Peak Oil News

Wed. Oct. 25 to Fri. Oct. 27, 2006 (Plus Evening & Sat. Sessions) - Boston University, GSU, 775 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA - Experts to discuss impacts of - and responses to - Peak Oil The Association for the Study of Peak Oil-USA (ASPO-USA) and Boston University’s Center for Energy and Environmental Studies (CEES) will co-sponsor the 2006 World Oil Conference, Time for Action: A Midnight Ride for Peak Oil, on the BU campus October 25-27, 2006. The Conference will bring energy experts from around the world to discuss the likely timing, impacts, and intelligent responses to the growing Peak Oil challenge. Virtually every sector of our society and economy will be affected by Peak Oil, from transportation, manufacturing, air freight, and agriculture, to homebuilding, city planning, and finance. » Source: Global Public Media “For ...

We tend to see urban pollution as a modern problem. But did you know that urban pollution was a serious problem for Western world cities as far back as 200 years ago? The greatest source of pollution for 19th-century cities was, believe it or not, the horse. Horses were ubiquitous back then. They drew pretty much anything that was heavy and had to move. Horse-drawn carriages, trains, wagons, supply carts...you name it. Of course, there were no horse toilets, so these animals had to relieve themselves in the streets. This might seem like a quaint issue until one realises that the average city horse could produce up to 35 pounds of manure and 2 pints of urine a day. Yuck! » Source: Daily Reckoning Today, we have to deal with global warming and Peak Oil – back then, they were dealing with global stench ...

I wanted to be a geologist once — even claimed it as my major at the University of Georgia. Then they made me take calculus. I decided on a degree in English not too long thereafter, thinking I’d read books about oil and rocks instead. Research for last week’s column on the oil discovery in the Gulf intrigued me, as did the responses I received. Like addicts worrying about where our next fix will come from, we all seem to have an opinion on the future of oil. Back in the 1950s geologist Marion King Hubbert posited that crude oil was a finite resource and went on to illustrate when the U.S. and world would reach a peak in production by using a bell curve. The curve rises from left to right, as new oil is discovered and infrastructure is put in place to extract it. The curve goes back down ...

In assessing future demand for transport, the Department uses assumptions of future oil prices which are established, and periodically updated, by the DTI. In the 2003 Future of Aviation White Paper, the Department's assumption was that aviation fuel prices would remain at $25 dollars per barrel in real terms (2000 prices) until 2030.[205] In the 2004 Future of Transport White Paper, the Department referred to the DTI's May 2004 projections of the price of crude oil standing at $23 a barrel (2003 prices) in 2010, and rising to almost $28 a barrel by 2020. » Source: UK House of Commons Since those White Papers were published, the price of oil has risen markedly; as of 11 July 2006 a barrel of brent crude stood at $74.16. In our first session, Transport 2000 discussed their concerns about the ...

Whereas the passage of history has recorded an increasing pace of change, such that the demand for energy has grown rapidly in parallel with the world population over the past two hundred years since the Industrial Revolution; Whereas the energy supply required by the population has come mainly from coal and petroleum, such resources having been formed but rarely in the geological past and being inevitably subject to depletion; Whereas oil provides ninety percent of transport fuel, is essential to trade, and plays a critical role in the agriculture needed to feed the expanding population; » Source: Post Carbon Institute Whereas oil is unevenly distributed on the Planet for well-understood geological reasons, with much being concentrated in five countries bordering the Persian Gulf; Whereas all the major productive provinces of the World have been identified with the help of advanced technology and growing geological knowledge, it ...

"That argument known as peak-oil theory has provided intellectual backing for the boom in crude prices. . ." This quote comes a September 14 Wall Street Journal article that was entitled "Producers Move to Debunk Gloomy 'Peak Oil' Forecasts" and detailed efforts by Exxon Mobil and Aramco to counter peak oil advocates. » Source: The Huffington Post The piece appeared more than a year after the publication of my book, "Over a Barrel," the first chapter of which challenged the notion of oil as a scarce resource. And it was published barely a week after my post, "Massive Oil Find in Gulf of Mexico Brings Gloom to Peak Oil Pranksters" 9/08/06 (you always read it first on Huffington). That post, focusing on the important Gulf of Mexico find underlined the vast potential for new oil discoveries not only in ...

In May 2006 I wrote, "I know about the "Peak Oil" theory that says we either have or are about to reach the point of diminishing returns regarding the world's oil supply, but these recent discoveries suggest there is still plenty of oil to be found." In that commentary I documented nearly a dozen new fields of oil and natural gas discovered since 1995. So I wasn't surprised when, on September 5, Chevron Corporation announced it had discovered new, huge reserves of oil some five miles below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. The initial estimates were that these reserves "could boost U.S. oil reserves by 50 percent." Good news for Americans and good news as well for other oil companies such as BP, Anadarko Petroleum, and Exxon Mobil that have their own projects in progress. Indeed, two days later, Exxon Mobil announced that its Sakhalin-1 project offshore Russia had begun ...

Leading players in the petroleum industry, including Saudi Arabia and Exxon Mobil Corp., are aggressively arguing that plenty of crude oil remains for world consumption, in an effort to counter critics who contend crude output is about to plateau. That argument, known as the peak-oil theory, has provided intellectual backing for the boom in crude prices and sowed doubts among some policy makers about crude's long-term reliability as an energy source. Such doubts, coupled with concern over sky-high prices, have added impetus to the search for oil substitutes--including in Washington, where President Bush this year declared the U.S. "addicted to oil" and sparked a boom in interest in ethanol. » Source: Mail Tribune Some in the industry now are keen to fight the threat posed by such fears. Tuesday, Abdallah S. Jum'ah, chief executive of Saudi Arabian state-owned Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil ...

The world has tapped only 18 percent of the total global supply of crude, a leading Saudi oil executive said Wednesday, challenging the notion that supplies are petering out. Abdallah S. Jum'ah, president and CEO of the state-owned Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known better as Aramco, said the world has the potential of 4.5 trillion barrels in reserves - enough to power the globe at current levels of consumption for another 140 years. Jum'ah challenged oil ministers and petroleum executives at an OPEC conference in Vienna to step up exploration "and leave the minimum amount of oil in the ground." » Source: The Jerusalem Post "The world has only consumed about 18 percent of its conventional potential," Jum'ah said, contending that should lay to rest fears that the world is in danger of being tapped out within a few decades. Many experts ...

Of all the many aspects of the predicament of industrial society, the peak of world petroleum production will likely have the most drastic impact in the short and middle term. Now it’s true, of course, that plenty of other resources are also running short worldwide, from topsoil and fresh water to dozens of minor but economically important minerals. In the latter days of a system designed and built to pursue the delusion of infinite material growth on a finite planet, shortages are inevitable, but no other globally traded commodity is as central to the world’s industrial economies as oil, or faces so imminent and irreversible a decline. » Source: The Archdruid Report Thus the end of the age of cheap oil promises a sea change in the world’s economies and societies as significant as the beginning of the fossil fuel age some three ...