Archive for the ‘Peak Oil’ Category

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Nuclear power popular again as energy prices soar

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

Slammed by the surging cost of energy imported from volatile regions and befuddled about how to meet their pledges for tackling global warming, European countries are reviving nuclear’s role in their energy strategies.

Pro-nuclear countries are pushing ahead with plans for next-generation reactors, encountering so far either minimal opposition or even acquiescence. In some anti-nuclear countries, decisions to phase out power are being reversed or are under threat.

“We need nuclear energy as part of the energy mix,” the President of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering, said this week before a ceremony to honour environmentally friendly projects.

Such an endorsement would have been unthinkable two or three years ago. European memories were still seared by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, when a stricken Soviet nuclear plant spewed fallout over the continent.

But in January this year, the British Government gave the go-ahead to replace 14 nuclear plants that date from the 1970s. France, which gets 78 per cent of its electricity needs from nuclear, has started work on a new-generation European Pressurised Reactor (EPR), a model that is also being built in Finland by the French firm Areva and Germany’s Siemens.

More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Nuclear Waste, Peak Oil, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Energy Watchdog Warns of Oil-Production Crunch

Wednesday, May 28th, 2008

– I’m seeing folks arguing both sides of the current oil price crisis.  Some say it is sheer speculation and some say it is actual shortages being reflected in the prices.   And some, of course, say it is some of both.

– These folks are warning that  we may not have as much oil as we think.

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IEA Official Says Supplies may Plateau Below Expected Demand

The world’s premier energy monitor is preparing a sharp downward revision of its oil-supply forecast, a shift that reflects deepening pessimism over whether oil companies can keep abreast of booming demand.

The Paris-based International Energy Agency is in the middle of its first attempt to comprehensively assess the condition of the world’s top 400 oil fields. Its findings won’t be released until November, but the bottom line is already clear: Future crude supplies could be far tighter than previously thought.

A pessimistic supply outlook from the IEA could further rattle an oil market that already has seen crude prices rocket over $130 a barrel, double what they were a year ago. U.S. benchmark crude broke a record for the fourth day in a row, rising 3.3% Wednesday to close at $133.17 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

For several years, the IEA has predicted that supplies of crude and other liquid fuels will arc gently upward to keep pace with rising demand, topping 116 million barrels a day by 2030, up from around 87 million barrels a day currently. Now, the agency is worried that aging oil fields and diminished investment mean that companies could struggle to surpass 100 million barrels a day over the next two decades.

The decision to rigorously survey supply — instead of just demand, as in the past — reflects an increasing fear within the agency and elsewhere that oil-producing regions aren’t on track to meet future needs.

More… ➡

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Posted in CrashBlogging, Peak Oil, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Indiana Man Operates Oil Well in Backyard, Producing Three Barrels of Crude a Day

Thursday, May 22nd, 2008

SELMA, Ind. —  It’s just a drop in the global oil bucket, but an eastern Indiana man is operating an oil well in his backyard in an effort to capitalize on soaring crude prices.

Greg Losh’s rig produces three barrels of crude oil a day, though he told FOX News that he hasn’t started selling it yet. For now, he and his partners are keeping it in storage containers.

He declined to say how much oil they’ve collected in the two weeks they’ve been pumping.

But as oil is going for about $127 a barrel on the international market, three daily would yield just under $400 a day for Losh on the global spot market — or 1/100,000 of the daily production increase the Saudis agreed to earlier this month.

More… ➡

 

Posted in And Now for Something Completely Different, CrashBlogging, Peak Oil, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Nuclear’s CO2 cost ‘will climb’

Friday, May 9th, 2008

– I’m not a fan of nuclear power. Until we work out a good way to deal with the waste, we are just robbing Peter to pay Paul and pushing the whole mess caused by our irresponsibility onto future generations who will get to deal with it.

– In spite of that, I’ve invested some money in PKN an ETF which focuses on the nuclear industry. While I don’t like nuclear, I think it is pretty inevitable that we (mankind) will be going down that road because the oil’s running out and we don’t seem to be smart enough to accept that fact and implement viable alternatives now – while we still can.

So, in the end, we will leave ourselves no choice and nuclear power will be massively built out. What smart monkeys we are.

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The case for nuclear power as a low carbon energy source to replace fossil fuels has been challenged in a new report by Australian academics.

It suggests greenhouse emissions from the mining of uranium – on which nuclear power relies – are on the rise.

Availability of high-grade uranium ore is set to decline with time, it says, making the fuel less environmentally friendly and more costly to extract.

The findings appear in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

A significant proportion of greenhouse emissions from nuclear power stem from the fuel supply stage, which includes uranium mining, milling, enrichment and fuel manufacturing.

Others sources of carbon include construction of the plant – including the manufacturing of steel and concrete materials – and decomissioning.

The authors based their analysis on historical records, contemporary financial and technical reports, and analyses of CO2 emissions.

Experts say it is the first such report to draw together such detailed information on the environmental costs incurred at this point in the nuclear energy chain.

More… ➡

See also: ➡ and ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Peak Oil, Pollution, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Fears emerge over Russia’s oil output

Friday, April 18th, 2008

Russian oil production has peaked and may never return to current levels, one of the country’s top energy executives has warned, fuelling concerns that the world’s biggest oil producers cannot keep up with rampant Asian demand.

The warning helped on Tuesday to push crude oil prices to a fresh all-time high above $112 a barrel, threatening to stoke inflation in many countries.

More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Peak Oil, Social Breakdown, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

What lies beneath

Friday, April 18th, 2008

– I now publish articles that seem to go against my basic premise which is the Perfect Storm Hypothesis (see the Counter Currents category).

– Just a few days ago I published one about the Bakken Formation and some months ago, I published another about new gas discoveries off Brazil. (And here as well.)

– Here the Economist Magazine takes a second look at the Brazilian claims.

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JUST how much oil is there off the coast of Brazil? Until recently, Brazil’s oil reserves were thought to be relatively modest: about 12 billion barrels at the beginning of 2007, according to BP, or about 1% of the world’s total. But last year, Petrobras, Brazil’s partly state-owned oil firm, announced the world’s biggest oil discovery since 2000: the Tupi field, which it hopes will produce between 5 billion and 8 billion barrels. Now the head of Brazil’s National Petroleum Agency (ANP) says another nearby discovery might hold as much as 33 billion barrels, which would make it the third-largest field ever found. That alone would be enough to raise Brazil to eighth position in the global oil rankings—and there is talk of further big discoveries. But the peculiar way in which the information came to light is casting doubt on its significance.

More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Peak Oil, The Perfect Storm | 1 Comment »

Bakken Formation

Wednesday, April 16th, 2008

– Recently, I heard about a new oil discovery here in North America called the Bakken Formation. There seems to be a lot of excitement about it and, like a few other recent discoveries (➡), it may push the menace of Peak Oil away for a number of years more.

– Most of the information I’m seeing is recent but This Wikipedia article shows that we’ve known about the Bakken Formation for some time now. But, it may be that with the current price of oil so high, extracting it from places like this becomes profitable.

– And indeed, it is just this logic that has made me think for some time that the Peak Oil crises will not come on like a lion – but rather more like a lamb.

– As the oil prices go up, sources that were formerly marginal will become profitable and oil use will continue. People do not want to give up the perks of our oil based economies so we will continue to pay higher and higher prices for oil and continue to extract it from ever more difficult sources until, finally, the pain is just too high to continue.

– Along the way, many of us will continue to talk about the rising CO2 levels and Global Climate Change which are resulting from the continued use of oil – but I fear no one will be listening to those complains either – until it is far too late.

– I googled for “Bakken Formation” and got a huge number of hits.   here are just three of the first ones: 

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The Bakken Oil Formation

Bakken Reserve Estimates

Bakken no energy panacea

– research thanks to Dave C.

Posted in CounterCurrents, Peak Oil, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR COAL

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

A Long Year in the Life of the U.S. Coal Industry

Lester R. Brown and Jonathan G. Dorn

With concerns about climate change mounting, the era of coal-fired electricity generation in the United States may be coming to a close. In early 2007, a U.S. Department of Energy report listed 151 coal-fired power plants in the planning stages in the United States. But during 2007, 59 proposed plants were either refused licenses by state governments or quietly abandoned. In addition, close to 50 coal plants are being contested in the courts, and the remaining plants will likely be challenged when they reach the permitting stage.

What began as a few local ripples of resistance to coal-fired power plants is quickly evolving into a national tidal wave of opposition from environmental, health, farm, and community organizations as well as leading climate scientists and state governments. Growing concern over pending legislation to regulate carbon emissions is creating uncertainty in financial markets.  Leading financial groups are now downgrading coal stocks and requiring utilities seeking funding for coal plants to include a cost for carbon emissions when proving economic viability.

More… ➡

 

Posted in Climate Change, CrashBlogging, Peak Oil, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

Europe’s Next Green Thing

Friday, March 21st, 2008

Ireland’s OpenHydro and Germany’s RWE are spending millions to try to turn the power of waves into electricity.

With oil prices hitting almost daily record highs and global warming climbing up the public agenda, the need for alternative energy sources has never been more urgent. But while wind and solar have dominated the recent rush to invest in renewables, market watchers reckon it could now be marine energy’s turn to shine.

Ocean power — using the energy from waves or tidal flows to produce electricity — is quickly coming of age as a viable green resource that could help meet ambitious global targets to reduce greenhouse gases and dependency on fossil fuels.

European and North American power companies such as Canada’s Emera and Germany’s RWE are spending millions to fund wind and tidal projects. This investment has led to a new generation of more efficient technologies, with dozens of prototypes expected to be ready for commercial deployment within the next five years. “There’s huge interest in both wave and tidal technology,” says Thomas Boeckmann, clean tech analyst at market research firm StrategyEye in London. “It’s gaining a lot of attention from energy companies, which will be able to offer financial backing and technical expertise to these startups.”

More… ➡

Posted in Peak Oil, Politics - The Right Way, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

The ethanol bust

Monday, March 3rd, 2008

– I’ve never had much faith in Ethanol as an alternative fuel.  To me, most of what drives us towards thinking Ethanol might be a good idea is our denial of another idea. The idea that we just can’t continue to sustain oil-based economies like the ones we are currently living in.

– Nobody wants to go backwards into a time when they have less.  So every idea that comes up that suggests that we might not have to, is embraced warmly.

– But there’s only so much land to grow crops on and finding enough to grow food for consumption is increasingly a problem so how can we take large tracts of land out of food production to grow corn for ethanol production?   

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The ethanol boom is running out of gas as corn prices spike.

By Jon Birger, senior writer

NEW YORK (Fortune) — Cargill announces it’s scrapping plans for a $200 million ethanol plant near Topeka, Kan. A judge approves the bankruptcy sale of an unfinished ethanol plant in Canton, Ill.. And that was just Tuesday.

Indeed, plans for as many as 50 new ethanol plants have been shelved in recent months, as Wall Street pulls back from the sector, says Paul Ho, a Credit Suisse investment banker specializing in alternative energy. Financing for new ethanol plants, Ho says, “has been shut down.”

How can the ethanol industry be slumping only two months after Congress passed an energy bill most experts consider a biofuels boon? The answer is runaway corn prices.

Spurred by an ethanol plant construction binge, corn prices have gone stratospheric, soaring from below $2 a bushel in 2006 to over $5.25 a bushel today. As a result, it’s become difficult for ethanol plants to make a healthy profit, even with oil at $100 a barrel.

More… ➡

Posted in CrashBlogging, Financial melt-down, Food Shortages, Peak Oil, The Perfect Storm | No Comments »

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