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Peak Oil (was "petroleum geologist explains US war policy")

And a rather telling example of how we have moved from peak oil denial to acceptance that there are supply issues but denial that it could possibly be anything to do with geology.

http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalc...get-ready-for-the-oil-supply-crunch-iea-says/

That article also makes me think that if despite the recession, there is a failure of supply to meet demand in the next few years, before the IEA think likely, OPEC production cuts are going to get quite a bit of the blame.

The final battle between planetary resource reality versus the god of growth and his chum virtual wealth has begun. As the question changes from whether there is a problem, to whose fault it is, the financial crisis adds a thick veil of confusion which may lead us stumbling through many years of actual hardship due to supply crunch, with still millions unaware of what is really happening?
 
elbows said:
To oversimplify, it seems that how hard you milk the fields is more relevant to their decline rate than their actual size?
Click to expand...
Sort of, so far as I understand it. There is a flow rate that near which the field will not become damaged and the URR (ultimate recovererable reserve) will be produced. By producing below this you wont increase the URR. You can increase the URR from a field by using secondary recovery techniques and increase its flowrate. The problem with secondary recovery techniques is that they do have a big impact on the downside. You are getting the same amount or a bit more out but quicker, so when it runs out your flow rate drops much quicker.

One of the famous examples of fucking up a field is the Soviets with Samotlor field. It is one of the highest flow rates ever achieved.


The only other known field whose daily production ever exceeded 2 million barrels per
day was Siberia’s giant Samotlor field, which was not even in production in 1971.
Samotlor peaked in the late 1980’s at just above 3.5 million barrels per day. But this
production rate was attained through aggressive water flooding while the field still had
natural pressure as its primary drive. As a result, the field’s reservoir was badly
damaged. Today, it produces just over 300,000 barrels per day.
Click to expand...
http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/giantoilfields.pdf
The arrival of things like horizontal drills, 3D imaging and the like from the west allowed the field to eventualy get back up to about 450 000 barrels a day and it will likely get close to the full URR of 20 billion barrels.
 
elbows said:
And a rather telling example of how we have moved from peak oil denial to acceptance that there are supply issues but denial that it could possibly be anything to do with geology.
Click to expand...
For some reason a question posed in Jarred Diamons Collapse springs to mind "what was the going through the mind of the Easter Islander who cut down the last tree?" Or at what point did the Scandinavian Greenlanders realise there dairy based lifestyle was not going to see them through this cold snap and that the icebergs had meant that there were no more ships coming, why did they not start fishing? Why are there so few fish bones found in the Greenlanders middens? Both probibly preyed to there gods in the sky, we seem to be praying to ours in the capital markets.
 
Crispy said:
This is pretty major. The following companies; Arup, FirstGroup, Foster and Partners, Scottish and Southern Energy, Solarcentury, Stagecoach Group, Virgin Group, Yahoo; have formed a "UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security" and release their report today. Foreword from Lord Ron Oxburgh, former chairman of Shell.

You can read the whole thing here:

http://peakoil.solarcentury.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/oil-report-final.pdf

This is very mainstream stuff now.
Click to expand...

I got a chance to read some of it today - good stuff. I thought the following bit was interesting given the credit crunch:

To date the demand side has been equally unresponsive to high
prices largely because oil demand continues to be very price
inelastic. Experience from the 1970s oil crises indicates that
demand is only impacted after some sort of yield point when
recession or worse destroys demand. The other key learning from
the 1970s is that adaptive responses – new technology, new
equipment – take about six to eight years before there is any
substantial impact.
Since the 1970s all the easy substitutions of oil products have
largely been made. Compared with the 1970s little fuel oil is now
used for power generation or by industry. Use of kerosene and gas
oil for home and commercial heating has been massively reduced.
Further substitutions away from oil will now be much harder.
The conclusion is that oil prices can move in quite wide ranges
with only limited supply and demand responses although there
is undoubtedly a yield point at which economic activity and oil
demand collapses. For example individuals will continue to drive
to work and consume fuel until the point where they lose their jobs
and their fuel consumption then decreases. No one knows where
the yield point is although it is clearly lower in poorer economies
than in richer ones.
Click to expand...
 
gonna have to give that peak oil report a proper read over the next few days.

spent the last few days hanging off ropes on my parents roof fitting 9m2 of solar water heating panels as a starting point to my contribution to sorting this situation out... or more to the point making sure my family at least are in a better position to ride it out as the country's pissing our remaining money away to russia, norway, the middle east etc. Insulating the loft next, then see how the gas bills look in a years time.
 
darkfibre said:
Sooooo... the IEA World Energy Outlook 2008 was published today.

On the third page of the Executive Summary (page 39), you'll find these words:



I see little point in reading any further. :(
Click to expand...

You'll note they say 'electricity' not 'energy', so my first thought was that they were including nuclear among 'modern renewables' apparently not though.

I haven't time to read this properly now, but I'm interested in how they reached that conclusion.
 
OPECs responce

Abdullah al-Badri, Opec's secretary-general, gave a withering verdict on the study. “I don't trust this report,” he said. “I don't think the IEA is equipped to review these oilfields...I don't see how it will be useful.”

He said that Opec, the cartel of 13 oil-exporting countries that produces 40 per cent of the world's oil, had not been involved in drafting the study, which he dismissed as alarmist. “We have the reserves, we have enough oil for the foreseeable future,” Mr al-Badri insisted.
Click to expand...

The dispute between the IEA and Opec goes to the heart of the debate over “peak oil” and how much of the world's energy needs its existing oilfields can supply in the years ahead. This year's World Energy Outlook report slashed its assessment of how much oil the world would be able to produce by 2030 by ten million barrels to 106 million per day and placed more emphasis than ever before on the need to develop alternatives.

Opec has traditionally adopted a much rosier view of the prospects for future global oil production growth. For years, it has also been accused of overstating its reserves for political reasons and to discourage the development of alternatives.

The IEA's report also gave warning that the present economic slowdown could have damaging consequences for the world's energy supplies by undermining crucial investment. “We cannot let the financial and economic crisis delay the policy action that is urgently needed to ensure secure energy supplies and to curtail rising emissions of greenhouse gases,” Mr Tanaka said. “We must usher in a global energy revolution by improving energy efficiency and increasing the deployment of low-carbon energy
Click to expand...


comical_ali.jpg
 
Yeah Ive no idea how they get to those renewable percentages unless their is a collapse in total generation. I mean I know offshore wind is due for a big rise but even so, all of the renewables combined struggle to get anywhere even vaguely close to the level of conventional power, according to most numbers Ive ever seen.

Anyway my ealrier post about the day of peak oil acceptance finally having arrived, was obviously well overstated as the IEA stuff got no mainstream fanfare. Coverage in the business press, along with that interesting UK group of companies who did that peak oil report, shows that awareness is now at a high level within certain sectors. The deciders pretty much all know now, but for some reason making the idea well known and acceptable to the masses doesnt appear to be on the agenda yet.

Or Im wrong and government is in genuine denial privately, as well as in public. Ive tended to assume theyve know the reality for ages, hence policies such as war for control of oil, but Im not sure how much longer their denials can remain plausible. Is the general economic picture, naughty countries not allowing outside companies in, or even terrorists, really going to get the blame, will it really wash once the horror starts to affect people in developed countries badly, are the masses going to be satisfied with government-selected scapegoats?

Well I guess we've long heard that decarbonating our society is going to take a warlike effort. The desire to save the planet hasnt proved motivation enough. Economic hell is a preferable way to motivate us all than the hell of actual war, I suppose, oh well.
 
So what happened to the hydrogen economy?

Bugger, not enough platinum. There has been an idea that hydrogen would be an excellent store of energy for renewables that are more not as reliable time wise as current hydrocarbon energy. Things like tidal and wind energy. But according to this we are currently somewhat curtailed by the need for platinum.

Here is another analysis of the IEA report on the 12th on November.

linkage

Jeremy Gilbert, former BP Chief Petroleum Engineer

There were people from the International Oil Companies still working with virtually all the OPEC country National Oil Companies in the late 1970s. From talking to a cross-section of them we can be sure that the numbers quoted for OPEC reserves in the early 1980s (before the revisions) were reasonable.

I was more or less responsible for the Iran reserves compilation in 1977 and 1978 and I worked in Abu Dhabi and Kuwait in the early 1970s: I am quite confident that the numbers shown for these countries in the early 1980s are good; they are possibly a little conservative, because there was some reluctance by the western International Oil Companies to make big capital investments in improved secondary/tertiary recovery which might have led to slightly higher numbers, say 5% more at most.

Since we know from service company and other sources that there were no multi-billion barrel discoveries in these countries in the mid 1980s there can be no technical basis on which reserve estimates could have later increased as reported by the individual National Oil Companies.

It is probable that the archives of BP, Shell, ExxonMobil etc., contain reports from the period which would confirm all of this. These companies provided technical-expert teams which regularly reviewed field performance data and reserves estimates with the technical staff of the operating companies during the 1970s.
Click to expand...

Previously the IEA has openly assumed that the growing gap between future demand and their forecast for non-OPEC production would be met by OPEC, with no quantification of whether OPEC resources were available to match that ambitious assumption. That the IEA has now attempted a resource based estimate for both non-OPEC and OPEC regions is a vital albeit obvious and overdue step forward. In another positive move, the IEA has also seen fit to independently revise down the USGS estimates for reserves growth and undiscovered resources.

The most obvious and fundamental flaw in the IEA report is that OPEC reserves have again been taken at face value. The laws of physics do not stop at the Middle East borders and there is not some mythical abundance of oil in OPEC countries. They do have the largest share of remaining resources but they cannot meet our expanding desire for oil forever.

Despite recognising the OPEC reserves issue, the IEA has avoided confronting it. The poor quality of data for these countries has consequential impacts on the assessment of reserves growth and real discovery trends. We cannot have a robust official forecast of future oil supply until we get transparent and audited information concerning oil reserves in OPEC countries.

The IEA has warned that massive levels of investment are required to bring oil resources to market in a timely manner, but the reality is that oil resources are insufficient to meet these forecasts regardless of investment. Oil production will be heading down hill well before 2030, constrained by a fundamental lack of oil resources and not simply a lack of investment.
Click to expand...

Over on the TOD there has been a great wailing and gnashing of teeth from many of the hyper techie posters as the IEA report was very light on methodology. But the feeling is inspite of the IEA movement to downgrade the total peak we will reach to a mere 105 million barrels a day it contains alot of paper barrels of reserves and is very reliant on future discoveries breaking the trend and being pretty big over the next ten years. It is also very heavily reliant on tar sands ramping up to some superlative figure like over 10 million barrels a day. Ive been busy doing some reading up this week on the difference between tar sands and oil shales. Basicaly tar sands are bitumen while oil shales are kerogen (Id thought both were kerogen). Bitumen is basicaly oil that has not been heated enough to become oil, and kerogen is bitumen that has not been heated enough to even become bitumen. Crude, natural gas, bitumen and kerogen all come from the same process. Thick dense mats of biological material lie on an anerobic sea or lake bed until they are covered by other matter. There ultimate fate depends on the level of heating they are exposed too. The hotter the more the long chains of hydrocarbons get broken up (this is thermal cracking, much like what happens in the more basic oil refinaries). The lack of oxogen in anerobic enviroments prevents the decomposition of biological matter and it forms what is called kerogen. If the kerogen is heated it cracks the longer chains and becomes more of a bitumen and eventualy at about 150C it starts become crude, it runs through the low to high APIs of crude, from very heavy oils like the very heavy crudes in Venesualas orinoco through to the very light crudes (API 30 to about 45) such as Nigerias Bonny Light at over 40 API. Once it gets to hot it cracks into gasses, and this is where natural gas comes from. As it transits through those stages it becomes less viscous and easier to refine.

One very intersting thing, I had always assumed that a huge amount of oil was yet to be discovered on the abyssal plains. I was very wrong. The abyssal plain has a much steeper thermal gradian than the cratons of continents, largly because it is much thinner and so closer to the mantle. The physical oil window in the rock of the ocean crust is very thin (the space between where oil would be bitumen and gas). Moreover unlike the continental cratons the actual floor of many oceans is quite new. While some crude can be as young as 5.3 million y.o. the two main periods of oil formation were in the mid cretatious (90-120 million years ago) and the upper jurassic (144-159 million years ago). The atlantic for example only started to form about 120 million years ago. So the geology of the ocean floors is very uncondusive to oil formation.

Ive posted in before but this is the most awesome ontro to oil for the educated.....
http://publications.uu.se/abstract.xsql?dbid=7625

And here for an ABC doc on the story of oil. link
 
Crispy said:
This is pretty major. The following companies; Arup, FirstGroup, Foster and Partners, Scottish and Southern Energy, Solarcentury, Stagecoach Group, Virgin Group, Yahoo; have formed a "UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security" and release their report today. Foreword from Lord Ron Oxburgh, former chairman of Shell.

You can read the whole thing here:

http://peakoil.solarcentury.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/oil-report-final.pdf

This is very mainstream stuff now.
Click to expand...
 
Crispy said:
not in a position to video right now, what's in the link?
Click to expand...
Basicaly a short 5 minute intro about the working group your link was about. They give a very very basic overview that oil will peak in the early part of the next decade and then basicaly say we need to start acting soon. Brian Soulter and Richard Branson are amoung those who have a say. Its very fluffy stuff but suggests that people who can be heard are now voicing opinions on the subject.
 
Anybody lurk on any peak oil community sites and can say what the mood is out there at the moment? Do many think the current economic woe is at least partly sponsored by peak oil? Do many think that peak-oil might not take centre-stage as we enter quite a decline in carbon consumption, that the economy will be in the lead role with climate change in support?

I suppose many of the transition/survival plans that have been drawn up will be compatible with depression, apart from high tech/high investment ones, or ones that were somehow based on instant total collapse.

I dunno, I should have been following such things more closely, I might be talking out of my bottom. What Ive mostly seen is evidence for when peak might happen, and how bad the decline might be. Ive seen a variety of survival strategies, but a lot of them were either pretty extreme post-apocalyptics gardening, or not very effective (such as policies we've seen from government so far). I havent read enough stuff about what a gradual descent in the form of prolonged depression might entail. Can we look forward to government leading us slowly through a long depression, transitioning away from mass manufacture of non-essentials, towards mass agricultural labour,with a larger chunk of our lives kept local, and digital networks trying to fill the distance and entertainment gap? What can I read that explores such things?

Am I right to expect this thread to be quieter for at least a few years, as the low oil price, deliberately reduced production, and large demand destruction takes hold? I shudder at the thought of how many seemingly-unrelated threads will be started on the forum in the coming years, detailing the horrific specifics of demand destruction.

Fear the triangle of doom, climate change, peak oil and depression are its points, smell the suffering, oh how I wanted to be wrong about the way this century would go. I still hope to be wrong, but its getting harder to expect such an outcome, its been an ugly ride watching it all seem to fall into place over the last 5 years. The only consolation is knowing that there are many others out there who have similar expectations, and hopefully know more about how to handle it than I do. I still feel sorry for people who've been expecting imminent enviromental or oil doom since the 70's, Im glad I had the luxury of not worrying about this stuff till it loomed large on the horizon. Ive only been paying attention for 5 years and Im tired before the main feature even begins.
 
The average opinion appears to be:

The spike to $150 was a financial abberation, but one that came about due to
a)The boom in global economy - coupled with
b)Peak Oil fears entering mainstream economics.

The current drop in price is entirely due to demand destruction in the recession.

Wild swings of high and low prices and demand in chaotic feedback are symptoms of the peak. Without the capability for continuous growth, the oil market 'bounces' against the ceiling.

Ultimately, a crash in oil prices is bad for the peak, because it reduces investment in the projects which are supposed to soften the decline rate.

---

As for what's going to happen, the numbers (that I've read about) show that replacing oil as an energy source is beyond our current industrial means. ie. once we're over the peak, it will not be possible to manufacture enough windmills, nuclear plants, biodiesel refineries etc. to offset the decline. So yes, a decline in 'living standards' is, as far as I can tell, inevitable. However, that decline will not neccesarily be uniform accross the globe. Whether or not the 'farming of suburbia' will ever happen, a reversal of globalised capitalism will happen first, with countries less willing to share their energy reserves (or access to those reserves. ie. the US didn't build that massive embassy in Iraq for nothing...)

That's just a ramble off the top of my head though, so please rip it apart :)

The only prediction I'd like to make with any certainty is : we will never pump more than 100,000,000 barrels of crude in one day.
 
Crispy said:
The average opinion appears to be:

The spike to $150 was a financial abberation, but one that came about due to
a)The boom in global economy - coupled with
b)Peak Oil fears entering mainstream economics.

The current drop in price is entirely due to demand destruction in the recession.

Wild swings of high and low prices and demand in chaotic feedback are symptoms of the peak. Without the capability for continuous growth, the oil market 'bounces' against the ceiling.

Ultimately, a crash in oil prices is bad for the peak, because it reduces investment in the projects which are supposed to soften the decline rate.

---

As for what's going to happen, the numbers (that I've read about) show that replacing oil as an energy source is beyond our current industrial means. ie. once we're over the peak, it will not be possible to manufacture enough windmills, nuclear plants, biodiesel refineries etc. to offset the decline. So yes, a decline in 'living standards' is, as far as I can tell, inevitable. However, that decline will not neccesarily be uniform accross the globe. Whether or not the 'farming of suburbia' will ever happen, a reversal of globalised capitalism will happen first, with countries less willing to share their energy reserves (or access to those reserves. ie. the US didn't build that massive embassy in Iraq for nothing...)

That's just a ramble off the top of my head though, so please rip it apart :)

The only prediction I'd like to make with any certainty is : we will never pump more than 100,000,000 barrels of crude in one day.
Click to expand...
Well when making predictions its always best to say either "all liquids" or "C&C" (crude and condisate). The IEA publishes both.

PU200804_Fig1c_small_1.png


This excellent thread on TOD the other day gives an excellent overview onto the one bridging energy source that will work for a year or two that is natural gas, both form NG condensate (that counts agaisnt the lower crude figure) and natural gas liquids. The problem is that it looks like the IEA has really over estimated the NGL and Condensate figures in making its energy projects. But that said there is still a pretty huge amount of it to come. We are not likely to hit NG peak quite as soon as crude oil. As an example the South Pars\ North Field complex that holds about 20% of the worlds reserves is still quite new (2003\ 1989 respectively) (link). Additionaly non conventional natural gas is alot more realistic than oil. Coal bed methane and 'tight' gas fields are currently being comercialy exploited and have the potential to add quite a bit to the worlds gas supply. But it wont be cheap and the unconventionals are more likely to mitigate the downslope of NG than delay peak (excellent outcome in my book). But on the whole Id roughly agree with what Crispy said.

Id say my best guess would be peak by 2012 and only two million extra barrels C&C at best by then. But the economic crisis is taking its toll on difficult and expensive future oil projects. Brazil for example look like they will go ahead but the bigger deeper disocveries may not be comercialy exploitable at $50 oil. Round the world may projects are likely to face fudning problems.


The big big big downside of the economic bump and the collapse of comodity prices is there is no capital available for alternative energy projects and the price of them is now far less competative.

We are now entering the era of price swings. This is the graph of yesterday and tomorrow. The so called whale oil price saw tooth.
050320_peak_whale_oil_prices.jpg

That is that as a comodity becomes scareser its price goes up, people stop using it or use it more efficiently then the price drops for a bit, use goes up (Jevons Paradox: more people use it more efficiently) and price goes up. And so on.
 
elbows said:
Anybody lurk on any peak oil community sites and can say what the mood is out there at the moment? Do many think the current economic woe is at least partly sponsored by peak oil? Do many think that peak-oil might not take centre-stage as we enter quite a decline in carbon consumption, that the economy will be in the lead role with climate change in support?

I suppose many of the transition/survival plans that have been drawn up will be compatible with depression, apart from high tech/high investment ones, or ones that were somehow based on instant total collapse.

I dunno, I should have been following such things more closely, I might be talking out of my bottom. What Ive mostly seen is evidence for when peak might happen, and how bad the decline might be. Ive seen a variety of survival strategies, but a lot of them were either pretty extreme post-apocalyptics gardening, or not very effective (such as policies we've seen from government so far). I havent read enough stuff about what a gradual descent in the form of prolonged depression might entail. Can we look forward to government leading us slowly through a long depression, transitioning away from mass manufacture of non-essentials, towards mass agricultural labour,with a larger chunk of our lives kept local, and digital networks trying to fill the distance and entertainment gap? What can I read that explores such things?

Am I right to expect this thread to be quieter for at least a few years, as the low oil price, deliberately reduced production, and large demand destruction takes hold? I shudder at the thought of how many seemingly-unrelated threads will be started on the forum in the coming years, detailing the horrific specifics of demand destruction.

Fear the triangle of doom, climate change, peak oil and depression are its points, smell the suffering, oh how I wanted to be wrong about the way this century would go. I still hope to be wrong, but its getting harder to expect such an outcome, its been an ugly ride watching it all seem to fall into place over the last 5 years. The only consolation is knowing that there are many others out there who have similar expectations, and hopefully know more about how to handle it than I do. I still feel sorry for people who've been expecting imminent enviromental or oil doom since the 70's, Im glad I had the luxury of not worrying about this stuff till it loomed large on the horizon. Ive only been paying attention for 5 years and Im tired before the main feature even begins.
Click to expand...
The triangle of doom as you call it is usualy referred to as the 'converging catasrophies'. Although I was very late in picking it up, the housing crisis was being predicted from back in 04. The idea is that things like global dimming, peak oil, global warming, ocean acidification, the de-industriliastion of the west, "peak soil" (soil errosion) and so forth will all feed of off one another. An example is that as we near or hit peak oil loads of companies will go bust and there will be an ensuing recession, this recession will cause a debt crisis in the finacial markets but it will also mean less particle pollution and a brief dip in global dimming increasing global warming. That is a pretty basic overview. This is not a prediction of what will happen. But it is a plausable and possible scenario. The thing is though we still have a very slim sliver of a gap we can get through relatively untouched. The 2007 arctic melt, the 2008 oil bull run and the credit crunch have awoken alot of people to the difficulties we are facing. The Guardian and the Times comments section still get log jammed with the zombies 'denial' myths, but the people near the top seem genuinely worried now.

The doomsteaders are prepping like mad. Im cursing life that I dont have enough money to aleast make a start just in case* (sounds daft, hell it is daft but you just want to be sure). But we are a clever and resourceful people. We have options left, half the oil is still in the ground and we may not have unleashed the methane time bomb. The currents may change in time or perhaps the solar cyclists are right and we are headed to a new maunder minimum.

Life goes on.




*very funny but tragic story. I heard about one bloke who back in the late 30s figured something bad was up in the world so relocated away from any potential war. Apparently he moved to Guam.
 
The new peak oil buzzword....... supply destruction. Seen it around once or twice now the bull king of oil Goldman Sachs Arjun Murti has become a growing grizzly bear........ $45 oil means the destruction of supply projects.

link


The team led by Arjun Murti, who made waves in 2005 by calling crude's ascent to $100, also said prices would bottom out early next year and that a shift from "demand destruction" to "supply destruction" would ultimately revive oil's rally.
Click to expand...
 
Thanks Crispy and David for the very interesting info, as always :)

Supply destruction is certainly going to make that 'blame the lack of new oil on lack of investment rather than lack of suitable oil' argument more believable than it has been. And so I suspect that those who, for whatever reason, dont want to face the geological realities, will have a pretty easy ride.

OPEC cutting production also provides an easy & traditional non-peak explanation for decreases in oil production today, let alone the future investment stuff, not that it all matters so much now as I assume demand has taken a battering. It was easy to imagine this yoyo-ing quite rapidly whilst the demand destruction was due to oil price, but now we are in a general economic hole, I presume supply isnt going to be much of an issue in 2009 for a start?

Cheers
 
link.

Matt Simmons and Robert Hirsch.

By 2030 world C&C will be down to about 25 million barrels a day. Down from about 73 million barrels a day today.
Oil companies in the US are downsizing very quickly at the moment, due to the fiancial crisis, this may lead to the US losing up to about 30% of its production within a year, as they are reliant on oil fields that peak quickly and then go into rapid decline, stopping drilling new holes will create a huge problem soon.
14% of the worlds oil comes from 10 fields. The next 10 biggest accounts for 4%. The average age of the worlds top 20 fields is 59 years old.
4 Saudia Arabias need to be found to keep oil flat till about 2020.


Matt Simmons "the game us over"
Hirsch "not over but its going to be very hard"

Fatih Birol is apparently giving a very very different assesment to governments in private than the recent report.

Edited: Big hints that Obama is very peak oil aware.

Simmons is quite big on liquid amonia as a fuel storage.
 
Cheers that was interesting, I liked the song at the end.

I could be wrong but it seemed like even though they kept mentioning the economic woes, demand destruction was downplayed quite a bit.

I suppose it is natural that as Simmons works in energy investment, he should be focussing on new technologies and replacing the existing rusty infrastructure. And that decline in the overall consumption of energy, and size of economy, is the bad horror thing that they are desperate to avoid.

But personally I think that reduction in consumption is destined to be a big part of the solution, or at the very least its a response for the short and medium term until wonders are worked. I guess we have to see quite how bad the economy gets in 2009, as its quite easy for me to get carried away and expect demand may fall by a very large amount quickly. It may take a lot longer in reality, but I'll be surprised if it isnt a huge part of the story of how we transitioned, when looking back in 40 years time.

Their conversation about the IEA report, the 6%ish decline rate with heavy investment, versus over 9% without, does make me wonder if there is any point bothering. Id probably rather that money was invested in things that help us cope with decline, rather than try to slow the decline rate a little bit for a while.
 
I see oil made the headlines today, with Brown saying stuff about price volatility, which was probably in response to OPECs production cuts, and now OPEC have fired back:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7791985.stm

Brown is certainly right that high prices damaged the economy, probably the main reason Ive been expecting a recession for several years is that Id read that oil prices above a certain price lead to economic poop a bit later.

But there is always plenty Brown says about oil that I dont agree with. Likewise what OPEC says usually makes me shake my head or laugh. Here its left to the Lib Dems to say something vaguely sane about the issue..

Mr Brown's comments were also criticised by the Lib Dems who said that "instead of lecturing the world, what Mr Brown should be doing is moving the UK away from its crippling dependency on oil".
Click to expand...

My how far we've come since Mr Brown arranged this meeting, back when prices were sky high and inflation was the prime fear.
 
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