The coming 'peak oil' and its geopolitical consequences

[Zorba]

Zorba, have you read the Spiegel link at all? I guess not, since according to the leaded info, German think tanks are suggesting:

Peak oil would also have profound consequences for Berlin's posture toward the Middle East, according to the study. "A readjustment of Germany's Middle East policy ... in favor of more intensive relations with producer countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia, which have the largest conventional oil reserves in the region, might put a strain on German-Israeli relations, depending on the intensity of the policy change," the authors write.

So, this is the 'succumbing' part. Got it?

Now what's my plan? I just explained it briefly in my 1st post: since the despotic regimes ruling the oil-rich nations are dependent on Westeran technology to explore & extract their oil, West has actually the 'upper hand' in its relations with them, quite contrary to what German 'experts' would us believe. So, there's no need to 'intensify' relations with Mullahs & Saudis at the expense of abandoning democracy-promoting campaigns and neglecting the well and alive freedom-seeking movements of Iranians and Arab. And this is what I call a 'brave' move. May be not a thoroughly appropriate word though.

Regards,

PL

Yes, I read the article. The succumbing as mentioned in the article is clear, although it remains unclear how the current situation might be a form of succumbing to Israel. The article also mentions: "Unconditional support for Israel and its right to exist is currently a cornerstone of German foreign policy."

Now for the more interesting part: the bravery. You state that "the West" has the upperhand in the relations with the biggest oil-producing countries with their totalitarian states, because we provide the technology.

That seems like a very wrong and short-sighted observation. The West only provides this very technology because we need their oil. If the West stopped providing these countries with this technology, the resulting huge oil crisis would cause western economies to rapidly decline or even collapse, which especially given the current deep economic crisis, is something no western country can afford.

Another problem with your approach is that "the West" doesn't exist (anymore) and that "the West" is only one of the players on the geopolitical playfield. The totalitarian regimes with their oil will simply play a divide and conquer strategy. Therefore, the result of your ideas might be that the West tries to pressure f.i. Saudi Arabia, has to deal with oil shortages and economic decline, while China or India will grab the opportunity to dominate with both hands.

[NIHILIST]

The ultimate question here is WHAT ARE YOU PREPARED TO DO IF THE POWERS THAT BE TURN OFF THE SPIGOT ?

In the near 40 years since the first energy crisis, despite much political chest-thumping, most of the industrial world is still as dependent on oil as it was in the 70s. At the time, the US government could have mandated that all new construction must be solar powered but it did not. 40 years later the first all-electric cars are about to come to market, with price tags of about $ 40,000 and requiring a re-charge after 85 miles. Not much to inspire lifestyle changes.

Estimates of oil in the ground in the USA vary but, despite all the rhetoric about dependence on foreign oil, our politicians have declared drilling in several promising areas to be off-limits, largely out of alleged concern for the environment.

At the same time, these politicians are being held hostage by the environmental PACs that provide ample campaign contributions. Within the last year, Senator Feinstein of California unveiled a plan to pave vast areas of the desert in the southwest USA with hundreds of square miles of solar panels.

Not so fast, said the Sierra Club and other environmental groups, claiming that such an action would cause irreparable harm to miles of pristine desert.

For years the state of Massachusetts was ready with a project called CAPE WIND. This was to construct an offshore farm of windmills to provide power to the good people of New England.

Not so fast, said then Senator Ted Kennedy, the liberal lion of the senate, who objected because the project was to be built in one of his favorite yachting areas.

When world oil prices sent gasoline to $ 4.00 per gallon, legendary oilman T Boone Pickens was all over the air and on every talk show hawking his latest venture, windmills stretching from the Mexican to the Canadian border. Gasoline prices retreated to less than $ 2 per gallon and T Boone is nowhere to be seen.

One of the more amusing aspects of the increasing summer melt of arctic ice is the rush to explore previously icebound areas for deepwater oil, natural gas, etc despite alleged concern for the environment.

So the options seem to be, resuming exploitation of our own natural resources, re-learning how to ride bicycles, or what countries have done since the beginning of time........take the resources they lack from nations that possess them.

Take your pick.


Bob

[diane]

This seemed sort of relevant....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWhLSORCwW0#

[Zorba]

Umm, about the CAPE wind project: dear Bob tells us a one-sided story as usual.

"Cape Wind was an issue in the 2006 election for Governor of Massachusetts. The winner, Democrat Deval Patrick, supported the project; his Republican opponent, former Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey, opposed it."

and

"Walter Cronkite was the subject of controversy as well when he originally came out against the wind farm but then changed his opinion. Other opponents have included Sen. Ted Kennedy, Sen. John Kerry and former Gov. Mitt Romney."

I guess Republican governors like their sailing trips just as much.

[RickrInSF]

The options to reduce demand of oil are varied and many, electricity from wind is but one of them, they include:

Jimmy Carter style solar panels (heats water using black pipes on the roof)
direct electricity from solar (although production has it's own polution concerns)
mirror solar (directs sunlight to one spot, heating water for steam engine)
geothermal plants
electric cars (battery production and disposal a big problem, but well worth the effort to find solutions)
hydrogen powered cars
nuclear (dangers well known, so might scrap this as option)
point of use electric generation (eliminates power line waste)

and many more i'm sure

all of these could have been implemented to some degree in the "near 40 years since the first oil crisis", but they have all been fought tooth and nail by big oil, they desire a crisis, it increases profit

" resuming exploitation of our own natural resources" is not a solution, there is not enough oil in the world, much less the US to satisfy current projections of demand, the only real solution is (of course) to reduce demand

"take the resources they lack from nations that possess them" is at best a short term solution, and morally corrupt

human nature being what it is, we will (of course) wait for a real crisis before doing something about it

so bob, u had better go buy that bike ur so unwilling to ride

[stog]

i like that   

[ah_clem]

The options to reduce demand of oil are varied and many, electricity from wind is but one of them, they include:
...hydrogen powered cars...

Hydrogen is not an energy source.  You have to get the hydrogen somewhere, and the usual way is to run electric current through water to separate the Oxygen from the hydrogen.  That takes energy.

Which isn't to say that hydrogen powered cars are a useless technology.  It has two giant advantages over petroleum based cars:

• You can use any source of electricity to make Hydrogen - coal, nuclear, solar, geothermal, natural gas, hydro, or even good old oil can all be used.  This means our transportation infrastructure is not dependent on a single energy source.
• It eliminates the point-source pollution from each vehicle.  Cars that burn hydrogen only emit water vapor, so they are inherently non-polluting.  Of course, the plant that makes the hydrogen may emit pollution, but you can slap more pollution control technology on a stationary plant than a moving vehicle, and you can locate it far outside the city.  Getting rid of the literally millions of point-source pollution generators would make the air in cities much much cleaner.

So, hydrogen technology is great, but it's not an energy source, merely a method of energy distribution.  

[RickrInSF]

well, to say that hydrogen is not an energy source is kind of silly, when you burn hydrogen, it releases energy

actually, hydrogen is normally produced FROM hydrocarbons (using steam reforming), which has a byproduct of CO2 (so, not a good solution at all!)

simply heating water to 2000 deg C can also break the hydrogen oxygen bond (thermolysis) (concentrating solar power could be used)

finally, electrolysis - since heat is absorbed from the surroundings, the heating value of the produced hydrogen is higher than the electric input

so, hydrogen could be produced cleanly and efficiently - to be used as an energy source 

[NIHILIST]

Just a few final words on the subject.

With regard to EXPLOITING OUR OWN RESOURCES, the truth is no one really knows how much oil is in the ground. The huge find offshore of Brazil came as no small surprise. And refusing to continue to drill for oil where we know it exists in the USA simply because certain special interest groups say it's not enough to meet demand is absurd. If there isn't enough oil to meet demand why not just stop drilling now ? If the effort is futile, why waste time and money pursuing it for the present ? Plus, I can't think of a faster way to reduce dependence on oil than to quit drilling for it.

Regarding CAPE WIND, it's true that the project was opposed my many politicians of different party affiliation. However, Ted Kennedy was by far the most powerful of the opponents. An alleged environmentalist, he fought the project for at least 5 years, trying to introduce legislation in the Senate to kill the project. I used him as the most hypocritical of those involved in the issue, his opposition based on nothing more than NIMBY.

It's no coincidence that Cape Wind was finally approved after Kennedy's death. No doubt at sometime during the debate Kennedy announced that the project would be built only over his dead body. I'm glad he got his wish.

With regard to my comment about TAKING RESOURCES FROM THOSE WHO HAVE THEM, I was gratified to find the one idiot in the crowd who can't recognize a tongue-in-cheek comment. I agree that the idea is morally corrupt and reprehensible, but it is nothing new.

Great Britain was the most powerful nation on earth for about 200 years in no small part because it looted resources from its colonies. In the northeast colonies of America, Britain completely deforested millions of acres of forest to the extent that something like 80% of all ships of the Royal Navy in the 18th and 19th centuries were built from wood cut in the American colonies.

The city of Los Angeles became the huge metropolis it is today by stealing water from the Owens River valley and diverting it south.

Human nature being what it is, no one should be surprised to see such things occur in the future. Water will likely be the next resource that nations will go to war over.


Bob

[ah_clem]

Hydrogen is an energy source in the same way that your ATM card is a source of income.  Yes, you can burn hydrogen and get energy, just like you can get money with ATM credit card, but the actual  money/energy has to come from somewhere else.

[NIHILIST]

My ex-wife could never understand how her checking account could be overdrawn if she still had checks in her checkbook.

Bob

[RickrInSF]

your atm card analogy is completely wrong

hydrogen is the money, not the atm card, how you produced it is completely separated from how you use it (u cannot withdraw money from your account if you don't have any, even if you have an atm card)

yes, it takes energy to produce hydrogen from water (or other sources or simply seperated out of air), but once produced, it is a source of energy (by burning)

Bob, as for your ex-wife, she married you so her intellect is very much in question (although the ex part has to go in her favor)

As for "EXPLOITING OUR OWN RESOURCES", you play the typical game of twisting my words into something i never said. I did not argue we should not drill for oil because there is not enough to meet demand, what i said is that exploiting our own resources is not a solution. We should absolutely continue to drill for oil - WHERE it is SAFE! (so, there are many places that we know oil exists, but i am against drilling there for other reasons and that is a completely different argument) Again, the only solution is to reduce demand for oil.

As for your remarks being "tongue-in-cheek", it is very hard not to take your statements at face value when you continue to justify them as "nothing new", and then predict that although "morally corrupt and reprehensible", something that will most likely happen anyway.

[ah_clem]

yes, it takes energy to produce hydrogen from water (or other sources or simply seperated out of air), but once produced, it is a source of energy (by burning)

So, where do we get the energy to produce the hydrogen?   

(BTW, you are correct about the method to make hydrogen - electrolysis is not the most common industrial method.)

[RickrInSF]

where the energy comes from to produce hydogen has no relevance to the question (is it an energy source), once produced it IS an energy source

it does, however, give relevance to the question - is it a viable energy source?

i realize that this is an exercise in semantics, but i believe it is an important one, by you saying that hydrogen is not an energy source because it takes as much energy to produce as it produces, is wrong

is it safe?, is it economical? is there a cheap, clean way to produce hydrogen? those are good questions, but if there is, hydrogen would be a good substitute for oil - as an energy source (for the reasons you already mentioned) .

[garp_02]

Nuclear gets my vote, if we're talking about electricity production.

As for the rest, I agree with Rick in that people should be looking more at reducing the dependence on oil than where else can we get more.

Cheers

[stog]

nitrogenous methane pour moi  
see also references to Petomane*



*

Spoiler

During a career that spanned more than twenty years, Frenchman Joseph Pujol--Le Petomane--captivated fin-de-siecle Parisian audiences and brought international crowds to tears of laughter with his unusual performances. Alone on stage and elegantly attired, Pujol demonstrated his peculiar ability to take in copious quantities of air or water at will through his rectum and to expel either when convenient, a skill which allowed him to perform a number of spectacular feats. Pujol used his disciplined flatulence, for example, to blow out candles (from a distance of 12 inches) or to shoot jets of water--sucked in immediately beforehand--as far as four or five yards. He could imitate various animals with his emissions and could play recognizable tunes. (A newspaper of the day reports: "In reality he produced only four notes, the do, mi, sol, and do of the octave. I cannot guarantee that each of these notes was tonally true.") And in a coup de grace that would have left Howard Stern screaming for more, Le Petomane would insert a rubber hose into his anus and, thrusting a cigarette into the hose's free end, would enjoy a rectal smoke, his sphincter alternately breathing in and exhaling. (Pujol played the flute using the same apparatus.)

[close]

[socksey]

Omg!   

socksey



Marriage to her (Barbra) was like a bath of lava. - Elliott Gould

[dorbel]

The point about burning oil for energy is that it will eventually run out, there is only a limited supply. Planning for a world without oil is essential and all discussions about "increasing supply" or "reducing demand" for it are so short term as to be laughable. It's replacement for transport, presumably electricity generated by a mix of wind, wave, sun, nuclear power and remaining coal stocks, needs to be planned for and implemented now.
I'm not quite clear how the analogy with using timber for ship building in the 18th and 19th centuries is relevant. Using timber, in itself a renewable resource, to make something is very different to burning it for energy. Wooden ships of that time had a useful life of about 30 years, after which the timber was recycled for new ships, houses and barns. Moreover, NIHo's figures are just wrong. Prior to the American war of Independence, the only transatlantic timber trade was in masts and large spars, as only these justified the high cost of shipping. Almost all the rest came from the Baltic states, a serious drain on the British economy as we had a trade deficit with the Baltic. However, a great number of british ships in the 18th century, about a third of the registry, were built in the new england yards and purchased from the shipbuilders there, hardly plundering. After the war of independence the transatlantic timber trade did become very important, as the invention of the circular saw made the shipping of cut lumber more practical, but note that this was trade, not despoilation.
The forests of America and Canada were cut down for shipbuilding, but not by Imperial Britain.

[RickrInSF]

NO, the point is, that no one is doing short term or long term planning (except the oil companies who are planning on a crisis for profit), so unless we start with short term solutions, how will we know the best methods for long term solutions?

[NIHILIST]

I made no reference to the transatlantic timber trade. What I referred to was the deforestation of New England by the British, who, of course, claimed the colonies, to build British ships in the colonies. As I pointed out, a huge preponderance of British ships were built in the colonies and built with wood harvested in the colonies.

This occurred largely because Britain had already stripped its home island of all timber and was forced to go elsewhere. Its colonies were the logical places to go. This process can reasonably be called EXPLOITING THE NATURAL RESOURCES.

To pursue it a bit further, why did Britain and other nations of Europe claim colonies in other parts of the world ? They certainly didn't do it for the betterment of their fellow humans as the Spanish conquest of Latin America or Britain's involvement in India demonstrate all too clearly. At least the Brits built infrastructure as opposed to the Spaniards who were motivated only by loot.

But I digress..........no one doubts that the planet would be better off if cars could run and homes be heated and industries be powered by other than fossil fuels. We've known this for 50 years, maybe longer. You can point fingers at BIG OIL or BIG COAL  or any other convenient scapegoat, but the truth is that the necessary paradigm shifts haven't occurred because powerful elected officials don't want them to.... BIG GOVERNMENT.

A senator who claims to be a dedicated environmentalist, who regularly denounces the oil industry, but does everything in his power to prevent a wind farm which would serve his own constituency from being built because of his own personal reasons is the worst kind of hypocrite.

We've elected too many of these people, in both parties, for too long. The current political unrest in my country indicates that the voters are at long last fed up and want career politicians who talk a good game but do nothing, sent home. I personally have been waiting for this election since I quit voting in 1984.


Bob