Wird das Öl knapp?

Die einen schieben den starken Preisanstieg des Erdöls allein auf
Spekulation, doch andere warnen, dass die Förderung vielleicht schon
an ihre Grenzen gestoßen sein könnte
Der Ölpreis scheint kein Halten mehr zu kennen. Am Donnerstag musste
für die besten Sorten zeitweise über 135 US-Dollar das Fass gezahlt
werden. Zum Wochenende gingen die Preise wieder etwas zurück, aber für
ein Fass der Sorte Brent lieferbar im Juli mussten immer noch etwas
über 130 US-Dollar hingelegt werden. Anzeichen für einen ernsthaften
Preisrückgang sind nirgendwo auszumachen.

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/27/27993/1.html

Doomsday Prognosis

http://www.aspo-ireland.org/index.cfm?page=viewNewsletterArticle&id=29

 

The European Commission has released remarkably forthright new guidelines for NATO. This organisation was originally formed as a defensive pact such that the signatory countries undertook to go to the defence of any member under attack. The rules were later made more proactive to broaden the scope for intervention: first, if any member were deemed under threat ; and later, if its vital interests were perceived to be at risk. In other words, it was transformed from a defensive into an offensive organisation. It is at the present time killing Afghans and planning to place troops on pipelines.

The EU report now makes the opening moves in a new conflict for control of the Arctic Ocean, mistakenly assuming that it has enormous hydrocarbon resources. In fact, its oil potential is severely limited for two principal reasons. First, it lies a long way from the prime source-rock developments which were in tropical regions, even if plate-tectonic movement have locally transported such rocks northward. Second, it has been subject to substantial vertical movements of the crust due to the weight of fluctuating ice-caps in the geological past, which have depressed such source-rocks as are present into the gas-generating window, and also adversely affected seal integrity, leading to remigration and dissipation.

Poor Norway, which is a NATO member, having a common boundary with Russia on the Arctic Ocean, is likely to find itself embroiled.

The report also calls for the deployment of pipeline troops around the world. NATO is in addition endeavouring to bring the Ukraine into its orbit, although this is seen with reason as a threatening gesture by Russia which may remember the eastward thrust of Nazi Germany in its quest for lebensraum (living space), eyeing the rich agricultural lands of the Ukraine.

The report furthermore draws attention to new immigrant pressures on Europe as famines strike other regions due to dwindling crops, falling water supply and exploding populations. It points out that the population of Europe (including Russia) makes up 11% of the world’s 6.7 billion, having an average age of 39, but on current trends expects its number to fall by 2050 to 7% with average age increasing to 47.

The report speaks of a vicious circle of degradation, migration and conflicts over territories and borders that threaten the political stability of countries and regions………where frustration and disenchantment breed ethnic and religious strife and political radicalisation.  It admits that competition for energy resources is already a cause of conflict, diplomatically avoiding mention of the invasion of Iraq.  

Britain’s new Chief Scientist has also pointed out the growing shortfall in world food supply. This is in part attributed to climate change, but dwindling energy supplies during the Second Half of the Age of Oil must exacerbate the situation.                           (See The Guardian Newspaper of March 10^th for coverage)        

 

Peak oil date revised: 2007

 

According to the latest (May) ASPO newsletter, the peak for both regular and non-regular (tar sand, gas liquids, etc.) was revised to 2007. As far as I see this correctly, this is a major revision, the estimated peak year was 2010. This means the peak for conventional was 2005 and the peak total is now last year, 2007. If this is really the case, it is going to be very ugly, at least  as far as fuel and food prices concerns. Do we have to expect a new resource war?

 

http://www.aspo-ireland.org/contentFiles/newsletterPDFs/newsletter89_200805.pdf

laßt es im Boden

 

"Ich verrate Ihnen kein Geheimnis, dass wenn es einige neue Ölfunde gab, ich ihnen gesagt habe, nein, laßt es im Boden, mit der Gnade Gottes, unsere Kinder werden es brauchen"
King Abdullah von Saudi Arabien 12.04.2008 in einer Stellungnahme warum er Anweisung gegeben hat, einige jüngere Ölfunde in Saudi Arabien aktuell nicht zu entwickeln.

http://www.energiekrise.de/

the great turning and the cognitive surplus

 

Two very interesting articles:

 

Navigating The Great Turning From Empire To Earth Community

 

by David Korten, YES Magazine

 

" ... The second piece of the big picture is an unraveling of the social fabric of civilization that is a consequence of extreme and growing inequality. A world divided between the profligate and the desperate cannot long endure. It intensifies competition for Earth’s resources and drives an unraveling of the social fabric of mutual trust and caring essential to healthy social function.

... We cannot grow our way out of poverty. The only way to end poverty and heal our social divisions on an already over stressed planet is through a redistribution of resources from rich to poor and from nonessential to essential uses. Ooops. Can’t you just hear the right wing wind bags? Hey, that Korten guy, he’s talking about equity. He must be a communist."

 

and

 

Looking for the Mouse in Media:
Clay Shirky on Deploying the Cognitive Surplus for Public Good

 

by Jay Rosen, PressThink

 

"… This is a huge deposit of waking hours lived in front of the tube, a vast expanse of free time occupied for 40 years by commercial television. We’re at least starting to find the architecture of participation (Tim O’Reilly’s phrase) that would turn some of those couch-born hours into sentient activity, followed naturally by inter-activity, as in massively multiplayer games, which can lead (for some) to public works and social goods, as with “the online encyclopedia anyone can edit.”

the price of oil and the energy slaves

...and it still extremely cheap. Just imagine that 159 liters gives approx. 1500 KWh and even with a conversion efficiency of 33% it is still 500KWh or 500 energy slaves working hard for 10 hours (5000 energy slave hours). So currently we pay something like 0.025 $ per energy slave hour, or 25 cents per working day. even 1000$ per barrel will still be almost free. Just imagine what a waste it is to use it for transporting 2000 kg of metal and 80 kg of meat.

The Richard Heinberg Interview

What will happen to bacteria feeding on fossil fuel to grow
exponentially once they completely deplete their environment from
these resources.

BEYOND OIL: The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades

"When BEYOND OIL appeared in early 1986, it made some impact by
quantifying US economic and agricultural performance based on
precarious oil and natural gas dependence. The study got the attention
of some in the environmental, renewable energy and population control
communities, but not of those who steer the ship—the government and
the oil industry. With a respectable 11,000 copies sold, many
environmentalists have still not read nor heard of it. But as energy
and environment are more and more at the top of people's concerns,
BEYOND OIL will be a landmark work."

DISRUPTION WILL GO FAR BEYOND GAS LINES

BEYOND OIL forecasts that a major consequence of our oil vulnerability
is that between 2007 and 2025 the US will cease to be a food exporter,
due primarily to rising domestic demand, topsoil loss, food production
inefficiencies, and shortages of costly petroleum used in
agriculture—to say nothing of feared climate change problems. Less
food for export will be a great fiscal problem for the US, which
relies heavily on agricultural exports, but it will spell catastrophe
for many other hungry people in other parts of the world.

ECONOMISTS DON'T LIKE IT - IT CAN'T BE ALL BAD!

The BEYOND OIL model breaks new ground by exploring the stark
geophysical limits which counter the neoclassical economists'
assumption that there will be increased resource supply or resource
substitution in response to higher prices. Neoclassical economists
have trouble with BEYOND OIL due to its unrelenting focus on the real
limits of energy resources and the pure logic of the "Energy Profit
Ratio" and all of its implications.

RUNNING FASTER TO STAND STILL

Is the future already upon us? Oil people do not worry out loud about
our increasing difficulty in producing oil. BEYOND OIL makes the
observation that a 280% increase in drilling in 1985 compared to 1973
produced less oil than in 1973.

The seriousness of our domestic oil supply situation as analyzed in
BEYOND OIL can be appreciated by using a concrete example. Let's take
the besieged Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, not underestimating the
amount of oil there, which is perhaps the greatest hope for a huge
untapped US field. Based on the US Geological Survey's most optimistic
estimate of reserves, 9.2 billion barrels, your reviewer's calculation
is that this potential production would provide less than two years of
gasoline use in this country. [However, the average estimate of those
reserves used by the Interior Department is 3.2 billion barrels,
according to the NY Times & Rocky Mountain Institute on 9/5/90.]

ALTERNATIVES ARE NO PANACEA

The book also deals thoroughly with the question of alternatives to an
increasingly expensive, diminishing resource. "Alternatives" are dealt
with in accordance with the authors' setting off the word in quotation
marks. The main criterion of alternatives feasibility is their energy
profit ratio, which is poor for all alternatives compared to cheap
oil. Long before any alternatives can be put in place, the US will
have become totally at the mercy of OPEC. "None (of the alternative
fuels) currently has an energy profit ratio comparable to those of
domestic oil and gas or imported oil during the 1950s and '60s, when,
not by accident the US economy grew at its fastest rate ever" (p. 69).

DIMINISHING OIL = DIMINISHING WEALTH?

"We may already be seeing the effect of more expensive fuel on the
economy" (p. 241). Co-author Kaufman points the reviewer to proof of
that effect, such as today's generation being poorer than our
parents', with mostly two or more workers per family instead of
one-{worker households; real family income increased from 1940 and
peaked in 1973. GNP per capita could now be stagnant, but notes
Kaufman, this is rarely if ever understood as a function of resources.

REFORMS SUGGESTED

Since conservation and efficiency were downplayed, the Afterward by
Carrying Capacity (not affiliated with Carrying Capacity Network)
listed steps to improve where we can, with policy solutions to
alleviate fossil fuel dependence. Those reforms were in the areas of
population control, raising fuel taxes, pushing cogeneration and
energy conservation/efficiency, promoting sustainable agriculture, and
investing in renewable energy.

OIL-BASED AGRICULTURE DESTROYING OUR SOIL RESOURCE

BEYOND OIL does not see a technological fix to our energy challenge.
The Age of Oil will come to an end, inevitably, but clinging to our
addiction up to the end may result in tragic dislocation and
starvation, considering the population explosion and agriculture's
current dependence on fossil fuels. The prime entropic process brought
on by petroleum-intensive agriculture is the waste and loss of
nature's storehouse of energy: the topsoil.

Fossil fuels also power every component of production, packaging,
distribution, and consumption of our food supply. Whether we cope with
these inefficiencies will determine if we can export food in the
future.

BEYOND OIL: The Threat to Food and Fuel in the Coming Decades.
Third Edition (1991) ISBN 0-87081-242-4
John Gever, Robert Kaufman, David Skole, Charles Vorosmarty

Review: http://www.oilcrisis.org/BeyondOil/