By William Mellor and Le-Min Lim
Sept. 27 (Bloomberg) — In a steamy jungle clearing in Myanmar, a lone drilling rig topped by limp red flags bears testimony to China’s insatiable thirst for oil. (more…)
September 2006
Monthly Archive
Tue 26 Sep 2006
China’s Oil Deals With Iran, Myanmar Put It at Odds With U.S.
Posted by diderot under Peakist , Energy , Iran , China , Resource , New Oil1 Comment
Sun 24 Sep 2006
Robert Hirsch: Peak Oil in Five to Ten Years
Posted by Dan Welch under Peakist , Peak Oil , Economics1 Comment
Since oil prices took a nose dive over the last few weeks there has been much gloating from those with interests in denying oil depletion and the ill informed, claiming that somehow the peakist position was now discredited. Typical was The Australian, which happily conflated recent fears of spiking petrol prices with the peak oil position, before going on to uncritically confuse Exxon’s recent propaganda with reasoned argument:
“During the chaos of record prices, Goldman Sachs warned that the world could soon be paying $US100 a barrel for oil…The doomsday scenarios of Peak Oil theory - that we have already found most of the oil available and are rapidly running out - gained fevered currency. That interest has since subsided and the theory itself has been dismissed by oil companies.”
Whilst more informed commentators noted “What we have now is a moment of super volatility.”
It is with grim satisfaction therefore that we note, at the world’s most prestigious energy forum held last week in London - the 27th annual Oil & Money Conference - Robert Hirsch (author of the authoritative US Department of Energy report on oil depletion mitigation scenarios) told reporters he expected peak oil “within the next five to 10 years.’’ He went on to say that the mitigation effort required is on a par with “the race for the moon, or the mobilisation for World War II,’’ and that the world needs to spend $1tn a year on alternative fuels, starting 20 years before the peak in conventional oil production, in order to mitigate fuel shortages. According to Hirsch’s best guess, then, we are 10 to 15 years and 10 to 15 trillion dollars behind schedule. Source
Sun 24 Sep 2006
Report Proposes Importing Solar Energy from Africa
Posted by Dan Welch under Peakist , Energy , Renewability , Carbon , Solar Power , Global WarmingNo Comments
Reduce CO2 from electricity generation by 70% by 2050 without nuclear, claims research group
TREC Press Release
A new report, commissioned by the German Government, shows in detail how Europe (including the UK and Ireland) can meet all its needs for electricity, cut emissions of CO2 from electricity generation by 70% by the year 2050, and phase out nuclear power at the same time.
The key to this revolution in electricity supply is the replacement of old polluting power plants that rely on dwindling supplies of fuel with a larger range of non-polluting sources of energy that will be good for thousands of years. (more…)
Sun 24 Sep 2006
OPEC casts a dark eye on the greening of energy
Posted by Dan Welch under Peakist , Global Warming , Saudi Arabia , Climate Change , OPEC , biofuelsNo Comments
AFP, 17 September 2006 - Despite forecasts that show no end to rising demand for crude over the coming decades, oil-producing nations are casting an uneasy eye on the growing number of measures being taken to tackle climate change.
“The main long term challenge is definitely the necessity to reconcile oil with environmental demands,” Claude Mandil, executive director of the International Energy Agency, told a recent conference organised by OPEC to examine the industry’s future.
Mandil also hinted that the 11 Middle Eastern, African and Asian nations in the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries could not afford to ignore concerns about climate change, which are even winning over once sceptical consuming nations. (more…)
Sun 24 Sep 2006
White House Greenwash
Posted by Dan Welch under Peakist , Global Warming , Climate ChangeNo Comments
Last Sunday the Independent reported rumours from senior Washington sources that President Bush was preparing an astonishing U-turn on global warming following increasing pressure on the White House from Republican governors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, the mayors of more than 300 cities, business leaders and Congress (as well as from Al Gore’s global feting).
Officials disclosed to Time that the Administration is formulating a huge energy initiative designed to “change the whole nature of the discussion” and challenge the g.o.p. [Republicans], Democrats, the oil and electricity industries, and environmentalists. An adviser said : “Only Nixon could go to China, [recalling how the former president amazed the world after years of refusing to deal with its Communist regime] and only Bush and Cheney–two oilmen–can bring all these parties kicking and screaming to the table.” (more…)
Thu 21 Sep 2006
Monbiot Throws Out the Baby with the Bathwater
Posted by Dan Welch under Peakist , Climate Change[3] Comments
In his comment piece in the Guardian today George Monbiot argues “If the biosphere is wrecked, it will not be done by those who couldn’t give a damn about it, as they now belong to a diminishing minority. It will be destroyed by nice, well-meaning, cosmopolitan people who accept the case for cutting emissions, but who won’t change by one iota the way they live.” While he is right to condemn those amongst the priveleged classes who think they are “saving the planet” “because they shop at Waitrose rather than Asda” he is throwing out the baby with the bathwater when he attacks Friends of the Earth and the report Living within a carbon budget published last week by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. (more…)
Thu 21 Sep 2006
Climate Change is Threat to National Security, says UK Special Representative
Posted by Dan Welch under Peakist , Climate ChangeNo Comments
In a welcome example of straight talking, John Ashton - the UK foreign secretary’s special representative for climate change - has called human-induced climate change an immediate threat to national security and prosperity. He argues that we must secure a stable climate whatever the cost, through the urgent construction of a low carbon global economy, as failure to do so will cost far more - and the window of opportunity is rapidly closing:
“The first priority of any government is to provide the conditions necessary for security and prosperity in return for the taxes that citizens pay. Climate change is potentially the most serious threat there has ever been to this most fundamental of social contracts.” (more…)
Tue 19 Sep 2006
Russia tries to rein in foreign oil firms
Posted by Dan Welch under Peakist , Environment , Russia , Gazprom[5] Comments
· State withdraws approval for Shell’s Sakhalin project
· Gazprom rumoured to want half of BP venture
Terry Macalister and Michael Mainville in Moscow Tuesday September 19, 2006
The Guardian
Shell and BP were facing legal wrangles and upheaval in Russia last night, raising doubts about the involvement of foreign companies in the country’s oil and gas sector. Government approval for Shell’s $20bn Sakhalin project was withdrawn and state-owned Gazprom was reported to be trying to buy half of the TNK-BP joint venture.
Russia’s Natural Resources ministry said it had revoked the environmental approval for the major Sakhalin-2 scheme in the far east of Russia to “satisfy the arguments of the prosecutor’s office” leaving the future of the scheme in doubt. (more…)
Tue 19 Sep 2006
Bahman Aghai Diba PhD International Law - Persian Journal
The officials of the Islamic Republic of Iran have threatened that if the United Nations Organization adopts serious sanctions against the regime of Iran (due to the nuclear case of Iran which is currently in the Security Council of the UNO), they may resort to the “oil weapon”. This threat has been also used in the past for countering the Western efforts for stopping the Iranian nuclear program of Iran and the struggle to get the regime in Iran changed from the Islamic Republic to something else. (1) But, what is the oil weapon and what does it mean for the regime of Iran and the others? (more…)
Tue 19 Sep 2006
Saudi Aramco and ExxonMobil Attack Peak Oil
Posted by Dan Welch under Peakist , Peak Oil[5] Comments
U.S. National Petroleum Council to investigate peak-oil claims
Leading petroleum producers, including Saudi Arabia and Exxon Mobil Corp., are aggressively arguing that plenty of crude oil remains for world consumption, a move to counter critics who contend crude output is about to plateau, according to the Wall Street Journal on Thursday. (more…)
Thu 14 Sep 2006
Japan faces deadline on Iranian oil field
Posted by Dan Welch under Peakist , Geopolitics , Iran1 Comment
It’ll be interesting to see how this geopolitical conundrum plays out…
Yuji Okada and Megumi Yamanaka, International Herald Tribune, September 12, 2006
TOKYO The government of Japan said Tuesday that it would enter talks with Iran to resolve a dispute over delays at the $2.5 billion Azadegan oil drilling project operated by the Japanese state-run firm, Inpex Holdings.
“Iran plays an important role on issues in Japan’s energy policy and the national interests,” the Japanese trade minister, Toshihiro Nikai, told reporters in Tokyo. The government and Inpex “will work closely and deal with the matter carefully,” he said.
The chairman of Inpex, Kunihiko Matsuo, said in June that the Tokyo- based company had not started drilling the field because Iran has not completed the removal of land mines laid during the Iran-Iraq War, lasting from 1980 to 1988. The field could be awarded to Russia or China if Inpex fails to start work by Sept. 15, Kyodo News said last month, citing an official at an Iranian state-run company.
Japan, which imports 99 percent of its oil, has come under pressure from the United States to abandon Azadegan amid efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program. (more…)
Thu 14 Sep 2006
In this week’s New Yorker magasine David Remnick profiles Bill Clinton. Check out what’s on Clinton’s reading list:
“I borrowed a book from him that he had just read—“The Party’s Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies,” by Richard Heinberg, not exactly summer reading—and it was full of underlinings and what looked like the most serious undergraduate’s markings, with lots of exclamation points.”
Tue 12 Sep 2006
Dounreay’s catalogue of idiocy
Posted by diderot under Peakist , Energy , Environment , Nuclear[3] Comments
One thing would have prevented decades of radioactive pollution in the far north of Scotland: open government, George Monbiot
It is as far out of sight, and as far out of mind, as any place on the British mainland could be. From the point of view of our political leaders, this is just as well. If the perennial farce at the Dounreay nuclear site, on the north coast of Scotland, were any closer to the surface of public consciousness, we would be hounding and haranguing them wherever they go. A report in this weekend’s Sunday Times suggests that the agencies charged with cleaning the site up have, in effect, conceded defeat. Dounreay - or the area surrounding it - cannot be wholly decontaminated. Nuclear pollution from the site will last for as long as the fissile metals remain radioactive. (more…)
Mon 11 Sep 2006
US Army Contemplates Redrawing Middle East Map to Stave Off Looming Global Meltdown
Posted by Dan Welch under Peakist , Peak Oil , Geopolitics , Iran , Iraq , Global Warming , production disruption , Saudi Arabia , Climate Change[4] Comments
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed writes: In a little-noted article printed in early August in the Armed Forces Journal, a monthly magazine for officers and leaders in the United States military community, early retired Major Ralph Peters sets out the latest ideas in current US strategic thinking. And they are extremely disturbing.
Ethnically Cleansing the Entire Middle East
Maj. Peters, formerly assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence where he was responsible for future warfare, candidly outlines how the map of the Middle East should be fundamentally re-drawn, in a new imperial endeavor designed to correct past errors. “Without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East,” he observes, but then adds wryly: “Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works.” (more…)
Mon 11 Sep 2006
Members of the Kuwaiti National Assembly tabled a motion in July to link Kuwait’s crude oil production with its oil reserve, following a report published by the ‘Petroleum Intelligence Weekly’ putting Kuwaits known and potential reserves at around 50 billion barrels, significantly less than OPEC and IAEA estimates for Kuwaiti reserve at 85 to 102 billion barrels. If this lower figure is correct Kuwait has about 25 years of oil production left. If the motion is approved, Kuwait will be the first oil state to regulate and tie up oil production with the rate of oil reserve quantities - a significant step forward towards an international Oil Depletion Protocol.
Richard Heinberg’s new book on the Protocol has been just been published and together with the Post Carbon Institute a new website has been launched to the promote the Protocol. Heinberg’s latest essay on the Protocol is published on Energy Bulletin.
