A midweekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Developments this week

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If you’re one of those humans who actually eats food, like I am, then a non-negligible part of your energy allocation goes into food production. As an approximate rule-of-thumb, each kilocalorie ingested by Americans consumes 10 kilocalories of fossil fuel energy to plant, fertilize, harvest, transport, and prepare….But much like household energy, we control what we stick in our mouths, and can make energy-conscious choices that result in substantial reductions of energy consumption. I now call myself a flexitarian, a term acknowledging that my body is a flex-fuel vehicle, but also that I need not be rigid about my food choices in order to still make a substantial impact on the energy front.

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Since its beginnings, the sleeper-awakes scenario has been one of the most commonly used frameworks for introducing fictional utopias and dystopias–yet somehow it doesn’t feel overdone. The reason, I suspect, is that the sleep is incidental to the story, the true focus being the new world order and how it compares with the old. That’s certainly the case with Patricia Frank’s Falling Through Time, the story of a woman who travels into the future and takes us on a sort of guided tour of it. Her name is Summer Holbrook, and she’s a prominent advertising executive who goes missing while vacationing in Alaska. After suffering a spill down a glacier crevasse, she freezes, falls into suspended animation and is found and rescued by a band of expeditioners in the year 2084.

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Since its beginnings, the sleeper-awakes scenario has been one of the most commonly used frameworks for introducing fictional utopias and dystopias–yet somehow it doesn’t feel overdone. The reason, I suspect, is that the sleep is incidental to the story, the true focus being the new world order and how it compares with the old. That’s certainly the case with Patricia Frank’s Falling Through Time, the story of a woman who travels into the future and takes us on a sort of guided tour of it. Her name is Summer Holbrook, and she’s a prominent advertising executive who goes missing while vacationing in Alaska. After suffering a spill down a glacier crevasse, she freezes, falls into suspended animation and is found and rescued by a band of expeditioners in the year 2084.

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Four weeks after the Elgin G4 well sprung a leak above the production platform in the North Sea, Total has spudded the first of two relief wells as backup in case the attempt to kill the well from above doesn’t work. It will take 6 months to drill the wells, however, and an estimated 200,000 cubic meters of gas has been released so far – reportedly enough to heat all of Aberdeen for a decade. In this post, I will provide some additional background on the history of this project and what Total E&P UK’s plans were prior to the leak and subsequent shutdown of all production.

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A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-the Iranian confrontation
-the EU’s debt crisis
-Argentina nationalizes YPF
-Quote of the week
-Briefs

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Out of desperation for the climate, many prominent environmentalists converted to the religion of nuclear (fission) power between 2008-2011. Maybe this is a good time to rethink those deathbed conversions.

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Approval of hydraulic fracturing for gas in the UK moved a step closer this week as a DECC commissioned report on the seismic impact of drilling at Cuadrilla’s Lancashire operation advised ministers to proceed. The report recommended a tightening of procedures around drilling, including a pre-injection diagnostic phase, and a traffic light warning system halting operations should an earthquake over 0.5 magnitude occur…

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Approval of hydraulic fracturing for gas in the UK moved a step closer this week as a DECC commissioned report on the seismic impact of drilling at Cuadrilla’s Lancashire operation advised ministers to proceed. The report recommended a tightening of procedures around drilling, including a pre-injection diagnostic phase, and a traffic light warning system halting operations should an earthquake over 0.5 magnitude occur…

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-Obama Streamlines Oversight Of Shale Gas
-Fracking Tied to Unusual Rise in Earthquakes in U.S.
-U.K. Shale Fracking Can Resume Provided Risks Minimized
-Fracking: green groups denounce report approving further exploration

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