Peak Oil Linkfest - 09/29/07

New York Times: Rising Food Prices Lead to Less US Food Aid

A U.S. newspaper says rising food prices have helped cut U.S. food aid to its lowest level in a decade, and have possibly resulted in more hungry people around the world.

The New York Times cites data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture showing the United States has bought less than half the food aid this year than it bought in 2000.


Lifestyle changes prepare locals for energy changes

Michael Brownlee wants to help you change your life.

The head of Boulder Valley Relocalization has a radically different view of the future, one in which the daily gridlock on U.S. 36 would be a thing of the oil-guzzling past, where farms would dot large swathes of Boulder County open space, Kentucky bluegrass would give way to food crops in suburban yards and businesses would plant rooftop gardens. Solar panels and other renewable energy would supply a large portion of the community's energy. Local businesses would meet many more of the citizenry's daily needs, and customers could even choose to use a local currency.


Peak Oil Passnotes: Neo-Peak Oil

If we think of peak oil as a subject in itself, rather than a subset of general discourse about oil and energy, then we can see it has been around for something approaching 100 years. After World War One there was sustained and popular debate about the prospect of the U.S.’s valuable resource running out. After all there was no more to be found and it was going to be too expensive anyway.

This debate has been repeated a few times since then, most notably in the 1970s, but it has never been stronger than it is now. Nor has it attracted such a wide range of people willing to discuss it.


Al Gore's climate change film 'is propaganda'

Al Gore's climate change documentary, , contains "serious scientific inaccuracies, political propaganda and sentimental mush", the High Court in London has heard.

The attack came as Stewart Dimmock, 45, a father of two, challenged the Government's decision to provide every secondary school in England with a copy of the former American vice-president's film as part of an environmental campaign.


Technological Advances to Quench Thirst for Oil

Oil markets are in turmoil, admits Saudi Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi in an interview in New York. With Saudi Arabia currently accounting for almost one-fifth of global crude exports and analysts expecting it to meet a quarter of the world's increasing crude thirst in the near future, the global dependence on Saudi Arabia is set to go up. As the only producer with significant excess capacity, the Kingdom has played a crucial role in alleviating temporary supply disruptions and crises. The Kingdom upped its daily production by 3.1 million barrels during the first Gulf War, for example, when oil production in Iraq and Kuwait dropped by 5.3 million barrels. It was crucial in balancing the global markets then. With geopolitics occupying center stage, the Saudi role would stay crucial to the global well-being.


Global Warming: The Great Equaliser

As the latest summit to discuss a post-Kyoto treaty continues in New York this week, the single most revealing statement has already been spoken: “We need to climate-proof economic growth”. These few words, told to reporters by the UN’s top climate official, Yvo de Boer, during the recent Vienna round of talks, define the blinded establishment approach to tackling climate change.[1] Only if continued trade liberalisation and corporate profits are kept sacrosanct, remains the assumption, is it possible to consider even a broad agreement on future cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions.

Split in group delays vote on sanctions against Iran

The United States, Britain and France chose unity over speed and agreed on Friday to delay until November a United Nations Security Council vote on a third sanctions resolution against Iran.

The delay, a concession to Russia, China and Germany — the other three countries in the fragile coalition of six world powers that are seeking to rein in Tehran's nuclear ambitions — came after a week of haggling on the outskirts of the General Assembly. The six countries issued a statement advising Iran that a diplomatic offer of economic incentives remained on the table if Iran suspended its uranium enrichment program.


Ethanol, schmethanol

SOMETIMES you do things simply because you know how to. People have known how to make ethanol since the dawn of civilisation, if not before. Take some sugary liquid. Add yeast. Wait. They have also known for a thousand years how to get that ethanol out of the formerly sugary liquid and into a more or less pure form. You heat it up, catch the vapour that emanates, and cool that vapour down until it liquefies.


Modeling Oil Production to Estimate URR - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and World

This is a guest post by Apparent Peak. He started his career as an aeronautical engineer and is currently retired. Now he has more time to study peak oil and write posts for TOD. He has selected "Apparent Peak" for his handle which will become obvious once you have read the post.

1) Background

I have followed the subject of peak oil since the seminal article by Campbell and Laherrère appeared in the March 1998 edition of Scientific American. Approximately one year ago, I began to casually follow some of the discussion threads at TOD. The posts, the ensuing discussions and in particular, discussions on HL, logistic functions and Khebab's The Loglet Analysis caught my interest. I decided to investigate these topics since I did not know what HL was, let alone logistic functions. A quick trip to Wikipedia explained the Logistic function. As it turns out, it is a fancy exponential function that has characteristics similar to the Gaussian distribution.


Alan Greenspan vs. Naomi Klein: who has rights to Iraq's oil?

US Federal Reserve chief Alan Greenspan famously spills the beans in his new memoir, The Age of Turbulence: "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." (London Times, Sept. 16) On her blog Sept. 25, Arianna Huffington lauds leftist icon Naomi Klein for calling out Greenspan on this point in a Sept. 24 interview with him on Democracy Now: "Are you aware that, according to the Hague Regulations and the Geneva Conventions, it is illegal for one country to invade another over its natural resources?" (Contrast Ann Coulter's "Why not go to war just for oil? We need oil! What do Hollywood celebrities imagine fuels their private jets? How do they think their cocaine is delivered to them?")

The Status of North Ghawar

This post is not introductory (for which I apologize), but is instead intended to summarize the status of the overall hypothesis that watering out of North Ghawar is the main cause of declines in Saudi production in the last couple of years. Readers getting up to speed may want to read the following earlier posts which document most of "The Oil Drum Ghawar Project":

Gov´t strives to save oil field

In March 1971, a fisherman named Rudesindo Cantarell took a few geologists from state-run oil company Petróleos Mexicanos to this spot, where he had seen oil slicks. Cantarell didn´t know it, but he had stumbled across one of the largest offshore oil fields ever found.

A few decades and 12 billion barrels of oil later, the field that bears Cantarell´s name is dying, and Pemex, as the state-owned company is known, is struggling to stave off the field´s demise.

Giant oil fields and their importance for future oil production

Giant Oil Fields - The Highway to Oil:
Giant Oil Fields and their Importance for Future Oil Production

Since the 1950s, oil has been the dominant source of energy in the world. The cheap supply of oil has been the engine for economic growth in the western world. Since future oil demand is expected to increase, the question to what extent future production will be available is important.

Ghawar Is Dead!

I’ve watched in shock and awe in recent days, shaking my head and wringing my hands. Yet another unremarkable narrative of celebrity intrigue entered the echo chamber of the mainstream media system and its 24/7-positive-feedback-amplification-loop to emerge as biggest news event - no, the earth-shaking cultural event of the year. This time it is…Anna Nicole is dead!

Saudi Arabian oil declines 8% in 2006

The first possibility is that the Saudis could still pump 10 mbd or more today if they wanted to, but they are cutting back production and exploring like mad because they put an extremely high value on having 2-3 mbd of excess capacity. If so, the recent price behavior suggests that the reason they would seek such capacity is not because they want to stabilize the price, but because it puts them in an incredibly powerful negotiating position. For example, the ability at any time to flood the market could be used at an opportune moment to undercut expensive alternatives such as oil sands that require an oil price over $50.

The second and more natural interpretation is even more disturbing: the mighty Ghawar oil field is already in decline, and the Saudis don't want anyone to know.

Avian flu rears its ugly head again

Last month, several reports were released on various things that can end the world as we know it.

The big one, of course, was global warming. Meeting in Paris, the International Symposium of Climatologists released (Feb. 2) the direst study yet, saying that even if we immediately cease the burning of fossil fuels, the damage will continue unabated for several centuries. Their description of what to expect is ghastly and will, most probably, be much worse. “This is very conservative,” says Andrew Weaver, one of the authors. “Scientists by nature are skeptics.”

The Ghawar Oil Field: How Much Is Left?

Back in 2001, before the issue of energy scarcity ever entered my mind, I read a chilling online article called "Ghawar Is Dying" that bluntly speculated about the massive global upheavals modern industrial society would suffer if the largest oil field in Saudi Arabia were indeed running dry.

The article represented an eye-opening, paradigm-changing revelation for me, as I began to understand how very fragile the way of life that millions of people take for granted actually is. If access to abundant amounts of cheap oil were suddenly cut off, virtually every person living in the developed world would experience a precipitous drop in their standard of living, as most of the available creature comforts would disappear like a puff of smoke. After copiously researching the topic, discussions with friends and acquaintances became more and more strained as I realized that not only were they were just as clueless as I had been, but no one wanted to even contemplate the possibility of a decidedly grimmer future.