World oil to run out in 4 years

[waltky]

Guess McCain sees it as a good election issue...

McCain calls for lifting ban on offshore drilling
June 18, 2008 - Democrats accuse him of flip-flopping

Warning that America's security is at stake, Senator John McCain called yesterday for conservation, renewable energy, and more aggressive exploration, steps he said would help to end US dependence on Middle East oil. In laying out his energy policy, the presumptive Republican nominee sought to woo voters angry over $4-a-gallon gas and to carve out his independence from President Bush.

But by saying he would lift the federal ban on offshore drilling, he dismayed many environmental groups, which had praised him as an ally on global warming and had said either he or Democrat Barack Obama could provide the presidential leadership needed for real progress. And McCain provided an opening for Democrats, who accused him of flip-flopping on the offshore drilling issue and kowtowing to Big Oil - the same moneyed interests critics say have controlled US energy policy under Bush. Unlike Bush, however, McCain still opposes oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, but the senator wants to let other states allow oil exploration off their coasts.

"With gasoline running at more than four dollars a gallon, many do not have the luxury of waiting on the far-off plans of futurists and politicians," McCain told cheering political leaders and oil industry executives in Houston yesterday. "We have proven oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production. And I believe it is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions and to put our own reserves to use."

MORE

[waltky]

Plenty of oil in Iraq...

Iraq's oil
Thursday, 19 June 2008 - The challenges of tapping into untapped reserves

It's difficult to imagine today, but 50 years ago the Iraqi oil industry was directed from offices thousands of miles from Baghdad. In the 1950s, number 214 Oxford Street, London, was the headquarters of the Iraq Petroleum Company. For three decades, the IPC held a stranglehold over Iraqi oil - a monopoly only broken with nationalisation in the 1960s. But once again, foreign oil companies are waiting for another opportunity to return to Iraq. With governments eager to see the rocketing price of crude oil kept under control, focus on Iraq is increasing.

Shortlist

So what's on offer? According to some, Iraq has more unexploited reserves of oil than anywhere else in the world. It has 115 billion barrels of proven reserves, but industry estimates say potential oil fields could more than double that. "Iraq is the one country that has so much proven and potential reserves - that puts it on a par with Saudi Arabia," saysTariq Shafiq, a veteran Iraqi oil engineer who started his career with the Iraq Petroleum Company.

Pumping it out of the ground is technically cheaper than anywhere else in the world, making it even more attractive to foreign oil companies, Mr Shafiq explained to the BBC World Service's Newshour programme. A shortlist of 35 companies has been recently been approved by the Iraqi government to bid for oil contracts. They are waiting for the Iraqi parliament to approve new laws governing the industry. After two years, there has been little progress.

Capital BBC NEWS | Business | The challenge of exploiting Iraq's oil

[waltky]

Public wants more oil and power...

Oil Drilling Trumps Energy Conservation among Americans, Poll Shows
July 01, 2008 Washington - A new poll shows high gasoline prices have dramatically changed Americans' views on energy and the environment.

More people now say expanding oil drilling and building new power plants is a bigger priority than energy conservation.

The poll by the Pew Research Center shows nearly half of those surveyed - or 47 percent - now rate energy exploration, drilling and building new power plants more important, compared with 35 percent in February.

The Pew poll of about 2,000 adults conducted in late June shows the shift toward energy development across the political spectrum including among Democrats, political independents, liberals and young people.

Source

See also:

Arctic holds 100 billion barrels of oil: US geologist
2 Jul 2008, The Arctic holds 100 billion barrels of oil in unexplored fields, a government geologist with the US Geological Survey said on Tuesday at an international oil industry gathering in Spain.

"The Arctic is almost completely unexplored," said Donald Gautier at the World Petroleum Congress in Madrid. "There are 100 billion barrels of oil to be found in the Arctic." Gautier said that throughout the world "our best guess is still that there is a 50-50 chance that there is an excess of 500 billion barrels of conventional recoverable oil in undisclosed fields as of now."

The disputed ownership of the Arctic is the biggest barrier to the development of these oil resources, not a lack of technology, Gautier said. "The real issue in the Arctic is access to those continental shelves," he said.

Five countries that border the Arctic Ocean — Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States — dispute the sovereignty of the region's waters. Earlier this month BP, ConocoPhillips and MGM Energy Corp were awarded exploration rights by the Canadian government for three offshore blocks in the Arctic region in a lease sale. The US Geological Survey is a unit of the US department of the interior.

Source

[waltky]

They know they got us where they wants us...

OPEC: Energy Needs Will Spike 50% By 2030
July 10, 2008 - Report Says Supply Will Still Keep Pace With Demand

World energy needs will spike by more than 50 percent by 2030 but adequate oil reserves, conservation and new methods of recovery mean supply will keep pace with demand, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said Thursday. In its "World Look Outlook for 2008," OPEC also took issue with critics blaming present skyrocketing prices on the refusal of the organization to increase output, asserting that the weak U.S. dollar and market speculators were at least partly to blame.

And it suggested that decades of low prices led to under-investment, leaving the industry ill-prepared to sate the increased hunger for crude generated by strong economic growth. Past "low prices were bad for the oil industry, and in the longer term they were also bad for consumer," said the summary of the 214-page report. At the same time, despite delivery bottlenecks, "there is enough oil to meet the world's needs for the foreseeable future," it added.

OPEC Secretary-General Abdalla Salem El-Badri made the same point, in his foreword. "Today, what is apparent is that oil supply and demand fundamentals are healthy," he wrote. "There is, and has been, more than enough supply to meet demand, and oil stocks in major consuming countries are at comfortable levels. This should point away from the direction of current price levels."

More OPEC: Energy Needs Will Spike 50% By 2030, Report Says Supply Will Still Keep Pace With Demand - CBS News

[waltky]

Dem's plan for more oil...

House Dems Push Oil Legislation
Thursday, Jul. 17, 2008 (WASHINGTON) — Seeking to blunt GOP efforts to permit oil exploration off Atlantic and Pacific coasts, House Democrats are pushing legislation they say would spur oil drilling on already available lands in Alaska, the West and the western Gulf of Mexico.

Republicans scoffed that the so-called Drill Act — imposing a tougher "use it or lose it" rule on leases already held by oil companies — would do little to boost oil exploration, saying current policies are aimed at the same goal. A vote was set for Thursday. On the eve of the vote, the Interior Department issued a major new lease in Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve, known as NPR-A. The Democratic bill would require a more active Interior Department leasing program on the reserve, which is located to the west of the off-limits Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, the subject of a long-standing battle between environmentalists and the oil lobby.

"Democrats brought forth their 'Use It or Lose It' bill without knowing it was already the law of the land," said GOP Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo. "Today we're reminded that the majority's efforts to 'unlock' NPR-A are about as necessary as passing a bill ordering the sun to rise." The oil lease proposal is an effort by Democrats to counter a push by congressional Republicans to lift a long-standing drilling ban on most offshore U.S. waters. With gasoline prices exceeding $4 per gallon, public opinion on energy issues is shifting in favor of a more permissive stance on drilling, even though the idea of opening the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, or the eastern Gulf off Florida's beaches to oil and gas companies has been long seen as a nonstarter.

Democrats are scrambling to appear pro-drilling — hence the "Drill Act" title for Thursday's bill — even as their leaders appear dead set against reversing the long-standing drilling bans along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Democrats say the industry should first go after oil and natural gas in areas where they hold leases. They also say Republicans are simply seeking political advantage with a pro-drilling plan that won't deliver new U.S. oil for another decade or so, and that the GOP's fixation on drilling is a smoke screen for the Bush administration's inability to prevent the sharp spike in gasoline prices.

"The administration's responsibility was to protect the American people from this kind of gouging, and they did nothing," said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. "So today they're trying to deflect the very legitimate criticism of, 'What did you do on the watch?'" In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., unveiled a bill this week aimed at curbing speculation in the oil markets that Democrats say has contributed to the rapid rise in the price of oil. Action could begin this week. Republicans hope to use the bill as a vehicle for votes on further offshore exploration, among other pro-energy production measures.

Source

[waltky]

Sound familiar?...

China cars accelerate demand for fuel
Mon., July. 28, 2008 - Thanks to government policy, bigger is better for new generation of drivers

Nodding his head to the disco music blaring out of his car's nine speakers, Zhang Linsen swings the shiny, black Hummer H2 out of his company's gates and on to the spacious four-lane road. Running a hand over his closely shaved head, Zhang scans the expanse of high-end suburban offices and villas that a decade ago was just another patch of farmland outside of Shanghai. To his left is a royal blue sedan with a couple and a baby, in front of him a lone young woman being chauffeured in a van.

"In China, size matters," says Zhang, the 44-year-old founder of a media and graphic design company. "People want to have a car that shows off their status in society. No one wants to buy small." Zhang grasps the wheels of his Hummer, called "hanma" or "fierce horse" in Chinese, and hits the accelerator.

Car ownership in China is exploding, and it's not only cars but also sport-utility vehicles, pickup trucks and other gas-guzzling rides. Elsewhere in the world, the popularity of these vehicles has tumbled as the cost of oil has soared. But in China, the number of SUVs sold rose 43 percent in May compared with the previous year, and full-size sedans were up 15 percent. Indeed, China's demand for gas is much of the reason for the dramatic run-up in global oil prices.

Boom in car ownership

See also:

Global pressures forge a new oil reality
Sun., July. 27, 2008 - Thirst for petroleum forges a new oil reality; Drivers unlikely to see gas prices retreat to levels enjoyed for a generation

The two events, half a world apart, went largely unheralded. Early this month, Valero Energy in Texas got the unwelcome news that Mexico would be cutting supplies to one of the company's Gulf Coast refineries by up to 15 percent. Mexico's state-owned oil enterprise is one of Valero's main sources of crude, but oil output from Mexican fields, including the giant Cantarell field, is drying up. Mexican sales of crude oil to the United States have plunged to their lowest level in more than a dozen years. The same week, India's Tata Motors announced it was expanding its plans to begin producing a new $2,500 "people's car" called the Nano in the fall. The company hopes that by making automobiles affordable for people in India and elsewhere, it could eventually sell 1 million of them a year.

Although neither development made headlines, together they were emblematic of the larger forces of supply and demand that have sent world oil prices bursting through one record level after another. And while the cost of crude has surged before, this oil shock is different. There is little prospect that drivers will ever again see gas prices retreat to the levels they enjoyed for much of the last generation.

Unlike the two short, sharp oil jolts of the 1970s, the latest run-up has been accelerating over several years as ample supplies of crude oil have proven elusive and the thirst for petroleum products has grown. The average price of a barrel of oil produced by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries doubled from 2001 to 2005, doubled again by March this year and jumped as much as 40 percent more after that.

'At their mercy'

[waltky]

Granny says we all gonna be ridin' horses an' drivin' buggies again...

The coming collapse of western civilization as we know it
Tuesday 12th August, 2008 - This is one of the more difficult articles/reviews I have worked on. I have been well aware of Peak Oil for a while, but never did I gather so much information in one sitting that simply spelled out doom and gloom.

I live alternately surrounded by the incredible amazing flexibility and beauty of nature contrasted with the ever-present artefacts and contrived superficialities of humanity crafted on the basis of ample and cheap fossil fuels (as well as its benefits of agricultural wealth and medical advancements). Since the 1960s environmentalists have been sending out warnings about the future of our environment if we do not care for it. They have been mostly ignored until now, when global warming concerns have proved a direct threat to individual lives as well as possible future lifestyles. t the same time, the industrial era based on cheap fossil fuels that created the climate change is rapidly drawing to a close – in what form humanity survives that closure is open to debate, but debate is not what is needed.

What is needed is action, not the action of the Washington consensus and the free marketers who have chosen to act through their global war on terror as a pretext to harvest and protect the last remaining years of oil production thereby maintaining their position under the mantra that “the American way of life is not negotiable.” What is needed is action that moves us towards new energy sources as quickly as possible, away from oil, towards an economy based on renewable energy and – choke on this all you industrialists and corporatists – an economy that does not grow. This world is finite.

The end of cheap oil is happening now. The economy is already suffering for it, and unlike the Great Depression, recovery will not be a simple matter of putting people back to work. The Great Resource War is already underway, mainly in the Middle East, but also in smaller skirmishes scattered areas around the world, disguised to many as the Global War on Terror (or drugs as in the case of Colombia). Depressing? Yes. Optimism? There is some room for it, but only if we recognize that the paradigm shift is already underway and that action to a more positive, minimalist lifestyle needs to start, before nature demands it of us in more dramatic fashion.

Overview.