 | Misguided Energy Policies | The Oil Drum | Telework Pros and Cons: 28 Reasons To "Telework"--With Data To Back Them Up |  |
DrumBeat: July 22, 2008
Posted by Leanan on July 22, 2008 - 8:13am
Topic: Miscellaneous
Diesel farming feeds the world. But what happens if the fuel becomes too expensive for the farmers?Listen in to WYPR 88.1 FM public radio in Baltimore tomorrow morning (Wednesday, July 23) at 9:35 a.m. to hear my most recent "Environment in Focus" program. If you're not next to your radio, or you miss the segment, you can listen to a podcast on the WYPR web site.
Tomorrow's piece is about "peak oil" and world hunger. Back in the 1950's, Shell Oil's top petroleum geologist, M. King Hubbert, discovered that all oil production follows a bell curve, with a rising amount of new discovery of oil fields, a peak and then an inevitable decline. He correctly predicted years in advance that America's lower 48 states, then the world's largest producer of oil, would pass its peak production in 1970. And since then, 33 of the world's 48 largest producers of oil have also passed their peak, including perhaps Saudi Arabia. That means production will start slowly declining (some say the world passed its peak in 2005, others say 2015). Meanwhile, the world's population continues to grow -- and developing nations like China and India are buying more cars and trying to live American lifestyles.
Long-distance commuters’ road to nowhere
For Dollie Kinkead, the economic turmoil gripping the country translates into an 80-mile drive each work day from a house she can't sell to a job she thinks she's lucky to have.For Danny Jesse, it means living with his parents and enduring a commute that is at times so costly and brutal that he would rather spend the night in his car.
For Brian and Ronda Mitchell, the combination of high gas prices and a housing market downturn has forced them to make the difficult choice to allow the home they have owned for seven years to go into foreclosure.
“Gas was, for us, the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Brian Mitchell said.
The weak housing market, high gas prices and iffy job market are proving a nasty mix, leaving many Americans stuck with long commutes, unwanted homes and few options.
Huge oil trading loss sinks energy trader SemGroup
NEW YORK — A $3.2-billion (U.S.) trading loss on oil futures and derivatives sank high flying energy trader SemGroup LP, which at one time billed itself as the 14th-largest private company in the United States.The Tulsa-based SemGroup shorted NYMEX crude oil futures to hedge against a decline in the value of the oil it purchased as part of its 500,000-barrel-per-day trading business, according to court documents, before surging crude prices forced it to recognize billions of dollars in losses on futures positions.
GM, utilities join to study electric car’s impact
SAN JOSE, Calif. - General Motors Corp. has joined with more than 30 utility companies across the U.S. to help work out electricity issues that will crop up when it rolls out new electric vehicles in a little more than two years.
New Mexico: Residents asked to limit energy use
Xcel Energy officials are asking customers to limit power use Tuesday as expected electricity demands could outweigh production.Xcel Energy spokesman Wes Reeves said the company shut down two generators Monday in coal-fire power plants in Muleshoe and Amarillo after discovering tubes in the boilers were leaking.
Iraq's parliament passes poll law, Kurds walk out
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq's parliament passed a provincial elections bill on Tuesday, but a walkout by Kurdish lawmakers over how to deal with the disputed oil city of Kirkuk could mean the law will not be ratified by the presidency.
China's June crude imports from Iran at 18-mth low
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's crude oil imports from Iran in June halved from a year ago to its lowest monthly level in 18 months, contributing to the overhang of crude stored offshore in Iran, official customs data showed on Tuesday.... The lower Iranian supplies came after some refineries cut back on costlier Iran Light crude to trim deep refining losses aggravated by state-capped domestic fuel prices, the trader said.
"Refineries are getting really picky as pressure is so huge to cut losses," said the trader familiar with Iranian supplies.
Preparing Australian aviation for a new world
For almost 90 years QANTAS has developed a cultural strength that enables us to cope well with crises. We have shown great resilience through numerous major shocks over the past decade alone.But right now the global aviation industry faces, not a shock or a blip - not even a crisis - but a permanent transformation. The drivers of this transformation will be globalisation, accelerated by permanently high fuel prices. And the result will be a new aviation world order.
... Oil, of course, is a finite natural resource and whether or not the world has reached "peak oil" is a matter of debate. But there is no question that the cost of finding and extracting oil will continue to climb.
The race to own the top of the world
Melting icecap has circumpolar countries - including Canada - scrambling to bolster their claims to Arctic territory and the oil and gas riches beneath its seabed.
Africa's Last and Least: Cultural Expectations Ensure Women Are Hit Hardest by Burgeoning Food Crisis
On her way to the market, Lingani explained the ugly math: A year ago, she could feed her entire family a nutritious meal of meat and vegetables and peanut sauce for about 75 cents. But now the family gets much lower-quality food for twice the price.She said the cost of six pounds of cornmeal has risen from 75 cents to $1.50. A kilogram -- 2.2 pounds -- of rice cost 60 cents last year and costs a little more than $1 now. Other basics such as salt and cooking oil have also doubled in price.
Fuel costs have more than doubled for trucks that haul food to landlocked Burkina Faso, helping keep food prices high.
Soaring gas prices drive U.S. scooter sales
NEW YORK–Record gasoline prices are fueling a boom in sales of fuel-efficient scooters across the United States, as commuters ditch their gas-guzzlers and don helmets and goggles to beat high prices at the pump.U.S. scooter sales have risen 65.7 per cent in the first half of 2008, according to the Motorcycle Industry Council, making the industry one of the biggest beneficiaries of a more than 30 percent spike in oil prices this year.
Russia 'exceeds targets' for gas supplies via Ukraine to Europe
MOSCOW (RIA Novosti) - Ukraine's state oil and gas company Naftogaz told energy giant Gazprom on Tuesday that Russia is supplying more natural gas to Europe via Ukraine than it is obliged to under existing contracts.
Russia to raise oil export duty to record $495.9/ton from August
MOSCOW, July 22 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's government has approved a rise in Russian oil export duty of $97.8 to a record $495.9 per metric ton as of August 1, the government press service said on Tuesday.Export duties on light oil products will rise to $346.4 per ton from August 1, 2008, from the current $280.5, and duty on heavy petroleum products will grow to $186.6 per ton from $151.1.
Economy: Analysts said remarks by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and a huge loss posted by banking company Wachovia Corp. contributed to the perception that demand for oil will drop in a weakened economy."Reduced economic activity translates into reduced energy demand," said John Kilduff, energy analyst with MF Global.
Paulson, speaking in New York, called for Congress to pass a bill to shore up mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying they were the key to repairing the battered financial markets.
BP 'Reluctantly' Removes Technical Experts from Russia
BP has withdrawn 60 remaining technical specialists, formerly assigned to TNK-BP, from Russia. All 148 technical experts, who have been instrumental in making TNK-BP one of Russia's best performing companies, have now been withdrawn to be redeployed in BP's businesses globally.
Fiji: Fuel shortage stops water supply in Rotuma
ROTUMA is again plagued with shortage of water because there is no fuel to operate pumps.Speaking from the island yesterday, Samuela Kafoa said the last ship to visit to the island arrived there two weeks ago but since last week there had been no piped water on the island.
He said the island had run out of fuel.
"Yesterday the schools on the island had to be closed after lunch because there is no water," he said.
Egypt: Drivers infuriated by shortage of affordable fuel
CAIRO: Taxis queued in front of gas stations across Cairo as the congested city suffered a shortage of 80-octane and diesel fuel, a crisis that reached its peak last week.
PetroChina to control fuel exports
PetroChina will extend its "strict control'' on fuel exports into the second half of the year as China, the world's fifth-biggest oil producer, seeks to ease a domestic petrol and diesel shortage.Fuel supplies will remain "tight'' for the rest of 2008, President Zhou Jiping said.
Cost of shipping doubles in the past 12 months
The cost of shipping a container from Dubai to key destinations around the world has almost doubled in the past 12 months – sparking fears that rates could reach alarming levels.
What's driving the asphalt shortage
Yes, refineries are making more profitable products, but asphalt is in short supply not because the refiners are greedy, but because Congress during the Clinton administration passed legislation mandating Ultra Low Sulfur Fuels (ULSF) for gasoline and diesel.
The shorter week, which some New England employers are exchanging for longer workdays, is being touted as the latest way to go green and lower energy costs. But while the trend seems to be catching on with government agencies, adoption by the corporate world is lagging.
Travel industry call for national energy policy
The Business Travel Coalition, along with former American Airlines Chairm and and CEO Bob Crandall are asking travel industry members to sign a letter to President George W. Bush calling for a special session of Congress "for the sole purpose of debating our energy alternatives and enacting a coherent national energy policy."
Fuel shortage will drastically reshape transportation
For cities, it's time to massively invest in public transit. More riders will need more buses to run more often, with more drivers, more shelters and benches, more convenient routes. The province as well as the federal government must get involved with the cities. In Regina, we welcome the transit review starting now, when citizens will be urged to give our views, and will be listened to.
Maintaining realistic expectations for more drilling
We didn't know from global warming in those days, and I guess we assumed the oil would flow forever. But about the time I quit doing oilfield work in the early '70s, the oilfields themselves began to stop working, as well, part of a long national decline in petroleum production.In fact, the pinnacle of crude oil production in the United States occurred in 1970 at about 9.6 million barrels per day. Then a long, steady decline began and today petroleum production is around five million barrels per day. (By way of comparison, we consume about 21 million barrels per day.)
Even the most extensive exploration and drilling program is unlikely to raise petroleum production back to the 1970 level, at least for any length of time, and energy independence, based on more drilling, is a pipe dream. Ignoring global warming and traffic congestion, it would be nice to imagine that vast reservoirs of petroleum await our discovery, in spite of considerable indication to the contrary. We've been tapping the big reservoirs around the world extensively for decades, and common sense suggests that the oil cornucopia of the past can't last forever.
Why we need to keep gas above $4
On the surface, the market's behavior on certain days of June and July has been so illogical that my brain simply has refused to accept it. Double-digit intraday swings in prices of stocks without any material catalyst have become routine.But last week's trading has finally explained what should have been clear for a while: Though current economic troubles may have started with lax credit and underwriting standards and the ensuing subprime-mortgage fiasco, they will likely continue or end based on the behavior of another, seemingly unrelated macroeconomic input: oil prices.
Crude Oil Prices, Monetary Stability and Credit Expansion
What so many commentators fail to grasp is that free markets, not taxes, conserve resources. This is really basic stuff. When the supply of any resource falls its price rises. Eventually the price reaches a point where the cost of producing an additional unit exceeds the demand. This is why we never run out of resources in a free market. If, however, the resource is treated like a free good, as in the case of fish, then complete exhaustion is possible. This is obviously not the case with oil.
The Strategic Vulnerabilities of Oil Dependence
Indeed, in a 2007 interview with The Futurist, former CIA director James Woolsey said that if the terrorists had gotten within mortar range of the facility, “they could have taken out the sulfur clearing towers. Robert McFarlane, President Reagan’s National Security advisor, tells us that would take six or seven million barrels of oil a day off line for probably over a year.”
“And when the bleeding is all done and the oil is all gone—not just the peak oil, but all the oil, down to the last drop—and we lie buried beneath our history, still waiting for some greater salvation or redemption to ignite us…even then, another temptation will reside beneath us and around us: if not the fluid supple allure of oil, then the densely compacted chitin of coal, the old dirty brown Paleozoic swamps, each lithified like a charred heart into brittlecake seams of strata—ten thousand years’ worth of such brittlecake. And I fear that it will be the easiest thing in the world then to simply remain buried in this land of the fossil fuels, and to continue gnawing at the coal, worsening our problem tenfold with every sulfurous exhalation, and with the now acidic celestial dome or dark curtain above raining sulphuric hail, mercuric tempest, brimstone.”
THE MESS; Over 50 years ago a geologist named M. King Hubbert accurately predicted that US oil production would peak in the 1970s. The arrival of peak oil inspired our political leadership to unleash all their resources of stupidity. They curbed the development of nuclear power, closed most of the American coast-line to exploration and extraction of oil and gas, placed a moratorium on the exploitation of our huge shale oil resources out west, put an end to refinery building for thirty years, and forbade the oil companies from disturbing Alaska’s sacred caribou. The development of hydroelectric power and wind power have been unsystematically impeded by tangles of environmental regulations and law suits.
Answer to energy crisis? Stop using oil
The main cause of rising oil prices is a simple supply and demand market issue. World supply is peaking while demand continues to rise, mostly in China. So, the easy solution would be to raise supply, right? The problem, though, is we can’t.
Eco-friendly homes not hard to find
These homes were constructed in 1988 following the second energy crisis and were built using 2-by-6 construction instead of the traditional 2-by-4's. The heating system consists of only a hot water heater, a small air handler/heat exchanger, and an air distribution system in the flooring between the lower and upper levels. Windows have six inches of insulating airspace instead of the traditional four, with window-insulating thermal shades installed between the storm window and inside window. By diligently using the windows and thermal shades appropriately on days of temperature extremes, one can be comfortable almost all winter and summer. Because the homes are tightly built, there is no need during the winter for a humidifier as indoor humidity is relatively high.
Utility experts warn against burnout at 50
Canada's ageing electricity infrastructure will need billions of dollars in investments to ensure its generation stations, transmission and distribution lines do not collapse under an exploding demand, industry experts said yesterday.While the engineering experts refused to draw direct links between the needs and a pair of recent incidents that struck two of the country's largest cities, they warned that time was running out for many steel towers, electric poles, wires, transformers and facilities.
"You're now looking at [50-year-old] infrastructure that is in need of replacement," said Jatin Nathwani, the executive director of Waterloo University's Institute for Sustainable Energy. "These things may last 20 years, [or] they may only last two. You don't know, so there's a large unknown and uncertain gap growing in terms of understanding the integrity of that infrastructure."
Japan's Hokuriku reports record summer power demand
TOKYO (Reuters) - Hokuriku Electric Power Co said on Tuesday demand for the company's electricity hit a record high earlier in the day as a heatwave scorched central Japan and boosted use of air-conditioning.Hokuriku is the first Japanese utility to report record demand this summer, and others may follow suit this month and next as a heatwave sweeps through the country, in line with hotter-than-average forecasts by the nation's official weather forecaster.
Tokyo Electric Says Smoke Detected at Niigata Nuclear Plant
(Bloomberg) -- Tokyo Electric Power Co., Asia's largest utility, said smoke was detected at a generator powering a radiation-monitoring system at its Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear complex.Local fire fighters confirmed the smoke stopped at 11:26 a.m. local time after the utility shut down the generator, Tokyo Electric said in a statement on its Web site. No injuries or radiation leaks occurred during the incident, the company said.
China refinery losses widen to $850M
BEIJING - Refining losses for China's top two oil companies widened 47.9 percent to $850 million in the first half due to government controls that limit their ability to pass on high crude costs to consumers, an industry association said Tuesday."They are facing big difficulties," said Feng Shiliang, deputy secretary-general of the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association, quoted by the China Daily newspaper.
Pemex May Drill Outside Mexico for First Time If Reforms Fail
(Bloomberg) -- Petroleos Mexicanos, struggling as oil production declines, may drill for crude outside Mexico for the first time unless lawmakers approve hiring foreign partners for domestic offshore projects.Chief Executive Officer Jesus Reyes Heroles said the company, known as Pemex, may court partners on the U.S. side of the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Cuba and in Latin America unless Congress adopts oil reforms proposed by President Felipe Calderon. Pemex needs foreign help because it doesn't have the technology to drill in water deeper than 500 meters (1,640 feet), he said.
Oil production rose briskly from 2002 through 2004, before appearing to hit a peak in 2005. That peak fueled more discussion of peak oil theory. However, rising prices have induced additional supply...
Expert view: We have to learn to live with costlier oil
Worryingly, the impact of the price hike is still working its way through those systems.Worse still, as Martin Christopher, Professor of Marketing and Logistics at Cranfield School of Management, Cranfield University noted in a recent article, high oil prices are here to stay and more significant price rises are inevitable. Further, we may be approaching, or have already have passed, “peak oil”, the moment when oil production enters a permanent decline.
Oil Myths, Oil Facts (video and transcript)
"We've got ourselves in a situation now where world wide demand is permanently outstripping world wide supply...So, we're going to look at the conventional wisdom and arguments and try to give you a few facts...
Pickens talks about alternative energy
DOBBS: And the cost of conversion to natural gas for large vehicles, those dinosaurs or the gas guzzlers are the ones in many cases that are most readily convertible to natural gas, are they not?PICKENS: I'm not interested in passenger car near as much as I am in heavy duty equipment. The government should move quickly to mandating that all new vehicles that be purchased by the government would be natural gas vehicles. General Motors has 19 different vehicles they make but none in the United States. All of them out of the country. South America and Europe.
Kuwait plans $132bn dream city
FUELLED by soaring oil prices, Kuwait has ambitious plans to invest $132 billion building a model city in its northern desert, complete with rail links to the rest of the Middle East, central Asia and China.
Russia's TNK-BP in surprise Venezuelan deal
MOSCOW (Reuters) - BP's (BP.L) Russian oil joint venture TNK-BP will sign its first deal with Venezuela on Tuesday, a Kremlin source said, after months of dispute between BP and its Russian partners over its expansion abroad.
Fun at the pump? TV entertains, distracts
MIAMI - In the midst of a cruel summer for America's drivers, there's a diversion: TV at the gas station.The number of televisions atop gas pumps have skyrocketed since their introduction at a handful of stations in 2006. Now, three privately held companies have placed more than 20,000 screens at thousands of stations from the Massachusetts Pike to Southern California.
Population bomb 'ticks louder than climate'
Global population growth is looming as a bigger threat to the world's food production and water supplies than climate change, a leading scientist says.Speaking at a CSIRO public lecture in Canberra yesterday, UNESCO's chief of sustainable water resources development, Professor Shahbaz Khan, said overpopulation's impacts were potentially more economically, socially and environmentally destructive than those of climate change.
''Climate change is one of a number of stresses we're facing, but it's overshadowed by global population growth and the amount of water, land and energy needed to grow food to meet the projected increase in population. We are facing a world population crisis.''
The LA Times has a special report on peak oil. In addition to the main article (discussed in yesterday's DrumBeat), there's a couple of sidebars:
Pemex Oil Production Falls 11% in June on Aging Field
(Bloomberg) -- Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned energy company, said oil output fell 11 percent in June from a year earlier as new wells failed to keep pace with a four-year decline in the aging Cantarell field, the nation's largest.Production dropped to 2.839 million barrels a day in June from 3.206 million a year earlier, the Mexico City-based company, known as Pemex, said today on its Web site.
Oil companies, refiners hurt by refining margins
The same historically high oil prices that are expected to contribute to massive profits for the major oil companies in the second quarter are dragging heavily, once again, on their refining operations.And for companies whose primary business is refining oil and selling gasoline, second-quarter earnings versus a year ago could be ugly. Plummeting stock prices for many refiners reflect the difficult operating environment.
Australian oil production has peaked: report
Oil production in Australia has already peaked and the alternative fuels industry needs to be dramatically ramped up in response, an expert research group says.After years of a stop-start approach to ethanol production, Australia is fast running out of time to end its love affair with crude oil, much of which is imported, the NRMA Motoring funded Jamison Group says.
"Oil production in Australia has already peaked,'' the group's report, A Roadmap for Alternative Fuels in Australia, warns.
Iran opposes OPEC oil output hike
TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran, the number two oil producer in OPEC, reaffirmed on Tuesday that it was against any hike in the cartel's output quota despite continued high crude prices."The market is in a good situation," Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari told reporters in Tehran on the sidelines of a petrochemical conference.
"In the next OPEC meeting we are heading towards winter. I think that preserving the current situation is the most appropriate one," he added.
Kenyan group raises health fears over exploration oil deal
NAIROBI (AFP) - Kenyan activists on Monday called for a Swedish firm's plans to search for oil and natural gas in the northwest Lake Turkana basin to be delayed, because of concerns about health....Previous exploration in the 1980s left waste that local people suspect polluted wells, causing infections among the Turkana people.
Feds to propose rules for squeezing oil from rock
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration wants to set the stage before leaving office for developing oil shale, rocky deposits in the western U.S. that could eventually yield 800 billion barrels of oil, according to government estimates.The Interior Department is scheduled to unveil proposed regulations Tuesday for a program to sell oil shale leases on federal lands, similar to the leases sold now for oil and natural gas both on and offshore.
Pakistan - Record jump in oil prices: 'A move to crush public'
The latest increase in the prices of the petroleum products would impact directly the living cost of the commoners as it would not only soar the common man’s fuel consequent upon the kerosene price-hike but would also fuel the transportation cost for the commuters.
Consumers change buying habits, but will it last?
Every economic downturn changes shoppers in some way. But this time, experts say the new behavior — fueled by higher gas and food prices, tightening credit and a slumping housing market — are the most dramatic and widespread that they have seen since the mid-1970s.So retailers, marketers and investors are all trying to figure out which habits shoppers will keep and which will they drop when the economy recovers. Will the people who switched to store-brand ice cream go back to Breyers or Edy's? Will shoppers return to department stores or keep looking for labels at T.J. Maxx?
Cheap air travel in peril in Mexico
Mexico City — Skyrocketing fuel prices are rocking the Mexican airline industry, leading to steep fare increases, the slashing of routes and what some analysts fear could be the end of low-cost air travel south of the border.
Food banks turn to gleaning in lean times
As grocery prices continue to rise and food donations decline, a growing number of food banks across the USA are turning to local farms for produce that otherwise might go to waste.The process, known as gleaning, involves collecting leftovers after crops have been harvested. While gleaning has long been part of some food bank collections, the current economic downturn has brought renewed emphasis to the practice.
...The Society of St. Andrew reports overall food donations have declined from 46 million pounds in 2001 to just over 20 million pounds in 2007.
Breitinger says that market conditions, the growing use of corn in the production of ethanol, the rising price of gas, along with climate problems like drought and floods, are all partly to blame for the drop in donations.
Gore's, Pickens' Energy Challenges Need Smart Infrastructure
Kurt Yeager, executive director of the Galvin Electricity Initiative, is responding to Al Gore's and T. Boone Pickens' proposals to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil with a call to action that is unfortunately relegated to the back seat in their plans.While increased use of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and geothermal energy should be everyone's goal, Yeager is calling for a stronger electric power grid as an essential first step that will allow for the full integration of renewables -- and meet our growing demand for energy in our homes and industries and for transportation.
Let's Have Some Love for Nuclear Power
While we may be at a turning point, one enormous question still hangs over this revival of nuclear power in the U.S.: Who is going to pay for it? The construction of reactors in the rest of the world is essentially a government enterprise. Private investment and even public approval are not always necessary. In the U.S., however, the capital will have to be raised from Wall Street. But not many investors are willing to put up $5 billion to $10 billion for a project that could become engulfed by 10 to 15 years of regulatory delay -- as occurred during the 1980s. The Seabrook plant in New Hampshire went through 14 years of that before opening in 1990. The Long Island Lighting Company's Shoreham plant began in 1973, but was shut down by protests in 1989 without generating a watt of electricity, and the company went bankrupt as a result.
This year, Congress has repeatedly found itself stalemated over the renewal of renewable credits. Supporters of the credits haven't been able to overcome opposition by Republican senators, the White House and a handful of fiscally conservative Democrats, who won't vote for the credits unless they're paid for as they go. Supporters have tried paying for the credits by rescinding tax breaks for oil companies; they've also tried raising the funds by eliminating tax loopholes that benefit hedge fund managers. Even though oil executives and hedge fund managers are perhaps the most widely hated two groups in America, neither plan has worked.
UK: Coal-fired power stations will lock UK into a high-emissions future, say MPs
The government will come under increased pressure today to ban new coal-fired power stations such as the one planned for Kingsnorth in Kent unless they are equipped to trap and store carbon pollution underground, as a committee of MPs publishes a critical report.The environmental audit committee urges ministers to make it clear that coal power plants that do not fit carbon capture and storage (CCS) equipment will be closed down. It says the government must set a deadline, after which the operation of unabated coal-fired power stations should not be permitted.
Is world's wettest place getting drier?
The town of Cherrapunjee, in the north-eastern Indian state of Meghalaya, is reputed to be the wettest place in the world.But there are signs that its weather patterns may be being hit by global climate change.
Satellite cutbacks could leave us blind at the poles
In 1994, the US government decided to replace its separate climate and weather instruments with a fleet of satellites holding both. The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System was intended to save money, but by late 2005, it was more than 25 per cent over its $6.5 billion budget. This triggered cutbacks that eliminated two of the six planned satellites and delayed the launch of the first replacement climate instruments by five years until 2013.The burden of the cuts has fallen heaviest on climate scientists, and if the old instruments fail it will create gaps in data covering microwave measurements of sea-surface temperature, the hydrological cycle, and sea ice.
The Competition Bureau of Canada is intensifying a probe into price fixing at some Quebec gas stations:
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=d47ed633-4794-4...
The last line from the above link: Australian oil production has peaked: report
That is the one thing that has yet to sink into the consciousness of the world's people. Economists, as well as MSM, seem totally oblivious to the obvious fact that the current world recession is due, in large part, to the very high price of oil. And we will not pull out of this recession until oil gets cheap again. And that will never happen.
Regardless of whether you are a doomer or a cornucopian you must admit that our lifestyle is totally dependent on cheap oil. And though some argue that there are alternatives to oil no one can argue that there are alternatives to cheap oil. The EROI of all other forms of energy, such as they are, is much lower than oil.
Our lifestyle is about to change dramatically, and lot sooner than even most people on this list realize. There will be no recovery from the current recession, it will only get deeper. Well, that is unless there is a sudden surge in world production driving prices back down to their levels of just a few years ago. And what are the chances of that happening?
Ron Patterson
just to reemphasize :
"Our lifestyle is totally dependent on cheap oil."
the addiction term clinically means;
DEPENDENT.
& i don't think it's addicted to oil; but our systems are dependent[addicted to] on 'cheap' oil.
we are just getting the slack[time lag] out of many parts of our system.
Transitioning from oil to 'alternatives' might be compared to making a transition from morphine to aspirin for 'pain management'.
Which of course would work just fine if we were a ways down the road to recovery, However...
Just to push back against one-word psychology diagnoses. We are all apparently addicted to
-food
-oxygen
-sunlight
-the earth's magnetosphere
-photosynthesis
-vitamin C, etc.
-water
-shelter
-sensory stimulation
-human interaction
The addiction metaphor, when used beyond throw-away rhetoric, is just another way of lazy thinking that makes us more stupid. Ah but perhaps we like the term because it allows us to place blame and guilt and to denigrate other people. No?
Stop calling fellow TODs lazy and stupid. It's rude.
The vehement objections to the addiction metaphor are astonishing. Use of the addict metaphor is a health field term not a political or criminal one and does not necessarily imply the negative judgements [blame, guilt, denigration] that you assume it does.
Ron,
I think one advantage you, Airdale and I have as "oldsters", is that we have experienced life when energy use, and society in general, were different. Further, we have had contact with family members going back into the 1800s and what their lives were like. Younger people cannot envision the life we actually lived without mounds of "stuff"...and energy.
We also have the advantage of having acquired what we need to survive. I look at my life in the boondocks and know there is no way in hell that I could pull it off where I under the pressure of having to do it "right now" in order to survive. By this I mean not only the physical things but also the psychological adaptation necessary to live a different kind of life.
Todd
Hello Todd from the oldster(class of ,57) down 'chere in Western Ky.
The truth is starting to 'come down hard' here in the outback. Lots of
families are feeling huge effects. I hear from my banking buddy that some are liquidating much of their belongings just to afford gas for the vehicles.
Myself I barely caught the 'wave' on finding and buying a couple of yesteryears Honda Trail 90s. Had to drive several hundred miles to pick them up but it was worth it easily.
Now I can cruise the outback roads and off roads and make trips to town to pick up needed necessities. To take to the woods I simply shift into low range and can crawl up the steepest banks in granny low.
Gets about 100 mpg when riding the pavement.
Big luggage rack. Could possibly haul out a field dressed deer ifn need be.
Yep its all starting to come down as we oldsters thought it would.
To those not fully into their lifeboats at this time? Well you surely are in deep kaka and right now prices are skyrocketing to add to the pain.
My latest project , not started yet, is a outdoor(screened in porch) wood fired pompeii style oven. Forno Bravo has all the details on constructing such along with recipes for what they would say as the best pizza in the world.
Airdale-doing what needs to be done(living in a pole barn), growing my garden,etc........
PS. I was given two huge blown down red oak trees to saw up into this winters firewood and possibly enough for the next year...have laid in 3 wood burning stove that I got for almost free.
Hi 'ol Buddy,
Well, I was class of '56 so I got you by one (but I did have a big, black '57 Ford convertible in college my senior year). Anyway, I've got about 2 years of wood in and I'm going to have a lot more. We had a major fire (8k acres) a couple of miles from us a few weeks ago. As I look around I see I have to clear a lot of woods for fire protection. Some of it's small stuff but a good portion are trees 60-70' high. The trouble is I've got tons of other projects. Guess they'll wait.
Todd
Good to hear from you Airdale. Yes, the changes seem to be upon us. I hope we oldsters can weather the storms. By the way, one of those storms laid a huge oak tree on my house yesterday. Provided a lot of potential firewood and a chance to practice living without electricity. It will not be easy. (I am not enough of an engineer to maintain a solar electric system--or afford one.) Best to you! Hummingbird, Class of '56
Glad to see you're around on the net and kicking. If you decide to come back to my site, we've taken care of the spam problem. I found a good modification that worked well at keeping the spammers away.
~Durandal (http://www.wtdwtshtf.com)
Thanks.
I revisited WTD just a bit ago after reading your post. Will post as time permits. Glad to see the site is
still alive(as I am).
Actually I am in better health than I was 5 years ago as my blood chemistry had made me very sluggish and prone to low energy levels.
Back riding my Harley, working on my new(old) Trail 90, and doing all the things I need to be doing.
Airdale
The generations in my family run long: one of my great-grandfathers was born in 1829. I can recall my grandmother telling about her daily chores. Her family had a large land-holding on the banks of the Missouri River directly south of Columbia at McBaine which was the rail stop at their farm. Although it was good rich bottomland, her father preferred to run cattle for the most part, and raise race horses. Every year they would have a horse race at which Frank James would fire the starting pistol. They had neither running water, electricity, nor indoor plumbing. Her main chore was to trim all of the wicks of the lamps in the house, and to keep them supplied with whale oil. This was from about 1900 to 1908. She went to Stevens College in Columbia, married my grandfather in 1912 and settled in Kansas City, where her first car was an electric car. Only in 1918 did she get a car with an internal combustion engine, and that winter she had to bring a pan of coals out from the house every morning and put it under the engine so she could turn the crank against the viscous, heavy oil, to start the car.
Ron,
Just curious as to what you think the difference is between Mexico and Saudi Arabia, since both regions are highly dependent on one large field and since both countries are showing rising water cuts (or more accurately thinning oil columns) in key parts of their big fields, and since both countries have shown monthly increases in production,e.g., last month in Mexico.
Does last month's increase in production in Mexico mean that Pemex has been voluntarily reducing their production because of market conditions, or does it mean that post-peak regions can show both increasing and decreasing production at different time periods, but on an annual basis they don't match their final peak rate?
Just curious.
Jeff, I believe both Mexico and Saudi are producing flat out. Ups and downs are to be expected due to maintenance of wells and such. Saudi has much more leeway and are not as concerned with keeping production at maximum as is Mexico therefore Saudi has much more volatility then Mexico.
Mexico's small increases in the last two months are nothing to cheer about. They are still below their March level and except for April and May, they are at their lowest point in over a decade, since well before they peaked.
I do not rule out the possibility that Saudi has been manipulating their production for a purpose that has little to do with the price of oil. If they were producing every possible barrel in the summer of 05 and there were serious rumors that they had peaked, they might have deliberately cut production by a million barrels per day, then raised it by three fourths a mb/d, then it would look for all the world like they could, if they wished, raise it even further. Of course everything concerning Saudi Arabia is just a guess but I don't trust a damn thing they say. At any rate the next few months will be very interesting.
But Mexico is an open book. I only wish Saudi were also. Saudi an Mexican production for the last seven months, in thousand barrels per day. The Saudi numbers are from OPEC's Monthly Oil Market Report and Mexico's are from PEMEX's Monthly Petroleum Statistics.
... Saudi ..... Mexico
Dec 8,980 ..... 2,954
Jan 9,075 ..... 2,957
Feb 9,090 ..... 2,929
Mar 9,031 ..... 2,847
Apr 8,984 ..... 2,767
May 9,179 ..... 2,798
Jun 9,350 ..... 2,839
Ron Patterson
As a followup comment to Ron's, I highly recommend that people review the monthly data for the United States from 1968 to about 1974.
The annual peak is very obvious in there but the monthly noise is, well, noisy. I refuse to read too much into single month peaks as trends are more important and annual production figures tend to smooth out maintenance and other issues. The problem, of course, is that getting annual figures literally takes years. ;)
If Mexico can increase production for 4-6 straight months, then I might take notice, but otherwise no.
It will indeed be interesting to follow Mexico's production over the next months. Do you know the C+C consumption of Mexico? Assuming an 11% decline rate in Mexico over the next years, Mexico will become a net oil (C+C) importer in 2011 assuming C+C consumption in Mexico is about 1.8mbpd. If it is more, it could happen in 2010.
I don't think we can expect much exports from Brazil either in the future. The consumption there is about to take off. Vehicle sales is up a wooping 30% so far this year, there's a consumption boom never before seen in the country, the mood in the country is one of great optimism, and to be frank, a country with almost 200m people, reaching 220m in 2020 should have ample room for internal consumption. Expect Brazil's consumption to double by 2020. The country is exactly in the income level where internal consumption takes off, similar to the western world in the 1960s.
No, we are not dependent on cheap oil, we are dependent on cheap oil that gets cheaper and cheaper as time goes by - comparing 2000 to 1970 each barrel of oil in 2000 produced around twice the GDP, (or the price of the oil halved).
The cheaper and cheaper bit is the important bit as it allows more and more to be afforded/consumed - AKA economic growth!
For the last nine years in the absence of adequate alternatives the net-export price of the marginal barrel of oil has not been getting cheaper and cheaper, the pace of overall world economic growth (and things like banking which depend upon economic growth for success) must slow as a consequence!
In a post peak-oil world in order to continue BAU world economic growth any alternates to oil (and FF in general) will have to be competitive in unsubsidised price and become cheaper as a proportion of income over time - what can we use?
Are there absolutely no plans whatsoever to massively increase production of the huge ultra heavy oil bitumen resources in Venezuela? Is it a fresh water shortage problem that would make it impossible to even increase it to 1 mbpd in the foreseeable future?
Ron, your statement frames the problem perfectly, and this is EXACTLY why the term "addiction" is flawed, trivial, stupid and banal.
This is no mere addiction. Dependency and addiction are different, categorically. In fact, I'd wager addiction is a cultural myth, the mythical golden goose that has hatched a thousand recovery groups.
There. Is. No. "Recovery." From. Peak Oil.
LOL.
To continue the metaphor re 'there is no recovery from peak oil':
Most politicians define 'recovery from peak oil' as returning to BAU: ie getting another fix from some forgotten hidden stash [offshore] or stealing it from some other [nation state] or switching to a substitute [coal]. They will fail.
Most addicts never recover, a lucky few do but the changes they make are thorough lifestyle changes. Thorough lifestyle change is not what most oil dependent states have in mind. They'd rather die.
And so they will.
Even a dead addict still fits the metaphor perfectly.
:>(
mikeB
u obviously haven't read many coroner reports.
but yes ron is right a declining spiral at best with dropoffs & occasional flat spots & rare brief upturns ;
& maybe at some distant point the coroner's report on humanity that never gets written.
Great post Ron. "Our lifestyle is totally dependent on cheap oil."
That one line says it all. People can crunch the numbers ad infinitum, but the truth of that one statement is the viewpoint from oil's peak plateau. We've created a world dependent on cheap energy (oil). Transportation on all levels is most dependent on it.
However, whereas I was completely pessimistic a while ago, my sense now is that we still have enough time to make the transition to alternative energy systems, with an emphasis on small passenger electric vehicles. If we develop a modern electrical grid that is more efficient, allowing for connection from wind and solar, the US can act as an example to other countries to greatly reduce their dependence on oil. We can also use natural gas as a competing subsitute for diesel in commercial trucks.
If we can successfully make this transition, then other countries will follow suit and worldwide dependence on oil will be reduced enough to extend the years oil will remain abundant, until some day oil will not stand as such a crucial foundation to our lives.
Now this could very well mean a temporary lowering of standard of living. Maybe we won't thunder down the road in giant 4WD black internal combustion monster, but instead whine down the road in a tiny Chevy Volt. Maybe we won't get all the imported products we once took for granted while this transition takes place. But it sure beats capitulation to the socially depraved micro townships depicted in Kunstler's books.
I urge all peak oilers to optimistically back alternative energy production.
Ok, I back it.
Now what?
So the NMRA acknowledges that Crude production in Ausralia peaked... some time ago (2000), and further acknowledge that our lifestyles are totally dependent on cheap Oil. Well, bully for them. They seem to be exhibiting Cognitive Dissonance, as they (and their fellow-traveller organisations such as the RACQ and RACV) are constantly calling for more money to be spent on building new roads/upgrading old ones.
Our motoring organisations came into being to campaign for safer roads. Then they campaigned for more roads. Then they campaigned for more, safer roads.
By 'safer', one can only assume 'safer at high speeds'. Last weekend I was in a car driving down The Range from my girlfriends 'farm', on one of the 'most dangerous roads in Queensland'. At the signed speed limit, it is not dangerous. If it rains, slow down a bit. The biggest danger to drivers is boredom, alternating with gawping out the side windows at the scenery. Yet the RACQ is constantly demanding more money to 'fix' this highway. Perhaps the RACQ could campaign for money to rebuild the abandoned railway line that used to run up the Range instead?)
Five kilometres from here, Main Roads is busilly ripping up several kilometres of National Highway, and adding extra lanes in each direction. I shudder to think what the final cost will be. And more locally, Main Roads recently spent the better part of Au$10-20 million to achieve what could have been achieved by simply painting new lines on the existing road.
Instead of funding a massive expansion in MT/PT, the Queensland Government subsidises Petrol/Diesel to the tune of 8c/L, adding up to $500 million a year! That's funding for about 50 kilometres of 25kVA electrified Heavy Rail, dissapearing into thin air!
Insanity.
"Population bomb 'ticks louder than climate'"
Isn't population the elephant in the room - the root behind all the other threats? It certainly is in the case of CO2, oil, water, etc. Admittedly there is a the multiplication factor of what each person produces, but the common element is that darn population figure that keeps rising.
How long before that hits the general conciousness? Peak oil is palatable by comparison.
You think people are in denial about climate change or peak oil? Well, the population question is one where people are *really* in denial.
My feeling is that people really need to fully absorb the two problems of climate change and peak oil. Then you can start to bring in other resources - fish, fresh wate