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Perhaps we are getting a little more attention

Posted by Heading Out on April 26, 2006 - 12:25am
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: peak oil [list all tags]

So there I was, glancing back over the site to the time, a year ago, when we commented several times on the President's proposals on the costs of gas and what could he do about it. But I was also amused to note that, at the time, Prof G looked into the popularity of the words peak oil using blogpulse. At the time he found a peak had occurred for the phrase, as you can see.

So being curious I did it again.

And suddenly we have another peak, though this is about twice as high as the last one.

To turn to the President's plans; if I understand this correctly, the President has stopped filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in order that there should be that much more (only actually around 70,000 bd) crude oil to go around and to keep prices down. Which would suggest that there is a shortage, where every little helps.

But when we go to the Doha meeting of OPEC their comment:
Saudi Oil Minister Ali Naimi, the powerbroker within OPEC and its convincing voice on extra capacity, said while it would offer more oil if the market wants it, the demand isn't there.

'There's no demand even for light crude,' Naimi said, referring to the higher quality oil favored by most refiners. The usable spare capacity is judged to be as low as 1.7 million barrels a day of high-sulfur, harder-to-refine crude.

'Send the customers, we will give them what they want,' said Naimi.

would suggest that the supply of crude is not the problem.

Well, the Murphy refinery at Meraux (125,000 bd) is scheduled to reopen the second week in May; so we should soon be back in production at all the refineries, just as the new Hurricane season starts. This should allow some greater influx of crude, to provide additional gas to the market, and perhaps this might influence prices. Though following through on the scenario that developed last year nothing much helped.

It would be nice, for those of us who look for answers, if there were more funds for creative processes outside of the defined few, since, as has been said before, the answers will be in bb's not a single bullet. Unfortunately we are not seeing that level of creativity in the allocation of funding. Pity, really!

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