by StarmanSkye » Sat Mar 25, 2006 12:17 am
I can't speak to what was being said about liberal bloggers being naive -- I didn't see this claim, and don't think it's even true of a blog that is really and truly 'liberal' -- that is, certainly not naive as with the MSM or conservative sites.<br><br>As far as peak oil and the 'we're all gonna die' misstatement or error -- it's been claimed on this forum that Peak Oil is a contrived 'emergency', as evident because its become de rigor, the accepted common-wisdom across the land, ie. the public has been duped in a scheme by politicos and the oiligarchy to wildly inflate oil prices by creating artificial scarcity (tho how foreign state-owned oil corporations could be talked into going along with this, or why, isn't readily explained). In addition, as the anti-peak argument goes, since all the evidence supporting Peak Oil is in the hands of oil-industry officials and petro-chemical experts -- the very ones who presumably have the most to gain from an artificial scarcity 'explained' by Peak Oil -- there's no way to conclusively DIS-prove it, they just cannot be trusted. This is, of course, a convenient circular-argument imposing an impossible-to-meet standard of proof -- the assumption being that since all information is specialized and highly-technical, it's tainted and can't be accepted.<br><br>This 'latest' development with its apparant implication, ie. that even liberal blogdom has jumped onto the Peak Oil bandwagon -- is inconsistent with and contradicts that claim ref. above -- Peak Oil could hardly have been the accepted, conventional wisdom if only NOW liberal blogs are waking up to it and promoting it.<br><br>I've always argued the geological, socioeconomic and political facts of Peak Oil are much too complex to be reduced to simplistic or reductionist arguments. Above all, I note the evident failure of society and our political institutions to adequately address and prepare for the many very serious implications of Peak Oil as constituting one of the plainest signs that Peak Oil has NOT become the accepted standard. We would have embarked on massive energy-consevation, new source development and diversification programs on the scale of another Manhatten Project if Peak Oil WAS universally accepted.<br><br>But a related criticism of the claim re: widespread acceptance of Peak Oil is that our political institutions have failed to even start on the most modest alternative-energy and conservation measures -- and its militant Middle East position is actually very harmful to the US and world's energy-needs issues, serving to antagonize and alienate potential partners and allies as it shows the reckless and dangerous side of a self-absorbed superpower so full of its own sense of power and interests that it sacrifices International Law and diplomacy.<br><br>If there were even a SMALL chance that Peak Oil was certain, with lack of certainty about whether Peak Oil's predicted declines have begun or won't be appreciated for another 5, 10 or 15 years, then one would expect an effective, competant government to take it seriously and begin planning to meet the many challenges ahead, not only to one's own nation but to take into consideration other nation's security and economic/development interests related to declining petroleum sources.<br><br>But that's the nub -- Under the last several administrations but most dramatically under Bush jr., our policy seems to be one of head-in-sand denial and outright appropriation of foreign oil reserves, by use of force or fraud.<br><br>But the weight of evidence signalling production declines of the world's largest fields which account for over half of the world's daily supply are clear wake-up calls that, even beyond a synthetic shortage of adequate refinery capacity, a critical lack of oil supplies is a very real, growing problem -- which we ignore or deny to our own (and the world's) peril.<br><br>Starman<br>******<br><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.raisethehammer.org/index.asp?id=269">www.raisethehammer.org/index.asp?id=269</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--> <br><br>Peak Oil is Now Official <br>Suburban Bureau <br> Mexico's supergiant Cantarell oilfield is now in decline. Can the rest of the world make up the shortfall? <br>By Trevor Shaw <br>Mar. 18, 2006 <br><br><br>A recent Kight Ridder article by Kevin Hall points out that world's number two oilfield, Mexico's supergiant Cantarell, has peaked. <br><br>Cantarell is second only to Saudia Arabia's Ghawar oilfield and has been pumping millions of barrels of light crude a day since 1976. According to Carlos Morales, production manager for Mexico's state owned oil company, Pemex, Cantarell's projected output will be 6 percent lower this year at 1.9 million barrels per day and down to 1.43 million barrels by 2008, the level of production in 2000. <br><br>A leaked internal memo from inside Pemex said water and gas were seeping into the massive offshore oil field. Cantarell is showing the signs of peaking. <br><br> Canterell's Output Levels Year Output <br> 1994 1.0 mb/d <br> 2000 1.5 mb/d <br> 2004 2.13 mb/d (Peak) <br> 2005 2.0 mb/d <br> 2006 1.9 mb/d (projected) <br> 2008 1.43 mb/d (projected) <br>To make up the decline of Cantarell, Pemex is spending billions to develop new fields such as Chicontepec. This will prove difficult for a company that lost $3.75 billion in 2005, during a time of record high crude prices. <br><br>The crude that is first produced from any field is light and sweet, it flows well, and is easy to refine. Not so the later output, and Pemex is faced with spending billions to reconfigure its refineries so they can handle heavier crude. <br><br>Pemex's Galindo, like many outside experts, thinks the era of easy, cheaply produced oil in Mexico appears to be over. The remaining crude left in Cantarell or in existing fields will most certainly be heavier and costlier. <br><br>The Cantarell field accounts for 60 percent of Mexico's total production. To make up for the anticipated decline of 500,000 bpd will be difficult to achieve and definitely more expensive if even possible. Mexico is the second-largest supplier of oil to the U.S. market. The decline will intensify America's dependence on Middle East oil. <br><br>Many experts - Matthew Simmons, Richard Heinberg, Colin Campbell, Bilaal Abdullah and members of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil - have said that when Ghawar Peaks so does the world. <br><br>Rumours and experts outside Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia's state controlled oil company, believe Ghawar has already peaked or is currently peaking. It is definitely showing symptoms. Some reports have stated that the water cut level is nearing 50 percent of the total liquids being pumped out by its more than 300 wellheads. <br><br>Combined with the news in January, 2006 from the Kuwait Oil Company that their super giant Burgan oil field has peaked, this strongly suggests we are in Peak Oil. <br><br>Do we need anymore convincing that Peak Oil is imminent? The world cannot sit idle waiting for a technological fix. If there was a solution or an immediate alternative do you think America would be spending billions to occupy Iraq? Our denial won't make the problem disappear. As Bilaal Abdulah's book notes, we need a global paradigm shift or we're all in big trouble. <br>*****<br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://energybulletin.net/14102.html">energybulletin.net/14102.html</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>--excerpt--<br>Explicit warnings of Peak Oil have started to turn up in official U.S. government literature. For example, a paper prepared for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers titled “Energy Trends and Implications for U.S. Army Installations” (Sept., 2005) includes the following tidbit: <br><br>The supply of oil will remain fairly stable in the very near term, but oil prices will steadily increase as world production approaches its peak. The doubling of oil prices in the past couple of years is not an anomaly, but a picture of the future. Peak oil is at hand. . . .13 <br><br>Then there is the following from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Petroleum Reserves, Office of Naval Petroleum and Oil Shale Reserves, dated March 2004: <br><br>The disparity between increasing production and declining reserves can have only one outcome: a practical supply limit will be reached and future supply to meet conventional oil demand will not be available. The question is when peak production will occur and what will be its ramifications. <br>Whether the peak occurs sooner or later is a matter of relative urgency. . . . In spite of projections for growth of non-OPEC supply, it appears that non-OPEC and non-Former Soviet Union countries have peaked and are currently declining. The production cycle of countries . . . and the cumulative quantities produced reasonably follow Hubbert’s model. . . . The Nation must start now to respond to peaking global oil production to offset adverse economic and national security impacts.14 <br><br>And then there is the 2005 Report, “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management,” commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy, about which we will have more to say below.15 <br><br>If none of this is specific enough (in fairness, we cannot expect George W. Bush to spend his evenings poring over obscure Army Corps of Engineers studies), we have the fact that Representative Roscoe Bartlett, Republican from Maryland’s sixth district—who has made many speeches about Peak Oil on the floor of Congress—has spent thirty minutes in private conversation with the president explaining the science of Peak Oil and seeking to convey the enormity of the problem.16 <br><br>But what if Bush wasn’t able to understand what Bartlett was telling him? After all, Bartlett has a Ph.D. in physics; perhaps he was using words that were too big, or concepts too abstruse for our president to grasp. <br><br>Even if that were the case, we have evidence that Bush’s second-in-command, vice president Cheney, understands Peak Oil; given time, Cheney could surely make the concept comprehensible to his superior. In a speech in 1999 (while he was still CEO of Halliburton Corporation, the giant oil services company) to the Petroleum Institute in London, Cheney pointed out that:<br><br>"By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day."17 <br><br>This is a fair statement of the depletion dilemma: 50 million barrels per day is almost five times the current output of Saudi Arabia. <br> <p></p><i></i>