They are making drastic changes from their last-years long-term forecast to reflect things that become obvious in 2005! If they admit that 2004's forecast (for 20 years ahead!) was crap, how do they expect to take 2005's forecast seriously?

Regardless of the silly previous thread that oil peaked in July, the IEA has announced this morn that the previous global extraction record of 84.7-mbd was surpassed in November: 85.0-mbd after the lapse to 83.8-mbd in Sept.

It seems the two organizations are being treated as the same thing in the comments here.

Ill look into the numbers but if even 1/3 of the people switched from nat gas to corn we would run out of farmland. This is another example (ethanol, solar panels, being 2 others) that make sense at the margin for certain companies and certain individuals but not the planet as a whole.

I wonder what he tells his corn stove customers?

We're up to Burn Level 2 of 5, burning about a 40lb bag a day, sometimes slightly more.  I'm glad we got the Prescott because it holds almost two bags of pellets in the hopper.  My wife wanted the cast-iron Hastings, which is attractive but terribly heavy and holds only one bag:
http://www.eventempinc.com/stcroix/stoves/stoves.html

Nothing bad happens to the stove if the pellets run out, but you will wake up to a cold house.

Are there any stoves which use the outside air for combustion? Does anyone know if this makes a big difference or not?

"The EIA report, however, projected that natural gas prices, which have soared to more than $14 per thousand cubic feet in recent weeks, would retreat and return to below $5 a thousand cubic feet in the years ahead. It projected a likely price of $4.46 per thousand cubic feet in 2016 as demand for the fuel eases and supplies increase."

(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10437549/from/RSS/)

Demand decreasing and supplies increasing? How much crack are they smoking??

Greg, how did you get R50 insulation in the wall cavities?
I plan to use 2"x6" construction faced with brick veneer, but have been told the best I can do with the walls is R-21 (fiberglass batting).

That is about twice what I have.  I have easy access to my attic (as long as climing a ladder still counts as easy), so I could easily lay down some bats on top of what I have.  I just wonder if I would need to lay some 1x2 strips across the tops of the joists to keep the stuff on the bottom from getting packed down too much.

From what I have read, the Saudi's have made extensive use of horizontal drilling with their wells. That is, fields like Gwahar are more like offshore fields in that one well will have an extensive horizontal extent in the producing regions of the reservoir. The down side of horizontal drilling is that production decline is steep and happens very quickly.

Therefore, considering how much drilling technology has changed since the US peak in the early 70s, there may not be a direct comparison.

The Saudi reservoirs are also very porous if I understand correctly. That is, they drain well and have quite a bit of pressure. Perhaps that allows for better production from a smaller number of wells? I think you would need to look at reservoirs of similar porosity to get an idea of what the max number of wells associated with depletion would be. For example, "tight rock" natural gas formations can have a very tight spacing of wells.

I can answer some of your questions.

Oil in Saudi is trapped in a very few, large reservoirs. Oil in the US is in much smaller fields, and distributed across a plethora of formations and traps and rock types.

You could think of Saudi oil as a spot where the Gods set down their leaky drums while sowing oil across the world. The oil just pooled up in Saudi, around the leaking drums, while the rest of the world was covered by splotches and patches randomly thrown about by the oil Gods.

One reason that looking at number of wells drilled is misleading pertains to average field size - small fields take more drilling. You might have to drill 500 US wells to equal a single Saudi well in volume. Our resources are more scattered, theirs are concentrated geographically and geologically.

There are a lot of reasons that comparing wells drilled isn't very accurate, but this is the main one.

As far as drilling in Texas around the Peak, it picked up tremendously right at the peak, but production continually dropped. The rapid drilling only served to slow the depletion rate short term. Since everybody also knew East Texas was drying up, they began looking like crazy for other plays as well, fueling a rise in # of wells drilled.

Unless, that is, they have an ulterior motive - usually involving very large $ amounts and / or a wish to gain selfish advantage at the expense of near everyone else.

Did you know that both GW Bush and Dick Cheney have state of the art self sufficient houses / ranches?

I note, however, that Richard Rainwater drives an SUV.

Are we in Europe more gullible? or are Americans more stupid? or have you a better explanation for why the USA, almost alone of nations, is unable to see what is in front of its nose?

That's a sad story of yours, Retro, we've had some abnormal flash floods that sound similar here in UK these last handful of years :-((

Point well made about oil powered machines. It is relevant on a global stage too: how would we be able to provide assistance to large disasters like the recent tsunami and earthquakes? The answer is we wouldn't, so instead of killing, say, 100,000 they will kill 300,000.

So are we PO'ers just a bunch of NNBON's?
All we need to do is drill offshore & ANWR?
That? is the answer?
Cool.

He admits NG shortage is killing Ag business

 King Spearheads Coalition to Find Ways to Lower Energy Costs for the Heartland

Vote for King Yeeha--He Voted YES on implementing Bush-Cheney national energy policy.

Agriculture is an energy-dependent industry that is affected by energy prices

At least until the reservoir springs a leak, and then all hell breaks loose.

How does pumping a gas into the ground dispose of it?

If the words fit, then you can quit (thinking & asking questions). One need not worry one's pretty head about how real science works. Some company PR manger (also an English major) says the CO2 is disposerized of just like a diaper into landfill and that's that. Simple, no?

Our problem is that we output CO2 in the atmosphere faster then it can be absorbed by natural processes. If we delay todays output spike enough we are ok as long as we do not produce as much for hundreds of years and the sum of new slow seepages from the ground storage/disposal/whatever catches up with us.

A massive ammount of ground storage of CO2 buys us time to either figure out how to produce energy withouth CO2 or how to control the greenhouse effect even if we release large ammounts of CO2.

Then imagine the climate control debate...
I even think it will include rude words. :-)