The Oil Drum

DrumBeat: August 31, 2006

Posted by threadbot on August 31, 2006 - 9:11am
Topic: Miscellaneous

[Update by Leanan on 08/31/06 at 9:17 AM EDT]

Peak Oil Forecasters Win Converts on Wall Street to $200 Crude

Aug. 31 (Bloomberg) -- On a sweltering Tuesday in mid-July, in the fields outside Pisa, Italy, Willem Kadijk scribbles notes as a ragtag troupe of doomsayers predict the end of the Oil Age.
With his shaved head, jeans and sandals, Kadijk, 48, blends into a crowd gathered under a white tent to hear of the coming calamity. The death of cheap, abundant crude, the forecasters warn, might unleash war and plunge the world into a second Great Depression.
That's not the prophecy of some apocalyptic cult. Kadijk, a hedge fund adviser, had flown from Amsterdam to attend a conference on a geologic theory known as peak oil.

Will the End of Oil Be the End Of Food?

American agriculture is fatally dependent on oil. A few forward-thinking farmers are trying to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.

PODCAST: The Nuclear Option. Popular Mechanics on the pros and cons of going nuclear.

Tom Whipple on The Peak Oil Crisis: Labor Day 2006.

BP may resume pipeline production soon

Chad oil tax row 'not asset grab'

Western auto execs woo newly rich Russians

Booming economy fuels Muscovites’ taste for conspicuous consumption

Analysts: Venezuela move hurts profits

Cash-strapped Cambodia eyes black gold

US oil giant Chevron is poised to prove Cambodia is sitting on oil reserves worth $1 billion annually.

Absence of an ill wind blows some good

GLOBAL warming's failure so far to produce a repeat of last year's serial hurricane assault and battery of the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico is the swing factor in the suddenly soft price of oil.

Public has to make solid energy choices, Lugar says

U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar acknowledges that production represents only half of the energy crisis equation.
"We want our SUVs despite all the talk about the mileage isn't so great," the Indiana Republican said during an energy summit he co-sponsored with Purdue University Tuesday.

[Update by Leanan on 08/31/06 at 10:00 AM EDT]

Nigeria: Kerosene Scarcity - What the People Say

Ghanaians told to save power

Pakistan’s oil demand to double in 10 years

China nomads on energy's cutting edge. Well, I guess this explains the silicon shortage:

One day last year, Sitkan and her husband were called to a meeting where 100 villagers waiting for a transmission line learned of an alternative to burning coal. After government subsidies, 500 yuan - a tenth of what Sitkan makes each year selling sheep's wool and meat - buys a photovoltaic solar unit that would provide enough electricity to power a small heater, a radio, a television, or a couple of light bulbs.
"Nearly everybody bought one," says Sitkan, a seminomadic shepherd who treks a well-traveled route each year with her family, 200 sheep, and a few cows.

BBC Radio 4 series - Driven By Oil. A four-part series about peak oil, starting Monday at 9am (UK time).

448 comments on DrumBeat: August 31, 2006

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tochigi on August 31, 2006 - 9:18am

Can we suppose that TPTB are not worried about our present oil production plateau because they know that the imminent collapse of the housing bubble will suppress US and other OECD demand for several years?

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tate423 on August 31, 2006 - 9:26am

WOW BLOOMBERG has announced Peak Oil to the masses of businesses.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=arur.i7moHMs&refer=exclusive

As energy prices soar and violence convulses the Middle East, the peak-oil movement -- an unlikely alliance of geologists, physicists, oil industry consultants and environmental activists -- is winning converts. Peak-oil ideas are bubbling up from scientific journals and offbeat Web sites, much the way warnings of global warming did a decade ago. For the first time, the peaksters have begun to grab the attention of Washington and Wall Street.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office, the nonpartisan congressional watchdog, is due to release a study on peak oil this November. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, a Maryland Republican, has formed the Congressional Peak Oil Caucus to sound the alarm.
``The world has never faced a problem like this,'' Bartlett says.
More and more, however, the peaksters are drowning out everyone else, Cranberg says. ``You can't turn around without seeing or hearing these ideas,'' he says. ``I think they are gaining.''
Jim Kunstler, a writer-activist who lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, says peak oil will ultimately destroy suburbia and plunge the U.S. into a violent dark age of feudalism.
``The question is, Can we run our shit the way we are running our shit?'' Kunstler, 57, says.
By 2020, Canada's oil sands will yield 4 million barrels a day, almost four times what they do now, according to CAPP. That sounds like a lot until you realize that 4 million barrels is just over a third of what Saudi Arabia produced per day in 2005.
``Geology will trump technology,'' he says.

You gotta love Kunstler. This has to be one of the most mainstream looks at what peak oil entails. I'm glad they pointed out the fallacy in believing the tar sands will save us.

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DrumBeat: August 31, 2006

448 comments on DrumBeat: August 31, 2006

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