Ippoippo

FT: World will struggle to meet oil demand

That was the headline in the Financial Times on October 28.

Without extra investment to raise production, the natural annual rate of output decline is 9.1 per cent, the International Energy Agency says in its annual report, the World Energy Outlook, a draft of which has been obtained by the Financial Times.

The findings suggest the world will struggle to produce enough oil to make up for steep declines in existing fields, such as those in the North Sea, Russia and Alaska, and meet long-term de­mand. The effort will become even more acute as prices fall and investment decisions are delayed.

The IEA, the oil watchdog, forecasts that China, India and other developing countries’ demand will require investments of $360bn each year until 2030.

The agency says even with investment, the annual rate of output decline is 6.4 per cent.

The bit in bold is key I think!

Now that indeed is a bit of concerning news. However, what gets more interesting is what got reported today.

The International Energy Agency yesterday sought to play down a report that it believes global oil production is falling faster than previously thought.
…
“The future rate of decline in output from producing oilfields as they mature is the single most important determinant of the amount of new capacity that will need to be built globally to meet demand,” the FT quoted the draft report as saying, adding that the IEA believed it would require a “significant increase in future investments just to maintain the current level of production”.

Now, if I were to put on my cynical hat (hmm, maybe it’s made of tin-foil ), perhaps we could translate that statement as:

Someone leaked the real version before we could fiddle the results.

Kinda takes us back to this Fatih Birol classic:

“You are from the press? This is not for you. This is not for the press.”

Of course in the meantime, the rest of the British press has more pressing issues on it’s mind. Not impedending economic collapse, not ecological footprint overshoot… nope, dodgy BBC radio shows.

Oiii, Brown and Cameron, get back to your proper work

Once again the printed media in this country has wound me up.
For anyone reading this blog outside the UK (and thus not been bombarded by the media overload on this non-event), this is kinda what happended.

Russel Brand is recording his BBC Radio 2 show, and his normal sidekick is away… so fellow Radio 2 presenter Jonathan Ross stands in. Naturally, this is an accident waiting to happen since both are known to occaisionally cross the line on what is ‘acceptable’.

Things get a little out of hand, and somewhat childish, resulting in a series of answer phone messages left on Andrew Sach’s phone.
Now, had the answer phone messages being left with a person who was close to either Brand/Ross… then it possibly would have been acceptable. However, I would admit that what they did was wrong.

Now, for some reason, whoever had editorial control over all this saw no issues with this, and let all this be broadcast. Somebody should have spotted this was somewhat dodgy, not broadcast the episode and made private apologies to Sachs and family.
Anyway, that didn’t happen and it went out on Radio 2. At the time, only two people complained, and that was only about the use of the ‘F word’.

But then the right-wing press jumps in and whips up a storm. Grand daughter can now see a bit of publicity in it for her and starts saying how she and her family have been offended and upset by it all.
Then all of a sudden, the number of complaints now rockets to 30000, a large number of whom probably never listened to the show.

The bandwagon is well a truly rolling now, and even the PM and Leader of the opposition start complaining about it, and what the BBC are going to do. Come on!!!! For f&£ks sake, you’ve got more important things to sort out.

And then on Thursday, I see the front page of the Sun. Grrrrrr. This girl who was so upset by the whole episode isn’t that upset, because she’s gone and sold her story to the Sun saying how Brand would shout ‘Que’ (reference to Andrew Sach’s ‘Manuel‘ character in Fawlty Towers) when they had sex.
What a complete media whore!!! Grrrr.

That’s what annoys me about the whole thing. Not the act itself (which was something they shouldn’t have done), but the over-reaction afterwards.

The Guardian has started running an interesting series of articles at the moment, regarding this issue of Greenwash.

And what are we to make of Fiji Water’s claims to be cutting the carbon footprint of its water by 25% and offsetting the rest? “Every drop is green,” it says. But isn’t the whole idea of bottling water on a remote South Pacific island and shipping it to your dinner table just a tiny bit barmy?

It’s things like this that give real, genuine efforts to address our various issues a bad name with the population at large.

There was also some further dicussion as well around ‘Green Energy‘, and how the current system is far from being green.
The only company that seems to be ‘relatively’ green is Ecotricity, and as they point out themselves, they are giving you ‘brown’ electricity too. At least they push back their profits into trying to build more renewables infrastructure.

2012

Mind you, maybe we are all just f%*ked. This article is quite interesting really. Whilst I’m not quite advocating we should be running to the hills yet, it’s food for thought.

US Election

“Was it charity that has permitted mankind’s closest living relative to spend two terms as president?“

Ouch!

The thing with Monbiot, whilst he brings up some interesting thoughts, he comes across as a little bit smug.

… top man. I like what he has to say in this video (regarding a different Palin)

Made me laugh anyway, despite the doom and gloom.

I’m a bit sick of that whole holding-his-head-in-despair schtick, to be honest. It’s about time they tried something more spectacular. Surely it’s time for a revival of that great cliche of the 1930s, the ruined City whizzkid hurling himself out of the window? The credit crunch high dive. Extra points if you manage to pull a backflip on the way down, or crack your jaw on a window cleaner’s cradle somewhere around floor 35. The ultimate high score goes to the first one who manages to successfully update his Facebook status using an iPhone seconds before slamming into the pavement. “Danny is plummeting to his doom.” Click here to tag him in a photo.

Was it wrong of me to find that funny

Now, the thing I find interesting in all this is… just how much was/is Peak Oil to blame?
Well, we can’t be sure we are at Peak Oil yet… but either way, was the record high prices of oil (when it was in the $140’s and $120’s a few months ago) the trigger to start the whole house of cards to collapse? Or did the very nature of the modern money system by itself the only cause.
Who knows.

What will be interesting to see though is if the oil price follows the predicitions of Colin Campbell when he made them back in 1994. Basically, a Saw Shape…. currently it’s going down due to the economy tanking. Now, as soon as the economy hits the next bottom, and maybe picks up again (a bit), that will push demand again. That will be the real test. Will oil cost go up a little due to the demand increase, or will it go up by loads because supply will not meet demand. If that were to occur, then I think we could safely say Peak Oil had arrived and gone by.