Energy poses major 21st century crisis: scientists

Paris (AFP) Oct 22, 2007

Energy poses one of the greatest threats facing humanity this century, the world's leading academies of science warned Monday, highlighting the peril of oil wars and climate change driven by addiction to fossil fuels.

Nations must provide power for the 1.6 billion people who live without electricity and wean themselves off energy sources that stoke global warming and geopolitical conflict, the scientists demanded.

"Making the transition to a sustainable energy future is one of the central challenges humankind faces in this century," they said.

Their report, "Lighting the Way: Toward A Sustainable Energy Future," is published by the InterAcademy Council, whose 15 members include the national science academies of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Brazil, China and India. Read More

Steep decline in oil production brings risk of war and unrest, says new study

· Output peaked in 2006 and will fall 7% a year
· Decline in gas, coal and uranium also predicted

Monday October 22, 2007

World oil production has already peaked and will fall by half as soon as 2030, according to a report which also warns that extreme shortages of fossil fuels will lead to wars and social breakdown.

The German-based Energy Watch Group will release its study in London today saying that global oil production peaked in 2006 - much earlier than most experts had expected. The report, which predicts that production will now fall by 7% a year, comes after oil prices set new records almost every day last week, on Friday hitting more than $90 (£44) a barrel.
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Report links energy crisis to security

October 11, 2007 -

An energy crisis could pose security risks for Australia by pushing fragile states in the region towards collapse, a report has warned.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute said in the report that such a threat should be factored into foreign and defence policy.
It said the increasing dependence of the world on energy from unstable regions like the Middle East meant obtaining an adequate supply of affordable energy would become a bigger part of most nations' security plans.
"Australia's self-sufficiency in oil products is declining markedly, and like most other Asia-Pacific states, Australia will become increasingly dependent on imports from the Middle East in the next decades," the document said.
The institute said that Australia's smaller neighbours would be most vulnerable if energy supplies were threatened.
"Most of the fragile states in the Asia Pacific are completely dependant on energy imports, and would have little economic resilience in the face of such a major shock. Read More

America and Iran: the spark of war

Sparks of War

Paul Rogers

20 - 09 - 2007

Four fresh developments - involving Israel, France, and Washington and Tehran themselves - are bringing closer a war that could happen by accident.

The two most recent columns in this series have focused on the increasing tensions between the United States and Iran, evident in the belligerent statements coming out of Tehran and the even more sustained, hostile rhetoric emanating from the George W Bush administration and the neo-conservative wing of the Republican Party (see "Baghdad spin, Tehran war" [6 September 2007] and "Iran: war and surprise" [13 September 2007]). Read More

What would a attack on Iran do to the price of oil? What is the Bush administration thinking? Read Paul Rogers analysis. Paul is Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. Ed.

Two barrels of oil are used for each one found. $100 oil anyone?

September 21, 2007

ROME -- For the peak-oil crowd, that merry band of doomsters who believe global oil production is about to go into irreversible decline and plunge us into a new Stone Age, the timing couldn't have been better. As the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas was holding its conference in Cork, Ireland, earlier this week, oil prices conveniently set record prices. By midweek, they had gone as high as $82 (U.S.) a barrel.

The conference speakers were no doubt thrilled. If oil prices had been falling, their message would have been laughed out of court. As it were, Ronald Oxburgh, the British lord and geologist who is the former head of Shell U.K., one of the world's biggest oil companies, looked like something of a prophet. He said oil prices could hit $150 as supplies fail to keep pace with soaring demand. Another speaker, CIBC World Markets chief economist Jeff Rubin, predicted prices of "around $100 a barrel by the end of next year." Talisman Energy chief executive officer Jim Buckee talked about rapidly declining production from once-prolific and seemingly stalwart oil fields. Read More

Renewable Energy conference: peak oil and climate change

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Ian Dunlop, Deputy Convenor of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil in Australia, delivered the final keynote address at the Renewable Energy and Regional Australia conference.

Mr Dunlop is a past chairman of the Australian Coal Association, and was the chair of the Australian Greenhouse Office Experts Group on Emissions Trading between 1998 and 2000. He is currently a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, and the Energy Institute (UK), and a Member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME (USA).

"What we're currently doing is completely unsustainable, in a global context," he says. Read More

Oil Price Tops $82 A Barrel. Do I Hear $85? $90?

Three Record-Setting Days Has One Analyst Thinking Big, And Others Thinking About Peak Oil

Thursday’s oil topped $82 a barrel, capping — perhaps — three straight days of record high prices, according to numerous reports in the press. At least one big name analyst foresees prices rising to at least $85 and perhaps $90 by the end of the year.

Light sweet crude for delivery rose 31 cents to $82.24 a barrel, in New York’s main futures contract, according to AFP.

Even before the price topped out today, Goldman Sachs had forecast $85 a gallon barrels by year’s end, with “significant risks of a spike above $90″ according to numerous reports.

Why? High demand and tight supply.

All this talk about a gap between demand and supply gets people talking about Peak Oil — the idea that the world has pumped about as much oil as it can — cheaply anyway — and we’re looking sooner rather than later at an era when demand consistently outpaces supply. OPEC, when it met earlier this month, agreed to increase oil supply by a “token” amount, to use the word used by the Associated Press. Read More