Suppose that Chinese oil demand shock drove up the price of oil and the resulting economic recession is driving down the production rates? Would that explain the recent production rate and price levels without the need to claim that Peak Oil is imminent?

World oil can go into decline years before there's anything definitive about having reached Peak Oil.

Case in point--1979 looks like this when using US DOE EIA data:



If that chart was of 2008 not 1979 being followed by four years of world oil production declining year on year there would be a hoard of people convinced Peak Oil was past and industrial civilization was over.

``...the second assumption of globalization -- cheap energy -- so take your capital to cheap labor markets in Asia ... let them produce the food and the manufactured goods and then ship it back because energy is cheap. The problem is that when oil went over $50/barrel something interesting happened. Inflation started to rear up in front of food prices to petrol. When oil hit $147/barrel July 2008 that's when the crisis hit. You'll recall the entire economic engine of globalization collapsed in July at $147/barrel because inflation was so high all the people stopped purchasing. Then the crisis hit 60 days later because you couldn't maintain that delusionary, credit-based debt culture. When the engine stops, then the financial markets collapse sixty days later--they're connected...'' -- excerpted from this Jeremy Rifkin lecture.


More about Jeremy Rifkin

MEND breakes ceasefire rule, attacks Shell/Chevron pipeline ``WARRI – ABOUT 35 militants, belonging to the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger-Delta (MEND), armed with rocket launchers, heavy calibre machine guns and assault rifles attacked in the early hours of today, a major Shell/Chevron crude oil pipeline located in Abonema, Rivers state.''

Nigeria Rebels Say They Attacked Shell, Chevron Pipe ``Attacks by armed groups in the oil-rich delta region cut more than 25 percent of the country’s crude output between 2006 and 2009. Nigeria, which vies with Angola for Africa’s top oil producer, is the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports.''

Reuters Q+A-What is at stake in Nigeria's Niger Delta? ``The unrest over the past three years has prevented the OPEC member from pumping much above two thirds of its 3 million barrels per day installed capacity.''

Just another undeclared war over oil--but is it the only thing going on here?



(click me)

Or is Nigeria permanently past peak production?

NYMEX Light Crude has been hovering around $75-$80 for some months now, but it recently dropped to $73. So what's causing that plateau and subsequent decline? One of the following should be true: Expectations for future supply are up, expectations for future demand are down (more than expected decline in supply), people are selling oil futures to have more cash on hand or to buy something else.

Honestly, I expected prices to be picking up again. Demand destruction, sure, but depletion is starting to take off and the actual drop in global oil consumption due to the recession was only a few percent. I wonder what the implications are if demand decline leads supply decline in the longer term. A lot of the peak oil futurism I've read hinges on speculation about the consequences of high oil prices specifically.

DIRT CHEAP VINTAGE CLOTHING /+/+/+/ NOTSOCHEAP UPCYCLED COUTURE
stop supporting mass consumerism. starve the monster. fight the system.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/irenemarinos

Screen cap from I Am Legend.

From New Scientist

AS THE world prepares for the largest investment in nuclear power in decades, owners of uranium mines last week raised the prospect of fuel shortages. To make things worse, the reliability of estimates of the amount of uranium that can be economically mined has also been questioned.


http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427364.500-nuclear-fuel-are-we-heading-for-a-uranium-crunch.html


Oh shit...!

Remember just a few weeks ago Warren Buffett bought BNSF outright? The press blather was predictable: "Our country's future prosperity depends on its having an efficient and well-maintained rail system."

Last night, though, while discussing an oil-poor future, my economist friend mentioned an alternative situation for buying the rail: electrification.

From The Journal of Commerce:

Earlier this year, BNSF Railway’s chairman, president and CEO, Matthew K. Rose, said he was in talks with transmission line companies that want to install new power lines in the railroad’s right of way. And he said BNSF was exploring whether that could help the railroad convert large parts of its sprawling western network to electricity.

Industry sources indicated other large carriers were looking at the same options, as Congress and the Obama administration push to upgrade the capacity of the U.S. electricity grid and tie in more alternative power sources including wind energy farms.

My friend also sent me a post from a rail site (sadly, one locked down to members only) which said:

If the wind- and solar-power crowd are really able to create some critical mass in their plans for mass conversion to such energy generation, transmission corridors for new high voltage lines are going to become necessary in the West. The battles for these rights-of-way are already starting to brew in several places in the West. . . .

Single steel pole towers, which are more easily situated on a railroad right-of-way than the old wider-footprint lattice-work towers, are now capable of handling up to the 765,000 volt lines being discussed for transmission from potential wind and solar fields in the West. . . .

Combine this observation with Buffett's planned wind farm facilities and one sees a definite business plan shaping up.

Buffett started as an oil man. He knows what's coming: Fuel shortages leading to ever higher fuel prices. Electric rail lines -- fed by the power lines sharing the corridor -- give him an incredible advantage, if he can get the major routes powered in time. And because he bought the rail outright, he won't have to dither about with quarterly stockholder reports. This means he can take his sweet time electrifying without worrying about "enhancing shareholder value" every few months.

This is interesting and worth watching.

Wars. We all understand very well that it’s just somebody’s business, somebody’s money. Cruel, bloody money.
Millionaires, multi-millionaires – their money are used in arms traffic, politics. All that happens in order to earn MORE money. I address to all oligarchs whose money are concerned with politics (and it means that they are concerned with all the wars):
BUY these five paintings! Give your fucking money for them! Hang them in your room, look at them and think about death. Think about those who died for your money. Think about death which is represented on these pictures and think about life which they are washed with – these pictures are sodden with my milk, with my life. I did it as hope that HUMAN life would become more important for you than money. Buy these paintings, accept this life and remember about it always. Look at them and think about the fact that you will die too and all the world can perish if we don’t invest money in life. Everything can disappear, and what for you accumulated all these millions and billions?
Buy these pictures and show to all the people fighting for their lives that you are worth being called a HUMAN BEING. After your death the world will remember that you didn’t live here for nothing.
Please! All those who read this – add me as a friend! Help me to extend my manifest. It must find it’s addressees.
LET’S SAVE LIFE! LET’S STOP WARS!

Tuesday night and tonight, I showed my students "The End of Suburbia." The most memorable reactions were "I never understood how anyone was going to make hydrogen work for running cars," "What a shame Americans are so spoiled. The end of oil is going to take away their toys and they'll all cry.", and "Should we really bankrupt ourselves fighting a war we can't win?" The second student wasn't born here, as you could probably tell.

Following is the worksheet I gave them. If you have the time, see how many you can answer.

( Tonight's worksheet )

So probably most of you heard the news, Warren Buffett, the second richest man in the world, just bought the rest of this huge railroad company for billions of dollars. This is the single biggest acquisition of his career.

The news is touting this as "Warren Buffett is betting on America!"

But to me it seems like he's betting on peak oil. What do you think?

http://solarbird.livejournal.com/885364.html?thread=4809076#t4809076




Aside from wondering what she's going to say I did enjoy looking back at the GS superspike report from March 2008...

New 'super-spike' might mean $200 a barrel oil - Goldman's projections foretell persistent turbulence in energy prices ``The core of our 'super-spike' view is that oil prices will keep rising until demand declines globally on a multiyear basis, resulting in the return of excess capacity and a lower cost structure," Goldman's analysts said. "Given this view, once excess capacity returns, we think prices can move sharply lower."''

...with no explanation of how demand would get lower.

The #1 country in searching for "transition towns" and "peak oil" is New Zealand.

http://trends.google.com/trends?q=transition+towns

http://trends.google.com/trends?q=peak+oil

I was really hoping that TPTB were going to try to get the world out of recession for a bit longer by stabilizing the price of oil at $70/barrel but it appears that they aren't.

I guess it's every cartel for itself, damn the torpedoes, etc. That and "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Oil Lunch for China."

Chinese Oil Demand Resumes Uptrend in September After August Dip ``Chinese oil demand climbed out of its August trough to 33.8 million metric tons in September ... a 12.6% spike in September oil demand''

China's oil thirst spurs race ``Crude prices rose sharply Tuesday after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said world oil demand will be stronger than it had expected this summer.''

So here we go again. How far up will the price go? What will the consequences be this time?

If we hit $100/barrel or more what will the crummy excuses be this time when the economy craps out? An "extend and pretend/delay and pray" crisis?

Well, not all agriculture requires lots of sun.

As apart from urban design proposals such as New Urbanism and some of the so-called "green" architecture being designed by experimental design offices, semi-urban farms like these do not propose a bright and new future where environmental problems spur fantastic Disney-like living, and nor do they suggest, as in the case of New Urbanism, a over-dependence on historical precedent to solve design problems. Instead, a project like the above becomes viable through its novel and creative use of the infrastructural landscape (in this case, an abandoned infrastructural landscape) which is by far the most dominant type of landscape in the modern human world: urban centers are not just busy streets, markets, and high-rises, and nor are they dominated mainly by suburban sprawl. Any urban center is fed by a network of support mechanisms that extend far beyond anywhere we would call the "city". After all, Chicago's treated sewage effluent eventually finds itself in the Gulf of Mexic. It is this infra-structure that provides opportunities for new adaptations of agricultural production - production that has generally been assumed to be somehow totally dependent upon the rural landscape. Even in the usual proposals for urban-agriculture, rural and somewhat pastoral surfaces are zoned, demarcated, and often decontaminated, apart from the unwanted city, in an effort to "restore" open space that is often considered to be a pre-requisite for the growth of food and of a new "post-industrial" urban reality. But really, there are forms of agriculture that depend on nothing but the urban and industrial / infrastructural landscape, and we should take advantage of them. 

True, this specific example is one of the re-use of an abandoned  infrastructure (or so called abandoned infrastructure), but it forms in a way its own linkage to the city that could not have come about without the realities of industry and its support networks. And in an energy-scarce world where food production will need to be re-introduced as a visible and highly activated center of urban life, it's worth considering embracing infrastructure as a medium on which to construct the future city.