The Oil Drum

Farmers unable to cash in on soaring food prices

All over the world, prices for basic foods -- barley for beer, milk for cheese, corn for tortillas, and the rice that serves as a staple for more than half the world's population -- are soaring. But farmers aren't rushing to cash in on the boom by planting more of the crops.

...They say the reason is simple. The cost of planting some crops is rising as fast as their prices, and sometimes faster, leaving little incentive to increase production of some foods that remain in high demand around the world.

ABC - Solar energy technology must be improved: G-G

Governor-General Major General Michael Jeffrey has stepped into the energy debate, saying solar power is Australia's best prospect of securing a large-scale clean and sustainable energy source. Speaking at a Future Summit in Sydney, he suggested water, food and the environment would be among Australia's top issues in 50 years time, and that all three were linked to plentiful and reasonably priced energy.

The Australian - Oil to stay high, says Knox

SANTOS acting chief executive David Knox thinks that world oil prices will remain high in the short term because of political instability in several of the major oil-producing countries. But he said in the long term, factors like demand from countries such as China and the rise of gas would play a far more important role.

Old gas pumps can't handle ever-rising prices

REARDAN, Wash. - Mom-and-pop service stations are running into a problem as gasoline marches toward $4 a gallon: Thousands of old-fashioned pumps can't register more than $3.99 on their spinning mechanical dials.

The pumps, throwbacks to a bygone era on the American road, are difficult and expensive to upgrade, and replacing them is often out of the question for station owners who are still just scraping by.

Many of the same pumps can only count up to $99.99 for the total sale, preventing owners of some SUVs, vans, trucks and tractor-trailers to fill their tanks all the way.

Don't let rising gas prices push you into panic selling

Logically, the high cost of fuel doesn't justify drastic lifestyle changes, so don't be too quick to dump your SUV or your suburban home.

The rising price of gasoline offers all of us an interesting logic test. What's the right thing to do in response? Should we sell our big vehicles, give up our houses in the suburbs, or spend billions of dollars on a new transit system?

If you checked off none of the above, you're on the right track.

This is a talk given by Dan Bednarz to a group of nurses. The talk was given at the House of Delegates Meeting of the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses & Allied Professionals (Pasnap) in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on April 29, 2008.

Dan is a healthcare consultant who tries to get people in healthcare (including public health) to start thinking about peak oil and climate change issues and how to address them. In Dan's words, he is "a healthcare consultant building a consortium among public health and health care stakeholders and actors to address peak oil, climate change and related environmental issues". Dan posts on TOD under the name Danb.

Hello, it's nice to be with you today. My intent is to give you a realistic take on the future of your profession by explaining why healthcare and nursing will be transformed by rising energy costs. Is there danger ahead? You bet. It's going to be difficult, probably life-changing for all Americans. Here’s why: the scale of our energy predicament is enormous, unprecedented and grossly misunderstood by institutional leaders and most of the media.

I know some of you may be wondering, Energy scarcity? That's someone else's problem; put this guy in touch with geologists and politicians.

So let's step back for the big picture.

Gas Prices Send Surge of Riders to Mass Transit

DENVER — With the price of gas approaching $4 a gallon, more commuters are abandoning their cars and taking the train or bus instead.

Mass transit systems around the country are seeing standing-room-only crowds on bus lines where seats were once easy to come by. Parking lots at many bus and light rail stations are suddenly overflowing, with commuters in some towns risking a ticket or tow by parking on nearby grassy areas and in vacant lots.

“In almost every transit system I talk to, we’re seeing very high rates of growth the last few months,” said William W. Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association.

'Peak oil' is here. Now what?

What does it mean that crude oil is peaking? Essentially it means that the world has used half the oil available to extract and will enter a permanent decline, even as world energy demand is rising, with new economic powerhouses China and India growing at an alarming rate. Peak oil does not mean we are on the verge of running out of oil; the overriding implication is that we are entering a period of relentlessly rising prices and ultimate shortfalls. This is ominous for economies and for individuals facing a seeming perfect storm of hardships financial and otherwise. Talk to a poor mother trying to fill her oil tank through a northern winter, or to a fisherman paying $6,000 in diesel fuel costs to get to and from Georges Bank, to a South American peasant thrown off his land to make room for “palm oil for biofuel” plantations, or to a native Athabascan woman watching as Alberta tar sands operations lay waste to formerly pristine ecosystems over an area the size of Florida.

The Age - Money pours into oil and gas fields

INVESTMENT in Victoria's oil and gas industry continues to boom, with the Esso/BHP Billiton joint venture in Bass Strait working towards giving a $1.1 billion go-ahead for the second stage development of the Turrum oil and gas field in early June.

NZ Herald - Fuel retailer Gull warns it could exit NZ

Independent fuel retailer Gull is warning that the Government's proposed emissions trading scheme could hurt its profits to the point where it reconsiders operating in New Zealand.

The Age - Bright solar power plan has dark side

THE State Government announced this week that Victoria would join Queensland and South Australia in offering an incentive for people to install solar power panels. Under the "feed-in" tariff for solar power, home owners will be paid more than three times the retail price for each kilowatt-hour of electricity fed into the grid from a rooftop solar power system.
[.....]
But while all international feed-in tariffs are paid on the entire production from the chosen renewable energy source, Victoria, like the other states, is offering to pay home owners only for the electricity exported to the grid after what is consumed in the home.

This raises serious concerns about equity issues and the ability of these schemes to produce the desired levels of renewable energy take-up.

Gas jumps nearly 3 cents to record; oil crosses $124

NEW YORK - Gasoline and crude oil jumped to new records Thursday, with gas rising 3 cents to an average national price of nearly $3.65 a gallon and oil crossing $124 a barrel for the first time.

At the pump, the average price of a gallon of regular gas nationwide rose 2.7 cents to a record $3.645, according to a survey of stations by AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Diesel prices also rose, adding 0.9 cent to match a record national average of $4.251 a gallon.

...Meanwhile, light, sweet crude for June delivery rose 16 cents to reach a settlement record of $123.69 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange Thursday after spending much of the day in negative territory. But in after-market electronic trading, prices rose to a new trading record of $124.49; volume was quite low, making it easy for oil to keep pushing higher.

Stuff.co.nz - Origin Energy prepares to fight off UK bid

Origin Energy has provided its first big hint that it will attempt to fight off a proposed $A12.9 billion takeover bid from Britain's BG Group, suggesting the valuations in the bid were not "challenging".

This is not really a local story, but the notion of Daniel Yergin of CERA talking about oil at $150/barrel, and a move to alternatives is just so staggering that I had to include a local report on the subject:
Stuff.co.nz - High oil prices seen spurring alternative fuel shift

Record US crude oil futures near $US124 a barrel have reached a "break point" that will spur a shift away from an oil-centric transportation sector toward alternatives, energy analyst Daniel Yergin said.

Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, said that US crude oil prices – which hit a record $US123.93 a barrel on Wednesday – will hasten the adoption of cellulosic biofuels made from switchgrass and woodchips, as well as battery-powered cars and fuels derived from coal.

ABC Radio - Fuel price set to rise in Indonesia

The government signalled early last month that it is bleeding money to fuel subsidies -- where the government off-sets the higher price of world oil to keep domestic prices down in diesel, gasoline and kerosene.

The subsidies are huge -- Indonesia nearly tripled its fuel subsidy spending in the last budget to 14-billion U-S dollars for 2008, about 12 per cent of total state expenditure.

But the world price keeps rising, and the government -- breaking an election promise -- has to act.