Daily Oil Blog

 Petroleum giant Shell recently mapped out 2 possible outcomes for our declining fossil world.First one is called Scramble and the second named blueprints.Let me summarize the 2 scenerios:

Scramble view:

a)World leaders cannot find the will to follow up on their promises to reduce carbon emissions as lower consumption of energy will affect the socio economic living many developed countries enjoyed and developing countries aspire.

b) Using biofuels for our energy needs but drive up our food prices by doing so. Many poor in our world will find it impossible to get cheap food.

c)Survival politics will be more frequent than ideologies in an oil scarce world.Coups will become more common in third world and volatile region.The fight for remaining oil resources will sour ties even between once cordial relations between countries.

Blueprint view :

a)Awakened giant China will become more concerned about her role in climate change and respond to it in a positive sustainable manner.She will use the revenue from the auctioning of emission permits which will distribute to other nations in the future.

b)Oil rich countries like the middle east and russia playing a bigger role by exporting more oil for more profits, they’re able to do this as their domestic demand drops in favour of alternative energy.

c)Enviromnental friendly financial markets and insurance develop and cash in on the emerging green trend and governments become more green due to a eco friendly populace.

The above scenerios by Shell shows how the leaders and her people in the world can make a difference between confrontation and cooperation in the energy scacre planet.I personally feel that our world may be going into a hybrid of the duo outcome hopefully with the blueprint weighing more in the process

Share This

Will the real test comes in 2008 for peak oil? Will our governments tell us the plain truth and sets the pendulum swinging for serious discussion in the business and grassroots level?Anything is possible but I’m keeping my fingers crossed as Janunary has cross the middle of the month in the new year.

OPEC exclaimed..don’t blame us blame the speculators..oh right as if the oil production will increased if the trades went long in wall street.Free market forces cannot be put on a pedestal & the final solution in the light of the survival of our human species energy woes.

Saudi Arabia seem to be the only likely candidate for propping up their oil production but she has problems dealing with wahabi radicals spreading anti western propagandas in the petro funded mosques and madrasas worldwide .The new administeration after Bush this year may find himself or herself dealing with this thorny issue but it cannot go unanswered if the America is to win the war on terror.

So here I’m testing the Peak Oil theory meter and it’s not coming down anytime soon.The facts are when the worldwide energy demand rises and oil production is not keeping up with it and this is the inconvenient truth.

Share This

The second day of 2008 really can be kind of drag for me especially this.So New Year and new hopes..what’s new under the sun you may ask.,however this presents a good chance to rake in some money in the coming year as oil hits new time high as Iran send shivers to oil markets worldwide.

Canadian oil sands seem to be getting many investors interested especially this year but one need to know what companies to invest to cash in on the ride.One must be educated about oil markets so I suggest hitting to your bookstores or Amazon to armed yourself more knowledge aboout middle east geopolitics and oil in general.

There are exploration companies who drill oil but actually emitting less greenhouse that harms our fragile earth than conventional methods.One can invest in this kind of companies without damaging our environment in a big way.One cannot have our cake and eat it…either sworn off oil 100% or use it to develop and sustain our modern economy but with CAUTION.

Public companies that are involved in Canadian oil sands are divided in to 3 categories:

a)Mature

b)Speculative

c)Emerging small firms

So tread with care and have a bonanza this year but also invest with a green mindset.Cheers!

Share This

Share This

                       
Remember the days our great grandparents used to move around the country without cars and buses.Horse carriages used to be the norm and time seems to be slower..will we swing back to that era without fossil power?

Yes and No…animals are always part of human ecosystem since the beginning of time.However with the advent of cheap energy, we’ve grown apart from the horses and bulls that’s been used for transportation. Nevertheless I do not forsee the return of cowboy age ..merely the fusion and better usage of our horsepower.

Renewable technonolgy plus animal power seems to be a more probable scenerio ,trains and buses that use clean energy will be back in a big way as the public give up their hummers for cycling shorter distances.Horse carriages may be the gap between trains and bicycles.

In Cuba we can see good examples of public transportation and goods carriers using both trucks and bullcarts. They’ve survived decades of energy embargoes and make good case studies of using our existing energy platform.But theirs is a crude way of managing peak oil environment due to politics and economics.Most countries will need to find their own paths and will do better than Cuba I believe as the populace is more creative and knowledge intensive.

Share This

The word “cheap oil” seems like a cruel joke now but not months ago when oil was trading around $60 a barrel.

Experts cited that oil prices will rise above $85 by end of 2007 and more than $100 a barrel by next year.People seem to talk about oil price by hearsay from their friends and gas attendents but no one really got a clear picture, if the analyst got trouble figuring it out, what makes you think that the man on the street know any better.

A few points that bystanders make when talking about oil markets almost got me fooled like “Damn, it’s those big oil companies trying to push prices up” but if companies like Exxon control less than 10% of the production, where’s the logic?

And when I tried to talk about peak oil , people normally give me a weird look like I’m from another planet.It shows how deluded men has come to be and I’m not surprised.
Here’s the deal: Peak oil is when global oil production began to peak and then decline.

The current oil production is 85 million barrels per day from depleting oilfields & producers are already struggling to maintain this figure.What if we consume more than 85 million barrels in the near future whereas production figures remain the same?

IEA(International energy Agency) suggest that the supply and demand gap continue to widen but the public remains in Oz land thinking that the market will resolve the problem,how does it resolve when we can neither recycle or grow oil, nobody’s saying.

If you think 80USd a barrel is expensive, try 300USD by the year 2015 when EIA estimates the world will be consuming 97 million barrels per day.So nowadays sadly 80USD a barrel is considered cheap, please enjoy while it lasts

Share This

Peak oil is coming, and once our oil supplies reach that critical point at which inexpensive supply begins to fall short of demand, the truly pervasive influence that oil currently exerts in all aspects of our daily lives means that we are all going to face some major lifestyle changes.

Consider the clothing that we wear. An average pair of cotton pants requires just under 1 kg of oil produced nitrogen fertilizer to produce, and when you factor in the transport of that cotton for processing, and the transport of the processed thread to the garment factory, and the transport of the finished pants to the wholesaler, then transport to the retailer, and finally transport to your home; the hidden oil in a pair of pants begins to mount substantially. This is of course no problem today, when oil remains relatively cheap, but when oil prices skyrocket, those $20 pants may just get a lot more expensive…if they are even available at all!

So back to polyester?

Current alternatives, such as nylon, polyester and rayon (which in addition to being unbearable on a hot day!) are in fact made from petrochemicals, and as a result carry an even heavier petro chemical footprint, and are not viable alternatives.

So what’s the answer?

Ecologically minded people are already promoting the purchase of organically grown cotton garments, and in fact manufacturers appear to be interested in supporting such “greener” production, as each year’s production of organic cotton falls significantly short of demand; but another option often touted is to shift away from energy intensive cotton to alternative materials. Hemp and bamboo, which both require very little fertilizer for growth, are often touted as the most sensible alternative to cotton; and activists swear that clothing made from these fast growing plants is not what you’d expect. The current public perception of incense fragrant hippy looking folk wearing scratchy rough hewn natural fibers needs not be the reality swear proponents of these materials, and they boast that both hemp and bamboo can be made to manufacture very soft and fine clothing, just as attractive and comfortable as those currently made from cotton.

We shall see anyways, as it looks increasingly likely that a gradual shift away from energy intensive cotton needs to occur, and with the rising price of oil, will occur of its own accord.

For now, if you’re reluctant to buy bamboo shirts, experts recommend buying second hand and vintage shirts, and buying with an emphasis on quality over price, in an effort to only buy clothing that you will use for a significant period of time.

Share This

What does solar panel and oil have in common?
It seems like one is the alternative energy and one isn’t and hence solve all our energy problems and everyone is happy..
But wrong guys..solar panels are made from plastics and as you all know plastics are made from oil.How are we going to manufactured solar panels worldwide without oil?
I’m always shocked when people told me about alternative energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines.But they failed to realize the mother of this are fossil fuel.
And even if we can.make panels without oil, can we replaced the energy consumption at the rate we’re going now with alternative sources?
And there you get a market of solar companies sales talk that just trying to create a whole new energy industry with again no clear solution to solve the energy woes.
We must face the facts that no alternative energy can replace the fossil fuel that is supporting our present way of life.No techno quick fix for this one I’m afraid:(

Share This

The recent surge in the planting of corn and other food commodities for use in the production of bio fuels has caused the price of corn and other commodities to rise, and as such the price of tortillas (made from dried corn) have risen dramatically. Tortillas, which are the staple food of the Mexican diet, have recently risen so high as to prompt concerns of food riots in some poorer Mexican states.

The web of influence spread by the increasing costs of crude oil seems to widen by the day, and we are now hearing regularly about both the environmental destruction these bio fuel plantations are causing in the world’s primary rainforest zones, and as well that the expanding hunger for commodities to be used as bio fuels are driving the prices up, and increasing the poverty level for many in the world’s less developed nations?

So what’s to be done about peak oil and food production?

Speaking at the Soil Association Conference in Britain, American oil expert Dr. Heinburg said that eventual rising oil costs and supply concerns would ultimately force a remigration back to rural areas, and suggested that as many 16 times as many people would be working the fields as do currently. Dr. Heinburg bases some of his forecasts on the model of Cuba, which after a US trade embargo, saw its oil supplies dwindle substantially, and as a result saw a dramatic increase in its rural communities.

Less oil means that food will be more expensive to grow, and will be more expensive to ship, and one way that some of these expenses are offset are by increasing the population of growers, and as well decreasing the distance that food must travel to market.

Dr. Heinburg calls for this shift to occur within the next 2-3 decades and says that some major American cities, such as Oakland, are already implementing strategies to greatly increase their food production needs within a small radius outside of the city.

It will be very interesting to see whether peak oil costs are enough to reverse an urbanization trend that has continued unabated for hundreds of years. Will the rising price of oil have us back on the farm…and will we need a team of mules to plow with?

Share This

The real kilo calorie energy involved in the production of a box of processed breakfast cereal is 7000 calories, but the actual caloric energy within is just over a thousand calories. If animals expend more energy in the hunt for food than they consume in food, they die, thankfully for humans, and with our ability to manipulate the natural world, these same rules don’t apply…yet.

The food consumed by the average American each year requires 400 gallons of oil to produce. About a third of this oil is expended in the production of nitrogen fertilizers, and the rest of the oil is burnt through transportation, harvesting, packaging and other processes. It’s all fine for now, but when peak oil is achieved, and when our finite supplies begin to dwindle, how will our massive urban populations be able to sustain themselves?

World populations have increased 500% since the industrial revolution, and this massive growth has only been possible through increasingly sophisticated and oil driven farming practices. These farming practices, completely dependent on oil, have had some environmental impact, and when top spoil erosion (from commercial farming practices) and ever increasing urban encroachment or rural lands are factored in, there is some cause for concern that we may have created an unsustainable farming system that will ultimately be unable to meet the food demands of an increasing world population.

Since the finite supplies of oil do seem to be a reality, and although estimates on when oil supplies will dwindle substantially are unclear, there will come a time in the not so distant future when our current farming practices are both unable to supply the food we need, and are well as unreasonably costly to use.

So what’s to be done?

One of the biggest shifts that will need to occur is to transition away from oil intensive and transport heavy farming, and towards less oil consumptive organic farming, done locally to minimize the oil burned in the shipping of goods. To achieve this transition, the change in our societies will be profound. Food will cost more, the abundance of products out of season in our local areas will evaporate from the shelves; and the number of people working the fields will need to increase substantially. The up side is that this food will likely be healthier, almost certainly be tastier, and will be sustainable.

Human innovation may solve what looks to be a certain food supply problem in the years to come, but rather than relying on an innovation that may or may not occur, farming practices should be gradually shifted towards the sustainable now. This will require both a governmental commitment to enact major changes, as well as a consumer willingness to pay the prices needed to support local and organically grown products.

Share This