Nigel Wilson, Energy Writer
November 22, 2005
DECLINING production from the world's major oil fields could not be made up by technological advances or the development of new discoveries, a Swedish energy expert warned yesterday.In Perth to launch the Australian chapter of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, Professor Kjell Aleklett of Uppsala University said four fields the size of the North Sea would have to be found for oil production to meet expected world demand in 2025.
"This is just not possible," he told a meeting of transport bureaucrats.
"There is no possibility that the 65 current oil-exporting countries can lift output sufficiently to meet demand when production is declining in 54 of them."
He said 75 per cent of known world oil reserves were in Muslim countries, and the rest of the world would have to be conscious of this as supplies of traded oil tightened.
About 1 per cent of world oil fields, "mostly in desert countries", were responsible for 50 per cent of production and this trend would continue, he said.
Professor Aleklett, who heads the APSO organisation in Europe, said that the answer to closing the gap between current world demand for 85 million barrels a day and projected demand of 115 million barrels a day in 2025 "must come from something other than technology".
The APSO is an international network of scientists, mostly affiliated with European institutions and universities, that aims to determine when world production of oil and gas will peak and decline, and the consequences.
Peak oil theory, which holds that at some stage exploitation of the world's known oil reserves will be greater than the oil remaining, developed from the work of Shell geophysicist M King Hubbert in the 1950s which correctly predicted oil production in the US would decline from the 1970s, despite an upsurge in exploration.
Professor Aleklett said the world was addicted to oil.
Current knowledge of the way petroleum systems worked suggested no new big oil fields would be found, unless they were off Greenland or in Siberia, both of which posed development challenges.
He noted that despite popular prejudices, China - with 21 per cent of the world's population - accounted for only 8 per cent of world oil and gas demand.
This compared with the US - with 5 per cent of the population - which accounted for 25 per cent of consumption.
If China lifted its demand to 21 per cent of world oil production by 2030 it would need 25 million barrels a day.
This compares to current demand of just 6.3 million barrels of oil a day.
Monday, November 21, 2005
No Technological Fix for Falling Oil Stocks
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
Renewed Interest Could Spark More Solar Building
The Sooner we move towards solar energy and smart building designs, the better.
ENERGY
Solar: Advocates seek governmental support
Don and Nancy Dayton aren't worried about the rapidly rising cost of heating fuels this winter.
They've paid less then $50 a month for the last two years to heat and cool, plus run all the electric appliances in their almost 2,000- square-foot, split-level home in Eldorado.
They estimate 90 percent of the heat is free -- from the sun -- with no expensive photovoltaics involved. Their almost two-decade- old house is simply designed to take advantage of solar rays and natural ventilation.
The house uses no propane or natural gas. Only occasionally does the couple use the wood stove or electric baseboard heaters. "In 18 years, we've never turned on our downstairs electric heat," Nancy Dayton said.
The Daytons think it's unfortunate that many people in a state known for sunshine will be paying high heating bills in their homes this winter when there's a better, cheaper way. "We're sold on solar," Don Dayton, a retired National Park Service administrator, said. "It's sad to see so many designers and builders get away from it. You drive around Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, and you see so few solar-designed houses."
Passive solar building gained support following the last energy crisis in the 1970s. Federal and state tax incentives for solar helped spur construction. When fuel prices dropped in the late 1980s, the tax incentives died and so did the government support and broad interest in passive solar design. Now, as fuel prices are expected to soar over the winter, the Daytons and other solar advocates think governments and developers should pay attention again to solar-powered homes by offering tax rebates and credits.
Good design is essential to balancing winter heat with summer cool inside a passive solar home like the Daytons'. The south side of their house sports large, double-pane glass windows. Properly sized overhangs provide shade in the summer, while windows and doors on the east and west provide circulation to keep the house cool. It has no air conditioning and no windows on the north side of the house. The home's bottom level is bermed into the side of the hill, providing more insulation. The home is well insulated -- better than standards called for at the time it was built.
Short, concrete-block walls about a foot wide, known as trombe walls, are covered with dark stucco and glass windows on the outside of the home's southside lower level. The walls collect heat during winter days and slowly release it at night, much as adobe does, into the bedrooms. The house can go two days in cloudy weather before it starts to turn cold inside.
During the heyday of passive solar design in the 1970s and 1980s, Eldorado touted itself as a solar capital of the nation and it still ranked No. 1 for its number of solar homes, with more than 300, in the 2000 Census. Life magazine featured four pages of Santa Fe solar homes in 1980, highlighting the often-studied Balcomb house off Old Santa Fe Trail in the First Village subdivison.
Dayton said a large roadside billboard used to proclaim Eldorado as a solar community. "The sign came down sometime in the 1990s and builders stopped doing solar houses," Dayton recalled.
Susan Nichols, who helped design some of the original Santa Fe solar homes, said solar enjoyed strong government and industry support three decades ago. "It was just injected with potential and excitement under the Carter administration," she said. "The minute Reagan came into office and gas prices fell, that all dried up."
Nichols said solar design education also died. She and business partners, including architect and one of the early solar gurus Ed Mazria, traveled the country giving workshops to architects, designers and builders on solar. Now, few people know how to correctly design or build a good solar home, Nichols said.
Nichols said, in spite of all the warnings about oil's finite supply, the nation didn't plan ahead for the day the supply would drop and prices would rise. "We, as Americans, are not particularly far-sighted," she said from her Communico company office in Santa Fe.
Solar design isn't rocket science, say Nichols and Mazria, who wrote one of the definitive solar design books in 1979 and is currently rewriting it. "We know it can be done and we know how to do it," said Mazria, who served on Gov. Bill Richardson' Green Building Task Force.
Mazria proposed two years ago in an article titled "It's the Architecture, Stupid" in Solar Today that new buildings be required to cut energy usage by half the average usage for an area. Mazria also wrote that architecture schools needed to focus on training students in energy-efficient design. It's a proposal he's promoting today at every opportunity before architects and governments. This week he presented his proposal to Santa Fe County for trimming energy costs in residential and commercial buildings.
Technology and materials for both active and passive solar homes has improved immensely. Trial and error in the field has given solar designers loads of practical information on what works and what fails for a given building site. Computer programs allow designers and architects to create energy-efficient, passive-solar homes based on the unique challenges of each site.
What's needed now, advocates say, is renewed support from government and consumers for passive solar construction and eduction. New Mexico, with a governor who supports renewable energy and energy-efficient buildings, is positioned to lead the way.
And with many in the oil industry observers predicting a time soon when oil supplies will peak and head on a downward slide, Dayton, Mazria and others believe solar, energy-efficient buildings need renewed interest fast.
Contact Staci Matlock at 470-9843 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Check out the following Web sites for the latest in solar research and information:
* New Mexico Solar Energy Association:
www.nmsea.org
* U.S. Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory:
www.nrel.gov/solar/
* Consumer Energy Design, www.consumerenergydesign.org, a good simple description of basic passive and active solar principles from the California Energy Commission.
Books and articles
* "It's the Architecture, Stupid," by Ed Mazria, download from www.mazria.com/publications.html
* The Passive Solar Energy Book, by Ed Mazria, 1979, Rodale Press. Considered the early bible for solar design.
Businesses
Santa Fe is blessed with a wealth of solar innovators, contractors and businesses with decades of experience. Check out the membership list in the New Mexico Solar Energy Assocation or the Yellow Pages.
What's it mean?
Passive solar: Refers to gaining heat and light from the sun through proper building design and natural movement of heat and air without use of mechanical systems.
Active solar: Moving air and heat from the sun by means of fans and pumps; also collection and conversion of solar rays into electricity by means of a photovoltaic system of panels, converters and batteries.
Source: The Santa Fe New Mexican
ENERGY
Solar: Advocates seek governmental support
Don and Nancy Dayton aren't worried about the rapidly rising cost of heating fuels this winter.
They've paid less then $50 a month for the last two years to heat and cool, plus run all the electric appliances in their almost 2,000- square-foot, split-level home in Eldorado.
They estimate 90 percent of the heat is free -- from the sun -- with no expensive photovoltaics involved. Their almost two-decade- old house is simply designed to take advantage of solar rays and natural ventilation.
The house uses no propane or natural gas. Only occasionally does the couple use the wood stove or electric baseboard heaters. "In 18 years, we've never turned on our downstairs electric heat," Nancy Dayton said.
The Daytons think it's unfortunate that many people in a state known for sunshine will be paying high heating bills in their homes this winter when there's a better, cheaper way. "We're sold on solar," Don Dayton, a retired National Park Service administrator, said. "It's sad to see so many designers and builders get away from it. You drive around Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, and you see so few solar-designed houses."
Passive solar building gained support following the last energy crisis in the 1970s. Federal and state tax incentives for solar helped spur construction. When fuel prices dropped in the late 1980s, the tax incentives died and so did the government support and broad interest in passive solar design. Now, as fuel prices are expected to soar over the winter, the Daytons and other solar advocates think governments and developers should pay attention again to solar-powered homes by offering tax rebates and credits.
Good design is essential to balancing winter heat with summer cool inside a passive solar home like the Daytons'. The south side of their house sports large, double-pane glass windows. Properly sized overhangs provide shade in the summer, while windows and doors on the east and west provide circulation to keep the house cool. It has no air conditioning and no windows on the north side of the house. The home's bottom level is bermed into the side of the hill, providing more insulation. The home is well insulated -- better than standards called for at the time it was built.
Short, concrete-block walls about a foot wide, known as trombe walls, are covered with dark stucco and glass windows on the outside of the home's southside lower level. The walls collect heat during winter days and slowly release it at night, much as adobe does, into the bedrooms. The house can go two days in cloudy weather before it starts to turn cold inside.
During the heyday of passive solar design in the 1970s and 1980s, Eldorado touted itself as a solar capital of the nation and it still ranked No. 1 for its number of solar homes, with more than 300, in the 2000 Census. Life magazine featured four pages of Santa Fe solar homes in 1980, highlighting the often-studied Balcomb house off Old Santa Fe Trail in the First Village subdivison.
Dayton said a large roadside billboard used to proclaim Eldorado as a solar community. "The sign came down sometime in the 1990s and builders stopped doing solar houses," Dayton recalled.
Susan Nichols, who helped design some of the original Santa Fe solar homes, said solar enjoyed strong government and industry support three decades ago. "It was just injected with potential and excitement under the Carter administration," she said. "The minute Reagan came into office and gas prices fell, that all dried up."
Nichols said solar design education also died. She and business partners, including architect and one of the early solar gurus Ed Mazria, traveled the country giving workshops to architects, designers and builders on solar. Now, few people know how to correctly design or build a good solar home, Nichols said.
Nichols said, in spite of all the warnings about oil's finite supply, the nation didn't plan ahead for the day the supply would drop and prices would rise. "We, as Americans, are not particularly far-sighted," she said from her Communico company office in Santa Fe.
Solar design isn't rocket science, say Nichols and Mazria, who wrote one of the definitive solar design books in 1979 and is currently rewriting it. "We know it can be done and we know how to do it," said Mazria, who served on Gov. Bill Richardson' Green Building Task Force.
Mazria proposed two years ago in an article titled "It's the Architecture, Stupid" in Solar Today that new buildings be required to cut energy usage by half the average usage for an area. Mazria also wrote that architecture schools needed to focus on training students in energy-efficient design. It's a proposal he's promoting today at every opportunity before architects and governments. This week he presented his proposal to Santa Fe County for trimming energy costs in residential and commercial buildings.
Technology and materials for both active and passive solar homes has improved immensely. Trial and error in the field has given solar designers loads of practical information on what works and what fails for a given building site. Computer programs allow designers and architects to create energy-efficient, passive-solar homes based on the unique challenges of each site.
What's needed now, advocates say, is renewed support from government and consumers for passive solar construction and eduction. New Mexico, with a governor who supports renewable energy and energy-efficient buildings, is positioned to lead the way.
And with many in the oil industry observers predicting a time soon when oil supplies will peak and head on a downward slide, Dayton, Mazria and others believe solar, energy-efficient buildings need renewed interest fast.
Contact Staci Matlock at 470-9843 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Check out the following Web sites for the latest in solar research and information:
* New Mexico Solar Energy Association:
www.nmsea.org
* U.S. Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory:
www.nrel.gov/solar/
* Consumer Energy Design, www.consumerenergydesign.org, a good simple description of basic passive and active solar principles from the California Energy Commission.
Books and articles
* "It's the Architecture, Stupid," by Ed Mazria, download from www.mazria.com/publications.html
* The Passive Solar Energy Book, by Ed Mazria, 1979, Rodale Press. Considered the early bible for solar design.
Businesses
Santa Fe is blessed with a wealth of solar innovators, contractors and businesses with decades of experience. Check out the membership list in the New Mexico Solar Energy Assocation or the Yellow Pages.
What's it mean?
Passive solar: Refers to gaining heat and light from the sun through proper building design and natural movement of heat and air without use of mechanical systems.
Active solar: Moving air and heat from the sun by means of fans and pumps; also collection and conversion of solar rays into electricity by means of a photovoltaic system of panels, converters and batteries.
Source: The Santa Fe New Mexican
Thursday, November 03, 2005
Natural Gas is Yummy
By Moe Fakih
This is a good concept Off Shore Wind Energy , but not the only solution towards taking mankind’s dependency away from fossil fuels. In order for us to meet the efficiency of oil and natural gas we will need to implement various forms of alternate energy – solar, wind, hydroelectric.
I was flying into San Diego this Monday evening, and I was amazed by how the San Gabriel basin and San Diego county looked on a clear night 20,000 miles up. If a 17th century pirate were in my seat he would see thousands of torch lights ablaze. Resources such as wood, fuel, and perhaps metal would be implemented to sustain constant illumination.
So what energy source feeds these glowing cities today? Have you ever considered how we have such an infinite amount of energy to power our hot water heaters, lights, and computers? In order for our power plants to generate energy, they also need an energy input. In the 1970s and 1980s, most electric power plants were fueled by coal or nuclear power. In 2000, some 23,453 megawatts (MW) of new electric capacity was added in the U.S. and almost 95 percent of this, or 22,238 MW, was fueled by natural gas. (Source: American Gas Association)
There appears to be enough natural gas in the world to supply our system in the short term, but perhaps alternate forms of energy should replace natural gas since the former is also used to feed the planet’s 6.5 billion people.
Crop plants assemble carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen into proteins that are essential both to plant growth and to the diets of humans and other animals. Of those four elements, nitrogen is the one that's too often in short supply. If you see yellowish, stunted crops, whether they're in an Indiana cornfield or an Indonesian rice paddy, it's likely that you can blame it on a lack of nitrogen.
Stan Cox, senior scientist at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, wrote, “A world of 6.4 billion people, on the way to 9 billion or more, needs more protein than the planet's croplands can generate from biologically provided nitrogen. Our species has become as physically dependent on industrially produced nitrogen fertilizer as it is on soil, sunshine and water. And that means we're hooked on natural gas.”
Perhaps we should save natural gas for food production and use other sources to power our refrigerators? Cox later writes, “Vaclav Smil, distinguished professor at the University of Manitoba and author of the 2004 book Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch and the Transformation of World Food Production, has demonstrated the global food system's startling degree of dependence on nitrogen fertilization. Using simple math -- the kind you can do in your head if there's no calculator handy -- Smil showed that 40 percent of the protein in human bodies, planet-wide, would not exist without the application of synthetic nitrogen to crops during most of the 20th century.”
That means that without the use of industrially produced nitrogen fertilizer, about 2.5 billion people out of today's world population of 6.2 billion simply could never have existed. This also means that if there is a long-term disruption in the natural gas supply, people will starve.
The momentum of past population growth is expected to add two to four billion people to the world's population by 2050, even with concerted efforts to rein in growth. Almost all of the increase will occur in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. That will double the demand for nitrogen fertilizer in those regions, and by that time, says Cox, “60 percent of their inhabitants will depend existentially (in the literal sense, not the philosophical one) on natural gas-derived nitrogen fertilizer.”
Aside:
Some say human population is exceeding earth’s carrying capacity. There is not enough, water, fish, timber, steel, oil etc. to sustain human consumption. In nature when a species experience a population explosion, it is only able to last as long as the environment permits. Usually famine or disease will minimize the numbers in order for the ecosystem to return to a state of equilibrium. Should nature run its course in terms of human population or should we continue to beat nature with ingenuity?
Here are some fun facts about natural gas:
http://www.pge.com/microsite/safety_esw_ngsw/ngsw/more/facts.html
This is a good concept Off Shore Wind Energy , but not the only solution towards taking mankind’s dependency away from fossil fuels. In order for us to meet the efficiency of oil and natural gas we will need to implement various forms of alternate energy – solar, wind, hydroelectric.
I was flying into San Diego this Monday evening, and I was amazed by how the San Gabriel basin and San Diego county looked on a clear night 20,000 miles up. If a 17th century pirate were in my seat he would see thousands of torch lights ablaze. Resources such as wood, fuel, and perhaps metal would be implemented to sustain constant illumination.
So what energy source feeds these glowing cities today? Have you ever considered how we have such an infinite amount of energy to power our hot water heaters, lights, and computers? In order for our power plants to generate energy, they also need an energy input. In the 1970s and 1980s, most electric power plants were fueled by coal or nuclear power. In 2000, some 23,453 megawatts (MW) of new electric capacity was added in the U.S. and almost 95 percent of this, or 22,238 MW, was fueled by natural gas. (Source: American Gas Association)
There appears to be enough natural gas in the world to supply our system in the short term, but perhaps alternate forms of energy should replace natural gas since the former is also used to feed the planet’s 6.5 billion people.
Crop plants assemble carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen into proteins that are essential both to plant growth and to the diets of humans and other animals. Of those four elements, nitrogen is the one that's too often in short supply. If you see yellowish, stunted crops, whether they're in an Indiana cornfield or an Indonesian rice paddy, it's likely that you can blame it on a lack of nitrogen.
Stan Cox, senior scientist at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, wrote, “A world of 6.4 billion people, on the way to 9 billion or more, needs more protein than the planet's croplands can generate from biologically provided nitrogen. Our species has become as physically dependent on industrially produced nitrogen fertilizer as it is on soil, sunshine and water. And that means we're hooked on natural gas.”
Perhaps we should save natural gas for food production and use other sources to power our refrigerators? Cox later writes, “Vaclav Smil, distinguished professor at the University of Manitoba and author of the 2004 book Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch and the Transformation of World Food Production, has demonstrated the global food system's startling degree of dependence on nitrogen fertilization. Using simple math -- the kind you can do in your head if there's no calculator handy -- Smil showed that 40 percent of the protein in human bodies, planet-wide, would not exist without the application of synthetic nitrogen to crops during most of the 20th century.”
That means that without the use of industrially produced nitrogen fertilizer, about 2.5 billion people out of today's world population of 6.2 billion simply could never have existed. This also means that if there is a long-term disruption in the natural gas supply, people will starve.
The momentum of past population growth is expected to add two to four billion people to the world's population by 2050, even with concerted efforts to rein in growth. Almost all of the increase will occur in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. That will double the demand for nitrogen fertilizer in those regions, and by that time, says Cox, “60 percent of their inhabitants will depend existentially (in the literal sense, not the philosophical one) on natural gas-derived nitrogen fertilizer.”
Aside:
Some say human population is exceeding earth’s carrying capacity. There is not enough, water, fish, timber, steel, oil etc. to sustain human consumption. In nature when a species experience a population explosion, it is only able to last as long as the environment permits. Usually famine or disease will minimize the numbers in order for the ecosystem to return to a state of equilibrium. Should nature run its course in terms of human population or should we continue to beat nature with ingenuity?
Here are some fun facts about natural gas:
http://www.pge.com/microsite/safety_esw_ngsw/ngsw/more/facts.html
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Time Magazine Finally Covers Peak Oil
By Shepherd Bliss
Time magazine became the most recent mainstream publication to finally give detailed coverage to Peak Oil. Its Oct. 31 twelve-page spread on “The Future of Energy” follows major articles in USA Today, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle and other big city dailies in recent months. They finally mention the coming Peak Oil that many geologists have been warning us about for years. Such articles appear after two major groundbreaking cover articles on oil by National Geographic, the first in the summer of 2004.
The October Esquire offered a two-page “Five Minute Guide: Oil,” which begins with the question “What’s ‘peak oil’?” Time’s lead article “How to Kick the Oil Habit” by Michael D. Lemonick runs four illustrated pages. Its only highlighted quotation is from Richard Heinberg, author of The Party’s Over:Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Society: “Price signals come much too late, and we will endure a tremendous amount of hardship that could have been averted if we’d acted sooner.” The article’s sub-head recommends that people “get ready for the withdrawal symptoms.”
In his two recent books on energy descent and in public speaking in the US, Europe, Africa, and Latin America, Heinberg describes how rising gasoline prices indicate the deeper and potentially devastating reality that the globe is running out of the petroleum that fuels contemporary societies.
Three major news events apparently stimulated the Time articles: 1) gasoline prices that “are roughly 25% higher than they were a year ago,” 2) “last week('s) 2005 Tokyo Motor Show,” where “carmakers practically ran over one another promoting their versions (of hybrid cars) in attempts to catch up with Honda and Toyota,” and 3) Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Time notes, “A hurricane like Katrina or Rita or last year’s Ivan could trigger a shortage by putting even a few of the remaining U.S.-based refineries out of business for a few weeks.”
Time quotes oil optimist Daniel Yergin, author of The Prize in 1991 and chairman of the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, as saying, “There’s a lot of technological innovation kind of bubbling that really has captured the imagination and obsession of a lot of people.” But Time writer Lemonick wonders, “Are we moving fast enough?” Energy investment banker Matthew Simmons responds to Yergin’s familiar argument that this is the fifth or sixth time that the world has run out of oil. Simmons, who doubts that Saudi Arabia has the petroleum reserves that it claims, argues, “This is a shortage where demand actually exceeds supply. A confluence of trends has made oil shortages inevitable, not optional.
One is the unexpectedly rapid expansion of India’s and China’s energy needs.” Amory Lovins, director of the Rocky Mountain Institute, adds, according to Time, that “oil companies, worried that these changes could leave them behind, are starting to think of themselves instead as broad-based energy companies.” Lovins says that “Shell and BP are already headed in that direction.” Shell has apparently become the largest seller of biofuels and is buying up solar panels.
Time’s spread, in fact, includes two familiar full-page BP ads, where the former British Petroleum corporation has re-positioned itself as “Beyond Petroleum.” These ads reveal the interlock of today’s mainstream media profiting from its promotion of such corporations. By placing the ads next to its allegedly objective news stories, Time mixes advertising and news, which journalism students are taught should have a “firewall” between them. One BP ad advocates that “It’s Time To Go on a Low-Carbon Diet.”
This ad advances natural gas, solar, and hydrogen as the appropriate substitutes for oil. The other ad highlights the assertion that “Natural gas is the clean bridge to renewable energy,” noting that, “Today natural gas makes up more than half of BP’s energy production.” One could almost think that BP is earth-friendly, rather than profit-oriented, polluting, and climate-changing. Various authors concerned with energy decline have documented how the combined energy from the proposed replacements for today’s cheap oil will not provide nearly the quantity of energy that we now derive from petroleum. Julian Darley of the Post Carbon Institute, for example, wrote the book High Noon for Natural Gas: The New Energy Crisis. It “looks at the coming shortage of natural gas in North America.” In both The Party’s Over and Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World, Heinberg refutes BP’s claim that natural gas, solar, and hydrogen will be able to provide the extensive energy that petroleum currently does, even when combined with other energy sources.
Consequently, demand for an increased use of the highly-polluting and climate-changing coal and for more use of the dangerous and expensive nuclear power are beginning to grow. Two separate, contrasting half-page viewpoints appear in Time: “It’s the End of Oil” by retired Princeton professor Kenneth Deffeyes and “Oil is Here to Stay” by Peter Huber, co-author of the new book The Bottomless Well. “World oil production is about to reach a peak and go into its final decline,” scientist Deffeyes contends. “The ‘Peak Oil’ theory fits nicely on a cocktail napkin,” counters the dismissive Huber. “Nonsense. Technology and politics -- not geology -- determine how much we pump and what it costs.” Huber contends that ample oil can be extracted by drilling in Alaska and off the shores of California and Florida, as well as in the tar sands of Canada and Venezuela.
Demands for such drilling -- in spite of their extensive environmental damage to the Earth and contributions to global warming -- are already increasing as the oil supply decreases, while the demand for oil products heightens. “It may be that the developments are coming too late to allow a smooth transition to the post-petroleum era,” Time writer Lemonick notes in a paragraph on Heinberg’s ideas. Heinberg contends that “all these things need an enormous lead time.” Lemonick concludes, “As consumers, we need time to make adjustments -- often very expensive ones -- to the new technologies.” Well-illustrated and helpful articles on “How Green Can We Get?,” “7 Cool New Ideas,” and “How to Save $$$ Now” complete Time's coverage. Time reports how people can “save your green by going green.”
It adds its voice to the chorus recommending that people slow down their cars, downgrade from premium gas, tune up and go hybrid. During the same week of Time’s coverage Big Oil reported its highest quarterly earnings ever and the highest profits of any corporation in history. The combined profits of ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron for the third quarter were $29 billion. Exxon/Mobil profits are up 79% and Shell’s are up 68% from last year. ExxonMobil’s third quarter net income alone is enough to cover all Social Security benefit payments for three months or to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for more than two months.
Perhaps there is a relationship between Big Oil and those wars? ExxonMobil sales for this quarter are already over $100 billion -- the highest in corporate history. ConocoPhillips, the nation’s third largest integrated oil and gas company, reported third-quarter profits surged 89%. This is in spite of hurricanes ravaging the heart of the nation’s oil industry in the Gulf Coast. Big Oil seems to profit from even disasters and turn them into opportunities. Yet Big Oil cried poverty last summer and its congressional allies added billions in tax breaks to its energy bill, not for customers, but for corporations.
Now even Republicans in Congress are considering measures to respond to the public’s increasing criticism of Big Oil at a time when parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida are still reeling from recent hurricanes. Representatives of the industry’s American Petroleum Institute keep assuring Congress and the public that prices will return to pre-hurricane levels. Peak Oil theorists doubt that this will happen, contending that prices will continue to go mainly up, as they bounce around in the increasingly unstable energy industry. Heinberg’s next appearances on Peak Oil include speaking on November 5 at San Francisco’s Green Festival, where around 25,000 people are expected to hear over 100 speakers on environmental issues at the two-day annual event.
Heinberg and eco-philosopher Joanna Macy will speak for an hour. Half a dozen other speakers will address Peak Oil during the weekend, including activists from Willits in Northern California, who advocate “re-localization” as the solution to energy descent. Heinberg has also been invited to be one of four speakers (including Prince Charles of Wales, who will deliver the keynote address) at a by-invitation-only meeting in San Francisco in early November.
Other invited participants include oil industry executives as well as other prominent business and government leaders. Dr. Shepherd Bliss has been a professor of Communication for the last two years at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo. He is currently moving to a farm in Sonoma County, Northern California, mainly because of how Peak Oil will probably strand the isolated, oil-dependent Hawaiian islands. He can be reached at: sb3@pon.net.
Time magazine became the most recent mainstream publication to finally give detailed coverage to Peak Oil. Its Oct. 31 twelve-page spread on “The Future of Energy” follows major articles in USA Today, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle and other big city dailies in recent months. They finally mention the coming Peak Oil that many geologists have been warning us about for years. Such articles appear after two major groundbreaking cover articles on oil by National Geographic, the first in the summer of 2004.
The October Esquire offered a two-page “Five Minute Guide: Oil,” which begins with the question “What’s ‘peak oil’?” Time’s lead article “How to Kick the Oil Habit” by Michael D. Lemonick runs four illustrated pages. Its only highlighted quotation is from Richard Heinberg, author of The Party’s Over:Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Society: “Price signals come much too late, and we will endure a tremendous amount of hardship that could have been averted if we’d acted sooner.” The article’s sub-head recommends that people “get ready for the withdrawal symptoms.”
In his two recent books on energy descent and in public speaking in the US, Europe, Africa, and Latin America, Heinberg describes how rising gasoline prices indicate the deeper and potentially devastating reality that the globe is running out of the petroleum that fuels contemporary societies.
Three major news events apparently stimulated the Time articles: 1) gasoline prices that “are roughly 25% higher than they were a year ago,” 2) “last week('s) 2005 Tokyo Motor Show,” where “carmakers practically ran over one another promoting their versions (of hybrid cars) in attempts to catch up with Honda and Toyota,” and 3) Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Time notes, “A hurricane like Katrina or Rita or last year’s Ivan could trigger a shortage by putting even a few of the remaining U.S.-based refineries out of business for a few weeks.”
Time quotes oil optimist Daniel Yergin, author of The Prize in 1991 and chairman of the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, as saying, “There’s a lot of technological innovation kind of bubbling that really has captured the imagination and obsession of a lot of people.” But Time writer Lemonick wonders, “Are we moving fast enough?” Energy investment banker Matthew Simmons responds to Yergin’s familiar argument that this is the fifth or sixth time that the world has run out of oil. Simmons, who doubts that Saudi Arabia has the petroleum reserves that it claims, argues, “This is a shortage where demand actually exceeds supply. A confluence of trends has made oil shortages inevitable, not optional.
One is the unexpectedly rapid expansion of India’s and China’s energy needs.” Amory Lovins, director of the Rocky Mountain Institute, adds, according to Time, that “oil companies, worried that these changes could leave them behind, are starting to think of themselves instead as broad-based energy companies.” Lovins says that “Shell and BP are already headed in that direction.” Shell has apparently become the largest seller of biofuels and is buying up solar panels.
Time’s spread, in fact, includes two familiar full-page BP ads, where the former British Petroleum corporation has re-positioned itself as “Beyond Petroleum.” These ads reveal the interlock of today’s mainstream media profiting from its promotion of such corporations. By placing the ads next to its allegedly objective news stories, Time mixes advertising and news, which journalism students are taught should have a “firewall” between them. One BP ad advocates that “It’s Time To Go on a Low-Carbon Diet.”
This ad advances natural gas, solar, and hydrogen as the appropriate substitutes for oil. The other ad highlights the assertion that “Natural gas is the clean bridge to renewable energy,” noting that, “Today natural gas makes up more than half of BP’s energy production.” One could almost think that BP is earth-friendly, rather than profit-oriented, polluting, and climate-changing. Various authors concerned with energy decline have documented how the combined energy from the proposed replacements for today’s cheap oil will not provide nearly the quantity of energy that we now derive from petroleum. Julian Darley of the Post Carbon Institute, for example, wrote the book High Noon for Natural Gas: The New Energy Crisis. It “looks at the coming shortage of natural gas in North America.” In both The Party’s Over and Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World, Heinberg refutes BP’s claim that natural gas, solar, and hydrogen will be able to provide the extensive energy that petroleum currently does, even when combined with other energy sources.
Consequently, demand for an increased use of the highly-polluting and climate-changing coal and for more use of the dangerous and expensive nuclear power are beginning to grow. Two separate, contrasting half-page viewpoints appear in Time: “It’s the End of Oil” by retired Princeton professor Kenneth Deffeyes and “Oil is Here to Stay” by Peter Huber, co-author of the new book The Bottomless Well. “World oil production is about to reach a peak and go into its final decline,” scientist Deffeyes contends. “The ‘Peak Oil’ theory fits nicely on a cocktail napkin,” counters the dismissive Huber. “Nonsense. Technology and politics -- not geology -- determine how much we pump and what it costs.” Huber contends that ample oil can be extracted by drilling in Alaska and off the shores of California and Florida, as well as in the tar sands of Canada and Venezuela.
Demands for such drilling -- in spite of their extensive environmental damage to the Earth and contributions to global warming -- are already increasing as the oil supply decreases, while the demand for oil products heightens. “It may be that the developments are coming too late to allow a smooth transition to the post-petroleum era,” Time writer Lemonick notes in a paragraph on Heinberg’s ideas. Heinberg contends that “all these things need an enormous lead time.” Lemonick concludes, “As consumers, we need time to make adjustments -- often very expensive ones -- to the new technologies.” Well-illustrated and helpful articles on “How Green Can We Get?,” “7 Cool New Ideas,” and “How to Save $$$ Now” complete Time's coverage. Time reports how people can “save your green by going green.”
It adds its voice to the chorus recommending that people slow down their cars, downgrade from premium gas, tune up and go hybrid. During the same week of Time’s coverage Big Oil reported its highest quarterly earnings ever and the highest profits of any corporation in history. The combined profits of ExxonMobil, Shell and Chevron for the third quarter were $29 billion. Exxon/Mobil profits are up 79% and Shell’s are up 68% from last year. ExxonMobil’s third quarter net income alone is enough to cover all Social Security benefit payments for three months or to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for more than two months.
Perhaps there is a relationship between Big Oil and those wars? ExxonMobil sales for this quarter are already over $100 billion -- the highest in corporate history. ConocoPhillips, the nation’s third largest integrated oil and gas company, reported third-quarter profits surged 89%. This is in spite of hurricanes ravaging the heart of the nation’s oil industry in the Gulf Coast. Big Oil seems to profit from even disasters and turn them into opportunities. Yet Big Oil cried poverty last summer and its congressional allies added billions in tax breaks to its energy bill, not for customers, but for corporations.
Now even Republicans in Congress are considering measures to respond to the public’s increasing criticism of Big Oil at a time when parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida are still reeling from recent hurricanes. Representatives of the industry’s American Petroleum Institute keep assuring Congress and the public that prices will return to pre-hurricane levels. Peak Oil theorists doubt that this will happen, contending that prices will continue to go mainly up, as they bounce around in the increasingly unstable energy industry. Heinberg’s next appearances on Peak Oil include speaking on November 5 at San Francisco’s Green Festival, where around 25,000 people are expected to hear over 100 speakers on environmental issues at the two-day annual event.
Heinberg and eco-philosopher Joanna Macy will speak for an hour. Half a dozen other speakers will address Peak Oil during the weekend, including activists from Willits in Northern California, who advocate “re-localization” as the solution to energy descent. Heinberg has also been invited to be one of four speakers (including Prince Charles of Wales, who will deliver the keynote address) at a by-invitation-only meeting in San Francisco in early November.
Other invited participants include oil industry executives as well as other prominent business and government leaders. Dr. Shepherd Bliss has been a professor of Communication for the last two years at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo. He is currently moving to a farm in Sonoma County, Northern California, mainly because of how Peak Oil will probably strand the isolated, oil-dependent Hawaiian islands. He can be reached at: sb3@pon.net.
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