opinions, to be heard or discarded like any others. The Australian government seems to credit only the very conservative end of climate scientists’ warnings, because it is acting as though we have many decades in which to adjust, and many years before anything serious needs to be under way.
U.S. Carbon-Dioxide Emissions Exceed China's, BP Data Indicate
(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. released more carbon dioxide into the air from burning fossil fuels than any other country last year, barely keeping its lead over China, whose emissions surged on coal use, estimates based on BP Plc data show.
Deregulate Transportation to Beat 100 MPG
Beat 100 mpg, 5 times current gas mileage standards (CAFÉ, Corporate Average Fuel Economy). Start small; iterate often. Set an objective for innovation and grant rights of way to anyone willing to privately finance and build transport to beat that standard. We know there is vastly better, cleaner and safer transport. Obtaining it requires a free market, allowing risks, innovators and small, non-traditional suppliers. Governments currently plan and regulate against this.
What Congress should do now about gasoline prices
This is a list of basic actions by Congress that would begin to address the devastating impact on U.S. consumers of the unpredictable surges in oil prices. They also would have a positive impact globally in that America accounted for one-quarter of the world's oil demand in 2007.Gasoline rationing and small car loan subsidies are measures intended to bring oil consumption for private transportation under predictable control and to encourage drivers to adopt small private vehicles. Gasoline rationing has been viewed as a last resort, but it is an essential step toward reducing oil consumption in a planned way while giving everyone an equal shot at gasoline regardless of her or his income.
Iraqi oil and peak oil: our true 'flawed intelligence'
Q: So why did Dick Cheney invade Iraq?A: To gain control of Iraqi oil. (Stay with me here: The record is clear.)
Q:Then, why are our troops still in Iraq?
A: Because those stubborn Iraqis won't surrender control of their oil.
Q:So, when the Iraqis surrender control of their oil our troops can come home?
A: Well, actually, no. They will have to stay there to protect the companies that are pumping the oil.
Q: How long will that be?
A: A long time. Depending on whose figures you use, Iraq has the fourth-largest oil reserves in the world. There are also reports of a huge untapped oil field in western Iraq.
'Fuel Prices Will Come Down - One Day'
Volatile, frightening and unpredictable. The price of the world's lubrication is at unbelievable levels.Unbelievable a year ago on what we knew then, and unbelievable now because no-one has a definitive idea of where the price is going or indeed why it's going anywhere.
Recession 'inevitable' while UK economy depends on oil
The UK's economy must break free of its dependence on oil to make a sustainable recovery from the current credit crunch.That is the warning from University of Liverpool expert Simon Snowden, who said the world is heading for a "supply plateau".
It is customary to run into brazenly racist commentary coming out of the U.S. liberals and right-wingers alike, especially when it comes to the question of oil. Besides the occasional surreal headlines about congressional members suing OPEC, it is normal to read headlines urging OPEC member countries to increase production. It is as if we were at a restaurant, trying to get more service. 'Hey waiter! More drinks over here!'The more liberal ones, of course, take it to another level. In the context of 'oil shortages,' when the right wingers assert that more internal exploration/extraction is needed, the inevitable liberal knee-jerk reaction is, 'Of course not! Leave our wildlife alone!'
Shocking bulletin to Western 'environmentalists': 'Oil Producing' countries too have environments.
Kelpie Wilson: Talking peak oil in the heartland
Arriving in Grand Rapids, Michigan for the ambitiously named “International Conference on Peak Oil and Climate Change,” I could see that the airport was undergoing a major expansion. The soaring, optimistic curves of the new Gerald R. Ford International Airport seemed at odds with recent news about sky-high jet fuel prices and crumbling airlines – the new reality that was the subject of the conference.
Spanish gas groups fear reliance on Algeria
The debate on energy security in Europe has previously centred on northern Europe's dependence on Russian gas and overlooked southern Europe's high dependence on Algerian gas. But that is about to change.
Egypt wants more money for gas
A years-old agreement between Egypt to sell natural gas to Israel may take new form, and mainly a more expensive price, after dramatic but secret talks between the two countries. Egypt may be willing to supply more gas to its natural-resource-poor neighbor, possibly at the price of reopening the original agreement.Spurred by opposition anger over Egypt's supply of natural gas to Israel, and mainly its low price, the Egyptian petroleum minister, Sameh Fahmy, vowed to "review prices of natural gas in all agreements without any exception".
China stumbles in forging Russia gas deals
MOSCOW - China is a power behind global commodity flows as well as prices. But Beijing has been slow to understand that it is the horse that pulls the cart; the whip hand belongs to the coachman.Chinese negotiators have already made one colossal mistake in pricing their supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG). They are making a second in trying to draw out of Russia a discount for natural gas. For China to insist on tying Gazprom down to the extraction cost of Siberian gas - at a fraction of the price Gazprom sells its gas to Western Europe - is producing an impasse in current negotiations and slowing down Russia’s readiness to invest in the pipeline systems, on which Chinese calculations depend.
China Orders Coal Companies to Increase Production, Steps in to Keep Prices Stable
BEIJING, June 9 (Xinhua) -- Amid coal shortage in some localities, China's State Administration of Coal Mine Safety on Sunday issued an urgent circular ordering domestic coal companies to increase production on the premise work place safety be ensured.
China Plans More Nuclear Reactors, Uranium Imports
(Bloomberg) -- China, the world's second-biggest energy consumer, plans to add more nuclear-power capacity by 2020, step up uranium imports and explore for the fuel in nations as diverse as Kazakhstan and Niger.
China Using Up Natural Resources Fast, Report Says
GENEVA - China is drawing on natural resources such as farm land, timber and water twice as fast as they can be renewed in its drive for development, a report from Chinese and international environmentalists said on Tuesday.
Capture carbon to avert catastrophic climate change, say world's scientists
The world must have a clear plan to fit power stations with facilities to capture carbon dioxide within a year to prevent "catastrophic" climate change, the world's leading scientific bodies said today.But the warning came as Britain's support for the technology was blasted as "woefully inadequate" by experts.
Eco coal power may cost 'double'
Electricity produced from the next generation of clean coal power stations could be twice as expensive as other coal-fired stations, BBC File On 4 has been told.The government's hopes for early success in defeating global warming by cleaning up coal fired power stations have been challenged by a leading power generator.
An executive at RWE Npower, expected to be a major player in "carbon capture" technology, has spoken of fears about both the cost and the timescale.
Food-related industries launch anti-biofuel campaign
Industry groups representing companies including Kellogg, Tyson Foods and Kroger are coordinating efforts to reduce U.S. biofuels-use requirements with a new "Food Before Fuel" lobbying campaign.The Grocery Manufacturers Association, the American Meat Institute, the National Restaurant Association and other groups say rising corn-based ethanol production is pushing food costs higher. Adding industry muscle to fight a federal requirement to about double ethanol production to 15 billion gallons by 2015 may slow the increase, helping company profits and easing consumer prices, said grocery association chief Cal Dooley.
Japan, US say to cooperate on new 'ice' energy
AOMORI, Japan (AFP) — Japan and the United States on Saturday agreed to cooperate on research into methane hydrate, known as the "ice that burns" which is seen as a promising future energy source.
A New Wind Power Design Good For Rural And Urban Environments
A U.S. company is offering a propeller-free personal windmill that can be set up in city or suburb. The president of Mariah Power, Mike Hess, demonstrates what he calls the "Windspire.""This one generates 25 to 30 percent of the power in your house, but if we are building a three kilowatts version, which is only twice the width, same height, then it generates 100 percent of your power requirements," Hess said.
World oil output falls for first time since 2002
LONDON (Reuters) - World oil production fell by 0.2 percent in 2007, the first decline since 2002, and proven oil reserves were flat, BP Plc said in an annual review released on Wednesday.Production fell by 130,000 barrels per day (bpd) last year to 81.53 million bpd and reserves were essentially flat at 1.24 trillion barrels, London-based BP said in its 2008 Statistical Review of World Energy.
The figures compiled by BP underline the world's challenge of boosting production to meet growing demand. Oil prices have been rising since 2002 and last week hit a record $139.12 a barrel, partly because of supply concerns.
World Faces `Oil Crisis;' IEA Ready to Tap Reserves
(Bloomberg) -- The world faces an ``oil crisis,'' and the International Energy Agency stands ready to release emergency stockpiles even as the biggest consumers discuss measures to contain spiraling demand, the agency's chief said.
BP chairman rejects "apocalyptic" talk of $250 oil
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The chairman of British oil major BP (BP.L) rejected as "apocalyptic" a prediction by the head of Russian gas giant Gazprom of oil prices soaring to $250 a barrel by the end of next year.BP chairman Peter Sutherland told the European Policy Centre on Wednesday there was no problem with available supplies of fossil fuels in the medium term, but there was a need for more investment to develop those resources.
"(I) personally don't believe in some of the more apocalyptic predictions," Sutherland said when asked about Tuesday's forecast by Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller.
"I don't believe we're in for a spike to $250 as suggested in price per barrel."
Oil price crisis threatens to reverse globalisation
With brutal efficiency, the oil price is beginning to duff up a monster of the 20th century: globalisation. Those great tentacles that gripped our world in a hideous embrace are suddenly weakening and the multinational octopus is looking a bit pale and sickly. The extraordinary rise in the price of crude oil is wrecking outsourced business models everywhere and distance from your customer is no longer merely a matter of dull logistics. Whether you are selling coiled steel or cut flowers, the cost of transport is a problem.
Fuel Prices Challenge Cars' Reign
Gasoline prices, which shattered the $4-a-gallon mark on average in the Washington area Friday, ranged as high as $4.39 a gallon for regular yesterday amid signs that cash-strapped Americans are changing vacation plans, consolidating errands, and turning to carpools and mass transit...."The fear here is that we've crossed a Rubicon," said John Townsend, a spokesman for AAA. "Normally, prices plateau after Memorial Day . . . But I don't think we're going to get much relief this summer."
In a society nurtured on cheap gasoline, the high fuel prices are having disparate effects: the end of free pizza deliveries at major franchises, a plunge in the sales of sport-utility vehicles, a steep drop in the price of houses that are far from jobs or mass transit.
Oil and gas should be the preserve of makers of industrial goods such as plastics and fertilisers, with consumers relying for the bulk of their energy needs on more sustainable sources such as wind, water and sunlight, according to the head of one of Europe’s largest energy groups.Technological advances in renewable energy such as wind and solar generation meant the power industry was better equipped to wean itself off oil and gas than many industrial goods makers, said Ignacio Sanchez Galan, executive chairman of Spain’s Iberdrola.
“Can we live in the future without things like fertilisers, plastics and certain types of polymers?” he said in an interview with the Financial Times.
“How is urea going to be produced and most industrial goods going to be produced without oil? We do not currently have alternatives for these products. However, we do have alternatives for energy production.”
Fuel prices: how to save £500 a year (even if it does mean driving at 20mph)
Record prices at the pumps could succeed where 6,000 cameras and millions of pounds in road-saftey advertising have failed for decades – by securing compliance with the speed limit.Driving more slowly will save drivers up to £500 a year in fuel costs, according to a study, which reveals that the most efficient speed is much lower than most people think.
Car manufacturers suggest that the optimum speed for fuel efficiency is between 50mph and 60mph and a recent survey found that two thirds of drivers believe this to be the case. But the study, commissioned by What Car? magazine and based on five cars of different sizes ranging from a 1 litre Toyota Aygo to a 2.2 litre Land Rover Freelander, found that the most efficient speed was below 40mph for all five and as low as 20mph for two.
UK Energy Minister to ask Saudi Arabia for oil market rethink
Malcolm Wicks, the Energy Minister, is to meet the Saudi Oil Minister this week to discuss global concerns over the soaring price of oil, which hit nearly $140 a barrel on Friday.
UK: Petrol is bound to run out in strike
PETROL stations will run dry over the weekend causing havoc for motorists if a tanker drivers’ strike goes ahead.About 1,000 Shell garages – one in 10 of all filling stations – will be hit by the four-day walkout due to start on Friday.
UK: Petrol sales fall 20% as drivers feel the pinch
Petrol retailers have disclosed that fuel sales dropped sharply over the past few weeks and the latest figures appear to show that demand for petrol in Britain has slumped by as much as 20 per cent over the past 12 months.
Energy surge prompts move to 4-day work week in US
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Skyrocketing energy costs have fueled fresh interest in the four-day workweek across the United States as a means to help workers as well as employers cope with the surge.
Supply of hybrids runs out of gas as demand soars
Even as car buyers stampede for vehicles with better fuel mileage, there are fewer hybrids, the gas-stingiest, to go around.While sales of conventional small cars soared last month, sales of the most popular gas-electric hybrids were flat or down because dealers had fewer left. There was plenty of demand, but hybrid assembly plants are running as fast as they can, and some are short of components, particularly batteries.
The global economy will have to adjust – and it will
Economies always adjust. The world is far less reliant on oil than it was in the 1970s. The high price will – again – call forth those traditional economic responses, substitution and increased supply.Even the much-rumoured oil in the Falkland Islands might be recovered at these prices. The world's car makers will, as ever, offer more fuel-efficient vehicles. Small things – energy saving light bulbs, double glazing, more efficient appliances – will help, as will the more ambitious technologies: the hydrogen fuel cell, renewable energy supplies, second, third and fourth-generation biofuels (which will be sustainable).
All the signs are coming clear and worse, peak oil is near
Suddenly it has hit home. The big news is oil. I went back to see when I first mentioned the phrase PEAK OIL, and discovered that it was way back in 2003: five years ago. So the event should not be a surprise, yet, it hurts, and will keep on hurting from here to eternity.
Senate GOP blocks windfall taxes on Big Oil
WASHINGTON - Saved by Senate Republicans, big oil companies dodged an attempt Tuesday to slap them with a windfall profits tax and take away billions of dollars in tax breaks in response to the record gasoline prices that have the nation fuming.GOP senators shoved aside the Democratic proposal, arguing that punishing Big Oil won't do a thing to lower the $4-a-gallon-price of gasoline that is sending economic waves across the country. High prices at the pump are threatening everything from summer vacations to Meals on Wheels deliveries to the elderly.
These steps could lower oil prices, but nobody'll take them
WASHINGTON — As gasoline prices soar to new records, America's president — and the two men who hope to succeed him — are offering only partial or long-term solutions and ignoring three steps that many experts say could bring some relief now.
Government steps up review of oil, commods price surge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators stepped up their efforts on Tuesday to determine why prices for oil and a range of other commodities have surged dramatically this year.The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced that an interagency panel, including the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and others, will assess price increases and trading in a range of commodities.
"High commodity prices are posing a significant strain on U.S. households," the CFTC said.
Retail gasoline demand down vs year ago: MasterCard
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. retail gasoline demand slipped 3.8 percent from last year's levels, as gasoline prices posted yet another record high last week, MasterCard Advisors said Tuesday.Year-to-date, American gasoline consumption is down 1.9 percent from last year's levels, according to MasterCard's weekly Spendingpulse report.
Scientists blame drilling for mud flow
JAKARTA, Indonesia - International scientists said Tuesday they are almost certain a mud volcano that has displaced tens of thousands of villagers in central Indonesia was caused by faulty drilling of a gas exploration well — not an earthquake as claimed by the company...."We are more certain than ever that the Lusi mud volcano is an unnatural disaster and was triggered by drilling the Banjar-Panji-1 well," Richard Davies, a geologist at Durham University in Britain, said Tuesday.
Hurt by rain, U.S. corn crop to fall short of demand
WASHINGTON — Torrential rains and flooding in the Midwest could soon mean consumers face even higher prices for meat, eggs, dairy and other foods.The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Tuesday slashed its estimate for the volume of this year's corn crop because of wet and flooded fields, prompting corn prices to surge to new records on Chicago futures exchanges. Contracts for July delivery hit $6.73 a bushel, with prices for later months soaring above $7.25 per bushel, more than double 2006 levels.
Bush: Global climate pact possible on my watch
BRDO PRI KRANJU, Slovenia (AFP) - US President George W. Bush said Tuesday that a global climate change deal was possible before he leaves office in January 2009."I think we can actually get an agreement on global climate change during my presidency," Bush said at his final summit with leaders of the European Union, which is at odds with the US approach.
Atlas shows effects of climate change on Africa
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - The United Nations environment agency unveiled a new atlas Tuesday that shows what the agency says are the dramatic effects of climate change on Africa.The nearly 400-page publication features over 300 satellite images taken in every African country. The before and after photographs, some of which span a 35-year period, appear to show striking environmental changes across the continent.
Study: Arctic warming rate could triple
Rapid Arctic sea ice loss could triple the rate of warming over northern Alaska, Canada and Russia and trigger permafrost thawing that unleashes extremely potent greenhouse gases, according to a new study."Our study suggests that, if sea ice continues to contract rapidly over the next several years, Arctic land warming and permafrost thaw are likely to accelerate," lead author David Lawrence of the National Center for Atmospheric Research said in a statement.
Is that an upward spiral or a downward spiral?
Pea Coil, in a downward spiral.
Classic.
Right up there with "visualize whirled peas", uh?
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Pea stalks
sf
Ha...are we, here at TOD, not the most cleverest bunch of coconuts? Nice pic.
That's good, but where's the cat??
A question to TOD : why does the graph showing the oil price on the TOD page, always have a straight line from the current price, to the end of the day. Somewhat confusing. Until about a month ago, there was no such line, and the price-plot just stopped at the current time.
Not of earth-shattering importance, but it's kinda weird.
It's a portent. Think of a flat line on a heart monitor.
the line is not flat- it indicates the deviation from the opening price- steeper slope is a quick gauge of a large deviation.
It's a Yahoo bug as it's their graph. Only started doing that a month or so ago. Someone at Yahoo will notice eventually and fix it - probably.
It's a long standing technical problem at Yahoo! or their data supplier. This email is from them to me in October last year after we'd been back and forth and I sent them screenshots etc:
Ri-ight. So I'm supposed to talk to Yahoo's data supplier to sort out an issue between them and Yahoo! I decided to give up.
It's a problem with Yahoo in my book no matter what they say. They plot data for a a part of the day which has not occurred yet. It certainly hasn't done it continually for me since last October. Wonder if there's any timezone dependency.
Interesting about the time zone thing - but I see the same from NZ and UK (can't state October for both).
Correction: just been looking at what I sent them previously.
In the UK, the first quarter of each on the 5-day graph is actually supposed to be in the first quarter of the following day; whereas in NZ, the first quarter is just empty. And then random vertical lines try and connect everything back up as though it makes sense.
The bug appears to be a wrap around problem, so that data from the first 15 mins or so of each day is assigned to the end of the day. Could be related to the way delayed data is recorded.
It's a very lame bug and a pathetic excuse from Yahoo, IMHO.
"Never underestimate the power of denial" ---from the movie "American Beauty" (1999)
British, French, Spanish, Portuguese lorry drivers all demand relief from high diesel prices.
Barrack Obama demands a windfall tax on oil companies. John McCain proposes a summer driving tax holiday.
In India and Pakistan, the public demands the prices for petrol and cooking gas be rolled back.
On BBC World, politicians blame OPEC and speculators for high oil prices.
NOBODY DARES ADMIT THE TRUTH: WE ARE, AND HENCEFORTH, WILL ALWAYS BE, SHORT OF OIL & GAS...THE PARTY IS OVER FOREVER. PERIOD.
Everywhere, people are in denial. They pretend that fossil fuel shortages are contrived and conspired by wealthy opportunists. What happens when the truth can no longer be denied ????
What happens when the truth can no longer be denied ????
Then, it is too late.
I think the truth can probably be denied a lot longer than you'd expect.
I've been thinking about this lately, because the news these days...well, it reeks of peak oil. Fuel protests in Asia and Europe, production falling despite record high prices, energy agencies admitting that future production has a tendency to be overestimated, fertilizer shortages, even talk of rationing by usually free-market-type publications.
I've been a member of PeakOil.com since 2004, and was reading it before I became a member. It's been partly amusing, partly horrifying, to watch the cornucopians and peak oil deniers drawing a line in the sand, seeing it washed away by real world events, backing up and drawing another in the sand, etc. Rinse and repeat. For the most part, they are still unwilling to admit they might be wrong.
So...I ain't holding my breath, waiting for that moment when the truth can no longer be denied.
Thanks for that leanan. I was going to ask you about your unique perspective re the news you post.
You have to admit tho that things are accelerating awfully fast, no?
Yes. Terrifyingly so.
And yet...here in the US, we are surprisingly unaffected. Yes, people complain about gas and food prices, but so far, they're still spending. Still going on vacations, still renovating their homes, still driving five hours every other weekend to see the grandkids. My best friend is on an Alaska cruise now. My parents just got back from a vacation that took them to several southwestern states. My sister's new house has depreciated rather more quickly than she expected (even though I warned her), but she's not in the least worried.
One striking thing (pun not intended) is that Europe seems harder hit than we are. Fisherman and truckers are striking over fuel prices, and it's affecting ordinary people. Here, labor was eviscerated long ago, so our fishermen and truckers have little recourse. No protests for us. We have that goofy guy praying for lower gas prices, but it's just an "odd news" story. People are hurting (trying Googling meals on wheels and gas prices), but they're largely invisible. The impression people get is that Americans are far less affected by the oil price spike than are Europeans, and I'm not sure that's accurate.
I guess it depends on what you are looking at. I live in Germany and to be honest, talking to the general public here, no one seems to be particularly worried. Of course there are the general moans that the price of petrol is high.
I eat every work day at a local restaurant for lunch. There have not been any price rises so far this year on the menu. The number of people wanting to do a Tandem Skydive at my Skydiving club has doubled so far this year. When money is tight the number usually goes down.
Maybe I am just not looking hard enough to see what is going on, but I would say most Germans are not yet experiencing to much discomfort.
I am sure the problems will come, but they are not there just yet.
There's a chart in today's Peak Oil Newsshowing gasoline prices for a select group of countries worldwide as of Maay 30,(I'd post it, but haven't figured out how to do that) which places Germany and Turkey at the top, $11.49/gal, followed by France, $9.66, and Britain, $8.31.
If "most Germans are not yet experiencing to much discomfort" at $11.49/gal, then something unnatural must be happening there in comparison to the rest of Europe.
What's unnatural is that up to the most recent economic numbers, Germany's economy is hot despite its high wages. And Germans didn't get way into personal debt like Americans and Britons, so they're not getting squeezed on both ends. However, German banks gave in to greed and invested in American mortgage garbage, and German exports will run out of solvent buyers soon, so all this could change rapidly.
That is so true, credits cards only started to be widely used in Resturants and shops within the last 10 years and it was only a couple of years ago that I saw the first super market accepting credit cards.
Cars were and still are often paid for in cash. Mortgages tend to be paid off as quickly as possible. There again most people rent in Germany.
Of course when we can no longer sell the Porsche's and Merc's, then we are screwed.
I guess I would be surprised if industrial machinery were not a much bigger euro volume of German exports than autos?
Siemens electric drive systems should still be in high demand.
It will take supply shortages before the reality of PO hits home - both in the US and in Europe.
It's a cultural issue. Most Americans do not believe they are entitled to a secure economic position. Things will have to get much worse before outright blockages and the like. Frankly, I lean towards the American attitude.
Most Americans do not believe they are entitled to a secure economic position.
Prove this claim.
Because LevinK's post here
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4136#comment-359800
shows that your position is needing defending.
Dude, compare the frequency of large scale strikes in Europe and in America.
More importantly, observe that in Europe the fishermen and the truckers are expressly demanding fuel subsidies, which you will never see happen in America.
This is your 'well researched' response?
Stikes?
Having tried to educate various members of TOD over the years, I know better than trying to educate someone who believes 'Dude' is a good start to showing how right their view is and follows up with no numbers.
Strikes and workers unions have a long history. In the US of A the powers of unions to strike were weakened by Ronald Reagan.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE2DA153FF93BA15752C0A...
And the US of A has low union membership
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C03E7D61230F937A35752C1A...
Now *YOU* can believe your strike thinking - but for the rest of you - stikes in the US of A don't happen often because the protection laws are weakly enforced. Air America used to have a show called 'working it' and they'd talk about the weak state of the Union. If you wish to dig into the matter of unions - contact the local AFL-CIO for info.
Now - back to "Most Americans do not believe they are entitled to a secure economic position." being a bogus claim:
"The American Way of life is non-negotiable" (Hrmmm isn't that a stated policy?)
How about this position? From: http://democrats.senate.gov/agenda/
Now - care to ACTUALLY defend Most Americans do not believe they are entitled to a secure economic position.?
I gave you one particular example: while Americans will defend implicit subsidies, few, if any of the truckers who did demonstrate last month would ask for government fuel subsidies. The remedies they were asking for did not include that, because that does not fit the American worldview.
So now you go with a 'topic change'?
You said:
I've went so far as to quote from the Democratic party that they are going to, in the 110th congress work to provide economic security. I used a quote from the serving VP of the US of A. Now, I can't changed a closed mind, but I'm sure others have found your argument refuted.
I asked you to defend
. You have not.
Your problems with reading comprehension are not my problem. Have a nice day, sir.
And your in-ability to provide quotes from 'a majority' supporting your position is noted.
VS showing members of 'the leadership' class expressing that the US of A 'deserves' a 'secure economy'.
Do feel free to come back when you have data VS handwaving.
And when you come back, I'll post data on the common claims that 'if you work hard you can enhance your economic position', thus showing a change in position.
I interject a little sideways thinking into this argument. I think that Americans don't believe that they, personally, are entitled to economic security. They just believe that if you make the 'correct' choices you should be successful in life.
If making the 'correct' choices does not make you successful in life, then it is the establishment's fault. And the establishment should be changed.
I expect radical change in the US very soon. Peacefully, because the people of the US are very heavily armed and it is unlikely that the establishment would dare to stop the election of Obama, or someone even more radical if Obama should be assassinated. But change.
Do you really believe that?
Obama would not have gotten as far as he has if the establishment were not behind him.
The anecdotal evidence supports you:
- Iraq stance not robust.
- BAU with a twist on health care.
- Pissing in the wind on energy.
Cheers
Yup. "Loud" members of the establishment have made their choice. For 'change' to happen, you'd have to be rid of various laws and change things like the tax code and perhaps even the money system.
If Mr. O made 'really big changes' - the common response of the people who think elites run things is that Mr. O would end up dead.
If there is a big game that abuses you, the only way to 'win' the game is to not play. Good luck on not playing.
How does this statement help your argument?
It states that by investing in American ingenuity and innovation, America can help secure its economic future. Where does entitlement fit into this vision? Ingenuity and innovation require ideas, thought, creativity, and work. Entitlement requires nothing.
P.S. I am an American an I do not believe that I am entitled to a secure economic position.
Where does entitlement fit into this vision?
And where was 'entitlement' claimed in the original argument?
P.S. I am an American an I do not believe that I am entitled to a secure economic position.
And this position is reflected HOW in published policy? I don't believe "I am entitled" either. But I'm posting on TOD. And that puts me in a minority right off the top. So unless you want to argue that 'you are in the majority' in the US of A, your PS supports the minority POV
And where was 'entitlement' claimed in the original argument?
I was under the impression that Congress' new vision was your rebuttal to Apuleius' "Most Americans do not believe they are entitled to a secure economic position".
In what way do these statements:
"I've went so far as to quote from the Democratic party that they are going to, in the 110th congress work to provide economic security."
"prove" or indicate that Americans believe they are entitled to a secure economic position?
And where was 'entitlement' claimed in the original argument?
I was under the impression that Congress' new vision was your rebuttal to Apuleius' "Most Americans do not believe they are entitled to a secure economic position".
I was under the impression I asked 'where was 'entitlement' claimed in the original argument?' not 'restate the discredited claim of Apuleius' as a question.
But hey, just keep not answering direct questions. No skin of my teeth.
"prove" or indicate that Americans believe they are entitled to a secure economic position?
Interesting that you've opted to leave out 'the majority' portion.
Other links claiming to want 'economic security'
http://www.nesara.us/pages/home.html
http://www.catholiccharitiesusa.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=664&srcid...
Daniel Hill, Director Strategic Industries and Economic Security
http://www.bis.doc.gov/defenseindustrialbaseprograms/osies/default.htm
(A director position for 'economic security'.)
http://www.kidsfutureusa.org/about.html
(A not for profit claiming they want economic security VS some handwaving billshit about strikes and singlecarrier's waek rebuttal)
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:av6CE-VCy-8J:www.ice.gov/doclib/pi/...
(more of my public attempts at removing the ignorance of those who claim the US of A citizens as a whole have no interest in economic security. )
So far I've provided plenty of supporting data to refute the claim
Do feel free to actually post supporting data VS handwaving at any time.
You are not entirely correct. Remember the fuel protests of small trucking companies a while back? This was in liberal, free-market US.
It is logical that truckers and farmers would be the first to be hit. They both operate on very small margins and rising energy costs can virtually wipe out many of them, especially the smallest. Here is another difference - in US trucking and farming industries are dominated by huge corporations. Huge corporations do not organize protests, they buy themselves politicians. They can also afford to take the hit for much longer than the smaller guys.
No.
Google "Truckers protest the high cost of diesel". A few links:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23903144/
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/04/02/truckers_protest_h...
Those aren't small trucking companies. They are independents. Basically, guys who have to keep working to pay the mortgage on their trucks, even if they're losing money at it.
And it wasn't a very successful protest. I know I never saw any sign of any protest, nor heard from anyone who did. One trucker explained that the cost of fuel was too high to waste any going to a protest.
OK, sorry for not recognizing the difference.
The point remains though - individual and small truckers are the hardest to be hit. US lacks the culture of public protests, so I guess it will take time before it goes up the foodchain. I don't expect Delta or LongHaul's stuff to hit the streets if they are about to go belly up, but there will be some heavy lobbying for bailouts. In the long term even this won't work and we can very well see the "European disease" coming to the New World.
It's not that we lack the culture of protests. There's a long tradition of them.
It's that they are no longer effective. Workers have become disposable.
Right now, we have more truckers than we have demand for truckers. I expect demand will fall as fast as truckers are wiped out, so there may never be a labor crunch.
The American system to control workers is probably the best one ever thought of - lure the people to get into debt up to their necks and import/outsource to low cost labor. Then they tell you that you can protest all you want, but then how many are those that can survive without income? The beauty of it is that according to the free market ideology, it's all your own fault that you are in trouble.
However once huge corporations start dropping out, and unemployment rises anyway things will change. You can fear nothing if you have nothing left to lose... who said that?
I suspect the protests, when they happen, will be more like what you are seeing Asia now than what you are seeing in Europe. Rather than labor-based, they will be consumer-based. People who can't afford to buy food and fuel, not people linked by a common profession.
Might be quite awhile before we reach that point, though.
Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster wrote it and Janis Joplin made it famous signing Me and Bobby McGee.
And trucker protests did take place and were blacked out by the propaganda system, although various alt-media covered them.
Also Mr. Dylan, in Like a Rollin' Stone:
'When you got nothin, you got nothin' to lose'.
Not surprisingly, Americans have been very aware of this for quite a while.
I do believe Paulo Friere might have a thought or two on that...
http://www.amazon.com/Pedagogy-Oppressed-Paulo-Freire/dp/0826412769
Dont worry,
the world is getting larger and rounder again...
As spotted up top, the flat earth economy is curling at the edges:
>>Oil price crisis threatens to reverse globalisation Carl Mortished: World Business Briefing
With brutal efficiency, the oil price is beginning to duff up a monster of the 20th century: globalisation. Those great tentacles that gripped our world in a hideous embrace are suddenly weakening and the multinational octopus is looking a bit pale and sickly. The extraordinary rise in the price of crude oil is wrecking outsourced business models everywhere and distance from your customer is no longer merely a matter of dull logistics. Whether you are selling coiled steel or cut flowers, the cost of transport is a problem.
America's steel industry is enjoying an unexpected revival, its competitive edge sharpened by the tariff wall erected by the cost of shipping heavy, low added-value products across the Pacific. We hear fewer complaints from Americans about Asian steel-dumping; instead, it is Asian exporters who are feeling the pinch and the pressure is from inputs as well as shipping to customers<<
I've got a copy of The World is Flat that I guess is going to be outdated before I read it. Oh well, gives me something to read by the glow of the burning shopping mall. ;)
Although I could update to the 2006 edition. That's sure to be more robust. ;)
According to US department of transportation data there are 7 million trucks in the US consuming 3 mbpd - they estimate there are a large number of trucks aged 40-50 years old, and that replacement of 50% of the fleet would take 15-20 years. This would indicate that the US truck fleet is not entirely owned by large corporations, with modern fleets
But they only pay 4 dollars not 9 dollars for their transportation fuel, and possibly are not feeling the same pressure as UK private contractor truck companies
FYI the 130 million autos consumer approx the same as the 80 m SUV (4-5 mbpd) WHILST THE 8500 commercial airlines use 1.1mbpd of jetfuel. Of course the problem with jet fuel demand is that a barrel of crude is not a barrel of jet fuel (in california its only 12% of the barrel). So one may wonder at the impact of US activation of the Military Industrial Complex, and a military force comprising 4000+ aircraft just in the navy (I think its 16000 in the combined armed forces)...
people in Europe can protest because by doing so they don't sacrifice jobs and the whole house of cards they built up in their life to that point.
If you miss a day of work here to attend a protest, you will be looking for a new job the following day.
"accelerating awfully fast"
I have to wonder if it is really that events are preceding apace or if it is simply your (mine, anyone's) awareness of events that have changed. I was first introduced to the whole set of environmental/resource/growth issues in the mid seventies. The "Limits to Growth" had been published, Paul Erlich had a best sellers called "The Population Bomb" and "The End of Affluence." And then during the late seventies their were a slew of books from all over the political spectrum.
Most people back then believed that the real troubles would start to emerge in 90's. Well, we got a bit of a reprieve in that we dramatically reduced our oil consumption growth (and economic growth) for more than a decade. But now many of the shortages that were projected are now coming to be (ten years behind schedule?).
Makes we wonder if some future historian writing about our current era will argue that the period from 1981 - 2002 was the first "stair step" down from the height of the growth based economy. Consider that the first "oil shock" just happened to coincide with US peak oil production. Consider, too, that present wages are still below (inflation adjusted) their 1973 peaks. (The U.S. has managed increased household income by reintroducing the multi-income household model.)
As a historian, I would write that during that time period we really put a lot of effort into burning the candle at both ends even faster than before thanks to Alaska, North Sea, and offshore GOM and Nova Scotia oil combined with the rise of Neoliberal Imperialist Ideology. The candle is now almost burnt out, and we haven't built a new one of sufficient size to continue as before because the construction material doesn't exist.
I think it's more like skipping a stone off a lake. You only get two bounces, and then you sink like a stone should.
Thanks for pointing out how we've used multiple household incomes to cover up wage declines. I wish more people would recognize this. Forcing the wives and children back into the workforce (though many women wanted careers) was a non-renewable resource for Big Business to depress labor markets while making GNP rise. Apparently we've used it up.
From Econbrowser - "The Oil Shock of 2008."
Looks to me like things really are moving quickly.
Bush to Iran: 'All options' are open over nukes - Europe- msnbc.com President George W. Bush threatened Iran on Wednesday with more sanctions if it fails to stop enriching uranium and said all options were on the table to ... www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25091410/ - 1 hour ago - Similar pages - Note this
Interview of the President by Israeli Television Channel 1 Aug 12, 2005 ... THE PRESIDENT: Well, all options are on the table. ... Saddam Hussein -- you know, we made the decision on a lot of factors. ... www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/08/20050812-2.html - 30k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this
President Bush: "This is a Defining Moment for the U.N. Security ... Saddam Hussein has not disarmed. Colin Powell made that case very clear. ... THE PRESIDENT: All options are on the table, but I believe we can solve this ... www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/02/20030207-3.html
"Chris Hedges
The failure by Barack Obama to chart another course in the Middle East, to defy the Israel lobby and to denounce the Bush administration’s inexorable march toward a conflict with Iran is a failure to challenge the collective insanity that has gripped the political leadership in the United States and Israel."
"All options" is code for attack soon.
The US must shoot down any Israeli jet crossing it's airspace.
The US attacks Iran and your car becomes worthless. Well, almost.
You can still live in it. ;}
Don't get me started on the greatest circle-j3rk of brown-nosed @$$-clowns in the 3,000 ring circus called Washington DC. The French were too merciful in their use of the guilletine, it's much too fast and painless. (I'm sure there's some historical bit I'm missing where that's just the stereotype and they were drawn & quartered or some such business... Roll with it, people.)
Obama has come out against alleged US demands for a security treaty with Iraq - which include control of Iraqi airspace. Whether intentionally or not, if he gets what he wants, the Baghdad regime regains control of Israel's route to attacking its patron Iran. How about we all start sending letters to our congressmen to keep pushing on this issue so that Bush can't get that scrap of paper?
Here's more info on that developing situation from McClatchy News:
***
On Capitol Hill, top Democrats and Republicans complain that Bush is rushing the negotiations to try to tie his successor's hands.
Six senators, including the chairmen of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees and their ranking minority members have written Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the past week asking for transparency in the negotiations and more briefings. White House, State Department and Pentagon officials briefed lawmakers and staff members on the talks Tuesday.
"There's a tremendous amount of concern up here about the state of these negotiations. ... It's been expressed repeatedly," said a senior congressional staffer, who requested anonymity. He noted that their appeared to be growing talk in Iraq of simply extending the U.N. mandate.
A spokesman for Obama (D-Ill) said any long-term U.S. security commitment to Iraq must be subject to Congressional approval; alternatively the administration should seek an extension of the current UN mandate. Obama wants a new administration to make it "absolutely clear that the United States will not maintain permanent bases in Iraq," said spokesman Bill Burton.
***
Not much but it's a start if we make news out of it.
all i have to say is that he is purposefully setting up negotiations to fail. If you set up the prerequisite of the talks you want as the actual goal then of course Iran won't agree to them. It's like telling a person who is holding hostages that you will talk to them if they first release the hostages.
It seems to me that the underlying reason for denial by both the general public and TPTB is that to admit that peak energy is here or nearly here also requires acceptance that current societal and economic paradigms are dead.
It means that standards of living are going to change in what is considered to be a negative direction. It means that up-coming generations will not live at the same "scale" as older generations. It means that economic growth as a source of "wealth" is dead. And, given the current emphasis upon "sustainable growth" it seems clear that a goodly number of economists are shaking in their boots.
I rather doubt that there will ever be an official admission that energy is the problem.
Todd
Very good observation, Todd. I have family members who are in exactly that boat, refusing to recognize the severity of the moment. Most interesting is my father-in-law who for years lectured me about the finiteness of oil but now, in his twilight years, does not want to face that maybe that moment has come while he is still alive.
I've seen the contrary,
Family members whose reaction used to be 'Don't be silly, there's plenty off oil' are now seeing the sense of public transport among other things.
David
I agree. However, at least in my case, the family members that were denying we had a problem are insisting that moving to more public transportation, etc. will save the day. They still refuse to look at the whole picture. Our civilization is built on cheap energy. When it goes away, there's a damn good chance that civilization goes away too. It might take a awhile, but most falls do.
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/
I think most of those who are deliberately avoiding this issue now are the ones Orlov cites.
But I wonder if our preparations are just smug imaginings.
Many years ago I was camping alone in the Kingston Plains of Michigan's Upper Peninsula when I was blasted from sleep by an earthshaking explosion that seemed to fill the world.
"It's over" I thought, "the bastards have dropped the bomb and this is the end of the world."
And I was seized by horror and an instant depression that made my mind wobble.
It wasn't until my hearing returned that I could hear the roar of the receding, low-flying military jet that broke the sound barrier, apparently right over my tent.
Despite the realization that it was just a jet flying low and fast, I could not shake that utter feeling of hopelessness that had descended upon me.
One may have the fully stocked lifeboat, guns, PV and such but how do you prepare for the mental impact of collapse?
IMO there will be much scarring and not all of it visible.
People. Community.
Though I'm having a damned hard time marshalling people and creating a community.
Cheers
There was another good discussion on the BBC yesterday as posted by DaveMart last night. I've uploaded a link (for those outisde the UK) to the show in Real Media format. This time the discussion was broadcast worldwide and not just in Scotland. Here's the info for those who missed it in last night drumbeat.
Hardtalk: Energy Crisis (Download Link)
It's in RealMedia format so you'll need RealPlayer (or anything else capable of playing the format such as mplayer, realalternative, total media player etc). It's also low bandwidth and just a 6mb download for a 25min program.
Hardtalk: Energy Crisis
Bingaman is my congressman. From the clip, it appears he either doesn't have a clue, or is not wanting to come straight out and tell the truth for fear he'll be punished in some way. I'm going to write him an email.
Here's a better iPlayer link for UK use only. A much higher bandwidth version. It's also available on iPlayer on Virgin cable so you can watch it on tv for the next 5 days.
Leanan. Rather alarmingly as you have commented previously the denial comes not only from the uneducated or uninformed, it comes from intelligent people and those with agendas.
I read constantly on TOD about how we can engineer to mitigate, ameliorate and even continue BAU. Build railways, 2 billion electric cars, spend trillions on windmills and so on. The plea is to consume the non renewables now so we at least, can continue to live in the style we are accustomed.
It was engineers and engineering practices which led the world to the predicament we now find ourselves, to think and expect that we can engineer our way out of this mess is tantamount to denial with elements of magical thinking.
Engineers will be the first to protest and deny what I have just said. It will simply be rationalized away.
The only thing I'll deny is the last part. I am an engineer, and I don't think we'll engineer our way out of this.
As an engineer, I don't think we can continue BAU. Perhaps we can mitigate the transition to crashing gracefully, as opposed to abruptly and catastrophically. Engineering may give technological tools to facilitate this transition, but the formulation of policy and governance that can actually use these tools wisely is not merely an engineering problem (perhaps a systems and social engineering problem though).
We need to consume nonrenewables to make the infrastructure to harvest renewables (aka wind), otherwise we will certainly crash and burn globally. Is this guaranteed to work? No, but what are the other options?
Thinking logically (as engineers are trained to do), it is quite easy to engineer a way out of this mess. Birth control, real practical education, and a commitment to replace our consumer driven economy with one that is centered on innovation, renewable energy and self-development, and we could easily pass through this crisis.
It is politics, ignorance, religion and greed that is going to do us in, not engineers.
You see, engineers act like such responses from our monkey brains are somehow an aberration but the reality is that those exact responses are the norm. Logical thinking is the aberration.
And also, when applied to 'social engineering' - quite an illogical approach in-and-of-itself. It requires a logical-premise that people/society will accept the solution that logical thinking imposes as required. Faulty assumption which hides circular logic.
Is it possible to engineer a workable solution which accounts for the 'stresses' and 'material properties' of "politics, ignorance, religion and greed"?
Much of "New Urbanism" is to create a physical environment that can promote positive social changes (vs. alternatives such as Suburbia).
The physical form can, and does, impact society in myriad ways.
IMHO, the New Urbanists are not as good as the "Old Urbanists" that designed large sections of New Orleans for example. But they are trying.
I see this type of engineering as preparing fertile ground for a better society. It does not guarantee the result, but it allows a better result to come into existence.
And that is my overall attitude, not to compel or control behavior, but to allow better options to develop.
Best Hopes for Better Options,
Alan
Maybe what we need is for a bio-chemical engineer at Merck or some such to invent a "logical thinking" vaccine that could be slipped into the world's drinking water supplies. Or at least into the water coolers in the congress and senate.
the image of a person continually pressing the power button on their tv when there is no power and no reason given for it comes to mind.
Not true anymore - BP admits that volume declined in 2007!
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20602099&sid=aiSucgXE2muM&refer=e...
Since 2006 was the previous high that must mean a peak - whether it is the final peak or not.
This admission is in direct contradiction to what the BP Special Economic Advisor Peter Davies told a UK House of Parliament Peak Oil Commitee meeting on the 18th of January 2008!!!
- what chance do you think that he will return to Parliament to appologise?
http://www.appgopo.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21
The rapidly rising price shows that the 2007 peak is clearly due to lack of supply.
While there are some seriously uncomfortable numbers staring us in the face, BP seems to be continuing to accentuate the positive. For example, they conclude their "2007 in review" oil summary with the following:
"International trade in crude oil and refined products rose despite OPEC production cuts and rising domestic consumption in oil-exporting countries. Much of this growth was in refined products, a reflection of imbalances and constraints in the world’s refining system."
http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9023758&contentId=...
But unless I am mistaken, according to the analysis done here net exports declined last year...
Maybe someone who's more familiar with BP's review than I can tell me what's going on. Are they using the dollar value of international trade, as opposed to the volume of trade? In other words, are they using the rising price of oil to obscure the fact that oil exports fell?
It's also noteworthy how assumptions/opinions are built into the language that they use - no doubt I am guilty of this too. But since we are parsing BP's influential report and not my marginal views, here goes. BP talks about "OPEC production cuts." But there is a powerful assumption/opinion built into that phrase. A cut is a voluntary action. And yet how do they truly know that those "cuts" were not imposed by geological constraints? In other words, they are taking OPEC at their word and in the process sending a subtle but powerful message against peak oil.
What comes after denial? Anger, people on the streets raging for their fix. Then bargaining : Just keep the price down and let me fill up one more time.
After that depression sinks in, and finally, for those who get that far, comes acceptance.
It'll be a long road.
David
That spurs a question in me. What do you all think the form of the "Bargaining" will take?
"If we drill in ANWR, will the oil last forever?"
"If I ride a bike to work, will the price of gas go down?"
"If we ask real nice, will the Saudi's pump more?"
"If we stop fixing the roads, can we suspend the gas tax?"
"If we round up all the Mexicans, will we save enough gas to make up for the fact that the Mexicans do all the road-fixing?"
"If we accuse each other of being terrorists until almost everyone has been put in a concentration camp, will I still be free to drive around in a Mustang like the Omega Man on the shattered and useless roads?"
It's gonna be that stupid.
It's the goddam boomers, I tellya. String 'em up!
(I am both a boomer and an environmentalist - see you in the camps!)
Peak Oil, the even less convenient truth
Damn, and I was only supporting this system for the conveniences.
High-speed train to victory?
Swing states need green manufacturing
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/6/9/203322/2001
The first comment...
Drake's proposal
See also the proposal by Alan Drake, What is Required to Displace Heavy Trucks (and Some Air Freight) in the USA? Drake proposes an incremental upgrade strategy that maximizes cost effectiveness, speed, reliability and practicality. He describes the proposal:
Commuter Rail Electrification FAQ
http://sonic.net/~mly/Caltrain-Electrification/electrification-qa.html
Please note that I have claimed a generic 15% improvement in average trip times by electrification.
Also the dispute between Caltrain (commuter rail) and BART (Rapid Rail i.e. subway) is noted (from a one sided POV). BART wants to extend down the East Side of SF Bay to San Jose, Caltrain wants to electrify existing service on the West Side of the SF Bay.
Best Hopes for Urban Rail,
Alan
Those are only competing projects to the extent that they both compete for money. The point of BART to San Jose is to allow East Bay workers to commute to San Jose. The point of Caltrain electrification is to boost Caltrain ridership on the peninsula which serves both San Francisco and San Jose. Electrifying Caltrain, especially as Caltrain plans with lightweight non-FRA compliant equipment and operating rules is the better project because it should only cost $500 million vs. the $4 billion for BART to San Jose. However, I would argue that there is more need for improved transit between the East Bay and San Jose than there is on the peninsula. I would like to see and expansion of commuter rail along the Alviso line (which is a more direct route than either BART or the so-called Caltrain East proposals that Bay Area rail advocates want). However, the real problem with commuter rail in the U.S. is that American operators are required to use heavy, dangerous, slow and costly to operate equipment because of the FRA's stupid 800,000 lb buffing strength requirement which results in equipment that is both much more expensive and more dangerous than that used in Europe where trains are typically required to be around half as stiff but to incorporate energy management techniques (this comparison is similar to comparing a 1960's, tank-like automobile to a modern one. The modern car is lighter and safer because it relies on crumple zones to absorb the energy of a crash).
On the EU vs FRA safety standards debate, I find knowledgeable advocates on both sides (Most, including FRA, generally agree that if one is not operating with freight trains, FRA equipment is not needed). Ed Tennyson is pro-FRA and, unlike me, he has been on site after a number of rail collisions, some with injuries, some with deaths.
Pro-FRA is that the "crumple zones" for autos are where engines and trunks are. For rail cars, people are sitting in the crumple zones and they will be sacrificed in a collision.
I would like to see a weakening of the FRA rules and adopting EU standards, and accepting the extra deaths. The lives saved from auto deaths will more than offset extra rail deaths (cheaper rail cars > more rail cars IMHO).
I strongly support allowing FRA passenger EMUs to mix with non-FRA equipment.
And I agree that East Bay BART to San Jose has more value than West Bay Caltrain electrification. On a per $ basis ???
BOTH need to be built ASAP !
Alan
On FRA vs. EU safety standards:
The FRA has increased their strength requirements to a very high level which makes passenger rail very expensive to operate. If they changed their requirements to the EU requirements they would still require stronger cars than were standard in the US in the 1950's which would also be designed to dissipate energy in a crash better than the cars from the 1950's did. As it stands US rail equipment is 2-4 times as expensive as equivalent European equipment, is slower, just as dangerous in a crash and requires more energy to operate. The problem is particularly severe if you want to run high speed service which is essentially impossible within FRA rules. However, in addition to having equipment that performs as well or better in a collision, the real secret to European (and Japanese) rail safety is avoiding collisions with good signaling. The other safety advantage of the European model is that it is much more economical so you are able to afford to put a larger proportion of your commuters on trains.
On BART to San Jose:
Although there is more of a need for rail in the East Bay, BART is not the way to do it (actually, not even the folks at BART were initially in favor of the San Jose extension and tried to block it). It is 4 times as expensive as providing similar commuter service using conventional rail would be. It would make far more sense to do that. As it stands, electrifying Caltrain gives a far better bang for the buck. The CA HSR bond is important here because Cltrain's tracks are the ones that CAHSRA is planning to use for the route from SF to LA.
I still think the only long term solution to rail service improvements in the USA is for the track and national rail traffic control to be owned and operated by the government the same as the airways and air traffic control are owned by the government and the roads and road traffic control are owned and controlled by the government.
Then you can have efficient passenger and freight service throughout the USA. And when things get too congested on the rails the government can easily go in and build double, triple or quadruple track - which would be very difficult for the private rail owners to do today. Look at the hell that DM&E (Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern) has gone through for many years trying to extend their service for just a few hundred extra miles in western Dakota & Montana. Compare DM&E's problems with the government deciding to upgrade a 2 lane interstate highway to 4 lane and extending it a few hundred miles.
David Gunn, the best rail manager is recent years, was quite opposed to separating operations from track. There are too many details that can go wrong when the track people have different goals, and different bosses than the guys who run the trains on the tracks.
Separating the two has been a disaster in (from memory) New Zealand and the UK and some other places.
Common trackage rights (BNSF can run trains on CSX tracks for a regulated fee might work better). Or Public Belt ownership of congested sections of tracks or ....
A difficult issue I agree.
Alan
I would agree with Alan. Years ago I was in the camp of believing track ownership should be separated (largely from frustation with freight railroads that didn't want to allow passenger trains on their tracks). Now I have completely reversed my opinion. The UK has had some major problems with that issue. I believe it was this last Christmas when a mainline track was not released from maintenance work during the holiday travel season IIRC. There were a LOT of angry people: passengers, train operators and politicians. Many American railroads have long cooperated when necessary in using each others tracks - SP and ATSF (now UP and BNSF) on Tehachapi, UP and ATSF (now also UP and BNSF) on Cajon, to name just a couple out this way in the west. Belt lines and switching districts are another as Alan mentions. BTW I now believe passenger trains should, in many cases, run on separate tracks from freight trains, due to the current high volume of freight traffic. I have also come up with ideas where those passenger tracks could be used for local freight switching by a shortline railroad, which is something else the big freight railroads have largely given up on along their mainlines. This would actually go back to the concept of the steam road with paralleling interurban - long-haul vs. short haul freight plus passenger intensive business.
Toyota vows plug-in hybrid by 2010
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/BUSINESS/06/11/japan.toyota.ap/index.html
Storage Boosts the Power of Renewable Energy
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=52716
Petroalgae - Life on Mars: The Secret Ingredient for Biofuel
http://breakingbuzz.blogspot.com/2008/06/petroalgae-life-on-mars-secret_...
Tchenguiz and Tata go green
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jun/08/investing.energyefficiency
Regarding the news about Toyota's plug-in hybrid plans, this related article indicates that Toyota's view is that oil production will peak in the near future
In your link, this is potentially the main thing:
Now the critical thing here is whether they have missed our a 'present', so that it should read 'present lithium ion batteries'
All I can think of that might fit the bill would be zinc batteries as they don't have to carry their oxygen, or maybe boron as Mr Cowan advocates:
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html#TOC
boron_blast.html
If they actually should have said 'present' then silicon nanotubes would seem likeliest:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071219103105.htm
New Nanowire Battery Holds 10 Times The Charge Of Existing Ones
Anyone any ideas?
Anyone read Japanese so that they could check what he actually said?
I think they are referring to Lithium Polymer batteries. To be honest, I don't know what the difference is, but they are apparently two different things.
Panasonic is making the current gen. They are staying mum on the new battery. Probably quite a ways off. As is the PHEV Prius, 2010 is only for goverment and fleets. It won't be available to the public in the US or Europe until 2011 or 2012 at the earliest. Of course you can shell out $20K now to have yours converted.
Prices are going down. I was at Luscious Garage in San Francisco on Saturday for the San Francisco Electric Vehicle Association Meeting and the owner, Carolyn, told me that her 15 mile pack was going to decrease in price from $8500 to just over $5000 in 45 days. This is using lead-acid batteries. Presumably better batteries will provide more range but fundamentally the Prius still weighs 2700 lb.
That's just too heavy. Cut 1000 lb, install the batteries in the factory, change the chemistry and maybe they can get 40 miles out of one charge without depleting the battery 100%, which shortens the battery life considerably, I've been told.
I think the plug-in Prius will take just baby steps, maybe 15 or 20 all-electric miles, but not much more. It's just too heavy and the better battery chemistries are also much more expensive.
In any case, it's too late. 90% of us would have to be driving electric cars right now to have any hope of a soft landing. The only options left, in my view, are hard landing or incredibly hard landing.
-Andre'
www.PostPeakLiving.com
How batteries react to deep discharge varies according to the chemistry used.
In any case, capacitors have been successfully used to prevent deep discharge and increase life at reasonable cost:http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/01/ultrabattery-combines-supercapacitor.html
Next Big Future: UltraBattery combines a supercapacitor and a lead acid battery
Firefly battery technology can also do the job at around twice the price of conventional lead-acid, far cheaper than lithium and with good deep discharge characteristics:
http://www.fireflyenergy.com/
Home - fireflyenergy.com
I would however agree that within the time available to us there is little possibility that a smooth changeover will be made to hybrid or EV vehicles.
It will though help a lot. At the moment the hybrid and EV technology is trying to establish itself against a background of expectations set when gas was cheap. That is a tough target to hit, and at comparable build costs will likely not be achievable before around 2020. A commuter EV capable of 80-100 miles can though be built at reasonable cost:
http://www.gizmag.com/ukp14000-thnk-city-electric-car-ready-for-showroom...
UKP14,000 TH!NK city electric car ready for showrooms
They can't be ramped fast enough to keep anything like BAU though, but the same battery technology will allow the build of all sorts of electric bikes and trikes.
Emergency service vehicles should also be able to switch to hybrids.
So not all of our problems will be solved but there is a lot of help available here.
On a different note, has anyone got more information on solid-state lithium batteries?
I could not find anything much by googling.
The metal battery is likely zinc-air, here is some information on this technology:
http://www.meridian-int-res.com/Projects/The_Zinc_Air_Solution.pdf
The_Zinc_Air_Solution.pdf
This would enhance capabilities considerably, and lay to rest concerns expressed about lithium availability.
Here is Masatami Takimoto's presentation on Toyota's Initiatives for Realizing Sustainable Mobility
On slide 29 it shows that Toyota's interest in "next generation" batteries lies with "solid-state", "metal-air", and "Sakichi" batteries
The presentation is very interesting - it highlights Toyota's wide-ranging efforts to improve the efficiency of its vehicles. The company appears to be looking at any and all options.
A summary of Toyota's initiatives can also be found in this press release
Does anyone what a "Sakichi" battery is? I see the oval on slide 29, but no clue as to what this might be. 2x performance of metal-air!
Spacecraft have used nuclear batteries for a long time - And they don't even need recharging?
Just replace the battery once a year (or 100,000 kilometers which ever comes first?) and the nuclear battery is sent back to the factory to be reprocessed to make a new battery.
Plenty of power for air conditioning/heating, entertainment, lights and mototive power.
What do you recon that development would do to the price of oil?
Considering our massive hangup about the possibility of terrorists getting ahold of material for a dirty bomb, you ain't gonna see it. Then there is price. Polonium is a great energy source (and assasination tool as we saw last fall), but enough to kill a person (not nearly enough for a car) is something like $.5M. That might be fine for powering a hundred million dollar satelite, but as a prectical energy source nada. Batteries are supposed to be energy storage mechanisms in any case, these nuclear "batteries" are not batteries, you cannot plug them in to charge them up. Nor can you throttle the rate of radioactive decay. Its lifetime is totally independent of whether you actually use the output.
A notable line in that Toyota PHEV article:
"Japan's top automaker, which leads the industry in gas-electric hybrids, has said it will rev up hybrid sales to 1 million a year sometime after 2010."
Toyota has sold 1 million Priuses in the past decade. So a couple years from now, Toyota plans to be selling as many hybrids annually as they've sold Priuses in the past 10 years.
The last I read on such things is that they plan on offering hybrid versions on all of their vehicles. I would also speculate that likely many vehicles will migrate towards hybrid only, or make the hybrid verion the luxury trim.
Well hey, with Toyota's new vehicle combined with gigawatt storage and biofuel being developed on the fast track in Melborne, Fla plus a $10 Billion commitment to Tata via Vinny T we can shut down TOD and say that new technologies have carried the day.
Dave ol bean, you are a marvel. I love the way you string together all these just around the corner miraculous new technologies to put peak oil in proper perspective and that is...'oil? what oil? we don' need no stinkin' oil!'
I will hazard a guess that at the rate you are posting that within 30 years, give or take, Leanan will no longer be necessary on TOD. You will have totally replaced any possible board monitor along with readers and other posters, with a cornucopia of just around the corner fixes for oil depletion and a crashing world economy. Hey, TOD don't need no stinkin' reality, we got Dave. Keep up the flow rate...you are gaining on reality.
What on earth do you mean River? Surely there'll be plugin hybrid tractors, combine harvesters and trucks soon too? Not to mention plugin hybrid fertilizer, asphalt, aeroplanes, ships and plastics?
I heard a bunch of people on the train this morning talking in glowing techno-cornucopian terms about the plugin cars we'll all soon be driving. I get to work & the guy at the desk beside me restarts the same conversation. Forget about the fact that our fossil-fuel driven electricity generation wouldn't cope with the load, or that it'd take far more years to replace the vehicle fleet than Peak Oil + ELM will give us. For every objection there's another "don't worry, they'll fix that with " answer. It seems to be such a widely distributed thought pattern :\
Unless peak oil doesn't happen until 2025, this schedule is pathetically to slow to make a meaningful impact. Given the trajectory of the oil price, we would need to be around 50% of production being hybrids today, to reach a meaningful level of mitigation on time. The CERAs, and IEA's have led us (and the worlds industrial planners) down the garden path, until it is far too late. As a consumer, when I see the price of fuel double in a year, but efficiency only goes up by 28% in a decade, it is obvious that the technology isn't coming fast enough to avoid the crash.
Was in a little dealership for these folks
http://www.milesev.com/#
yesterday. They are converting Daihatsus to run batteried AC pulse and have them currently for sale as NEV's. Owner told me they are 5 mo. out for lith-ion full electrics for use on highways. The battery SUV is about $19,000 with a 60 mi range but the new model will do 100 miles and top at 55mph. We got on the wait list just so I'll know when they hit.
(aside) Portland, Or. is teeming with bicycles more than usual and lots of bike-truck situations happening too. Max line peak hour ridership 10% above last year. In spite of all there are still plenty of cars and the background music is gasoline numbers changers out every morning. ($4.21 mostly)
Everything I've heard with the Javlon (they've renamed it to some letter/number combo) is that it tops at 70+. I'm still holding my breath that this car will be successful. I know people that have driven a prototype and said it was incredible. Target price of $30k isn't really feasible anymore, but it is way ahead of the game at the lowest possible price.
Here's to finally having a choice...
A Hybrid with no Transmission…..and it gets 160 MPG too!!!
Locomotives have worked that way for decades.
Sounds great. Or you could buy a 250cc motorcycle for $4000 and get similar performance.
Millions of people in asia ride around on motorcyles - it might catch on with westerners too once high oil prices collide with their increasingly third world wages.
Hub motors are not a new idea, and Volvo didn't come up with it. They go back to at least 1902 when Ferdinand Porsche put them in what became an early hybrid vehicle. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hub_motor.
Yep, and nobody uses Hub motors because of too much un-sprung weight.
Hi Rethin,
Could you elaborate?
I had a discussion with a coworker(nonengineer) who argued that hub motors were THE NEXT BIG THING.
I felt they could lead to handling problems despite the fact that they lowered the center of gravity.
They may be useful on rail vehicles though.
I'm not automotive engineer, so take this with a bit of though.
But my understanding is this.
They are not the next big thing. They are an old idea (1902 Porsche).
The reason they are not used is because of un-sprung weight. That is weight that is not supported by the suspension. This leads to very big handling problems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsprung_weight
Engineers like the idea because hub motors are so much more efficient. I believe there is an all electric mini running around out there with 4 motors in the wheels.
In fact, hobbyists have been building electric cars without transmissions for decades. Dr. Porsche built a car with wheel motors in 1900. It's definitely the way things are headed, but the catch is that even an electric motor has its torque limits. Your car uses gearing to multiply the engine's rated torque - if your final drive ratio is 4 to 1, then 200 ft/lbs of torque get converted to 800. But a directly-geared motor or wheel motor must actually put out that 800. This is not a bad thing, because ideally that same motor will be used for regenerative braking - and then all that torque goes into reverse to save your life. But it means wheel motors must be more powerful and heavier, and that becomes unsprung weight, which is a bad thing.
Mitsubishi, which is far closer to putting an electric into production than Volvo, has come up with a high-speed variant of its MIEV prototype which has the regular electric motor with halfshafts in the rear, and newly added wheel motors in the front. Not sure of the intent of this, but perhaps the more expensive wheel motors are expected to be used in sportier electrics.
But with an electric motor you get 100% of your torque at 1 RPM, which is not true with gasoline engines, which get their top torque ratings anywhere from 4,000 to 7,000 RPM typically. You can have a transmission on an electric vehicle if you like, but there's really little advantage to it.
Plus, you can put 2 or 4 hub motors in a car, and then you only need 200 to 400 lbs of torque.
I gave the Oil Drum a nice mention in my MoneyandMarkets.com column today. Many thanks to Jeffrey Brown and others for all their fine work.
How the New Oil Crisis Affects You
In ancient times, when mapmakers came to uncharted territory, they would scrawl: "Here There Be Dragons." Flash-forward to the 21st Century; oil markets went into uncharted territory on the charts last week. Friday's dramatic spike up was the biggest one-day move EVER. Morgan Stanley now predicts that oil prices could hit $150 per barrel by the 4th of July.
The dragons are coming to dinner. Are Americans on the menu? More specifically, are you?
"affect" meaning affection. I have no affection for what's going on right now.
"effect" meaning changing the way you live.
:-)
He got it right.
Dictionary.com says:
af·fect1 /v. əˈfɛkt; n. ˈæfɛkt/
–verb (used with object)
1. to act on; produce an effect or change in: Cold weather affected the crops.
2. to impress the mind or move the feelings of: The music affected him deeply.
.
.
.
Bank of England Governor wants banks to set up compensation scheme
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/banking_...
Bank of England governor warns 'innocent bystanders' may lose homes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/jun/10/bankofenglandgovernor.cre...
Shares in top housebuilders crumble
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/construc...
Regarding the above article from the UK " Petrol sales fall 20pc as drivers feel the pinch":
There is quite a contrast to Switzerland. Today there was announced in the press, that demand for diesel surged 15% during January - April, compared to the same period in 2007, whereas the the demand for gasoline was flat.
http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/wirtschaft/aktuell/schweizer_autofahrer_la...
I'm not sure but this 20% sales drop may have to do with the Grangemouth refinery strike.
Total UK passenger car mileage was still rising at the start of last year. By the fourth quarter - before pump prices really began to rise - it was down 3% vs. Q4 of 2006.
I'd guess the decline in mileage is accelerating (Peak Mileage?), along with people driving more carefully to stretch their fuel consumption. Van mileage was up last year (people buying more stuff online, perhaps).
All the same, a 20% fall looks somewhat exaggerated compared with the view from my office window, which looks like a slightly slower and quieter version of BAU.
Having said that, I've just been commissioned to write a 20-page guide to fuel-efficient driving for a 30,000-employee business. They're not even trying to disguise it as a "green guide" to cutting CO2. A corner is being turned.
It's a misleading figure. See this comment to the article. The actual drop is closer to 8%
Diesel use is up in the US, while gasoline use is down. I think it is important to distinguish between the two, because they have very different demand characteristics these days.
Why the Brain Follows the Rules
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-the-brain-follows-the
That rather sociopathic group would seem to include our rulers by definition.
It would seem then to be a prerequisite of a liveable society to ensure that heavy punishment follows wrongdoing.
Therefore it is not a waste of resources to press for inditement, or to pursue those who authorise torture, or pursue those who have manipulated the system to grab vast wealth, in short pushed to the head of the queue, but a necessary part of the maintenance of a civil society.
For those in the UK, we need to pursue the MP's who have abused expenses, and those who ordered records burnt.
The answer to that is simple.
Any funds which cannot be properly accounted for should be returned, and banging on about retrospective legislation is nonsense, as all they would need is retrospective common sense.
The theory of the dominant culture is that the sociopathic (psychopathic) individuals will overwhelm those less aggressive individuals in social systems.
That is the case with our government, business, finacial and justice systems which are run by and for psychotics who spend little time considereing the unforseen impacts of their short-sighted actions.
Will this trend subside with the rise of peak oil and the long emergecy? NO. Peak oil will be a reverse revolution but as in any revolution there will be opportunities. Psychopathic personalities will be there to harvest those opportunites as well.
I see a rise in totalitarianism.
You are not alone in projecting this. I know it is a fear frequently expressed by our friend DaveMart when we start talking about ending growth economics as well.
My suspicion, though, is that what is really feared is that a society will arise that does not share the values of the person speaking. Consider what a totalitarian regime is. Working from the route of the word, "total," the idea is that the regime (at least attempts to) controls the totality of the society.
Those of us who were raised on western belief in "democracy," "free will," "self-determinism" and "freedom" generally see in this the attempt to control our thoughts and actions. What we fail to see is that our experienced freedom is really in a very small range of thought and action. Indeed, I would argue that the single greatest and most effective totalitarian system ever created is the one we currently live in. It has been totalized across the globe (a penetration level probably reaching more than 95% of humanity). It has been totalized most deeply in the societies where it was born (but none more deeply than the U.S.) such that our very identity is defined by it (consumer, employee, business owner, etc.). It has so totalized our experience of the world that we don't even recognize it as such, for we speak in it's metaphors without even recognizing them as such (not "sold" on that idea yet?; not "buying" my argument?)
Don't believe me? Try this thought experiment. What would you need to do to completely separate yourself from this totalizing system? Would you have to buy some land to grow your own food? How do you do that without participating in that system? Going to become a scavenger? While the most adept "street people" certainly have a freer existence than most, they require the rest of us to remain in place in order to create the "garbage" that they live off. How about some hunting and gathering? Not too many places on the planet where you'd be allowed to carry this out (and those that are left are rapidly disappearing). Choose your path and follow the logic.
The reality is that we already live in a totalitarian society - we just don't recognize it because we've been "drinking the kool-aid" since birth.
I'll buy that!
Just my two cents...
Leanan - thanks for the laugh. That was truly funny!
shaman - we're in complete agreement. What I meant to communicate is the prediction that rather than a cash starved (bankrupt) federal government giving way to more localized and egalitarian societies that instead the feds will ramp up repressive activities to ensure that the rich continue to hold the means of production. Wait for the next security threat that they have to protect us from.
I have thought through scenarios where I could unhook from this "totalizing system" and short of leaving the country and learning how to live in a tree I don't know how to be free of it. But I do recognize my dependency.
joe - I've no doubt you are correct that the "rich" will be protected at the expense of the "non-rich." Where I would quibble is with the locus of the decision making. I'm not quite sure who you mean when you refer to "the feds." Certainly there is a bureaucracy that comprises a good portion of what our government is, but I don't see that the people in those positions are necessarily aligned with the "rich." They tend to be middle to upper middle-class types - technocrats, hirelings of the elite.
But the bureaucracy is only part of what comprises the institutional apparatus we call our government. There is also the legal system and courts, the financial sovereignty, the land owned, and let's not forget the military.
So, rather than identify "the Feds" as the locus of the decision to protect wealth at the expense of the rest of us, look to the groups within our society who control the institutional apparatus. It has always been this way (the great "democracy" lie) with the possible exception of a few scattered years at the start of the republic. But once Mr. Hamilton got his hands on the thing, it has been increasingly codified into the very structure of the institution.
Of course, not all the elite speak with one voice and the history of our politics has been the competition between various groups within the elite to control the governmental apparatus. But you are almost certainly warranted in your assumption that they will "close ranks" and use whatever means they can to maintain their privileged position. Expect, also, that they will use other institutions available to them, most especially the newest big player in the power game, the corporation.
'The rich' need the services of 'the poor', and if 'the poor' ever:
1) Figured that out
2) Banded together to not 'do business' with 'the rich' - it strikes me that 'the rich' would be in a big world of hurt.
The way the rich have gotten around this is pretty simple, money. They buy off a portion of the underclasses - welcome to the technocratic class.
One reason I strongly advocate micro systems over maintaining and transforming the current system is the potential to then decouple from the BAU paradigm. If the populace is not dependent upon the government for their survival, and are not feeding the beast with income taxes, I could see a reasonable chance for transformation. But you'd have to have widespread change and passive resistance. What could the government do if you never *needed* to leave your homestead?
Attack. Only that. Not that it wouldn't...
Cheers
Cheers
So your post in it's self is just hewing to the Totalitarian line. Congratulations, you have just met the recursiveness of language and hence it's meaninglessness. Many thanks to Goedel.
I'm not sure I see your point - but I would grant you that the current totalizing system allows for a substantial amount of apparently subversive sub cultures (e.g., reggae/rastafarianism).
As for the recursiveness of language signifying it's meaninglessness, you're going to have to go some distance to convince me that is the correct conclusion. I would see it's recursiveness as defining it's meaningfulness. Simply rejecting a correspondence theory of truth does not equate to a complete un-tethering of language from meaning.
You are using language to talk about language. According to Kurt Goedel you can't prove it's consistency, hence it is fundamentally meaningless as is what I just typed.
Godel proved that you can make self-referential statements that are undecidable, e.g. "this statement is false", but that does not result in all statements being meaningless.
Bob - exactly what I told Hank in my response to him. But, he apparently is more interested in playing language games then actually discussing language. Anyone seriously interested in the subject understands that meaning is attributed to language, and that is what allows us to communicate. But Hank apparently doesn't think we are communicating.
Is the word "meaningful" included? Well, never mind. There's no useful meta-language to talk about it anyway. Sorry for the distraction.
Most people use totalitarianism and authoritarianism interchangeably. Personally, I believe the decentralization that accompanies peak oil will mean a reduction of totalitarianism, just as it is going to mean a reduction in globalization.
Authoritarianism, on the other hand, is already on the rise in the world, including & especially the US. I think we'll see much more of it in the future as social cohesion breaks down. As the social contract breaks down, force will increasingly be used (increasingly ineffectively) in an attempt to maintain social cohesion.
Shargas - for the most part I agree however IMO as things unravel the government will move into triage government and military, police and spying activities will remain funded.
The Oil Drum may disapear as a consequence.
If you aren't yet paranoid watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3db2IMqx4j0
Richard Lovelace
To Althea, From Prison
Just a verse from a poem I read this morning. It is of course easy to believe when one is outside of prison that one is free but I think personal happiness makes one free beyond any political or economic system. The king or TPTB must be wise to try to maintain a maximum happiness in society. Lacking this people will seek true happiness in relationships despite any barriers even under worst dictaorships.
See 'Tragedy of the Commons'
Iraqis Object to 60 Permanent US Military Bases
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/10/AR200806...
Best Hopes for "Running the Calender" till GWB leaves,
Alan
Anyone knowledgeable to say whether an attack on Iran would be do-able without an agreement in place to use Iraqi bases?
The statement that they want an agreement by July shows pretty clearly what they are aiming at.
Let's hope the Iraqui's manage to put a spoke in the neo-cons wheel.
No Iraqi government is going to permit the use of its airspace/territory for an attack on Iran for the following reasons:
1) its current government is made up of long-standing Iranian allies, and this will continue to be the case for as long as some form of majoritarian Shia-Kurd alliance remains in power. Shia nativist-nationalist groups such as the Sadrists and Fadhila have no interest in a war with Iran, and have made this explicit at various points.
2) Iraq, along with just about everyone else, has no "interest" in becoming a party in a US-Iranian war; permitting the use of territory/airspace for a third party to engage in war makes said third-party a co-belligerent. Al the talk about the SOFA wish-list is fantasy, just like the oil law, which you may dimly recall went nowhere.
3) War with Iran is neither a "doable" nor a desirable proposition for the US at present.
"Anyone knowledgeable to say whether an attack on Iran would be do-able without an agreement in place to use Iraqi bases?"
An attack on Iran changes everything on the ground.
Agreement or no. And remember that theses Iraquis are our puppets.
Hung out the instant our protection is removed.
Iran captures/kills Ceasars.
And Russia will not stand by.
DaveMart -
Well, we already have military bases in Iraq; they just haven't yet been made officially permanent.
On the presumption that an attack on Iran would be confined to an attack from the air, I don't see that anything the Iraqi government could say or do would be able to stop such an attack from taking place. Also, a large part of an air attack on Iran would not necessarily have to involve US planes launched from Iraqi. We have substantial naval assets in the area, as well as the base at Diego Garcia and other possible launch points.
Having said that, launching an air attack on Iran from Iraq (even if only part of the attack comes from Iraq) would not be without serious repercussions, to put it mildly. One might reasonably expect Sadr's Mahdi Army to go into full-scale guerilla warfare against the US forces, and I doubt the present Iraqi government (such as it is) would last more than a week after the attack.
So, while the US could physically launch an air attack on Iran from Iraq, there would be hell to pay come the day after. It's a recipe for chaos. I still think there's a 50/50 chance it's going to happen, either directly by the US or indirectly by Israel. Looks like we might have the makings of a long hot summer.
I can't get rid of this mental image of Chaney playing golf with some of his wealthy well-connected chums. One of them casually asks him if he thinks short-term oil futures might be good to get into. With a wink, a nod, and a nudge, Chaney says with a straight face that he really doesn't know.
First you reorganise the oil futures market in order to stabilise price. Then you attack Iran. Or you do it the other way around, which would leave a brief window of opportunity for the better informed to reap their benefits.
Wouldn't that be funny if the thing they finally busted Cheney for was insider trading for tipping off his buddies about the upcoming war. I mean not Ha Ha funny, but funny.
joule - I wish the U.S. Government would drop the pretense that we give a sh*t about the people who live in and around the countries we choose to bomb and invade. Let's strip off this fig-leaf of moral correctness and confess our motives and get on with the business of pillaging and raping. We now have 2 stripers in the Air Force controlling drone aircraft that fly over primitive villages looking for "suspects". I wonder how connected these kids are to the death and suffering they inflict with their toggles.
The bonus for the government is that these genuises come into the military already knowing how to murder efficiently having played countless hours of Grand Theft Auto prior to enlistment.
If you think GTA teaches how to murder with efficiency, you've obviously never played the game. For the training of efficient murder, there are much better games for that task.
As a whole, video games teach people how to make good pawn soldiers, but not soldiers. Why? These games have you "respawn" the second you die, encouraging reckless and fearless attacks. I prefer games that punish you heartily if you die, by making you go back to square 1. It encourages you to think tactically.
Airstrikes, certainly, without Iraq bases. Effectiveness of those airstrikes depends on the objective, and is another matter entirely.
Full-scale ground invasion, not realistic with today's military (and certainly not wise in any even, just my opinion).
Insufficient network in place to use a limited ground incursion/combination of special operations teams and airstrikes to support a domestic resistance group to affect regime change.
A ground invasion from Iraq is outright stupid if your goal is to get to Tehran, because there are huge terrain issues and plenty of room for effective defense-in-depth. So I'm not sure that Iraqi bases are really that important from that perspective. However, if your goal is to capture Khuzestan (where most of their oil is, and largely in the flat plain bordering southern Iraq), then this is doable. This could easily be under the cover of controlling the region where the Iranians are staging their support to Iraqi resistance.
The ground scenario most frequently advanced (and not requiring bases in Iraq) is using Azerbaijan as a leapfrog point for following the coastal plain of the black sea down to near Tehran, then only a single set of mountains to pass to get to the capital. This is also stupid--if the goal is regime change, the last thing you want is to get embroiled in urban combat in another city the size of Baghdad.
Finally, any option must be considered in light of our ability to prevent Iran from shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. Without occupying and controlling sufficient land north of the Strait, we probably don't have the capacity to prevent them from shutting it down--their ability to use small boat swarms, mobile ASCMs, shore-based artillery, etc. is just too hard for us to completely eliminate by air to keep the Strait effectively open. No really viable options for seizing the land north of the Strait of Hormuz, there is just too much mountainous shoreline from which they can operate, and they only need 1-5% survival of their equipment to effectively keep the Strait closed.
So, for what it's worth, I don't see any viable options to confront Iran militarily. We could significantly delay their nuclear program through airstrikes, but I don't know if the consequences re: oil prices could be justified. I don't think we have the groundwork in place to affect regime change without occupying the country, and we certainly don't have the capability to do that. I don't think even Bush & Co. are stupid enough to try to seize Khuzestan for the oil. That said, standard disclaimer: I didn't think they were stupid enough to actually invade Iraq, either, so in August 2002 I booked a trip to Hawaii for December 2002. By December I was sitting in a tent in the desert making plans.
I'd see their plans as centring on air strikes against nuclear capability and taking Khuzestan.
Stupid, yup, but that is basically an operational requirement.
Sack anyone who says that the mountainous terrain north of the straights will be a problem on trumped-up charges, and employ the same guys who did not see a need for 'boots on the ground' after the invasion of Iraq.
Thanks for the insights.
The US unilaterally attacked the soverign nation of Iraq and to my knowledge there was no 'written agreement' between Iraq and the US to allow that action.
jeff - Sorry to hear that you got caught up in that nonsense.
Q: How many carriers do we have floating around the Persian gulf? They can launch a sea attack take out "suspected" sites as well as ground their primitive Air Force, their PT boats and navy would be wiped out in minutes not hours. If there is no full scale invasion how long will the Iranians want to keep the fight going with a superpower that can easily crush them militarily?
The U.S. doesn't want to occupy Iran, they just want a conflict that they might be able to win.
Don't be too sure about how this will go. I don't have a link handy, but some years back the Navy was running a Persian Gulf war game and made the mistake of having a retired Marine general run the Iranian team. He figured out how to launch an all-out attack using the PT boats and Iran's imported anti-ship missiles and was credited with blowing up a carrier - which in real life would have been nuclear. In a sure sign that there's a serious problem with our military, the Navy responded by changing the rules of the war game to make carriers magically off-limits.
Since then, the missiles have improved more than the carriers. We're in another weapons revolution, like the carrier revolution that had to wait from 1919 to 1941 to prove it had already happened. The Russians and Chinese are on their 3rd generation of anti-ship missiles since the Iraq War began and I've lost track of the nicknames. But the Sunburns from a couple of years ago would probably be bad enough if you could launch a hundred.
I thought the biggest downside to attacking Iran is that Russia will jump in to help the Iranians. Or am I mixing up my doomsday predictions again?
Myth Of US Invincibility
Floats In The Persian Gulf
http://www.rense.com/general64/fore.htm
I think most people look at it as an airpower problem, but in reality it's more of a "time critical targeting" problem.
Our carriers in the Persian Gulf aren't really the critical point--they do have a lot of airpower in an abstract sense, but nowhere near the kind of ability to strike mobile targets that will be needed. Old as they are, USAF B-52s flying out of Diego Garcia, B-1s flying out of Thumbrait (Oman), or B-2s flying out of the US would deliver the vast majority of the precision airpower. The Navy won't be marginalized, but their ship and sub-launched cruise missiles will be their main game. I remember in 2001 trying to coordinate a single bomb to be dropped from a single F/A-18 off a carrier onto a bridge in Afghanistan in a time-critical manner (meaning the plane was already airborne when we were tasked to target the bridge and get the info to the pilot). It took a lot of reachback manpower--we really couldn't have done many of these at once. This will be the key with an air campaign against Iran--the ability to (sorry, devolving into Air Force speak here) find, fix, target, track, engage, and assess highly mobile Iranian targets. The Iranians have essentially three critical assets that can shut down the Strait of Hormuz: small patrol boats, mobile shore artillery, and mobile anti-ship cruise missile launchers. What they'll do, as it becomes clear that hostilities are imminent (or immediately after they begin), is to begin to move these assets among thousands of prepared and semi-prepared sites every few hours. This means that we'll need to scour these known sites (and look for unknown ones), identify and prioritize targets at these sites, targeteer and weaponeer these targets, and get them to strike aircraft. Here's the sticking point--that whole cycle, including the time it takes to re-route planes already in the air or get planes overhead--must be completed before the targets move, which can be as often as every hour. That's a very, very difficult task. It can certainly be done, but we just don't have the capability to do it under those time constraints against more than a few targets at a time. If Iran only had 100 of these mobile targets, then it might be doable. They have a lot more than that, and I really don't know if we'll be able to deal with them. If they keep just 2 or 3 ASCM launcher teams operational, or if they keep just one or two of the right shore artillery teams operational, they will be able to effectively close the Strait. Not to mention the small boat swarming tactics (mentioned in a response below), mines, midget subs, etc. Sure, you'll still be able to get 9 out of 10 ships through, but that isn't acceptable if that 10th ship is a US navy vessel or an oil tanker.
Tangentially, Australia is in a similar situation.
Sorrounded by water, with populous nations to our north and west who, while not seriously contemplating an invasion (imo) in BAU, might decide their citizens need more room in a Post-Peak world.
The only way to get here is by ship or air.
So we're buying F-35's, and, because the previous government was so... ahem, taken, by Bush and Co, we're too far along in winding down the F-111's (which had a public reputation of unreliability, but really were rock-solid after we got the maintainence issues sorted out around 2000). This would be no problem if the F-35 had anything like the range, throw-weight, or endurance of the F-111, but it doesn't. Neither does it have the endurance, radar, or weapons that of the Sukhoi fighters that nations around us are buying.
In my spare time, I'm working on something that I can present to my local MP that will 'keep the lights on' in nearby countries, and hopefully convince the locals to stay put even though they can't afford food, but I'm not hopeful of getting anything more than a handshake and a 'thanks for coming'.
GREAT VIDEO ABOUT "OIL SHORTAGE MYTH" ON WWW.FRICTION.TV
Watch this great video of Dr Richard Pike discussing that there is twice as much oil in the ground as claimed by major producers
http://friction.tv/ftv_debate.php?debate_id=3369
Very interesting
Leave comments on friction.tv to start a good debate
Inclined to agree - as the saying goes 'the stone age did not end due to a lack of stones'
And now while I'm at it, the stone age ended because we managed to master metals. IOW, we found something better.
So far, we did not find anything better then fossil fuels, even after trying for 50 years.
Not only that, but the transition from stones to metals was probably rather smooth since the stone tools could be used over and over and fancy new metal tools were just an addition to the existing stone tool supply.
Energy, OTOH, cannot be used over and over- we depend on a massive amount to be available for immediate consumption each day and once we use it, it is gone, "poof". New day, new supply. We rely on a diminishing fossil resource to give us that supply, and the rate at which we can extract it is declining. The comparison to stones in the stone age is very poor and I wish people would stop using it.
I read in my archaeology lessons, that at least in the UK, high quality flint used in stone axes became harder and more expensive to find towards the end of the stone age. Quite deep mines were dug (with antler axes) at a location called 'Grimes Graves' to get to the flint layer. The product was exported widely across Europe. The first metal axes were made of copper, and in many ways these were inferior to flint, very soft and easily blunted. It was only the with the development of bronze that flint was replaced as the primary working material. Ceremonial stone axes of very high quality continued to be made throughout the bronze age.
So it was a shortage of stone that provoked the development of metalworking.
Actually we haven't really been trying, at least not in any truly serious way
Hmm, let me just check this out:
friction.tv - member for 1hr 11m
Colin Danielsson - member for 1hr 11m
Gee, what a surprise.
1972 Texas peak and 1999 North Sea peak lined up with each other, different vertical scales.
These two regions were developed by private companies, using the best available technology, with virtually no restrictions on drilling. Texas has declined at about -4%/year, the North Sea at about -4.5%/year.
In 2005, based on HL, Saudi Arabia was at about the same stage of depletion at which Texas peaked, and the world was at about the same stage of depletion at which the North Sea peaked.
In neither case did oil companies stop finding oil fields. The problem is that we have not been able to offset the declines from the older, larger oil fields.
So why in 2006 was the following comment made?
“We are looking at more than four and a half trillion barrels of potentially recoverable oil. That number translates into 140 years of oil at current rates of consumption, or to put it anther way, the world has only consumed about 18 percent of its conventional oil potential.
"That fact alone should discredit the argument that peak oil is imminent and put our minds at ease concerning future petrol supplies.”
"The Impact of Upstream Technological Advances on Future Oil Supply" - Mr. Abdallah S. Jum'ah, President & Chief Executive Officer, Saudi Aramco, address to OPEC, Vienna, Austria, Sept. 13, 2006
How much of the price is actually driven by speculation?
I see that you appear to be the Cornucopian du jour.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2767
Net Oil Exports & the "Iron Triangle"
Regarding oil prices, it's very simple. Importers are bidding for declining oil exports, and our model and recent data suggest that the net oil export decline rate is accelerating.
Tell him your infinite-consumption-growth-vs.-finite-resource-base gem.
Two versions.
CPSR--Cornucopian Primal Scream Response, as cornucopians scream that there must be some way, somehow that we can maintain an infinite rate of increase in our consumption of a finite energy resource base; in effect, all that people want is an infinite supply of cheap energy.
The Titanic Analogy--After the ship hit the iceberg, two types of passengers, those who realized that the ship would sink and those who would realize that they ship would sink; some of them realized it as they were drowning or dying from hypothermia. Two types of Americans, those who now realize that we live in a finite world, and those who will realize that we live in a finite world (although in a lot of cases, they may be unable to acknowledge that a finite world has finite limits).
Given enough warning some of the men (who would not have been allowed on the life rafts anyway) could have jumped onto the iceberg as it drifted by...
...I bet that didn't sink :o)
Nick.
Agreed - supply and demand should dictate the price and that the price should be higher. However, taking the surge in price literally, the suggestion that actual supply has fallen to 70% of demand so far this year is absurd. Some investors with a vested interest are even suggesting 50% (or $200 a barrel) by the end of this year. The housing bubble was the same - not enough houses...
Strictly speaking, supply and demand--what consumers are willing and able to buy--are generally in a rough equilibrium. And it only takes a small decline in net oil exports to cause a large move in oil prices. The problem is that we have been expecting, and we are currently seeing, an accelerating net export decline rate. For a number of reasons, this will almost certainly require an accelerating rate of increase in oil prices--especially as forced energy conservation moves up the food chain.
I'm not sure I follow your reasoning, but a 1% shortage in a market does not automatically mean that a 1% rise in prices will level supply and demand. The price will rise as much is needed to balance demand and supply.
In the case of oil, prices will have to rise substantially more (in %) to balance supply and demand, because we cannot go without the stuff. A rise in prices will not easily destruct demand for oil.
Absolutely. During the Enron-induced shortages in California, a 2% shortfall in natural gas produced a 300% increase in price.
Shargash, do you have a source for this? I've spent hours looking for it on previous occasions. I was told it was a 4% shortfall.
Or as we call it on ebay, last-minute crazy bidding.
The price has to rise enough that people change their behavior, and businesses that consume oil go out of business. Everyone is trying to outbid everyone else to try to avoid being one of the triage victims. Unless we can get government to perform the triage, the pricing mechanism will do the dirty work.
Not enough houses?!?!? Jeesh.
The huge price increases in the UK housing market was to a large extent predicated on the assumption that demand (due to cheap money) completely outstripped supply. The market was vastly overvalued since the media, and indeed the government suggested this was the case for a number of reasons including higher than expected rates of migrant workers. People lost sight of the underlying value, so yes - not enough houses!
No just too many stupid people over here in the UK who have believed you can have something for nothing.
I would like to point out a small difference between markets like the housing market and the energy market that seems to be evading some people like my fellow newbie, Colin. Many commodities (not including food) can be recycled or reused after they have been bought and used by their first purchaser. In addition to which, commodities like metal ores are processed into more useful products that have a useful life of years/decades/centuries. One can cite many examples of this:
limestone + energy = cement -> cement + agregate + steel + energy = buildings
wood pulp + energy = paper -> paper + inspiration = books
iron ore + energy = steel -> steel + rubber/plastic = bicycles
In the above cases the non energy portion of the product can be used over and over again for a considerable length of time by significant numbers of people. Energy on the other hand is transient, you use it it is all gone. The little energy that can be recycled (such as done in a combined cycle gas turbine electricity generator), is just as transient. So when one buys a bicycle, one can use it till its all worn out, while when buys a gallon of gas and drives 10-60 miles (Hummer vs. Prius), that's it, one gallon gone. An important distinction between the market for houses and the market for oil; Both oil and housing are finite resources. Housing can be reused, oil can not.
Of course, there is no dispute that oil cannot be reused (except, I suppose, some plastics). The parrallel with housing is to demonstrate that markets can be hugely over valued. Similarly, the discourse about the stone age is about alternatives...
Your choice of words: "the suggestion that actual supply has fallen to 70% of demand so far this year is absurd." It shows you do not understand what supply and demand are.
Supply and demand are not single quantities. They are 1D curves in 2D space. Get thee to an intro to microeconomics textbook.
It takes roughly a 15% increase in price to kill 1% of demand: http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1062&context=u...
That depends upon the elasticity of what you're talking about. For some things, a 15% increase in price may kill 100% of demand. The same increase may kill none of the demand.
First, you take any random assessment without gauging the quality of the assessment and then ask why we don't all believe that 4 trillion barrel BS? A better question is why we should believe that estimate? Have you evaluated the errors made by the USGS consistently over the last 20 years? Have you evaluated the USGS's 30 year estimate (from the 1990s) of oil to be found by 2025? Guess what, the oil predicted to be found in the first third of that period turns out to have been way too optimistic. Are even aware that global discoveries (not production, so don't give me environmentalist excuses!!) peaked in 1964 and have gone down drastically ever since? Are you aware that globally in the 1960s we found 8 barrels for every barrel consumed but today we consume 6 barrels for every new one discovered?
Then you try extrapolate prices linearly. Do you even understand price elasticity? And that oil has a very low elasticity thus requiring nearly exponential increases in prices to achieve linear changes in consumption?
It would be in your best interests to critically evaluate all such claims yourself. Everyone I know who has looked at the oil problem with an open mind, people as different as Bill Clinton and Glenn Beck, have agreed that there is a supply-demand issue and that it is growing. Everyone who has examined this realizes that it's time to begin the move away from fossil fuels. The marketplace is telling you to move away from fossil fuels. There is also very little speculation in the oil market since all that oil has to be physically delivered at the end of each contract month.
I strongly suggest you really investigate the physical data, which is available, for discovery and production over the last 50 years. And there are real solutions, if we would get off our fat rear ends and move on them. If you ask people around here, I'm a "doomer" and expect serious social upheaval. Why? Not because we lack ways to mitigate this crisis but because of empty suits who keep us from ever beginning to mitigate this crisis. We have the technology. We lack the political will.
Speculators trade contracts before they are delivered so have the net effect of driving up the actual price without having to physically take delivery of the oil. For example:
"We're paying, some believe, as high as a 50% premium to the pockets of speculators that are operating in markets that are completely unpoliced," said Michael Greenburger, a University of Maryland professor and former CFTC official. "At least 70% of the US crude oil market is driven by speculators and not people with commercial interests."
To re-iterate an earlier point, yes oil should cost more for all the good reasons made by people far cleverer than me on this forum - flow, EROEI etc. - but one has to recognise that the underlying price may be far less than speculators with a vested interest in the price becoming a self fulfilling prophecy might suggest. Do investment banks use oil?
Forgot to post the following link:
http://www.platts.com/Risk/Resources/News%20Features/spectrading08/index...
Colin - if you think this through you'd recognize where you have missed the obvious. If a speculator trades a contract just before the end date to avoid taking delivery, who is buying that contract? How is the price set? How much would you pay for a contract about to close?
As for your quote, some prof providing unsubstantiated estimates of the size of the impact of speculators proves absolutely nothing.
The sock puppet offers a straw man.
Ever heard of elasticity of demand?
Another point that is often overlooked is that oil has been under priced historically. The mindset of most people has and is that there are these trillions of barrels of oil and we can go on slurping the stuff up indefinitely. I thin the market is just re-pricing oil to reflect its true nature - high energy density compared to almost all other sources and its scarcity. Scarcity of oil is a brand new concept and scarcity = high prices.
Consider the source.
Dear Colin,
Welcome on TOD.
Reserves are not at all that important. It's flow rates that determine production. Obviously syntetic crude from tar sands for example, has a very slow extraction rate.
Furthermore, how much energy (best expressed in BTU's so one can compare one source of energy with another)is needed to harvest a resource. Tar sands, for example again, suffer from low EROEI (Energy return on energy invested).
See for example http://www.eoearth.org/article/Ten_fundamental_principles_of_net_energy
We can have 4.5 trillion barrels of oil in "reserves" but if we can't get it out (fast enough), economically, or with positive EROEI it's not really a pretty prospect.
I guess the comment you wrote down was made by someone who lacks this basic information.
Also, note that technology is not the same as, and is NOT interchangeble with, energy, i.e. technology will not put more oil in the ground. In fact the recovery rate (the amount of oil that can be extracted from an oil field) typically hoovers around 35-40% (IIRC), despite decades of oil tech improvements.
Cheers
Thanks for the Welcome Paulus (and indeed the patience westtexas). Very interesting insights...
My pleasure. Note that I'm not an oil industry insider, nor a professional scientist. I'm just a working class hero worried about the future of himself and his kids. As Nate Hagens correctly stated, I'm one of those who is seeking a comparitative advantage.
Colin Danielsson,
If you get a chance - and have the time - I would suggest reading Kenneth Deffeyes' books on Hubbert's Peak. In particular, the part on the probability of finding a field of oil vs. size of field. (His books are written in easy to read style, with bits of humor thrown in).
In short, we found all (or pretty much most) of the large fields. As you get to the remaining smaller fields you are basically (to drill) spending as much (as on a big field) as you are on a smaller one but only to find less oil. Eventually, you're going to get to fields where the oil recovered isn't going to cover 1) the expenses, and then it won't 2) cover the energy that you used to drill for that oil.
For all practical purposes, even if we had over 300 - or even 1,000 -trillion barrels of oil down below the ground, unless we see a REALLY significant advance in technology, it's all unrecoverable as we approach the smaller-sized fields.
Another way of saying what PaulusP said is;
Imagine you had $1 million dollars in the bank, BUT you could only withdraw or otherwise use just $5 a month.
Just $5 a month....
Would it really matter if you had $1 million or $5 Million in the bank?
If you only getting $5 a month, the bank account/Reserve QTY starts to be just a cruel joke.
Reserves don't matter.
It's the FlowRate Baby.
I think we can bring EROEI into this equation so it would be:
Imagine you had $1 million dollars in the bank, BUT you could only withdraw or otherwise use just $5 a month. For every withdrawal of $5 currently you have to pay 50 cents (taken from the money withdrawn) but the bank increases the charge all the time and when the charge reaches $5 you won't be able to withdraw money at all.
Just to give a concrete example of this:
North Sea reserves were initially about 63Bbbl, and after production started went up to over 6Mb/d in 25 years, with very rapid increases in production - to 1Mb/d in 5 years, and from 1Mb/d to 3Mb/d in just 6 years (1977-1983).
Oil sands reserves are about 175Bbbl as currently booked, and will likely go higher (they're based on $65/bbl oil). Flow rates, however, have not increased nearly as quickly: it's taken decades to get to 1Mb/d, and most estimates are for 15 years to go from 1Mb/d to 3Mb/d, or more than twice as long as the North Sea, despite more than twice the resource base.
Resources matter, certainly - you can't produce oil that's not there - but, as you say, it's far from the only consideration.
Recovery rate does appear to be increasing, albeit slowly. There was some discussion about that here.
Apparently, the learning curve is longer than the oil depletion curve.
I am astounded by the patience shown by WestTexas and all the other founders of the OilDrum
Methinks we are getting a lot more "newbies" on this board who are testing their ideas. My husband (Ph.D.) is giving "peak oil" talks to a group of teachers in Texas this week (sponsored by TXU). He is directing them to this site as a source of good information on the subject. Yes, back in the 60's/early 70's we were taught about population overshoot and peak oil. We've just been waiting patiently for effects to appear. That's why 20 years ago we bought acreage with good water.
Methinks the two are not newbies. They came with agenda in hand. That is, trolling ain't just for fishermen anymore.
Cheers
Yeah, "start of a good debate", like the one over evolution. Or abortion. Have fun with that "debate" and let me know when any of them are "settled". The planet, meanwhile, is indifferent.
like the quote this site uses.
“Men argue; nature acts.”
—Voltaire
I couldn't help noticing in the article:
"UK: Petrol is bound to run out in strike"
In the comments section, two out of the first five comments mentioned Peak Oil. People are beginning to see that this is a greater threat than striking workers. I think we may be getting somewhere!
A Truckstop Perspective
"If things keep up this way, there will be a rising-up." Another truck driver complaining about the prices. What a surprise.
I raised my eyebrows. I'd had my share of ignorance for one day, and my nerves were frayed. Besides, he was the only customer in the store, so I had time to chat. "What'r ya gonna do, shake yer fist at the sky?"
"We'll take control. Constitution gives us the right ta bear arms." He gave me a conspiratorial wink. "The ones in power need ta go."
I counted out his change diligently. "So, who's to blame? I mean, who are you going after, exactly?"
"Those rich bastards," he fairly spat. "They need ta be taken down. They screw us all and don't think twice about it."
I gave a crooked smile. "That doesn't sound very sustainable. It might feel good at the time, but then what?"
He looked at the floor. "Hell, we do things the right way, where everyone has a decent chance."
I snorted unabashedly. "And go back to being sharecroppers, eh?"
The man gave me a wounded look, ducked his head, and fairly flew out the door to the haven of his truck.
This job is going to get more and more interesting in the times to come, I thought grimly.
Note the comment, linked uptop, from the IEA about releasing oil from emergency reserves. Of course, my prediction was more specific--before Labor Day, we will hear calls to release oil from the SPR, specifically because of supply problems on the Gulf Coast.
As the CPSR--Cornucopian Primal Scream Response--grows louder, Bush is going to be under tremendous pressure to release oil from emergency reserves.
I had a driver tell me that the so-called oil shortage is a crock -- that our reserves are full.
"You mean the Strategic Oil Reserve?" I asked.
He nodded. "Yup. They got all we need an' more."
"It's my understanding that, since this country burns through twenty million barrels a day, those reserves would last maybe two months."
"Yeah, right." He didn't look so sure, though, as he walked out the door.
Does anyone know what the max possible flow rate from the SPR is? Not that I'm advocating, I would just like to know.
Factoids about the USA SPR
* Maximum drawdown capability - 4.4 million barrels per day
* Time for oil to enter U.S. market - 13 days from Presidential decision
Question: How fast can oil be released from the Reserve?
Answer: Should the President order an emergency sale of Strategic Petroleum Reserve oil, DOE can conduct a competition, select offers, award contracts, and be prepared to begin deliveries of oil into the marketplace within 13 days. Oil can be pumped from the Reserve at a maximum rate of 4.4 million barrels per day for up to 90 days, then the drawdown rate begins to decline as storage caverns are emptied. At 1 million barrels per day, the Reserve can release oil into the market continuously for nearly a year-and-a-half.
more (such as 40% sweet, 60% sour stored in SPR) at
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/reserves/spr/spr-facts.html
Best Hopes for a SLOW drawdown of the SPR,
Alan
What happens after it's pumped? How does it get to the market? Trains, trucks, pipeline...?
SPR oil gets shipped via pipeline and taknker truck depending on the repository to refiners.
The 700 million barrels in the SPR, if not rationed and instead used at normal rates of 21 mbpd, would last 33 days, just barely over one month. Feed that to your customer next time he pokes his head in.
Or, if we just replace all US imports with the SPR (14-15 mbpd), it would last all of about 50 days, still not a full two months. :)
People don't like hearing that but people don't realize how much oil this country sucks down every day.
Ain't that the truth! When I tell most folks the numbers, their eyes kinda glaze over, like I'm trying to make them do calculus or something because the numbers are beyond their grasp. It's like their rational mind shuts down and they retreat to their Happy Place.
the SPR can only release 4.5 to 5mbpd...physical constraints on piping it out
Earthbound Misfit , Could you PLEASE write more often about your observations on the ground? You working where you do is very close to where the pain is felt. I very much enjoy you sharing what people tell you.
Please don't get someone T'd off at you and do something crazy. Folk's emotions are about to go vertical.
Thank you, Samsara. As I've said before, I've got a million of 'em -- the problem is trying to find time to write 'em down :)
Yes, please do as we don't seem to have any sociologists conducting the sorts of field work you experience at your job daily.
I've always thought of it as a psychology major's Dream Job ;)
EM -
" the problem is trying to find time to write 'em down :) "
I can surely understand that, but I must echo what was said above. Your observations really fill a gap in the reportage (as well as being quite nicely written). I hope you can find time to send a few more our way, as time allows...
We tend to get plenty of virtual reality in our diets, but not nearly enough actual reality. AKA, Reality.
Thanks!
sgage ~ thanks for the compliment. Maybe my tag line could be Keeping it Real.
Might I suggest starting a free blog (at a place like Wordpress) and taking a laptop to work with you? Even if you just jot things down in your spare time, then post to the blog when you get home. Insights from 'Ground Zero' are always welcome and appreciated.