Subscribe
Recent Posts
Eyjafjallajoekull and all that
Sustainability in the Service Sector - video
Are you part of the problem...
Book Review: Confessions of a Radical Industrialis...
We're coming over all web 2.0...
Archives
News & Views From the Front Line
Thursday, 26 November 2009
M King Hubbert & Peak Oil Theory
If anyone is interested in the background to the concept of peak oil, I've just posted a profile of the godfather of peak oil, M King Hubbert, on Green Gurus. The profile covers recent controversies.A future edition of The Low Carbon Agenda will look at peak oil and its implications for the industry of the future.
Labels: green gurus, m king hubbert, peak oil
# posted by Gareth Kane : 06:47
0 Comments
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Is there a peak oil cover up?
Until recently I've been agnostic about 'peak oil' - I've been in the "we'll only know when it happens" camp, but as the issue has moved steadily from the fringe to centre stage, I've started siding with the peak oil brigade. Last year International Energy Agency Chief Economist Fatih Birol stated that production could "plateau" by 2020 and a recent report by the UK Energy Research Centre concluded that a peak could occur before 2020. But then yesterday The Guardian reported allegations that the IEA has been exaggerating the future reserves of oil under pressure from "the US". One insider stated "we've already entered the peak oil zone".There is one good reason for this cover-up (if that's what it is) - to stop panic buying and even resource related conflict, but I suspect that denial and inertia are the dominant drivers. In particular, the oil industry has a massive vested interest in avoiding talk of a peak. If reserves are seen to be depleting then shareholders will dump their shares - the 2004 reserves scandal nearly did for Shell. The sensible thing to do would be to diversify quickly into new energy technologies. The sort of cash that Big Oil could pump into renewables and efficient technology could drive us quickly to a low carbon economy, resilient to both climate change and peak oil, but instead they seem wedded to pursuing expensive and destructive forms of oil extraction like tar sands. If I were an investor, I'd start backing a different horse - and indeed investment in renewables exceeded that of fossil fuel exploration in 2008.
There's a great political opportunity here. The resistance to cutting carbon emissions in the US and elsewhere is mainly based on a suspicion of the political motives of the green lobby ("an excuse to raise taxes", "eco-communism", "red-green alliance" etc). If the world wants to maintain its standard of living once oil has peaked, we'll need those low carbon technologies anyway, irrespective of your views on climate change evidence. John Kerry has been promoting the business opportunities green innovation to persuade reluctant US politicians to sign up to President Obama's climate change bill. Maybe he should ask them "what will your voters say if you let the pumps run dry?" instead.
Labels: barack obama, climate change, iea, peak oil
# posted by Gareth Kane : 15:18
0 Comments
Friday, 23 October 2009
The risk of oil price rises
Very interesting speech this week by John B Hess of oil exploration company Hess Corporation at the somewhat unsubtly titled "Oil and Money" conference in London. He caught the attention of the audience by declaring "The price of $140 per barrel oil was not an aberration; it was a warning." He went on to say that demand was outstripping supply and while production had either peaked or plateau'd ouside OPEC, it was still unlikely that we would hit a target of keeping global warming below 2°C while oil prices soar. Bleak indeed.The oil price risk is one I communicate to my clients - if if you can handle current energy prices - what happens if they soar? Oil going above $100 a barrel was unthinkable a few years ago, but it went way over in the spring of 2008 and appears to be on its way back. This is a serious risk for many businesses and organisations - are you ready for it? Resilience is a term I'm pinching from the Transition movement - is your organisation resilient to the risks ahead?
Labels: oil prices, peak oil, risk
# posted by Gareth Kane : 09:14
0 Comments
Friday, 12 October 2007
Oil price at record high - is this the beginning of the end?
With the BBC reporting that oil prices are staying near the record high set in September, the 'peak oil' debate has started again.'Peak Oil' is the theory that we are nearing the economic limit of oil exploration and extraction, beyond which the cost of extracting the fuel will soar. Estimates of when the peak will occur range from now (Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas) to 2037 (US Govt advisors). Others reject the idea that peak oil is happening at all, such as Deborah White, senior energy analyst at Societe Generale in Paris (quoted by the BBC) who said "We don't endorse the idea at all."
The difficulty is that the oil & gas supply is a function of many different factors: politics (see Russia switching off Ukraine's gas supply in 2005), economics, geology (where the gas & oil is and in what quantities) and technology (what was uneconomic last year could be economic today). Apart from the geology, these factors are interrelated, unpredictable and may combine in unexpected and sudden ways.
If it is happening, we will be forced to decarbonise our economies swiftly. The only problem is, we won't probably know until long after it has started. If it isn't, then we should do it anyway for climate change and security of supply reasons.
Labels: climate change, oil prices, peak oil
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:32
1 Comments
A highly accessible, practical guide to those who want to introduce sustainability into their business or organization quickly and effectively.
