Peak Oil News

The need for such a protocol is becoming increasingly plain. Petroleum is a non-renewable, polluting, and depleting resource on which the world has become dangerously dependent. This in itself should be cause for nations to find ways to reduce their consumption and thus their dependency. However, there is also the problem of uncertain future supply. Long before the last drop of petroleum has been recovered from any given reservoir the possible rate of extraction tends to peak and then fall off for purely physical, geological reasons. Today, most oil-producing countries have already reached and passed their national production peaks and are in steady decline. There is universal agreement that the world as a whole will reach its peak rate of production at some point in the next few decades-but there is controversy as to when, exactly, the peak will come. While some analysts forecast the maximum flow rate as occurring later ...

China, the world's second-largest oil consumer, hopes dialogue and conciliatory policies will blunt tensions caused by its growing energy needs, a Foreign Ministry official said on Wednesday. Liu Jianchao, the Chinese Foreign Ministry's chief spokesman, said China's growing appetite for natural resources would not put it in conflict with other countries, and that it was actively pursuing alternatives to imported oil. "At the moment we are trying to rely on ourselves for energy supply and at the same time trying to find clean, alternative energy resources," Liu said at the Reuters China Century Summit. » Source: Reuters China gets more than 40 percent of its oil from abroad and most of that oil arrives by sea. But Liu said that while China was concerned about the guaranteed supply of crude, its needs would not put it in conflict with other countries. "We are ready to work with the United States, with the European ...

Japan needs friends who are rich in natural resources, and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi made no bones about what he wanted from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan when he became the first Japanese premier to visit the two countries last month. The country is hardly alone, however, in looking to parts of the former Soviet Union to meet its energy needs from new sources, and indeed, rivalry among East Asian nations may well intensify as they compete to woo the region. Only days after Koizumi left the region last week, China National Petroleum Corp., China`s largest oil producer, said that together with Korea National Oil Corp., Malaysia`s Petronas, Lukoil of Russia, and local group Uzbekneftegaz, it had obtained a 20-percent stake in a joint oil and gas exploration project in Uzbekistan`s Aral Sea extending about 10,000 square kilometers that potentially has 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. » Source: M&C News Each ...

There has been a lot of talk recently about the "spike" in oil prices. Spike is, of course, a reassuring word: it implies there's a downward slope on the other side. Just the other day, editorial writers and business-page commentators were reassuring us that oil at $75 (about R540) a barrel was "unsustainable", and that prices would fall as supply and demand even out. But opinion is moving towards the Goldman Sachs 2005 forecast of a "super-spike", in which prices could go as high as $105 (R750). » Source: motoring.co.za At present, we are told, demand is increasing while supply is insufficient as a result of oil companies' under-investment during the 1990s, when oil prices were low. But now (says the business correspondent of The Guardian), "the majors are looking for - and finding - oil like never before". And ...

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, ...