The Oil Drum: Europe

To steal a phrase “It is the best of times, it is the worst of times,” although the rest of the opening to A Tale of Two Cities (“It was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,”) may also be appropriate. It is also interesting, and will become more so as the new Administration seeks to find a way forward out of the compounding problems that now face it. The WSJ has noted the statements by President-elect Obama earlier:

On the campaign trail, Mr. Obama argued that spending $150 billion over the next decade to boost energy efficiency would help create five million jobs. The jobs would include insulation installers, to make houses more energy-efficient, wind-turbine builders, to displace coal-fired electricity, and construction workers, to build greener buildings and upgrade the electrical grid.

It goes on to note that if renewable energy is only brought on-line to displace conventional coal power, then the net job losses from existing industries may well offset the gains in wind power. That topic brought a discussion in comments a couple of days ago. It is, however, perhaps worth pursuing in a little more detail.

The ABC has a report today noting that Wilson "Ironbar" Tuckey is still promoting his vision of large scale tidal power generation in the Kimberly region in Western Australia.

The Federal Government expected to release their white paper on Australia's future energy needs next year and the use of tidal power in the Kimberley is expected to be one of the options under consideration.

There are renewed calls for the development of renewable energy in the Kimberley, with the federal Member for O'Connor spruiking the merits of tidal power. Wilson Tuckey wants the Commonwealth to spend $10 billion establishing the necessary infrastructure for a tidal power industry in the region.

Mr Tuckey says tidal energy could provide 10 times the country's current electrical capacity without producing any carbon emissions. He says the Commonwealth should fund start up infrastructure before commercial interests jump on board like the State Government did with the North West Shelf. "This will be the same. If the Australian Government puts in the original tidal generating capacity and the interconnecting transmission lines, which is probably the most important, the Kimberley will then see a rash of people charging in to produce that same electricity from other localities," he said.

It's election time in New Zealand and Finance Minister Michael Cullen has mentioned Peak Oil in a campaign speech he gave on Wednesday, decrying the state of funding for rail transport and declaring "a new era in the rail industry".

Given the energy challenge we face in coming years, the so-called black hole of rail funding looks more like a pot-hole that urgently needs filling.

In 1908 our predecessors built the North Island Main Trunk line because they had a vision for a much more populous New Zealand and for opening up the North Island to settlement and economic development. The Main Trunk justified the faith of the settlers for more than 50 years, before the rise of road and air transport – helped by cheap oil prices – diminished its role as a carrier of both freight and passengers.

Today we have to come to terms with a new set of circumstances – the emerging reality of Peak Oil and the impact rising fuel prices have on our economy. Rail's energy efficiency has a new relevance and a new importance.

This is a guest post from Tim Jones of the Sustainable Energy Forum New Zealand.

About 70 people attended the joint Engineers for Social Responsibility/Sustainable Energy Forum conference on "Responding to Oil Depletion and Climate Change" in Auckland on Saturday 26 July. Most of the conference presentations, plus the conference statement and report, are now available online at: http://www.sef.org.nz/conferences.html#2008

The conference was a resounding success. Those present accepted the urgent changes we need to be talking about, the mix of cold hard facts that we as a society find hard to face up to but also the hope for the future in the examples of local action in New Zealand communities on sustainable towns, and examples from abroad. Those present at the conference were deeply concerned at the lack of urgent action by the Government and most political parties on rising oil prices, peak oil, and climate change. The conference therefore agreed the following statement, in the hope of helping raise government and community awareness, and to help build a consensus for change.

This is a guest post from Tim Jones, the Convenor of the Sustainable Energy Forum (New Zealand). It was previously published in The (Wellington) Dominion Post.

In November 2007, when the world oil price was nudging US $90 per barrel, I wrote an article entitled “The Future of Oil” for the Dominion Post. The article explained that oil prices were rising because world oil production had been virtually static since 2005, while demand had continued to rise.

Since my article appeared, the price has climbed still higher. And there’s not much relief in sight: the International Energy Agency is now predicting only a slight increase in supply over the next couple of years, and a worsening supply crunch after that.

It appears that historically high oil prices are here to stay, and further increases remain likely. The question now is: how should we respond?

On Saturday 26 July, the Sustainable Energy Forum and Engineers for Social Responsibility are holding a joint one-day conference at Unitec in Auckland, New Zealand on the theme "Responding to Oil Depletion and Climate Change".

The programme is below. The registration form is available online at http://www.sef.org.nz/conferences/2008_Registration.doc

This is a guest post from Tim Jones of the Sustainable Energy Forum in New Zealand.

With the price of petrol hitting NZ$2 per litre, the Sustainable Energy Forum has proposed twelve steps for New Zealand to end its increasingly self-destructive addiction to oil.

Our addiction to oil has been bad for us for a long time. We’ve paid a high price for it in terms of high greenhouse gas emissions and cities choked by cars. But now we can’t afford our regular fix any more. So here’s what we need to do to conquer our addiction. It won’t be easy, but it will be worthwhile — and besides, we don’t really have a choice.

Cross posted from Peak Energy.

I seem to have spent half of this week criticising various energy articles in the local media, however there seems to be an endless supply of them coming down the pipeline.

NZ Petroleum Exploration and Production Association executive officer John Pfahlert had an opinion piece in the NZ Herald this week ("Minister out of whack on importance of gas") arguing that New Zealand should be building new gas fired power stations instead of trying to become carbon neutral.

A couple of interesting things emerged in the comment thread of the previous post. You might have seen us play with blogpulse in past posts. Well now, google has a new tool (posted by stiffpicken and expanded on by Mike A) that looks at trends in google searches. Here's a link to the 'peak oil' search, and here's a link to the 'peak oil' versus 'gas prices' search. Click around between the two, and you will notice a few things.

Stiffpicken says rightly: "I punched in "peak oil" ... search volume appears to have hit its own plateau but news volume is on the rise." Then Mike A notices: "What is really SOBERING though, is to compare search and news volumes between 'peak oil' and 'gas prices'. 'Peak oil' hardly shows a blip compared to 'gas prices', which implies to me that most people are still not making the connection. [...] Again, check the distribution of languages - in English 'gas prices' have far, far more results, but the Europeans seem to "get it", with 'peak oil' having more responses in Swedish, Finnish, Dutch & German (in that volume order)."

Then I was playing around and made a couple more observations: 1) Portland seems to be the most peak aware city via google, followed by Austin and Seattle. 2) BUT, even more interestingly, look at the regions tab. New Zealand and Australia have more raw numbers of people (i.e., not percentages folks) searching for "peak oil" than in the United States! What's the population proportion between the US and those two countries? 20m-ish for Australia and 4m-ish for New Zealand, compared to 300m-ish for the US!

We have much work to do in the US folks. Much much work. And good on you New Zealand and Oz!

One of the side benefits of attending the World Oil meeting in Denver last week was that I could pick up a few of the DVD's that Global Public Media had available including a long interview with Colin Campbell.  Watching the first half of that tonight, I was reminded by him, that while we are discussing the depletion rates for oil, the more critical one for immediate attention is that for natural gas.

When one taps an oil reservoir the oil requires a certain amount of differential pressure to push it towards the well, and with the passages it must pass being generally narrow, flow is relatively constricted.  Good well management means that, in order to control water and gas problems, the pressure difference between the well and the rock is carefully controlled, and this allows the oil to be effectively recovered at rates which, while worryingly increasing, are still generally considered to be less than 10%..

Natural gas, on the other hand, flows a lot more easily, and normally does not have a lot of the constraints that producing oil has.  Thus, if your pipeline can handle the flow, and there is a demand, the gas field can be drained much more rapidly, with a consequent dramatically more rapid conclusion to the flow.  As Dr Campbell pointed out fields may last just months, and then "boom" they are gone.