poor oil companies

One Vijay Vaitheeswaran speaks to public radio's Marketplace about ExxonMobil. He asserts that ExxonMobil has 3 problems:

1. resource replacement
2. unfriendly governments
3. climate warming

Regarding the first, there's a lack of recognition that it's a global problem affecting producer and consumer (i.e. everyone) alike. Vijay is the author of:Power to the People : How the Coming Energy Revolution Will Transform an Industry, Change Our Lives, and Maybe Even Save the Planet. If the book is serious, the title obviously is not.

Here's an in-depth Bloomberg piece about the current state of the oil industry. It begins with an example of how difficult oil production has become and includes:

ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva says his company is spending as much as it can on searching for oil and developing new wells. Mulva, 58, says investment is being constrained after 147 years of exploration as companies struggle to find deposits large enough to produce sufficient profits. In the past four years, the average discovery outside of North America was the equivalent of 38.6 million barrels. That's less than half the amount of oil burned every day around the world and the lowest average for a four-year period since 1901, Chew says.

All the signs point to a depleted finite resource, yet again and again the analysts presume that if only the oil companies would invest more in exploration and production, there would be enough supply to meet demand.

There are two ways to get new reserves,'' says Robert Kaufmann, director of graduate studies at Boston University's Center for Energy and Environmental Studies. ``Go out and drill for them or buy someone else's. They are increasingly doing the latter, and the problem with that approach is it doesn't add any new barrels of oil. It's just a reshuffling of the cards in the deck.

What do they say about shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic?

I see the scenario playing out over and over:

1. oil gets scarcer
2. market prices rise to reduce demand (government controls are anathema)
   
3. oil companies and traders make tons of money
4. consumers fume
5. Congress hems and haws (raising taxes is anathema)
   

But somehow I doubt that we'll call a spade a spade. Introspection is not our strong suit.

The people who explore for and produce the oil we consume deserve our appreciation for their talent and effort; they have been doing our bidding after all.

a tale of two Drakes

Great as Sir Francis was to have circumnavigated the earth and defended England against the Spanish Armada, he is not one of the Drakes of whom I speak.

First is Edwin Drake, the "crazy man" whose determination founded the oil industry.

Then there's Frank Drake who devised the Drake equation 'in the 1960s in an attempt to estimate the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy with which we might come in contact.' The conditions for a temperate world conducive to life are rare. One recently recognized condition that has come to light of late is the fortuitous presence of our moon. But of greatest concern to us is the last factor in his equation, L, which is the expected lifetime of intelligent communicative civilization. Drake himself conservatively estimated L as 10 years, a minimum. We can today safely raise that value to around 50 years. Carl Sagan in the 12th episode of his TV series Cosmos, Encyclopedia Gallactica, speculates that we have only a 1 in 100 chance of surviving past 100 years. Sagan's main fear was of nuclear war, but he lists the other dangers, such as resource depletion.

Human-like life is very rare in the Universe; let us not waste it.  I think a fitting analogy for our place in the Universe, taken from Buddhist scripture, is that of a blind turtle surfacing on the ocean once every one hundred years and poking its head through a floating ring!

Here's a site that predicts the worst and soon, even as evidenced in its name, Dieoff.

Syriana

Syriana opened December 9, after private screenings with the director in Washington D.C. Some in the audience walked out during those early screenings; one wonders why. And one wonders: is this how the oil business and government intrigue work? For example, here's part of a quote that might have struck close to home:

Corruption. Corruption is our protection, corruption keeps us safe and warm, corruption is why we win.

Another quote has an energy analyst in the film preaching to the Emir's son:

You want to know what the business world thinks of you? We think a hundred years ago you were living out here in tents in the desert chopping each others head's off, and that's exactly where you're gonna be in another hundred. So yes, on behalf of my firm, I accept your money.

This is a perversion of an extant Arab saying about camels before and camels after (the age of oil). But furthermore, this condescending statement reflects a lack of understanding on the part of the writers about our own fate as separate from that of the oil producers. Even the enlightened Oxford-educated son can only look at the short term future.

For an example of them is us, look at this project in one the more progressive Gulf Emirates.

Syriana is rightfully being talked about in various circles, including critics and politicos. Here are two conservative views. One says:

Syriana makes no attempt to grapple with the distressing fact that every time we fill our cars we fund those plotting to murder us.

He somewhat misses the point. It's not that others are trying to kill us; it's more like we're killing ouselves through our indulgence and dependence. Another critic says about the film:

[There's] no hint that petroleum fuels civilization.

I dispute that; there is a very small hint. The critic also writes:

And who are the really greedy? Do the simple arithmetic of pumping petroleum in the desert: After expenses of typically under $5 a barrel, rigged cartels in the Middle East -- run by Iranian mullahs, Persian Gulf royals or Libyan autocrats -- sell it on the world market for between $50 to $60.

First, it's their oil, unfortunately. Second, is it really that cheap to produce? What happens when it starts to run out? Third, should they (whomever) keep the price low, so that we use it up all the faster?

See also James Howard Kunstler's crtiique.

Does this sound credible?

MSNBC reports on a preliminary EIA report.

The analysis reflected a sharp change from the department's projections a year ago when it predicted oil prices in constant dollars _ not counting normal inflation _ would decline to $31 a barrel by 2025.

The report, issued Monday by the department's Energy Information Administration, now projects oil will cost an average $54 a barrel in 2025 and $57 a barrel in 2030 before inflation. Currently, crude oil prices have been hovering around $60 a barrel, briefly soaring as high as $70 earlier this year.

and

In the reference case—one of several cases included in AEO2006—the average world crude oil price continues to rise through 2006 and then declines to $46.90 per barrel in 2014 (2004 dollars) as new supplies enter the market. It then rises slowly to $54.08 per barrel in 2025.

and

In the AEO2006 reference case, world petroleum demand is projected to increase from about 82 million barrels per day in 2004 to 111 million barrels per day in 2025. The additional demand is expected to be met by increased oil production from both OPEC and non-OPEC nations.

What's changed in one year? Does EIA think its reference case is the most likely? Where will the additional supply come from exactly to satisfy continued current levels of use nevermind the projected future ones? What alternate cases will be discussed later, presumably in February? What kind of worst case scenario and what assumptions? See also Where on the Risk Continuum?

Republican Representative Roscoe Bartlett gave a one-hour special order speech on the floor of the House in which at one point he rejected the EIA numbers. Truly, it's laughable if it weren't so sad.

clear as bull pucky

Here's a transcript of a recent BP tv commercial.

bp: What would you ask an oil company?
2w (2 women in front of a flower shop): Do you think that oil will never run out, or is it a resource that will be depleted? What's next? What will our kids be driving then?
bp: BP is the biggest investor in new U.S. energy development. We're investing $15 billion over a decade to find and produce new energy supplies in the Gulf of Mexico. It's a start.

At least the 2 women got the question right. Further questions: how much is there left to be found in the Gulf? Would it make a dent in our consumption, even if instantly available? If it's just a start, what then? Why the ads, to soften current and future windfall profits?


On BP's web site and another more recent tv ad, BP focuses on reducing carbon dioxide emissions through alternative energy. Like the recent Montreal climate conference, this is a distraction to the much more pressing problem of oil depletion.

This is how bp defines sustainability:

Sustainability for BP means the capacity to endure as a group, by renewing assets, creating and delivering better products and services that meet the evolving needs of society, delivering returns to our shareholders, attracting successive generations of employees, contributing to a flourishing environment and retaining the trust and support of our customers and the communities in which we operate. Sustainability, therefore, is a journey. We are committed to being open and transparent in our dealings with the outside world as we move in this direction.

But oil is finite and non-renewable, keenly so given our rate of extraction. What then is 'beyond petroleum'?

Here is Caltech physicist David Goodstein's concise analysis of the problem. At a 2004 conference, here's what Prof. Goodstein had to say:

We have created a trap for ourselves.
The United States has so far avoided serious consequences from the trap by relying on imports. The country uses about 7 billion of the 30 billion barrels of oil produced annually around the globe. And it makes us rich. Oil consumption equals standard of living,

A fellow physicist and former Caltech provost Steve Koonin, took a leave of absence from Caltech to become chief scientist at BP, for what that's worth.

local efforts

where I live

First, a hydrogen bus

It [the plant] produces hydrogen by reforming natural gas and converting solar and wind energy through electrolysis.

Then, an agreement between a California desert city and California utilities doing their part by sending their esteemed officials to the Baltic in August, when back home the temperatures got to 120 DegF.

August 2005: Palm Desert Mayor Buford Crites and City Councilman Jim Ferguson meet with representatives from Southern California Edison and the Southern California Gas Co. in Tallinin, Estonia. Along with John Phillips of the Energy Coalition and Mike Peavy, chairman of the California Public Utilities Commission, they write and sign an agreement - called the Estonia Protocol - to cut the city's energy use by 30 percent.

Of course, it takes time to come up with measures such as this, perhaps a decade, and the authors went to places like Sweden, Aspen, San Francisco, Italy and Estonia. The city plan refers to the 30% thusly:

While considered by many to be "stretch goals', we are firm in our commitment to demonstrate something really meaningful.

The big boys have their Uppsala , Rimini and other Oil Depletion Protocols. We have our own.

As a followup on this plan, here's one development that's supposed to come under its rubrick. The building industry balks at any extra expense:

But Ed Kibbey, executive director of the Building Industry Association's Desert Chapter, said the city has no proof that the extra costs of its new standards will be balanced by long-term savings.

Developers comply, he said, because "their concern is with time, 'cause time costs money. They've got a market that is good, and they want to get their sticks in the air to sell them."

Conlon [director of the city's new Office of Energy Management] replied that the new standards are only interim proposals and will not be written into an ordinance until the city completes a cost-effectiveness study, which will have to pass muster with the California Public Utilities Commission.

A followup piece describes a retrofitted energy-efficient house with an air conditioning system that is supposed to cut

energy use from the 7,000 watts most air conditioners run on to about 300 watts, about the same as three light bulbs, said Virginia Nicols, communications manager for the Energy Coalition.

The quote is mostly likely incomplete, since the calculation leaves out the energy used to create ice (energy storage) at night. For California homes, energy rates are not cheaper at night. Such an incentive could help, but energy demand would still be great.

8/25/06 Update: per Desert Sun followup , Buford Crites states it's:

stuck in the deep sand of the California regulatory labyrinth.

and regarding the 'thermal-storage air conditioning system, which makes ice at night to cool their house by day':

The couple's electric bills zoomed. May's bill was $205, compared to $66.73 last year, said Dennis Hanks. And the couple's June and July bills showed similar increases. The problem, Hanks said, is that the system, made by Ice Energy of Colorado, runs all night, outweighing any daytime savings. "We don't know what to expect; it's a prototype," Hanks said of the system.'

Update (06-12-01): Palm Desert set to approve plan.

And a bit farther afield, here's a piece about electricity demand in the American West. Note the reference to the Tragedy of the Commons.

An update: California Connected on PBS tv presents one energy researcher, Peter Lehman.

Report: U.S. Coupon Wealth Largely Untapped

The Onion reports that the Department of Consumer Savings says that, in the midst of inflation, Americans are missing out on big money-saving opportunities.

Amory Lovins would be proud.

one reader's book reviews

Regarding the tension between politics and science, Herman Daly says this in his September '08 Scientific American article, in the Economics in a Full World:

In choosing between tackling a political impossibility and a biophysical impossibility, I would judge the latter to be the more impossible and take my chances with the former.

Herman Daly is co-editor of an anthology on ecological economics, Valuing the Earth, including the classic essay The Tragedy of the Commons by Garrett Hardin.

The Wikipedia article on Peak Oil has a list of books, some of which appear on this Amazon list by one R. Hutchinson.  James Howard Kunstler (of The Long Emergency) and I would call Mr. Hutchinson a cornucopian.

Where is Peak Oil on the Risk Continuum?

In New York Times Magazine, there's an article (reg. req'd) about an art exhibit at MOMA called: 'Safe: Design Takes on Risk'. The author points to an article by Richard A. Posner who writes that:

massive infrastructure planning in anticipation of something that may never happen is, politically, a hard sell. But on an individual level, we are quite receptive to the idea that this or that consumer purchase might be just the thing to prepare us and protect us - at least from the threats we are able to imagine.

Why is it so hard to imagine worsening oil shortage as an imminent threat? Why do we systematically refuse to acknowledge the reality?

The U.S. Dept. of Energy commissioned, then buried, a report (pdf) entitled: Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management.

Tying the pieces together

Earlier I criticized the Amory Lovins' article in the September's issue of Scientific American for not adequately addressing the depletion of fossil fuels. The next-to-last article in the printed version more directly addresses my concerns; it's entitled Economics in a Full World.

Society can no longer safely pretend the global economy operates within a limitless ecosystem.

the alternative to a sustainable economy, an ever-growing economy, is a biophysical impossibility.

the disaster will be felt eventually. Avoiding this calamity will be difficult. The sooner we start, the better.

The article points to the Laws of Thermodynamics as inviolable. Interestingly Lee Raymond, head of ExxonMobil , as noted earlier, refers to those same Laws when comparing oil to other sources of energy.

In a sidebar to the article, the author, Herman Daly, lays out 3 precepts that need to be followed for a sustainable future. We violate these precepts (call it a protocol, if you wish) at our peril.

Another blogger, in his Economist's View, quotes from the Sciam article: Measuring Human Well-Being.

boom and bust in Colorado

This piece from the Los Angeles Times looks at oil shale in the American West

Those projections are hotly debated, but as a point of comparison, should the Green River Formation produce as predicted, it would amount to as much as eight times the proven oil reserves in Saudi Arabia.

But some say the process may use more energy than it yields. Others cite harm to the land and wildlife.

More from Heinberg

This paper presented at a Reception with Their Royal Highnesses The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, at the California Leaders Round Table Dialogue on Peak Oil, Climate Change and Business Action; November 7, 2005 in San Francisco.

the inside scoop

Here's a much-talked-about piece by Peter Maass, The Breaking Point, that was printed in the N.Y. Times Magazine in August. Also here's an audio interview on NPR with Mr. Maass.

In another interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Mr. Maass states:

let's say for example; that indeed, there are limits to what they can produce. If they just all of a sudden announced to the world; you know what, guys, we're not going to be able to produce 12.5 million barrels a day. You'll have to develop alternative energy sources. You're going to have to start conserving energy. Then, two things are likely to happen, in the immediate term. One, is that the price of oil, which is already quite high; will skyrocket even more. And, the second - and, for the Saudis, more troubling kind of result, would be movements, in America and elsewhere; towards alternative fuels. Government programs to investigate and promote them. There would be movements, towards conservation of energy. And, the result of that - not immediately, but, five or ten years down the road. Is that, indeed; there might be alternatives to oil.

This means that such a well-connected reporter as Mr. Maass has no information to share about what needs to sustain our civilization in the long-term, alternate fuels. We know from Lee Raymond's words that scientific studies of that kind were done at least 20 years ago, and surely they have been done recently. Might Mr. Maass now be researching that problem for his new book?

More Newspeak

In an MSNBC piece, John Schoen has all the answers, including the following:

an oil company is no different than, say, a gold mining company. The price of gold has little to do with how much it costs to find and produce it — it's set by supply and demand.

it takes years from the time you invest in looking for oil to the time you can pump it out of the ground. So even in places where there are still plenty of reserves (oil underground) like the Middle East, oil production (how much you get out of the ground per day) didn't grow fast enough to cover the growth in demand.

most domestic U.S. oil costs more, not less, to produce than Saudi oil. Our oilfields are much more “mature” — which is another way of saying the easy (i.e. cheap) oil has all been pumped

I'd say there is an inconsistency here: why remark about oil costs, if costs don't have much to do with price. There is a lot of evidence that the Saudi oil fields are mature. Mr. Schoen posits that growth will, in time, keep up with demand, given enough monetary incentive. Where, oh where, is the recognition that the earth is round and that oil is a finite expendable resource?

and again, remarkably,

By the early 2000s, just as investment in new oil production had slowed, demand for oil began taking off — especially in developing countries like China and India that have presided over booming economies. (Which is a good thing, by the way. If the Chinese weren't able to afford to buy billions of dollars of U.S. Treasury debt to make up for our budget deficit, we'd likely be looking at much higher U.S. interest rates — or worse. But that’s another answer for another day.)

Sounds Orwellian to me.

If that's not enough, try following Mr. Schoen's glib answers to the following serious question:

If, in fact, world oil production has peaked and there are (at best) twenty years worth of oil and gas reserves remaining we are facing cataclysmic change. We're not talking about the "inconvenience" of higher gasoline prices or the need to curtail emissions to arrest global climate change. We're talking about the end of life as we know it. There is no single aspect of our economy, our very lives that is not dependent on products and processes derived from oil and gas …
While "alternative" energy sources are available, they, too, are dependent on fossil fuels: photovoltaic cells and hydrogen fuel cell membranes are derived from petroleum based plastics. The sooner we acknowledge that our fossil fuel sources are finite and the day of reckoning is not that far away, the better our chances that some semblance of what we call human civilization will exist fifty years from now.
-- Ray S., Los Angeles

I don't fully agree with Ray's assumptions. For example, one might conclude from Ray's question that we have twenty years before the 'guage hits empty' (to use Mr. Schoen's words). The evidence shows that there will be reduced production each year after the peak. And there is plenty of evidence that the peak is upon us. Our society worships growth. Can we possibly handle contraction? The cataclysm could come sooner rather than later.

To counter gloom-and-doom, Mr. Schoen offers pie-in-the-sky:

Many, like Ray in Los Angeles, fear that coming oil shortages could bring “the end of life as we know it.” We agree. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
post-oil life could end up being a much better one.

and

If the era of “cheap oil” is indeed over, we all have a lot of work to do. But here at the Answer Desk, we don’t believe that the game is over. There are a lot of very smart people out there working on solutions. As oil consumers, we all created this problem. The good news is that that means we all have the power to solve it.

It's not a game, Mr. Schoen, and aren't you the one with the answers? Why does our creating the problem imply that we have the power to solve it? Isn't there anyone at MSNBC who can see through such drivel?


Here's a Newsweek piece that purports to show how market forces are kicking in to advance alternate fuels. In it, the author states:

Add to that the fierce ongoing debate about "peak oil" and the declining viability of the Earth's oil supply.

The oil industry and government oversight

From aWashington Post piece

At a joint hearing before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Committee on Commerce, Finance and Transportation, oil executives repeatedly explained that oil and gasoline prices are set on world markets that they do not control. Asked why they did not keep gasoline prices low after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, company officials said doing so would have caused shortages. Charging market prices, they said, held down demand.

So when supply drops, as is inevitable, we can expect ever higher prices and more contentious Hearings.

The night before the hearings, the retiring ExxonMobil CEO, Lee Raymond, spoke to Charlie Rose on PBS. Several important points emerge from that discussion:

• Mr. Raymond is a chemical engineer. [Scientific illiteracy may be the main problem.]
  
• Exxon Mobil studied alternative fuels 20 years ago and found them non-competitive, especially for transportation. Replying to Charlie Rose's remarks about current studies by other oil giants, Mr. Raymond points out that Exxon's old studies are still valid, in that the 'Laws of Thermodynamics' have not changed.
  
• Oil is priced less in 'real' dollars than they did back in 1981. The cost to find or produce oil costs 50 cents compared to $4 a barrel back then. [I am not clear about this point, but for how long will that continue?]
  
• Gasoline is priced at $6.50 in France and $7 in England per gallon, because of large gas taxes there.
• Anticipating the effect of the Katrina and Rita, ExxonMobil moved product out of the Gulf Coast areas and refined gasoline in Europe for American markets.
  
• The idea of running out and peak oil were not discussed per se, even though Mr. Raymond stressed the importance of a long term view. [What happens when prices rise ever higher to keep down demand? Mr. Raymond did cite $1000 a barrel as being inconceivable.]
  
• Charlie Rose pressed Mr. Raymond to acknowledge excess carbon dioxide as causative for global warming. Mr. Raymond would only say the jury is out. [Again, this is a distraction from the sword up there.]
• Mr. Raymond says nuclear is part of the solution. China has much nuclear[see this].
• People built electricity plants that run on natural gas thinking that fuel was plentiful; turns out, it's not.
  
• Mr. Raymond concludes we, producer and consumer, are in this situation together.

So few in government and the media get it. Here's one, Rep. Bartlett R-MD, who comes close. He hosted a peak oil conference in September where Richard Heinberg points out that one study (in pdf) by the U.S. government might have been suppressed. One of several agencies that is supposed to be concerned with peak oil is the U.S. Department of Fossil Energy. Is there something in our human natures that refuses to recognize the bad news?

Just to show how so many don't get it, look at how the environmentalists react to the committee testimony. See the temporary link on this CSPAN page for coverage of a News Conference on Rising Energy Prices and Record Oil Industry Profits. Present were:
Navin Nayak from U.S. PIRG, Kert Davies from Greenpeace, Robert Dewey from Defenders of Wildlife, Sara Zdeb from Friends of the Earth, and others. 11/9/2005: WASHINGTON, DC: 20 min.

sustenance: Three Peak Oil Meetings

a blog piece about 3 recent meetings in the NY area illustrating the range of approaches. Which one represents the 'establishment' view?

a global view

Here's a blog based in Japan quoting from a book written by an Englishman. Matthew Stein analyzes the problem and, in the British vernacular, talks of what one person can do.

Here's a syndicated column that just showed up on a national site as well as in my local paper. The author argues that market solutions will take care of any scarcity. Where's your faith, man?

Deliberate obfuscation or what?

MSNBC presents this collection of articles written by John Schoen and titled, After Oil: What to do when the oil runs out. [John Schoen is a senior producer at MSNBC who helped launch the site.] Among the articles, Mr. Schoen points to the recent urgency to develop hydrogen as an energy source but later says 'hydrogen is what’s known as a “secondary” energy source' and then 'almost all of the hydrogen produced today is made from natural gas, a fossil fuel that is already in short supply'. The truth is that hydrogen is not an energy source at all (unless used in nuclear fusion - another subject altogether), but merely a repository for energy, like batteries.

Another important example of imprecision is Mr. Schoen's article on alternative energy where finally acknowledges that ' Some researchers say that these biomass fuels require more for fossil energy to make than they produce

Further on the energy cost of energy produced, see this blog entry based on this article. Besides the environmental degredation:

In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter “containing 44×10 to the 18 grams of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the planet’s current biota.”(1) In plain English, this means that every year we use four centuries’ worth of plants and animals.

In another article , Mr. Schoen refers to the role of efficiency as breathlessly propounded by Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute. Mr. Schoen includes a caveat: 'some' assert that 'the low-hanging fruit of energy efficiency has already been picked'.

Scientific American in its September theme issue, Crossroads for Planet Earth, published an article by Mr. Lovins entitled, More Profit with Less Carbon. Scientific American could have done much better where the fate of people (and science) on the Earth is concerned.

• The article regards climate rather than oil depletion as the main problem. There's no reference to Scientific American's important March 1998 article, The End of Cheap Oil.
• Mr. Lovins' arguments are hollow and unconvincing. As Vice-president Cheney has recently pointed out: we're twice as efficient as we were X number of years ago. So why then are we using twice as much oil?
• Mr. Lovins' article doesn't square with another article in the issue, Economics in a Full World: Society can no longer safely pretend the global economy operates within a limitless ecosystem. (See also this sidebar from that article.)
  

Scientific American's September issue is subtitled, 'The human race is at a unique turning point. Will we choose to create the best of all possible worlds?' This is reminiscent of Jared Diamond's book title, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. What choices do we really have?

Quoting

From the Rubaiyat of Omar Kayyam

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.

From the Book of Jonah

A plant grew up over Jonah to provice shade for his head and save him from discomfort. ... the next day the plant withered.

And the LORD said: 'You cared about the plant, which you did not work for and which you did not grow, which appeared overnight and perished overnight. Should I not care about Nineveh, that great city [whose inhabitants] do not yet know their right hand from their left.

Incidentally, Nineveh is the name of the province (among 18) in present-day Iraq that was pivotal in passing the new Iraqi constitution.

The Tragedy of the Commons

Back in 1968, Garrett Hardin wrote this scholarly essay about the tragedy ahead; the site, DieOff, for a further exploration of this theme.

How long an emergency?

Don't read this if you want to sleep well tonight. Forewarned may not be forearmed.

As grim is the scenario Mr. Kunstler paints, he actually soft-pedals the prospects. He says some areas may be depopulated. Does that mean they will just migrate elsewhere? He advises that we change our ways.

Yahoo group on Peak Oil

There are dozens of such mailing list groups, but this Yahoo! group is the largest and one of the oldest. The introduction states:

It is possible that the peak is upon us, the beginning of a plateau period before a perhaps steep decline in world oil and gas production...

The ability of alternative sources of energy to substitute for petroleum and natural gas is a subject of serious dispute.

So it seems the days of cheap oil are numbered. How this future will play out remains to be seen, but energy scarcities could bring major economic dislocations, food shortages, fighting over resources, and (literally) billions of human deaths.

Got a local food and energy system?

You will need to join the group to view its contents.

Materials on energy

For a starting point, look at this metadirectory.

This Australian site has a fine collection of free multimedia presentations.

After Katrina

In one of her Newsweek columns, Anna Quindlen has some choice remarks:

there has been no powerful national leadership from either party on this front in recent memory. Political officials have bowed to the public's thirst for more, more, more.it is going to become harder and harder to overcome the effects of blind overgrowth even for those of means. Get ready for the $100 tank of gas, and an Armageddon of our own making.We have been crummy stewards of the Earth, with a sense of knee-jerk entitlement that tells us there is always more where this came from. There isn't.

A Peak Oil blogger from the southern States, Aaron, wrote entries titled, katrina: will we simply react? and we must plan for ourselves. I ask: what really should be the lessons of Hurricane Katrina? It's not merely that we ought be self-sufficent in the short-term.

We need look at the bigger picture. Historical circumstances, including government actions and inactions, led to the vulnerability of the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. Some factors are: poverty, complacency, lack of will, expedience, inattention to the consequences on the natural environment (with the erosion of the marsh lands) and inadequate standards in the design and construction of the floodwall foundations.

Similar circumstances make us vulnerable to oil shortages. But we can expect those shortages to be increasing, permanent and global. Who is going to bail us out then?

So the survivalists may have it right, not only for their personal survival but as an ethical statement. The caching of industrial goods won't cut it. Rather, long-term survival for our species may require real local self-sufficiency. But what place is still natural and temperate enough (the South?) to support human survival, and who is courageous enough to shun outside dependencies and prepare for the worst?

How high?

The film Syriana opens in December. The trailer begins:

Imagine gas at $20 a gallon.

Mere fiction?

Are higher oil prices good for you?

Robert Samuelson on MSNBC/Newsweek stated a month ago:

What this country needs is $4-a-gallon gasoline or, maybe, $5. We don't need it today, but we do need it over the next seven to 10 years via a steadily rising oil tax.

Would that market prices (even without the gas tax) were so low a year from now.

Mr. Samuelson cites our negligence of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) as emblematic of the problem:

The SPR languished. In 1992, it had oil equal to 83 days of imports; by 2000, that was only 52 days.

How farsighted we were back then compared to now, right?

The signs abound

MSNBC often has accessible articles related to Peak Oil. Here's one that describes the effects of high oil prices and another predicting higher prices yet.

Here, another blogger points to the scary data on the producer's side.

First things first

People are using more energy, including fossil fuels, than ever we have before, and soon we will run short. The implications are, or should be, frightening in the extreme.

In this web log, I will point out media pieces and web sites related to the subject of Peak Oil. A good starting point on the subject is this 'Wikipedia' article . Here's a re-listing of the recommended books from that article, but with Amazon links and prices or do the LibraryThing.

Also recommended is the June 2004 National Geographic cover article: The End of Cheap Oil . It concludes:

at least some of the ingenuity and toil that goes into getting oil needs to go toward limiting our thirst for it. "People should be doing something now to reduce oil dependence and not waiting for Mother Nature to slap them in the face"

The NG article was in some ways prescient in that, before Katrina, it described the hardships in finding and extracting oil offshore from New Orleans. But then, 'slap' is putting it mildly.