The Oil Drum

Julian Darley seems to think that the world may be reaching Peak natural Gas. This has considerable impact on likely future supplies of LNG to the US, and to everywhere else for that matter. It was the first statement he made in chairing the last panel of the "Peak Oil and the Environment" Forum in D.C. this afternoon, but it was also the last statement I heard at the meeting. I had to leave for my flight, and with the program running just enough late I missed both it and the last presentation (and me with only 17 pages of notes from today).

Ah! Do we really need six pages of comment? Thank you at the back, we'll gladly cut it short. Suffice it to say I had the chance to split part of a bottle of wine with Ken Deffeyes (we talked a little about Abu Sa'fah the first indication of Saudi depletion, since the combined 800 kbd from it and Qatif were designated purely to match declines in existing fields at the time they came on stream.) There were a couple of short chats with Governor Schweitzer of Montana about 5-micron coal and a recognition, as the talks went on through the afternoon, that maybe the ground is changing.

But first an admission - they caught me out. Since Dr James Hansen had to be recognized as one of the Time 100 Folk of the Year, later this afternoon, they moved his talk up, and so sadly I missed the first bit. So this is where I put in another plug for the web site (URL corrected here and earlier), to get the Powerpoints. His message, as I caught it, was largely that we can only afford to raise the temperature of the planet one single degree Centigrade, and beyond that the historic record suggests catastrophe. One part of this is the melting of the polar ice caps, and, in this regard he showed the melt pictures and the latest measurements of the weight of Greenland (from one of the satellites). What is interesting in that, is that the last couple of years seemed to have created more of a trend out of the data. He commented (perhaps in response to Dr Crichton) that this may provided more reliable data than models.

So, there is no wireless within the hall, so this will be delayed a bit (not that I was ever a good note-taker). And yes, they spent a few minutes at the beginning making sure the sound worked.

I will admit that I am a great fan of Representative Bartlett, as was noted, he has gone out ahead of the crowd on this and brought the topic of Peak Oil some attention. (He is surrounded by the press at the break). But, as he noted, there is a concern that here, he is largely speaking to the choir. Actually I don't think so, I was surprised, looking at the attendee list, and listening in on conversations, at the number of oil industry folk that are here, and taking note. He gave his usual broad intro to the subject, sad that time constrained both him and Ken Deffeyes. I was struck by how energetically he gave his talk (he was born in 1926) and thought it a pity that the topic was so grim.

Dr Deffeyes gave more comment on King Hubbert and Hubbert Linearization, (its in his second book) and these were two informative, and very entertaining talks. And while the Powerpoints are on the website these are the sort of talks that are much better heard. Both speakers are convinced and knowledgeable of their subjects, and have a wealth of info on which to draw. (Dr Deffeyes analogy was that of trying to fit his book into a coffee mug).

Returning home from one meeting, it was quickly time to move on to another, and so I spent Saturday lunch happily listening to 29 High School kids from overseas telling a Rotary District Meeting the answers to 3 questions; what they most missed from home; what they would most miss going home from the US; and what they said "back home" when somebody sneezed.

To remark on only the first (though I liked the Belgian third answer) it was remarkable the consistency with which, from Japan to Latvia, the answer to the first question was "public transport."

I was reminded of that tonight, at the first evening of the Peak Oil and the Environment meeting, when Alan got up in the question period to ask Roger Bezdek (second author of the Hirsch Report), who had just ably summarized the contents thereof, as to whether he could hold out much hope that the re-introduction of trains and trolleys might help reduce the wedge time for the vehicle efficiency sector in the future.