News from April 2010

Oil Depletion Analysis Centre Newsletter, Apr 30

As oil companies reported sharply increased profits this week, an estimated 5000 barrels of oil a day was spewing into the Gulf of Mexico following the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. This ecological disaster comes just a month after President Obama gave the green light to expand drilling off the US coast, and while [...]

Warming, End of Oil, Perfect Storm A Talk by Richard Heinberg

Richard Heinberg Senior Fellow In Residence at the Post-Carbon Institute in Lexington, MA Download MP3

The Gold Rush in Iraq

There is a Gold Rush Underway in Iraq, with major implications for the rest of us. The success of the recent oil auctions in Iraq is creating a windfall for American oil services companies. Schlumberger (SLB), Baker Hughes (BHI), Weatherford (WFT), and Halliburton (HAL) have committed to drilling 2,500-3,000 new wells per year and building [...]

The BP Oil Rig Disaster

Under normal circumstances, I would be all over the story of last week’s BP oil rig disaster. By now, you all know that BP suffered an explosion and a fire in the Gulf of Mexico in which lives were lost and an unprecedented leak a mile below the surface of the ocean is occurring. Because [...]

UN pushes for energy efficiency, access

‘Easy’ oil is gone says editor of the Oil and Gas Journal

Sometime in the ’70s, the state geologist of Pennsylvania warned that the birthplace of oil was about to run out of the black gold. “That was the 1870s,” the Texas state geologist, Scott Tinker, said Monday, delivering the punch line in a joke about the oil industry’s short-sightedness. More than 130 years later, the world [...]

First US Offshore Wind Project, Cape Wind Approved after nine years ‎

The federal government has finally approved a 130-turbine wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod, dubbed Cape Wind, that has been in the works for nearly a decade. Renewable energy proponents are celebrating the U.S.’s decision to catch up with the rest of the world in offshore wind, but, as expected, the announcement has [...]

After The Peak: Grocery Store Problems

WNOC News interviews the manager of a local grocery store to learn more about the impact of peak oil on the food supply.

Financial speculation boosting oil price

…It was hard to quantify how much speculation has raised prices by, but estimates ranged from around $10 to $30 a barrel. If prices are $10 a barrel higher than dictated by supply and demand, producers are earning an extra $6 billion a week globally, or more than $300 billion a year. The role of [...]

Take the politics out of environmentalism

“(‘Global warming’) implies that the biggest problems are related to temperature change,” said Mark Chandler, NASA research scientist. “Though that is the fundamental beginning of the problem … it’s just a tiny part of what’s really happening.” It’s nice to pretend none of this is happening or that it is not our fault, but we [...]