Only a few places still remain for those who want to take part in the informal Oil Drum - ASPO meeting that is being organized in Italy in June of this year. Oil Drum readers are welcome to join the discussion with Oil Drum staff and ASPO members. This meeting, to take place on 26, 27 & 28 June in Italy at the “Alcatraz free University” near Perugia, will have a spontaneous self-organized program according to the ‘bar camp’ rules. People can bring any topic to the informal meeting that they want to discuss. The only limitation being the wide ‘systems boundary’, so that issues should be directly or indirectly related to the heart of ASPO & The Oil Drum, discussions about energy and our future.

In order to reserve a place, please send a message to Rembrandt Koppelaar contact@peakoil.nl also in copy to Ugo Bardi (ugo.bardi@unifi.it). Upon approval of your application a registration form will be sent with room and payment details.

More information on the meeting, costs, and traveling to Italy can be found below the fold

In 2007, The Oil Drum staff incorporated a parent non-profit organization called the Institute for the Study of Energy and Our Future (ISEOF). We feel that working under the aegis of a non-profit organization sends a clear message that our sole motivation is to give the public an unbiased view of the energy landscape. This distinguishes us from for-profit enterprises whose perspectives may be subject to a conflict of interest.

Dear readers, today marks the 4th full of year of the existence of The Oil Drum.

Our durability is because of you, the readers. We wouldn't—couldn’t—do this if we didn't think people were listening, helping us spread the word, and participating in and advancing the conversation. So, I offer you, our readers, a sincere thank you from all of our staff.

A summary and some thoughts lay below the fold.

We welcome all readers to the newest TOD sub-domain: "The Oil Drum: EROI" – or Energy Return on Investment. This sub-domain will be administered by Professor Charles Hall and his Ph.D. Student, David Murphy (EROI Guy) as well as by many of the other editors and contributors from TOD that write about net energy analysis and biophysical economic concepts.

We have at our school (SUNY – College of Environmental Science and Forestry) an “EROI Institute” (web site is operational, but still undergoing development) which is basically three offices, two relatively large, and a bunch of books and computers. There are roughly 8 graduate students at any one time and usually about half a dozen undergraduates hanging around. We all work on sweating out various analyses related to energy. We have only quite minimal funding and work on a shoestring although many students are supported by NSF fellowships, teaching assistantships or funding that we do have for tropical research. So with that introduction, let us turn our attention briefly to describing why we think EROI is important.