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a community peak oil portal
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| OPEC exports down 50,000 in 4 wks to Sept 21-LMIU |
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 LONDON (Reuters) - OPEC seaborne oil exports, excluding Angola and Ecuador, fell 50,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the four weeks to Sept. 21 and were down sharply from Gulf suppliers, Lloyd's Marine Intelligence (LMIU) said on Tuesday.
LMIU said oil shipments from 11 OPEC producers, including Iraq, fell to 23.528 million bpd versus 23.582 milllion bpd in the four weeks to Aug. 31.
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| A Gift From the ’70s: Energy Lessons |
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 The presidential candidates claim to see America’s energy future, but their competing visions have a certain vintage quality. They’ve revived that classic debate: the hard path versus the soft path.
The soft path, as Amory Lovins defined it in the 1970s, is energy conservation and power from the sun, wind and plants — the technologies that Senator Barack Obama emphasizes in his plan to reduce greenhouse emissions. Senator John McCain is more enthusiastic about building nuclear power plants, the quintessential hard path.
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| Peak oil, bailout bunk, and the coming recession |
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 by Tom Whipple and Steve Andrews
The concept of peak oil started as a geological theory* that went like this: if you knew the amount of oil produced in the past, the rate at which it was produced, and roughly how much oil remained under the earth’s surface, the theory could help you determine when oil production would likely start declining. Over the years however, proponents and critics alike recognized that more factors than just the size of oil resources and the ease of exploiting them would determine when world oil production would peak and plateau.
In the inimitable words of Frenchman Jean Marie Boudaire, “it ain’t the size of the tank [the resource], it’s the size of the tap.” And a veritable suite of factors can tweak “the size of the tap,” or how fast oil can be extracted or produced.
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| Ryanair boss accuses BA of 'scamming' passengers |
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 Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary has accused British Airways of "scamming" passengers with high fuel surcharges despite the price of oil continuing to fall.
Mr O'Leary claimed BA's long-haul surcharges, at £109 one-way, had risen 40-fold since they were first introduced in May 2004, when the oil price stood at $36 a barrel. The £16 short-haul surcharge has risen six-fold.
"Oil is only three times higher than then," Mr O'Leary said. "But as the oil price falls back down to less than $90, BA are still scamming passengers. Even Air France has had the grace to reduce surcharges."
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| Energy Department warns of higher heating costs |
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 WASHINGTON (AP) -- Although global oil prices have plummeted, the cost of heating your home this winter will be a lot more expensive, especially for households that depend on fuel oil, the Energy Department predicted Tuesday.
Households that use fuel oil can expect to spend an average of $2,388 - or $449 more than last year - for the October-April heating season. Users of natural gas will pay less than half that, $1,010 on average, still $155 more than last year.
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| Lugar: Next President Must Make Energy Security 'Core National Goal' |
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| vox_mundi writes: ...The challenge for Indiana, and for our nation, is to act urgently in moving toward a sustainable energy future. Some people have noted that Americans are using less oil because they are driving less, and that large numbers of Americans are demanding more fuel efficient cars for the first time in decades. Movement toward more efficient cars is a good development, but at least part of the reason for this change is the economic slowdown. We should not mistake this for a real energy policy.
In my view, relieving our energy dilemmas will require “game changing” policies that guide energy markets toward more sustainable energy solutions and technologies. Many new energy technologies have difficulty moving from research to deployment for commercial use. In some cases, technologies need help to demonstrate to potential investors that they will work. The U.S. government can use its purchasing power to jumpstart markets for new energy technologies ranging from electric vehicles, to alternative fuels, and better light bulbs. Loan guarantees that serve as an insurance policy for investors offer additional avenues for promoting private investment with minimal risk to taxpayers. Such loan guarantees were signed into law three years ago, but their implementation has staggered beneath bureaucratic delays in the Energy Department.
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| Army Looks to Build World's Strongest Solar Array |
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| vox_mundi writes: The Army says it wants to build what could be the world's most powerful solar power plant, as part of a far-reaching effort to cut back on the service's dependence on fossil fuels. The question is whether the Army will actually make good own its green promises.
Currently, the most powerful photovoltaic array in the country is at Nellis Air Force Base, outside of Las Vegas. It generates about 15 megawatts of power. Other plants are in the works in New Mexico, Arizona, and California that could produce up to 300 megawatts.
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| Don’t worry about oil. With oil and gas prices at all time highs, that seems a strange thing to say. Yet, we really shouldn’t worry. Solutions are available and well under way.
Around 1880, visionaries in Paris painted a bleak picture of the future. If our city continues to grow at this rate, they argued, carriages couldn’t ride our avenues anymore in the near future. They will be stuck in mounts of horseshit. The respected elders of their times didn’t see that the solution to the problem was already coming. Henry Ford was about to introduce the automobile to the world.
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| Herman Daly on the Credit Crisis, Financial Assets, and Real Wealth |
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| profgoose writes: Previously, Herman Daly wrote a guest post on the Steady State Economy, outlining core suggestions on how to overhaul our banking, financial (and value) systems. I encourage everyone to read it (if short on time, please read the conclusion). Professor Daly was Senior Economist at the World Bank before leaving to teach Ecological Economics at University of Maryland's School for Public Policy. He was also the catalyst for me to leave my own financial career and return to school to study the real economy (i.e. what we call the human economy is only a small part of a larger closed system). Below the fold are his thoughts on the current crisis (current being defined as last 30-40 years or so). (For comparison, here are links to what 'mainstream' economic icons George Soros, and Bill Gross are saying.)
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| The Other Scarce Resource |
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 vox_mundi writes: CHEAP AND PLENTIFUL, water was for centuries a manufacturing tool that industry took for granted. But population growth, globalization, and climate change are shepherding in a new water-constrained era. Good, clean water just cannot be replaced—and it is getting harder to come by.
Manufacturers have been keeping a keen eye on rising energy prices; their concerns about water, in contrast, are turning more and more to the risk of running out. "Everyone shares this water model where it's cheap, cheap, cheap—then unavailable," says Scott Noesen, director of sustainability and business integration at Dow Water Solutions. For Dow, water has become a major strategic issue. "It's huge because we're trying to grow around the world, and where we want to grow often has issues of fresh water," Noesen says.
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| Gazprom Expects OPEC to Stop `Substantial' Drop in Oil Price |
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| (Bloomberg) -- OAO Gazprom, Russia's largest energy company, expects OPEC members to prevent a further ``substantial'' drop in the oil price after it tumbled almost 40 percent since a July high, Deputy Chief Executive Officer Alexander Medvedev said.
``The oil price can't drop down substantially, at least through the policies of OPEC countries,'' Medvedev said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in Moscow today. ``We do hope the measures taken both in Europe and the U.S. will not allow the economy to freeze.''
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| What we're facing could be a lot worse than a recession
... Now, as a financial tsunami spreads through Europe, threatening to bring down our global financial system, while yesterday the hard-hit TSX suffered its biggest intra-day point loss ever with $225 billion wiped from share values since last week -- these gurus have changed their tune.
It's not recession we need to fear, it's something far worse.
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| Nigerian conflict a warning for Big Oil in Iraq |
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| BAGHDAD - Recurrent violence in oil-rich parts of Nigeria may provide a sobering lesson for oil companies hoping to work in Iraq — a place that is much more dangerous despite the fact that attacks are at their lowest level in more than four years.
Representatives of 35 international oil companies will meet with Iraqi government officials in London on Monday to discuss the bidding process for eight enormous oil and gas fields. If the contracts are approved, they could lead to the biggest foreign stake in Iraq since the industry was nationalized more than 30 years ago.
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| A cleaner way to get drinking water from seas? |
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David Kreamer's vision is to return old ships to the seas where they belong. But he'd like to see them fulfill a new purpose: turning seawater into drinking water through desalination facilities installed aboard.
According to Kreamer, a geoscientist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, hundreds of mothballed military and private ships could be well adapted as mobile desalination plants.
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| Secret for efficient ethanol in cows' stomachs? |
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NEW YORK - Researchers attempting to make the production of corn-based ethanol more efficient may not have needed to leave the farm.
During photosynthesis, corn stores nearly half of its potential energy in places other than the corn kernel, such as stalks and leaves.
An enzyme found in a cow's stomach may hold the key to using all of the plant, rather than just the kernel.
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