The Renewable Energy Markets

Aug 8, 2008 (21 hours ago) Energy and Capital - Articles

Has green lost its luster? Of course not. Yet that seems to be the attitude of more than a few. Sure, solar stocks have been battered over the past few months. But didn't the Dow (Index: DJI) go from over 13,000 to below 11,000 in the same time? Indeed, it did. And hasn't Exxon Mobile (NYSE: XOM) gone from nearly $95 to to about $75 in the same time? Indeed, it has. Even the incessantly-talked-about Transocean (NYSE: RIG) is down 15%. . . in just the past two months. So for renewables to be dismissed as bad investments by bulls of other energy sectors is not only wrong, it's quite hypocritical. Indeed, with the world's largest oil fields being depleted—some by as much as 15% per year—and natural gas facing a similar long-term plight, we're going to need all the energy we can get. And there's plenty of money in all of it. But you must realize, new oil discoveries, and even arctic and offshore drilling, are certainly no catholic cure. In fact, the amount of oil they're providing—and could potentially provide—is absolutely not enough to offset rising demand and oil field depletion, not to mention that oil is increasingly more expensive to extract. This is an often overlooked aspect of new oil finds. Yes, there's money to be made from the remaining oil and the companies that refine the ever more heavy and sour crude. And I'm not against making that money.

Alternative Energy for Shipping

Aug 8, 2008 (1 day ago) Energy Outlook

Last Sunday's New York Times carried an interesting article on the implications of high energy prices for the sustained globalization of supply chains. The reporter described how rising shipping costs were forcing manufacturers and retailers to rethink fundamental aspects of their business models, ultimately threatening the continuous expansion of world trade. Higher oil prices are responsible for much of the rise in freight rates, particularly for products carried by sea and air. Marine and aviation fuels are taxed very lightly, so they are more sensitive to changes in oil prices than motor fuels. But while airlines are hoping--perhaps in vain --for long-term fuel price relief from biofuels, cargo ship operators are likely to experience more competition from other uses for bunker fuel, and may need to seek solutions involving more exotic energy sources. Earlier this year, I mentioned an idea for deploying small, high-tech sails to reduce the fuel consumption of cargo ships. But if world oil supplies fall seriously short of meeting potential demand in the years ahead--an easy prospect to imagine, given the rate at which Chinese and Indian consumers are buying automobiles--ocean freight lines may need to look elsewhere for their primary energy source, not just for ways to supplement it. In 2004, the residual fuel burned by ships and power plants accounted for 1 out of every 8 barrels of global oil demand.

The Peak Oil Crisis: Masking the Peak

Aug 8, 2008 (2 days ago) Peak Oil News

Falls Church News-Press By Tom Whipple As world oil production has never peaked before, there is no historical basis for making informed judgments as to what is going to happen. All we know is that some six billion people, living in some 200 economies on this earth are soon going to be confronted with getting by on less than the 86 million barrels of oil per day (b/d) that we currently consume. The outcome of the interaction among all those people, all those countries and all that oil is too complex to foresee with any clarity. It has long been recognized among those studying the peak oil phenomenon a severe, lengthy, worldwide economic setback could reduce the demand for oil to such an extent that peak production could be lost in the chaos. Other scenarios involve oil prices rising to such level that demand drops significantly, which would be followed by a major drop in prices, followed by increased demand and rising prices, and the cycle continues. In the last three weeks, world oil prices have dropped steadily so they are now nearly $30 a barrel below what they were in early July. Now this decline could be the result of those pesky speculating hedge funds selling short the oil futures contracts. It could be the $4 gasoline keeping an increasing number of Americans off the roads, or even the Olympics, which forced Beijing into a two-month shutdown of a sizable piece of its economic activity in an effort to clean up the air.

An Oil Production Model from Roger Bentley

Aug 7, 2008 (2 days ago) europe

This is a guest article by Dudley Stark, Reader in Mathematics and Probability in the School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London. Bentley introduced the following model of oil production on page 204 of Global oil & gas depletion:an overview , and it is dicussed in the book The Last Oil Shock by David Strahan. This posting is meant to explain his model and some results I obtained for it. Consider the following oil production curve: It rises quickly to it's peak at time t=1 and decreases slowly until no oil is produced at time t=6. The idea is that the natural pressure of the oil field causes rapid production initially, after which decline is more gradual. Before and after the peak the curve is linear, so it looks like a triangle. [break] Suppose the next oil field looks the same as the first one, but oil production begins one unit of time later and the total amount of oil produced is only 75% of the oil in the first field. It looks like this: Adding the production of the two oil fields together gives this production curve: If you do this eight times, each time shifting the start of production by one time unit from the previous oil field and also making the amount of oil produced 75% of the previous oil field, you get a curve like this: It is starting to look like a plausible oil production curve. Note, however, that it is not too realistic because, for one thing, the curve is linear in between integers.

Oil Prices and the Media: Why the Blackout on Peak Oil

Aug 7, 2008 (3 days ago) Peak Oil News

huffingtonpost.com By Gabriel Rotello Every once in a while history reaches a point of real cognitive dissonance. I'm beginning to wonder if we are such a point right now. I'm referring to the astounding rise in the price of oil over the last couple of years, the concept of 'peak oil,' and the strange silence surrounding that concept in the media. The 'peak oil' idea is pretty simple. Petroleum is a finite resource. Since the first well was drilled in 1859 we have been pumping it out of the ground in ever increasing amounts. According to the peak oil theorists, most of whom are oil geologists, at some point we will have pumped about half of all the oil on earth. At that point, the remaining half will become increasingly harder and more expensive to pump, and so two things will happen. First, the amount of oil we pump will level off and start to decline, by about two percent per year. And second, since demand by a growing world population will keep rising, the market will respond by pricing the decreasing amount of oil higher and higher. An oil geologist named M. King Hubbert predicted this phenomenon for the continental USA back in the 50s. In those halcyon days, US production seemed limitless, but Hubbert predicted that sometime between 1966 and 1972, the USA would reach peak oil production and American production would thereafter decline. People laughed at Hubbert. Then, in 1970, right on schedule, production of US oil peaked and began to drop. Hubbert had been correct. So..