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Pelosi Democrats and Political Peak Oil

August 19, 2008 RSS Feed Print

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Today's New York Times story on the oil industry is full of juicy factoids and observations:

1) Western corporations now control just 13 percent of the world's oil production.

2) In the latest quarter, the five biggest publicly traded oil companies said their oil output had declined by a total of 614,000 barrels a day, the steepest of five consecutive quarters of declines.

3) The 10 largest holders of oil reserves are state-owned companies, like Russia's Gazprom and Iran's national oil company.

4) This is the money graf: "At a recent conference in Madrid, Christophe de Margerie, the chief executive of the French company Total, said the world would be hard-pressed to raise supplies beyond 95 million barrels a day by 2020. Only a few years ago, forecasters expected 120 million barrels a day by 2030, a level many analysts now view as unrealistic."

My bottom line: Big Oil will continue to diversify into alternative energy. It has no choice. So before we start taxing its "windfall profits," we should remember that all that dough will increasingly go toward clean energy. And the private sector will do a much better choice vetting new technologies than Washington. But I also find it interesting that just as whole swaths of the globe are off limits to Big Oil—experts call this "geopolitical peak oil"—so are whole swaths of America, such as ANWR and the coasts of California and Florida. I guess this is self-imposed "political peak oil."

Tags:: Democratic Party,; oil,; Nancy Pelosi,; New York Times,; politics

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As much as I dislike un-conventional oil more than conventional, it's make-up in the oil market will grow quite a bit in the upcoming years. Republicans make a big deal about "shale oil." Which is very expensive to extract, and devastates huge swathes of land. Also, heavier grades of oil will need to be extracted at greater levels, but will need to be refined further than light sweet crude.
Either way, conventional oil has peaked and any form of energy rich hydro-carbon is going to sought after - cheap or not. So the price of energy is likely to continue spiking and leveling off. What I would like America to do is tax oil so the price never goes down. That way we can begin reducing consumption through the mindset of ever increasing price of energy. I believe Thomas Friedman also proposed this.

Kevin Chavis of MN 12:48AM August 20, 2008

A review of scientific and governmental studies indicates that there are no alternative energies that will yield large amounts of liquid fuels that are needed for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ship transport, and surface mining equipment.
Alternative energies yield electric power, which is not what is needed.
According to energy investment banker Matthew Simmons and most independent analysts, global oil production is now declining, from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 14%.
This is equivalent to a 33% drop in 7 years. No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always be higher than production; thus the depletion rate will continue until all recoverable oil is extracted.
We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from "outside," and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.
This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
I used to live in NH-USA, but moved to a sustainable place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area with a good climate and good soil? Email: clifford dot wirth at yahoo dot com or give me a phone call which operates here as my old USA-NH number 603-668-4207

Clifford J. Wirth, Ph.D. 12:34PM August 19, 2008

Conserve is what each of us can do now. Many have started already because of the $4+ price per gallon of gasoline. The more we conserve, the less demand. But less demand will not solve the real problem nor return to cheap fuel prices in our lifetime.
The problem is not energy. We have all sorts of means of producing energy.
The problem is using oil derivatives to fuel the internal combusion engine mostly to move people and goods from one place to another, plus jet fuel to spew leaded pollution over our heads, heating oil to heat homes, etc. etc. etc.
In other words--burning oil. Burning oil consumes oil. But we cannot burn enough oil to run out in the lifetime of anyone alive today--including that baby just born.
But future generations will run out if we and they keep on burning it up.
And then, they will not have asphalt to pave their roads or make shingles to cover their roofs or materials to build their computers and on and on -- thousands of products made from petrochemicals that we take for granted today -- and our appetite for those products is growing rapidly.
The conservation will help some while the transformation is taking place to replace the burning of oil with all sorts of alternative--especially renewable alternative fuels.
Developing known alternatives in earnest and developing new technologies with subsidies if needed to accomplish zero burning of oil.
Many experts are offering a number of steps to accomplish this. All of them were proposed by Jimmy Carter in his televised speech of July 15, 1979 (google it and read the transcript). Had his plan been enacted in earnest, we would be totally independent of imported oil today as Brazil is.
Yes, Brazil is different from the U.S.
And surely the U.S. can do anything that Brazil can -- better and faster!
Governments like Brazil have a big advantage in that the government owned industries can be mandated to comply with orders.
In the U.S. private enterprize must have investors provide sufficient capital and perhaps also government subsidies, tax breaks, etc. and the will to do what is best for future generations in order to accomplish what other countries state owned industries do on order.
But we've enjoyed the benefits of what previous generations did for us and surely we owe as much to future generations.

HillbillyBill of TN 12:26PM August 19, 2008

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