Peak Oil News

For decades, the conventional wisdom about developing energy projects in the U.S. has been that "big" always meant cheaper, and therefore better, projects. This produced what has become our modern centralized electric power system fueled primarily by coal, natural gas and nuclear power. In the mid-to late 1990s, however, the electric power industry began to hear concerns, particularly from the environmental community, about the negative environmental consequences of a system based too heavily on these types of power. As a result, a second wave of thinking arose that called not just for producing the cheapest power at any cost, but also for finding ways to produce cleaner energy from renewable sources such as the wind, sun, biomass, water and geothermal heat -- and to do so on a scale large enough to become a significant portion of utilities energy portfolios. » Source: ...

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 ...

Peak Oil is the theory, on the verge of becoming conventional wisdom, that the world's petroleum supply is topping out and will not be able to meet global demand soaring along with the economies of China and India. But a successful test in a mammoth field deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico, announced on Sept. 5 by Chevron (CVX), Devon Energy (DVN), and Norway's Statoil (STO), should help put that scary scenario on hold for decades. One huge oil reserve, even if it could rival the 1968 discovery of Prudhoe Bay and increase U.S. reserves by up to 50%, will not turn around the world's tight energy markets, of course. It won't even bring the U.S. close to energy independence when oil and gas get into full-fledged production four or five years from now. » Source: BusinessWeek But the capability to find and ...

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 ...

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, ...

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 ...