Peak Oil News

Fuel cell cars could one day run on hydrogen made from cooking oil now research into a novel way of producing hydrogen is to take a step forward. If the process is proved to have commercial potential, other sources of the gas could include scrap tyres and waste industrial oil. A team at the Energy and Resources Research Institute of Leeds University is perfecting the making of liquid fuels by reforming unmixed steam. Put simply, fuel is reacted with steam to release hydrogen from both. The process was invented 10 years ago in the US but not made public until 1999. Now researchers around the world are trying to make it commercially viable so that it can play a significant role in the much-touted 'hydrogen economy'. » Source: Fuel Cell Works It claims to be a convenient way to distribute fuel for hydrogen production, ...

U.S. Rep. Tom Udall and others in Congress have positioned themselves at the center of an uncomfortable idea: Eventually the planet will run out of fossil fuels. Udall is pushing for open discussion of peak oil, the concept that world-oil production will someday reach an all-time high. After that, oil production will decline because there’s only so much of it in the ground. Oil production has already peaked in the United States at more than 3.5 billion barrels per year in 1970, just as a geophysicist predicted in the 1950s. Last year’s domestic production was about 1.8 billion barrels. Some energy experts say a permanent fuel crunch could be a disaster for the global economy because this decline in production would most likely happen at the same time that demand reaches an all-time high. » Source: New Mexican Government reports have suggested that widespread ...

In the 19th century, Russian and British diplomats, officers, and spies sketched maps of central Asia, carving political boundaries into the steppes and mountains as they played "The Great Game" to win control of the region. Today, there is a new map of central Asia, pored over by governments and oil company executives. It is known as "hub and spoke." The hub is the Caspian Sea, and the spokes are the multiple pipe-lines emanating from it, representing potential export routes for the vast oil and gas resources that lie beneath. Today's superpower struggle is over not the land itself but the hydrocarbons under it-believed to be among the world's largest untapped fossil fuel resources. And there are some new players. While Russia still seeks to maintain control over its former satellites, China, with its seemingly endless thirst for energy, ...