Peak Oil News

Relax! There's plenty of oil left in the ground. By 2030 conventional fossil fuels will still account for 80% of the world's energy requirements. At least that's the view espoused by Mark Nolan, chairman of Exxon-Mobil Australia. It is also the view of the US Department of Energy. Now I'm not here to promote conspiracy theories, only to promulgate them. FN Arena attempts only to be an objective news service, providing food for thought. Lord knows I get into enough trouble for suggesting central bank gold price manipulation (based on the evidence collected by others), but then I'm lauded on the other side of the fence. It is with the credo of objective journalism in mind that I have delved into the great Peak Oil debate. » Source: FNArena Put very simply, supporters of the peak oil theory believe the world's supply ...

The discovery of potential deep-water oil and gas reserves off Cuba's northern coast has caught the eye of the world's energy-hungry nations. The US could see rigs drilling for Cuban oil only 50 miles off Florida. India's state-run oil firm ONGC, already signed up to exploration in the area, has just upped its stake - the latest to place its bets on a Cuban oil rush. The 44-year-old US trade embargo, meanwhile, continues to bar American companies from doing business with the Caribbean island. » Source: BBC News But, some observers are asking, can the US really afford to risk losing out on valuable energy resources only 50 miles (80km) off Key West? The prospect of nations such as China, Venezuela or India lining up to exploit Cuban oil has already led some politicians to call for the embargo to be relaxed. They want US ...

The peak oil movement — an unlikely alliance of geologists, physicists, oil industry consultants and environmental activists — seems to be gaining momentum and winning new converts. For the first time, some say, peaksters have begun to grab the attention of Washington and Wall Street. The US Energy Secretary has now asked his advisory body, the National Petroleum Council, to investigate if oil supplies could keep pace with (the rising global) demand. Further, the US government accountability office, a non-partisan congressional watchdog, is due to release a study on peak oil this November. Interestingly, a congressional peak oil caucus has also been formed in the meantime, too. » Source: MENAFM Naturally with the theory of peak oil coming increasingly under discussion, the focus is bound to shift on Ghawar, the world's super giant well — accounting for more than six percent of the global oil needs ...

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 ...

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, ...

A global energy plan to be released by the World Bank next month risks squandering scarce resources on so-called clean coal technologies and misses bigger investments in renewable energy, but does address gaps in the energy needs of the poor, according to a new analysis by an environmental group. World Bank officials will discuss the document, called the "Progress Report on the Investment Framework for Clean Energy and Development", later this month before it is placed on the agenda of the joint annual meetings of the World Bank and its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), next month in Singapore. A similar programme focusing on longer term country-level activities and global research will be completed by the Group of Eight most industrialised countries at their summit in Japan in 2008. Rich nations had asked the ...