As much as 9 percent of Nigeria's oil production was interrupted last month when rebels blew out pipelines and kidnapped oil-company workers. Militants have said previously that oil companies should leave Nigeria. Last month, they vowed to cut Nigeria's oil export capacity by 30 percent in February.

We've heard this kind of thing before but I think these folks are getting serious... NYMEX LSC Future is up $1.32 as of now and rising. Could be an interesting weekend.

Bodies of fetuses, newborns clog Harare's sewers

Gasoline shortages and 613% inflation are blamed.  The sewers are also being clogged by sand.  People can't afford detergent any more, and clean their dishes by scrubbing them with sand.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=9285

Excerpt from the link:

"In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter "containing 44 x 10 to the 18 grams of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the planet's current biota."(1) In plain English, this means that every year we use four centuries' worth of plants and animals.

The idea that we can simply replace this fossil legacy - and the extraordinary power densities it gives us - with ambient energy is the stuff of science fiction. There is simply no substitute for cutting back. But substitutes are being sought everywhere. They are being promoted today at the climate talks in Montreal, by states - such as ours - which seek to avoid the hard decisions climate change demands. And at least one of them is worse than the fossil fuel burning it replaces.

The last time I drew attention to the hazards of making diesel fuel from vegetable oils, I received as much abuse as I have ever been sent by the supporters of the Iraq war. The biodiesel missionaries, I discovered, are as vociferous in their denial as the executives of Exxon. I am now prepared to admit that my previous column was wrong. But they're not going to like it. I was wrong because I underestimated the fuel's destructive impact."

Current US per capita consumption of petroleum is 1050 gallons per year.

Current US per capita arable land = 1.43 acres.

So therefore, we can either grow food or grow switch grass?
This is of course assuming the very optimistic figures quoted!

CHATSWORTH, CA--(MARKET WIRE)--Feb 13, 2006 -- Gravitomatic, Inc. is happy to announce that our 5 years long research of gravity resulted in a breakthrough discovery of a new energy source for humanity. Our revolutionary technology generates heat from the energy of the gravitational field of our planet. The latest round of experiments not just confirmed our theory, but also dramatically extended it. Based on our latest results, we see our road map as follows:

--  In three years we'll have the first commercially available
    gravitational electrical power plant.
--  In four to five years the first commercial car engine powered by
    gravity will hit the road.

Cars, trucks, ships which do not need refueling, cleaner air in our cities and many, many more things, are becoming reality thanks to our discovery.

Effective immediately this revolutionary technology is available for licensing.

1. Lots of acreage on which to dump mountains of sulfur extracted from high-sulfur crude (like the Kashagan sulfur mtn.)
   
2. Lots of NG from which to get the extra hydrogen necessary to turn heavy crude into light crude products.

Giving the Iran Oil Bourse that is soon to open, it is also very odd that such a contract would be in dollars. Then again, maybe the journalist got it wrong and confused actual dollars trading hands with a price of contract value just being measured in dollars.

Neither should we rule out the possibility that money may not be the only thing with which China is buying the oil from Iran.  Weapons systems can also be a form of currency.

Notice how the US is slowly getting squeezed out by the Chinese and others. Its$400 billion (by September 2006) effort in Iraq and Afganistan doesn't seem to be buying the US very much, is it?

There are also political considerations.  China is likely to take a dim view of any bombing of their "investment."

"The report said there was some disagreement over intended capacity, with Iran asking China to agree to daily output of 300,000 barrels of oil, while Sinopec preferred to set a target of 180,000 to avoid excess production."

Perhaps China wanted to reduce their capital investment, but it sounds like a difference in approach to reservior management.  Iran wants to max output ASAP, China wants supply for a L-O-N-G time.

Iran may be driven by pressing domestic needs (lots of young adults, etc.) and China by fear of Peak Oil.

George Deutsch has had his 15 minutes of fame, which in his case, seems at least 14 minutes too long.

Deutsch, a political appointee at NASA's Washington office, surfaced in the news story about James Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA: Hansen recently told The New York Times that Bush administration officials were squelching his comments about the dangers of global warming. Hansen said that NASA's political appointees, including Deutsch, were watering down his Web presentations, refusing interviews and trying to control his comments. When confronted about his efforts, Deutsch said his job was "to make the president look good."

The 24-year-old Deutsch obviously has also tried to make himself look good. After the Hansen story broke, the Times and other newspapers reported that the undergraduate degree that Deutsch claimed to hold from Texas A&M doesn't exist. When his fraud was uncovered, Deutsch resigned.

...But beyond Deutsch, this White House seems to have a real knack for putting people, regardless of their education or experience, into jobs for which they are ill-equipped. And it has a maddening tendency to try to twist science to benefit its political agenda.

The image of a 24-year-old college dropout trying to control the words of a respected scientist is sadly emblematic of this administration.

The fact that water is not lapping at the door
today does not mean it won't be a decade or two
from now. Speculation about the theoretical
amounts of oil that can be extracted from
various locations around the world, though
interesting, become meaningless if substantial
sea level rise is going to put much of the oil
extraction infrastructure and most of the oil
refineries on the planet under water by 2020 or
so.

And then of course there is the matter of the
devastating effect substantial a rise in sea
level will have in combination with very much
higher storm intensity.

As we all know (or should by now), everything
we do, from manufacture of steel to putting
out forest fires, adds to the global warming
problem.

I personally don't think the current oil-based
society will last another ten years,
irrespective of when peak oil cuts into the
supply, because environmental meltdown will
become the dominating factor for almost
everything in the future.

But in the meantime, I guess it keeps the
generally dumb public distracted from reality
and still flocking to the shopping malls if
politicians carry on with the farcical plans
for the reconstruction of New Orleans or the
equally idiotic plans for development in other
locations that will be under water in a matter
of a decade or two if we are lucky and even
less if we are not.  

We use almost exactly 9mbpd of gasoline in February. Our yearly oil consumption averaged to daily usage is basically whatever it is now, I think 21.7mbpd.

The EIA provides a breakdown of what a barrel of crude refines to in terms of gasoline, kerosene, heating, etc.

One barrel of gasoline requires two barrels of crude to produce. You probably had a more accurate factor of .56, but who knows.

So if we were importing 1mbpd of gasoline post Katrina, somewhere in the world they would have had to have been producing 2mbpd of crude(roughly) to supply that.

Conversely, those were 2mbpd we either couldn't or didn't have to produce. But then you have to factor in the other refined products and figure out where they went and what they offset. What were the refining mixes of the GOM plants that were damaged?

Then add in all the inventories and buffers everywhere and you're lost. The more you think about it, it gets so complicated, we probably couldn't calculate more than a general guess.

Good question though.

We've been living for a hundred years off "the low-hanging fruit," so to speak.

Abiotic oil has been pretty well demolished by the scholars at this site, by the way. Where's all the abiotic oil that should have replenished the old Texas fields and Prudhoe Bay by now?

More interesting to me is Venezuela's games, I tried to follow Gets It's link about this earlier but it failed for me. To be honest I was surprised they hadn't done this before, after all, it became virtually standard procedure for many OPEC countries a long while back. But times are different now so it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

I was musing earlier today about how the major oil producers might act when the words 'imminent peak oil' are seriously uttered on the world stage. I have a hunch (no, not a 'hunch' ;) ) that they will almost immediately cap production levels a bit below current. Say, 25 mbpd vs current 28 mbpd, in order to probably maximise and extend revenue. I would, lol. Perhaps that's another reason for the dreaded words being unspoken?

Not fair to leave us hanging like this...

Unfortunately your bet (which I, most definitely, would not take) will probably have to wait till at least 2010 for payout.

This does feel a 'moment', I have turned off all my lights and lit a candle in its respect, it will be my only light afore bed tonight. (just used my electric kettle, though)

Good luck with your post, it will be easier and truer if you do not equivocate or justify, let the quibbles come later.

Blessedbe

• conventional oils
• NGLs
• condensates

The phrase "within a finite & small future time range" I used above would seem to be a hedge. It is not. I would claim that we're in the undulating plateau now and that monthly production will stay within the range I said and then there will be a definite year-on-year decline from which the world never recovers.

I will only make an argument, an analysis for discussion based on the best data I can find. Give me a few weeks.

Only Chavez is turning out to be a bigger pain than the Middle East.  It's especially annoying that he was democractically elected, so we have to be really  secretive about our attempts at regime change.