Peak Oil Passnotes: Crack Gets High, Oil Gets Sexy Again

At the time of writing the gasoline crack between it and a tonne of crude oil has widened to its biggest since the price collapse of September. Whilst we have been witnessing some received wisdom from the mass media telling us about soaring inventories, as normal, they are about a month behind the game.

Inventories of gasoline have been dragged in the opposite direction to what many people thought. Despite imports from Europe the amount of draw down in the stocks in the U.S. has increased week after week.

Another Way

A band of idealists in the mountains of North Carolina is trying to build a low-energy lifestyle. But must we all live like hippies in the woods to make a difference?

Turning the World with David Korten

On the positive side of pending peak oil, climate change, water and food shortages, and the inevitable fall of Empire, Korten envisions a metamorphosis from the domination model to a cooperative one. He believes this is a choice we will have to make in our lifetime, or face the consequences of having it made for us. The cooperative choice is "Earth Community." In every aspect, it is the complete opposite of Empire. Earth Community nourishes, empowers, feeds, educates, develops, shares, restores, frees, respects, and provides equality, health and wellness to a global society without the use of violence.

Bacteria may hold the secrets to clean renewable sources of energy

"Imagine the future of energy. The future might look like a new power plant on the edge of town - an inconspicuous bioreactor that takes in yard waste and locally-grown crops like corn and woodchips, and churns out electricity to area homes and businesses," said Judy Wall of the University of Missouri - Columbia, one of the authors of the new report, Microbial Energy Conversion, released by the American Academy of Microbiology.

Study: Up to 100 million acres needed for renewable energy crops

As many as 100 million acres of cropland and pastures would have to be dedicated to cultivating biomass fuels like switchgrass to support a national goal of 25 percent renewable energy use by 2025, a University of Tennessee study says.

The hydrogen economy's nitty-gritty details explained by the DOE

We can expect clusters of hydrogen fueling stations to be installed and in use for the general public in the New York City and Los Angeles areas first, followed by broader dispersion along the West Coast and the Northeast. We're talking 2015 before anything resembling an infrastructure is even a possibility, and 2025 is a more likely date for these areas to be running a lot of hydrogen cars.

U.N. climate pact unlikely until after Bush

This week's U.N. climate talks kept a plan for fighting global warming on track for expansion beyond 2012, but breakthroughs look unlikely before U.S. President George W. Bush steps down, experts said on Saturday.

"Everyone is waiting for the United States. I think the whole process will be on ice until 2009," when Bush's second term expires, said Paal Prestrud, head of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo.

The Worst of Both Worlds?

Stern's headlined conclusions are intellectual fictions. They're essentially fabrications to justify an aggressive anti-global-warming agenda. The danger of that is we'd end up with the worst of both worlds: a program that harms the economy without much cutting of greenhouse gases.

Inhofe: Don’t Worry About Global Warming Because 'God’s Still Up There'

Raymond J. Learsy: An Energy Agenda For a New Age and Newly Energized Congress, Part 1

Beginning with this post, I will lay out a series of suggestions that we as citizens and consumers might do well to ponder and pursue. Taken together, these suggestions will, I would hope, be helpful in shaping dialogue in Washington and point us toward a rational energy future.

Public slow to plug into renewable energy

If attendance on the opening morning of Switzerland's first renewable energy fair is anything to go by, the planet is truly doomed.

More than a billion cars to hit the road

An economic assessment predicts that the number of private cars on the world's roads will skyrocket from today's figure of just over 600 million to between 1.4 and 2.7 billion by 2050, doubling or quadrupling their carbon dioxide emissions.

OPEC must cut again, $60 oil "moderate"

TOKYO - Qatar Oil Minister Abdullah Al Attiyah said on Saturday that OPEC would have to cut oil production further when it meets in Nigeria next month, and that a $60 US crude oil price was “moderate”.

IMF chief says demand set to keep oil price high

A decline in oil prices, which have soared over the past two years, is not "a visible scenario right now", IMF Managing Director Rodrigo Rato said at a news briefing before addressing a meeting of the Group of 20 financial leaders.

Feeding frenzy for Africa oil fields gathers pace

Africa accounts for only around 10 percent of world oil reserves but the continent is the focus of a feeding frenzy among energy companies that is just beginning in countries like Libya and Angola.

An interview with John Bellamy Foster, author of Naked Imperialism: The U.S. Pursuit of Global Dominance:

It is clear that the geopolitics of oil have changed, and this is a point made in Naked Imperialism. In the chapter "U.S. Imperial Ambitions and Iraq" there is a bar graph superimposed on a map of the world showing very visibly the extent to which the oil reserves of the world are concentrated in the Middle East. There is a lot of discussion today about whether the world has reached or even passed "peak oil" production. No one really knows the answer; there are still too many unknowns, though the peak oil hypothesis is a plausible one. What we do know for certain is what the oil industry calls reserve/production ratios (or simply r/p ratios), which give you the number of years before reserves are likely to be exhausted for various oil-producing countries in the world, based on current production levels. This tells us that with each passing year a larger percentage of the world reserves will be located in the Middle East, since the reserves to production ratios there are far higher. It is obvious then that control of the Middle East reserves becomes more critical each year if world oil supplies are to be secured.

The Chinese seduction of Africa

In contrast to Americans and Europeans, they take more risks and set no conditions on aid and trade