DrumBeat: March 31, 2008
Rx: Canned goods and ammunition
When financial assets disappear, real assets still have real value. You can eat food and live in a house.
Growing populations, rising standards of living and a finite planet argue for resource prices to rise.
Chinese demand for meat, which requires the input of much more vegetable matter than the equivalent calorie value in noodles, almost requires wheat prices to increase — and they are increasing. Whether peak oil is with us now or in 20 years, the oil supply is finite and demand continues to grow. Water, the ultimate in inelastic demand goods, is also finite — and getting scarcer.
[break]
Pemex Missteps Pare Oil Revenues, Pave Way for Petrobras Entry
Pemex, which produces more crude oil every year than Exxon Mobil Corp., suffers from too little investment, high taxes, laws that forbid competition, corruption and corroding and exploding pipelines. An accident at an offshore platform killed 21 in October.
The Pemex crisis that critics have warned about for the past decade has arrived: Production at the company’s largest oil field, Cantarell, fell 18 percent last year, and Pemex has little petroleum lined up to replace it. Yet the government of President Felipe Calderon finds itself unable to act to prevent what could be a disaster for both Pemex and the country, whose budget relies heavily on Pemex sales.
Visiting editors’ parting shots: Oil, vouchers and volunteering
There’s a topic to be discussed at the intersection of economics and the environment that doesn’t get the attention it deserves. The topic is “peak oil.”
Power crisis for Guangdong industry
HONG KONG - Guangdong province, one of China’s economic power engines, this year will suffer its worst electricity shortage in three decades. And despite China’s power supply and demand nationwide expected to reach a balance this year, power supply in the coastal regions will remain tight.
Lebanon’s top Shiite cleric bans attacks against public utilities in Iraq
BEIRUT, Lebanon: Lebanon’s top Shiite Muslim cleric has issued a religious edict banning attacks on public utilities in Iraq, mainly the oil industry.
Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah says in a statement that Iraqis should work for stability in their country otherwise they will be helping the “occupation.”
Gazprom ups pipeline costs, delays oil project
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia’s gas export monopoly Gazprom acknowledged on Monday it was facing delays and cost overruns at two key projects, a pipeline to Europe and an Arctic oil development.
India Turns to Angola After Losing in Energy Auctions
(Bloomberg) — India, Asia’s third-largest consumer of oil, will focus on obtaining energy assets in Angola after failing to secure supplies closer to home.
“Angola is the next country where we are going to concentrate,” Indian Oil Minister Murli Deora said in an interview in New Delhi. “We lost because our bid wasn’t good enough” in previous auctions, he said. “We have learned from this,” the minister said.
Dark days are coming. Oil will run out, temperatures will rise, governments will crumble and survivors will be forced to scratch out a preindustrial existence amid the detritus of the 20th Century.
James Howard Kunstler warned as much in his 2006 book of social criticism, “The Long Emergency.” And he stays on-message in his new novel, “World Made by Hand,” which sketches post-apocalyptic life in the fictional upstate New York town of Union Grove.
UK: Energy Minister Malcom Wicks grants change for green energy
New rules designed to help homeowners, schools and hospitals to install climate-friendly generators will be announced today by the Energy Minister.
Malcom Wicks will give details of the funding as part of changes to the Low Carbon Buildings Programme in which the cap on grants will be raised to 50 per cent of the costs.
Truckers to protest fuel costs
Facing mounting diesel fuel costs and shrinking profits, some truckers nationwide are making plans to protest this week by parking their semis or clogging traffic by driving slowly.
The truckers say average diesel gas prices, which AAA reported had risen over the past month from $3.38 to $3.91 a gallon nationally as of Friday, are forcing some drivers out of business.
Facing up to the coming resources crunch
The world is faced with a triple crisis: climate change, peak oil and global resource depletion. These are interrelated and interactive problems which makes the subject extremely complex. The certainties are that there will be great changes to contend with in the future in order to produce and deliver food to maintain the present world population, let alone a balanced diet for everyone. At the present time there are roughly one billion people that are underfed and/or on imbalanced diets lacking essential micro nutrients that are provided by animal protein.
The primary resource depletion is that of fossil fuel energy since the world has been using more fossil energy than is being discovered and it appears that the reserves of oil that can be cheaply mined are now at peak production (half these resources have been combusted). As oil reserves are depleted it is predictable that, just as with any other commodity, prices will rise with increasing scarcity. World population expansion has been promoted by the availability of inexpensive oil, which has supported increased world food production by providing inexpensive inputs including fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, traction power( lowering the need for labour and reducing the numbers of people in farming) and in places irrigation water. Inexpensive oil allowed food to be produced cheaply but this will change greatly as oil prices rise creating the potential for major disruptions in food availability.
Indonesia feels the pinch as oil, commodity prices surge
JAKARTA (AFP) - With prices for key commodities at record highs, Indonesia — Southeast Asia’s biggest economy and a key exporter — should, at first glance, be enjoying good times.
But with high oil prices leading to a government fuel subsidy blowout and rising food prices hitting the poor, analysts say most Indonesians are being squeezed.
Higher Crude Prices Jack Up Korea’s Oil Import Bill
Despite a drop in the volume of oil imports, South Korea’s import bill rose sharply this month from a year earlier as international crude prices shot up, government data showed Sunday.
Mexico to start afresh in oil reform talks
MEXICO CITY, March 30 (Reuters) - Mexico will start afresh this week with multiparty talks over a planned oil reform, the government said on Sunday, further reducing the chances of a law being passed before Congress winds up at the end of April.
Iraq’s Sadr orders followers off streets
NAJAF — Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr called on his followers on Sunday to stop battling government forces after a week of fighting in southern Iraq and Baghdad threatened to spiral out of control. A crackdown on Shi’ite militants in the southern oil port of Basra has sparked an explosion of violence that has risked undoing the past year’s improvements in Iraq’s security.
Ethiopia arrests 8 suspects in oilfield attack
ADDIS ABABA, March 30 (Reuters) Ethiopia said on Sunday security forces had arrested eight men suspected in connection with a deadly rebel raid last year on a Chinese-run oil field.
The state-run Ethiopian News Agency said the detainees belonged to the separatist Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), which killed 74 people during the April 2007 attack in the remote eastern Ogaden region.
In gas-rich Gulf, supplies fall short
DUBAI: According to BP’s latest “Statistical Review of World Energy,” Iran and Qatar sit on 30 percent of the world’s total natural gas reserves.
Yet within the Gulf, the ability to meet the growing local demand for natural gas is being frustrated by underdeveloped supply mechanisms and limited regional cooperation.
Russia’s new energy strategy seems a lot like its old one
Western analysts say they expect little to change politically as a result of Medvedev’s elevation and Putin’s shift into the prime minister’s seat: and economic analysts equally expect little change to emerge from the long-term plan.
There is in fact no shift in strategy, said a Russian oil industry analyst with an international organization in Paris, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the authorities in Russia to criticism. In the absence of new thinking, “the only strategy is accumulation of assets in state hands and appropriation of the largest possible share of the oil and gas rent,” he said.
Russian Oil Output May Fall for First Time in Decade in 2008
Russian oil output may fall this year for the first time in a decade as the world’s second-biggest supplier struggles with rising costs and harder-to-reach fields, Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev said.
“Two years ago, we said the growth rate was falling, and we said this was bad for Russia, remember?” Trutnev said in televised remarks after a government meeting in Moscow today. “Now we’re saying the production rate is falling this year. This is not a bogeyman, unfortunately, this is real,” Trutnev said, without giving a specific forecast.
Could the oil sands, Canada’s greatest economic project, come undone simply because no one thought about water?
Companies give folks solar help to go green
For years, Bruce Crawford dreamed of putting solar panels on his one-story house to cut his power bill and “do something good for the environment.” But he couldn’t see past some dark clouds — the $20,000 to $30,000 purchase price.
“I wanted to do it, but I was choking on what I had to” spend, says the software engineer who lives in Pleasanton, Calif.
Then, a Silicon Valley start-up called Sun Run offered Crawford a way to go green without straining his wallet. Last month, the company installed a 3.8-kilowatt system on his pitched roof for $6,000. Crawford, 62, says he’ll immediately save money on his electric bill. Sun Run monitors and maintains the system, replacing worn parts at no extra cost.
Thai temple fights off encroaching tide as world sea levels rise
KHUN SAMUT CHIN, Thailand (AFP) - Crabs scuttle across the wet floor of the near-deserted Khun Samut temple, the only building left in a Thai village that has disappeared beneath the rising and advancing sea.
Waging a battle against an encroaching tide that has sent all the villagers fleeing inland, a monk in orange robes and faded tattoos meant to ward off evil spirits stalks the newly-built sea wall, planting mangrove shoots.
Austrian glaciers shrink the most in five years
VIENNA (AFP) - Austria’s glaciers retreated more than 22 metres (24 yards) on average last year, in the biggest shrinking for five years, the country’s Alpine Club said Saturday.
“All glaciers experienced melting and retreated… an average of 22.2 metres” in the 2006-2007 period, the Alpine Club said, citing measurements of 93 glaciers by its specialists who blamed milder than normal temperatures.
Leave a comment!