Daily Oil Blog

It’s getting more common for corporate giants to get involved in Green activities because in a way it’s good for their image .Here comes the latest banking giant JP morgan Chase organisng a run on this coming wednesday here in singapore.

The T-shirts will be 100% cotton with eco friendly ink.Street banners made from recycled materials.Taking public transport to race site and the cups and bottles are also from recylced plastics.

By the way, this even is held in 12 cities to raise money for non profit interests, for those interested one can sign up at the Jpmorgan website.It seems to be more of a company focus but at least the registration is made online for the interested particpants.

Corporations wield enormous influence in our modern economy and way of life and of course they can do much more to promote green living .Hope more will do more than a green run..

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Last month the media highlighted the unrest in tibet which many are injured during a clash between the natives and Han chinese.Over 600 were hurt and 18 killed during the unrest.This movement however stain the progress of the Olympics in Beijing given the negative publicity.

The Dalai Lamai refuted claims of any involvement in the unrest citing resignation if unrest continues .Freeing Tibet has been a thorny issue for the PRC during the last decades though the tibetans themselves still live day to day given the buddhist fataslistic outlook in life.

Tibet is more of a strategic area for the PRC government , it also holds promise of 100 million of tonnes of oil which could help in the resurgency of her economy.In a way Tibet needs PRC to prop up her economy too in many ways other than tourism.

BP and Royal shell took stakes in the PRC oil companies to explore the tibetan region much to the dismay of the  environmentalists.Projects worth 3billion USD are being built from the city of Qinghai,Golmud to lhasa.The ambitous project to link tibet with the outside world and oil extraction will be the controvesy for many years in and out of the PRC.

To free  tibet is to  on the nerves not only for the tibetans but the countries involved in the energy supply of the dragon.

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Coming to the end of march 2008, I’ve got to say that our world is losing her common sense not only in dealing with our energy problems but also safeguarding the environment.Man should be good custodians to the environment and animals on the planet but sometimes people can just go too far.

It has become a cult of the masses coming from the prophets of ecological doom spearheaded by many interest groups whose agendas may be less upfront than we think.Reduction of carbon footprint has come to the point of being ludicrous, the world can never get rid of all the carbon footprints , there’s even a woman who aborted her baby to support the movement of carbon reduction.

In short, there must be scientific moderated objective truth and sincere efforts to help the environment,not media propagandas trying to herd the public into a wave of hysteria that’s based on unsound principles. Plants and animals are important to earth but it must not be done on the expense of human lives.

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It seems that the petro led modern world have move into the churches too, not only it provides air conditioned parishes but also the way people behaved in it as I witnessed during the Easter week here in my local church.It seems materialism in guise of modernism drives the believers in all directions with jammed car park to scantilly dressed women from my Church, how long can this madness last?Can’t one find any peace even in Churches nowaday?

Biofuel seems to be a step in relieving the dependence on fossil fuel found in many middle eastern states that’s suffering from instabilty  in their region.Also it helps to combat global warming from the rampant use of fossil energy from the world during past decades.But are the assumptions correct?

The thought comes from that biofuel arises from plant based rather than petro based so they are more environmentally friendly. However on a closer look, soybeans and corns used to produce these fuels are contributors to soil erosion and water pollution needing large amounts of pestcides and fertilizer to grow and harvest.

It also affect the global food production by making it less affordable to the poor driving the masses of poor to starvation if the reduction takes place in favour of biofuel propping the food prices up worldwide.And after all, the efficiency of biofuel can never replace fossil fuel as survey shows that it will take the entire corn crop of  America to replace 12% of the current petrol consumption.

Till we figure out how to deal with the food and environmental hazards caused by biofuel ,it will seem to remain as a cottage industry not rivalling her older crude oil cousin.

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Screensaving is not actually saving emergy on your Mac/PC the last study shown.Basically designed to prevent phosphor burn in on the CRT(cathode ray tube) computer screens.Filled in images when computers are not used but it does consume energy as the study proved.

2 ways to save energy to limt the use of screensavers:

a)A screensaver not only draw power for the monitor but keep the CPU from shutting down so better put it to sleep mode instead.

b)Use flat screen monitors as they use less energy and not hard on your eyes.

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The coming chinese lunar new year in Mainland china may not be going as well compared to previous years since the emerging giant open her doors to free market reforms when getting rich is glorious slogan by Deng in his twilight years.

Snowstorm has been keeping many workers from cities going back to their hometowns to celebrate the spring festival.Eastern and central china are the most hit region in the snowy epic that going to take a toil on china energy supplies as people tend to use more energy on heaters and others as most will stay indoors to prop up energy demands.

In this billion populace middle kingdom, any rise in energy consumption will be bound to get national headlines as it affect oil prices worldwide. Spokesman from china cited the costs of this snowstorm will cost the state 3 billion plus USD and affected residents up to nearly 80 million.

All this talk of the rise of china will be the quantity of energy like coal and oil to pump into  her and without proper steps to move away from fossil based economic structure,fire will not be coming out from the dragon to keep her people warm in the future.What use will be money by then?

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Coming from an island state like singapore, we face problems like burning and slashing of forest by our neighbour every now and then and we can’t really do much but sit it out till the haze pass us by.

Indeed forest fires are not limited to developing states like Indonesia but also Australia and USA but what makes the difference is the commercial motive behind developing countries.Of course the governments does their best to stop illegal logging and all that but one need more incentives  to lure the peasants away from profiteers who has no regards for the rule of law and the environment.

People need more than just laws but incentives to turn away from quick profits in exchange for environmental hazards that pollute our air and release more carbons that our fragile planet can take. Institutions not plagued by corruption are the final steps that will eliminate future destruction of our rainforests.

Haze are bad for our lungs and the cost of the economies of nearby cities affected by it are not even factored in.People will tend to stay at homes and not go out and there will be more workers taking sick leave due to the pollutants.And this requires more than an eye rub to resolve this hazy problems.

Hope that 2008 will not be a hazy year for all..

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As bali climate change conference of world leaders promising to cut carbon emissions, it seems we are more hopeful this century as Australia new Prime minister reaafirmed the Kyoto Protocol leaving USA out.

The Polar regions as we’re speaking now is under enormous pressure as melting ice caps harms the ecosystem there and polar bears are the best example how carbon emissions are hurting thier way of life for our polar bears.

Even so, the rich resources of the polar regions are again a heated contention between the superpowers for the race to get the world’s huge and perhaps last  region fossil and minerals pickings.It was believed that oil, natural gas & other precious minerals are found in their land shelf and ocean depths.

The riches was previously too remote to be plundered by the  superpowers but high oil prices and melting polar ice caps are making surrounding nations of the polar regions think twice.

One just need to look at how polar bears are living now to draw a conclusion how man will need to face this century iof we do not change our sailing masts. The Polar bears vs man survival is not going to work..we are in the same ark and must go through the rough storm together or perish

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After working a few days outdoors doing pruning and clearing the weeds, I came to realise how good the modernites are having being sheltered from the weather and natural calamaties that has befallen to our forefathers before Oil age.

More people has been working indoors as rural folks flooded the streets paved with vehicles a century back.And since then we never look back even looking down our rural cousins as inferior and uncultured.Forgetting they’ve been supplying city folks ample food during pre car era.

Severe drought and heavy monsoon can sweep away many months of backbreaking work done by farmers and even now we’re still facing the same problems for peasants who cannot afford the good farm site and technology to combat it. How we going to employ the technology to increase food production without oil with our limited good arable land?

Many of us will just need to learn to cope with a lower standard of living unlike the conspicous consumerism we experienced supported by petro infrastructure that was not meant to last forever…sooner or later..the drip will be lesser and more difficult to drill.

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One of the biggest challenge of fossil decline is whether our high tech industry can survive without it.Top Search engine leader Google is leading the way to stay green.It’s planning to spend hundreds of millions to help drive down electricity costs made from renewable energy below the price of coal.

This project is called Renewable Energy Cheaper than coal, is hiring engineers and paving the way for solar and and wind power.Running their system and networks on electricity and selling what is left to the power grid.

Their goal is to produce one gigawatt of renewable energy that is cheaper than coal and it’s to be done in years and not decades a statement released by Larry Page, Google co-founder. One Gigawatt can power up a whole city like San francisco.

More high tech companies not only in silcon valley but worldwide should follow Google lead in the use of sustainable energy.It’s a good example that big business can and able to make a big difference in the way that shaped our consumption of energy

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