Peak oil in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvanian production continued to increase as ever-more-productive new fields within the state were developed, reaching almost 32 million barrels in 1891. But I was interested to learn that, despite amazing improvements in technology since the nineteenth century, that was the highest annual production rate that Pennsylvania would ever achieve.
Here’s an update to the above graph with more recent data. The price increases of the 1970s and 2000s were sufficient to stimulate some increases in Pennsylvanian production. But note that the two graphs here are drawn on the same scale- we’re still under 4 million barrels per year, less than 1/8 of what the sturdy Pennsylvanians of 1891 were able to accomplish. And in 1891, by the way, oil sold for 67 cents a barrel, which corresponds to about $16 in 2009 dollars.
Output from Iraq’s West Qurna Stage 1 to triple to 750,000 barrels per day in 3 years
BAGHDAD - An Iraqi oil official says production from the country’s West Qurna Stage 1 oil field should more than triple to 750,000 barrels a day in three years time.
Mahdi Swadi, the head of the joint management commission that runs the field, told The Associated Press Sunday that the 8.6 billion barrel field currently produces 234,000 barrels per day. and is set to climb to 270,000 barrels per day by May.
Belarus expects Russia to keep gas prices unchanged in 2011 - premier
Belarus expects Russia to keep natural gas prices for the ex-Soviet republic in 2011 unchanged from this year, Belarusian Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky said on Sunday.
Belarus currently gets Russian gas with a significant discount. Under the current contract, Gazprom is expected to introduce the “equal-netback” principle for Belarus starting from 2011. In other words, Gazprom’s profits from selling gas to Belarus are supposed to match those it gets from sales at average European prices.
BP Sells 60% Stake in Pan American Energy to Bridas Corp. for $7.1 Billion
BP Plc, seeking to cover clean-up costs in the Gulf of Mexico, agreed to sell its 60 percent interest in Pan American Energy to Argentina-based oil and gas company Bridas Corp.
Nigeria detains 12 in Halliburton bribery case
(Reuters) - Nigeria’s anti-corruption police have raided the offices of the U.S. oilfield services group Halliburton and arrested 12 people in a bribery case involving the former Halliburton unit KBR Inc, a spokesman said on Saturday.
The U.S. firm said the detentions, carried out on Thursday, had no legal basis and that its employees had since been freed.
Power Line Project Faces Challenges in California Valley
EL CENTRO, Calif. — The sun is so strong here that people often talk about the temperature being “in the teens,” meaning 113 or above. The wind is so powerful that west of town, signs on an Interstate display the number of miles remaining in which drivers will face dangerous winds, like signs that give the distance to the next city.
And to the north, near the end of the San Andreas fault, water underground, hot enough to make steam, flows up through cracks nearly to the surface.
Together, those resources constitute “the most productive renewable energy fields in the world,” as Michael R. Niggli, the chairman of San Diego Gas & Electric, the region’s biggest utility, bullishly puts it. “Where else in the world in the same area do you have wind, spectacular solar and geothermal?” he said.
…But the problem, sometimes insurmountable, is how to get the energy to consumers. In what may be a dress rehearsal for skirmishes across the country over renewable energy and transmission, San Diego Gas & Electric has spent seven years and $100 million trying to start work on a 117-mile high-voltage line to reach the resources of El Centro.
CNOOC to increase new energy production
BEIJING - CNOOC, China’s largest offshore oil producer, said new energy will account for 40 to 50 percent of the company’s total energy produced during the 12th Five-Year Plan period (2011-2015).
“At present, new energy accounts for less than 10 percent,” Fu Chengyu, chairman of CNOOC, said. “But we will try to increase that to 40 to 50 percent.”
More inspection bungles found at Shizuoka nuclear reactor
TOKYO — Chubu Electric Power Co has found more bungles in its past safety checkups at its nuclear power plant in Shizuoka Prefecture, as its renewed study has confirmed that an additional 104 items of equipment had not been covered, sources close to the matter said on Saturday.
The utility firm conducted the study to double-check the situation after announcing in October that 27 pieces of equipment at the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at the Hamaoka plant had not been checked during the inspections. The 104 items also involve the two reactors.
Copper: the NEW ‘Poor Man’s Gold’
There is every reason to believe that a growth-boom fueled by ten times as many people is going to lead to ten times as much total economic growth – meaning that this boom will be ten times as large, ten times as long, or (more likely) some combination of the two. To fuel this unprecedented growth means expanding resource production at the greatest rate in history.
Houston, Oil Capital, Takes Steps Toward Green
At the recently opened farmers market outside Houston’s City Hall, Laura Spanjian, the city’s peppy new sustainability director, was in her element.
With a reusable cloth bag tucked under her arm, she bounded around the colorful cluster of stands, shaking hands and pointing out vendors — raw foods! local ingredients! grass-fed Texas beef! — as a Latin band played.
If this does not sound like Houston’s style, well, get used to it. The nation’s fourth-largest city, the sprawling capital of the oil industry, has recently embarked on a variety of green initiatives in an effort to keep up with the times and, it hopes, save money.
The “Transition Town” Movement’s Initial Genius
Can we get beyond denial about peak oil, climate change, and economic troubles as long as we don’t find forms of action open to us?
The genius of the “transition town” movement is that it starts with a positive vision, focuses on local scenes, teaches skills, invites people to develop plans, gives them other obviously useful things to do together, and thus provides the added-value of intensifying community. You can find this in its handbook, of which the second edition will soon be published.
Is sustainable agriculture viable?
The debate around the Murray Darling Basin crisis has brought to public attention the need to rethink agriculture in Australia.
Today, sustainable food production is relegated to niche status — squeezed out by methods of farming that are seen to be more efficient. However, the efficiency of the dominant mode of agriculture relies heavily on chemical inputs for fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides.
On Global Warming, Start Small
There is an alternative to this top-down approach to climate change: a bottom-up strategy that stands a much better chance of working. Rather than count on international negotiations to produce an effective strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the United States should build upon the innovative clean-energy developments already under way in individual states.
To Fight Climate Change, Clear the Air
AS the curtain rises tomorrow in Cancún, Mexico, on the next round of international talks on climate change, expectations are low that the delegates will agree on a new treaty to reduce emissions that contribute to global warming. They were unable to do so last year in Copenhagen, and since then the negotiating positions of the biggest countries have grown even further apart.
Yet it is still possible to make significant progress. To give these talks their best chance for success, the delegates in Cancún should move beyond their focus on long-term efforts to stop warming and take a few immediate, practical actions that could have a tangible effect on the climate in the coming decades.
Report: A Billion People Will Lose Their Homes Due To Climate Change
Devastating changes to sea levels, rainfall, water supplies, weather systems and crop yields are increasingly likely before the end of the century, scientists will warn Monday.
A special report, to be released at the start of climate negotiations in Cancún, Mexico, will reveal that up to a billion people face losing their homes in the next 90 years because of failures to agree to curbs on carbon emissions.
Up to three billion people could lose access to clean water supplies because global temperatures cannot now be stopped from rising by 4 degrees Celsius.
‘The World in 2050′: What countries of the north will look like 40 years hence
Laurence C. Smith’s “The World in 2050″ is both important and depressing. A professor of geography and earth and space sciences at UCLA, Smith examines four forces — population demographics, resource demand, globalization and climate change — to try to figure out what the world will be like in future decades. While some people and countries along the northern rim may benefit far more than others, his story is overwhelmingly bleak.
Population is booming. We are adding the equivalent of “two Pakistans or three Mexicos every four years.” We are blazing through natural resources at an alarming rate. And as globalization spreads prosperity to Third World countries, the rate of consumption will increase.
