The Peakist

This is the second of a series of papers by the Energy Watch Group which are addressed to investigate future energy supply and demand patterns. The Energy Watch Group consists of independent scientists and experts who investigate sustainable concepts for global energy supply. The group has been initiated by the German member of parliament Hans-Josef Fell.

Executive Summary

When discussing the future availability of fossil energy resources, the conventional wisdom has it that globally there is an abundance of coal which allows for an increasing coal consumption far into the future. This is either regarded as being a good thing enabling the eventual substitution of declining crude oil and natural gas supplies. Or it is seen as a horror scenario leading to catastrophic consequences for the world�s climate. But the discussion rarely focuses on the premise: how much coal is there really? (more…)

NEW DELHI: India and China have come together once again to jointly bid for a stake in an oil venture in faraway Colombia for some $800 million.

ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas arm of state-run Oil and Natural Gas Corp, and China Petroleum and Chemical Corp (Sinopec) have jointly submitted a bid to acquire stake in the Ominex de Colombia - a subsidiary of the Texas-based Ominex Resources Inc.
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Russia and China have signed an agreement to pipe large quantities of gas from fields in Siberia to China.

Officials said the pipelines, which could begin supply within five years, would deliver up to 80 bn cubic metres of gas annually.

The agreement came as part of a raft of economic deals signed between the two sides during the visit to Beijing of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But there was no deal on a separate pipeline to deliver Siberian oil.

Mr Putin said the two sides had agreed on a deal to supply large quantities of gas through two pipelines from fields in west Siberia and the Russian far east.

Alexei Miller, head of Russia’s gas monopoly Gazprom, told reporters that the timeframe and the scale of the deal had been agreed with China’s oil and gas company, CNPC, but he said the financial details were yet to be negotiated.

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Buddhi Kota Subbarao, a former Indian Navy Captain with a Ph.D in nuclear technology, looks at some unexplored angles of the Indo-US nuclear deal. As well as providing a nuanced account of the politics behind the deal, Subbarao’s critique of nuclear power is worth viewing given his record of technical publications on nuclear technology. Subbarno has previously written critically on the environmental consequences of uranium mining and the Indian nuclear industry . Subbarno writes: (more…)

This week has seen John Bolton, the US ambassador to the United Nations, ratchet up the rhetorical pressure on Iran over uranium enrichment and a UN report on Iran’s nuclear programme forwarded to the UN Security Council for consideration of possible punitive action. In the same week, in an extraordinarily provocative act of real politique George Bush has brokered a deal with India which allows it to buy atomic technology and fuel despite its refusal to sign the non-proliferation treaty and possession of nuclear weapons. John Bolton, on the day of the Indo-US deal said both Indian and Pakistani nuclear regimes were acquired “legitimately”. Writing in the Guardian today Randeep Rameesh sees this recognition of India’s nuclear legitimacy both in the light of India’s great power status as a “potential competitor [over] control of the planet’s future energy resource” and, he argues, the US’ “tacit recognition of climate change”.

Binu Mathew, the editor of countercurrents.org, sees the deal firmly in the context of peak oil - a trade off in which India is recognised as a legitimate nuclear power, and guaranteed atomic technology and fuel in return for backing off from the development of an “Asian energy grid” which would have seen the construction of a pipeline to deliver Iranian gas to Pakistan and India and other bids for control of dwindling fossil fuels resources.

Bush spelt it out very clearly in New Delhi - “It’s in our economic interests that India have a civilian nuclear power industry to help take the pressure off the global demand for energy. To the extent that we can reduce demand for fossil fuels, it will help the American consumer.” (more…)