The Agonist - Global Energy

Solar Power and Water

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:53:10 -0700

We've been invited by the International Boundaries & Water Commission to submit a proposal to then on our Solar Electricity and Water project, the part about a self contained (Power and Water) desalinization plant.

They like the proposal and the staff we've presented to favor our proposal over a competing proposal because we'll provide both electricity and water, and our power plant does not consume water.

And despite the terms electricity and power being somewhat synonymous in the English speaking word, they are not in the Spanish speaking world. Power = Political Power. Electricity = Electricity.

UK makes Atlantic sea bed claim

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:55:40 -0700

Aug 27

BBC -

Britain is to formally present its case to the UN in New York for extending its territorial rights around Ascension Island in the South Atlantic.

States have rights over their resources - including oil or gas reserves - up to 200 nautical miles from the shoreline.

But the UK wants to extend those rights around Ascension on the grounds that the island's landmass actually reaches much further underwater.

The UK will present its claim on Wednesday to the United Nations Commission for the Limits of the Continental Shelf.

Britain is also said to be considering making a similar claim around the Falkland Islands, where it is thought there could be significant reserves of oil and gas.

This would be deeply unpopular with Argentina, which claims ownership of the Falklands, and Argentine officials have told the BBC they are preparing their own counter-claim.

Greenpeace is concerned that what it calls this new colonialism could result in drilling which would harm the fragile ecosystem of the ocean.

What will be Putin's move in the Arctic?

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 15:46:17 -0700

Potential spoils of Arctic fight are huge

A report released last month by the U.S. Geological Survey has made it clear that the potential spoils are huge: an estimated Arctic storehouse of 90 billion barrels of oil and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas -- nearly one-quarter of the world's untapped hydrocarbon reserves.

The Arctic continental shelves, the report concluded, "may constitute the geographically largest unexplored prospective area for petroleum remaining on Earth."

Where Would Jesus Drill?

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:17:59 -0700

My thanks to Think Progress for this story:

The other day, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann told us that we don't need Nancy Pelosi to save the planet. Jesus has it covered. Here's what she said:

"[Pelosi] is committed to her global warming fanaticism to the point where she has said that she’s just trying to save the planet. ... We all know that someone did that over 2,000 years ago, they saved the planet — we didn’t need Nancy Pelosi to do that."

It gets better.

Yesterday on CNN, Rep. Bachmann gushed about how the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is "the most perfect place on the planet to drill."

The Czechoslovakia of our day!

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 02:41:36 -0700

Paul from Canberra tells me

that the conflict in Georgia is the Czechoslovakia echoes here of our time. Russia is effectively a fascist state run by a limited few, former KGB members. Dmitrij Anatol′evič Medvedev is the former CEO of Gasprom, handpicked crony and successor of Putin. It's basically a scheme to increase the power of modern Russia through control of energy.

Hitler used the Sudenten Germans as an excuse to bully the West into giving him key strategic military resources for the future, and reducing the influence of the western allies of the day.

So today, Russia is using the south Ossetians as their tool to gain strategic resource and positioning.

The pipe lines running from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey will possibly ended up under the control of a puppet government à la Czechoslovakia, 1938.

Should Georgia be asking the west, "what are you going to do?" What nation will go to war during the Olympics? How convenient the time of the conflict!

Is this just a little piece of history repeating?

No peace in our time, ever!

When You Are Wrong It's Best Just To Take Your Medicine

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 03:32:50 -0700

Well, when I am wrong, I am usually way wrong. So, gloat away:

A quiet data revision that has boosted by nearly 25% the number of oil futures contracts U.S. regulators think are held by speculators. And that revelation is raising eyebrows in the energy trading community.

The revision means that speculators controlled 48% of the open interest in NYMEX crude oil futures and options as of July 15—compared with just over 38% under the previous classification.

“That’s huge when you look at the numbers,” said Phil Flynn of Alaron Trading in Chicago.

I'll leave it to others with more knowledge of this specific market to interpret the data with a fine toothed comb. All I'll say is this: them numbers is ugly. And maybe add a little more: ain't free and unfettered markets grand?

Nota bene: From Numerian's comment,

"Maybe it is where all the "liquidity" went when Bernanke pushed rates down to 2%. The spike up to $140 looked awfully steep - the sort of thing that occurs with commodities as they top out (see corn, wheat, copper, and all the other commodities that have now topped out).

The trend line supporting this spike crosses near $115 now, so we are approaching critical support. If oil can hold here, it has the possibility of racing up to test its high or set a new top around $170. If it cannot maintain support, it heads back to its break-out point around $85. There it will rest awhile before heading even lower as the global economy shrinks even more.

This new speculator data suggests there is a lot of hot money in the system that is liable to panic, so there are somewhat better odds oil will not hold support at $115.

Then where does the hot money go? Probably out of the euro and other hot currencies, back into the dollar and safe instruments like Treasuries. In other words, the hot money is going to panic again about credit risk, which implies there are some more surprises in the banking industry ready to be revealed."

Resource depletion, complacency and the numbers game

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:24:12 -0700

The price of oil has fallen. The price of corn and feed grains follows. Go back to sleep. Allow the numbing neon glow to perform its magic. All is well. All is well. All is well...

Only it isn't.

The same fundamentals that caused panic in the markets remain in place. Oil production is flat. World supplies of grain remain precariously low. That massive pile of junk debt remains hidden from view like some cancer, rotting away at our economy from the inside out.

Pay no attention to the numbers. We (US) will use less oil next year, even less still the following year and within a few seasons we'll be using about half as much as we do today. Maybe it's three years, maybe it's five, mabye it's even seven. Imminent applies to all three of those numbers.

People are going hungry today, more will go hungry tomorrow. The shortfalls start at the bottom of the economic ladder and work their way up, insidiously, one rung at a time.

The price of products hardly matters--it's all a numbers game. We get inflation where prices outpace earnings or we get deflation and prices on necessary products go down but there's no money to be had. Either way, we'll be using less.

You can argue that it didn't have to be this way. But it is.

That's one equation you'd better get used to.

Spain cuts speed limit and turns out lights

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 07:03:55 -0700

John Lichfield

The Independent - Spain has seen the future and it is slow, dim and uncomfortable. A swingeing series of energy-saving measures announced by the Spanish government may be a foretaste of the kind of policies which will be forced upon an energy-hungry industrial world in the coming decades.

To protests from motorists and mockery in parts of the press, the Socialist government plans to cut motorway speed limits to 50mph and town speeds to 25mph. New austerity rules will be imposed on the air conditioning and heating of all public buildings. Street-lighting will be cut by half.

Almost 50 million low-energy light bulbs will be handed out by the government in an attempt to drive high-consumption bulbs out of the market in the next four years. The government will also sponsor a project intended to introduce a million electric or hybrid electric-petrol cars on to Spanish roads by 2014.

Oil By Numbers

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:16:55 -0700

$11.68 billion . . . That's how much money ExxonMobil reported earning in its second quarter report.

1 . . . That's the rank of ExxonMobil's quarterly profit among all American companies. Ever.

Doubled . . . That's what happened to the price of a barrel of oil from 2001 to 2005.

Doubled again . . . That's what happened to the price of a barrel of oil from 2005 to March 2008.

Rose 40% . . . That's what happened to the price of a barrel of oil from March to July 2008.

85.5 million . . . That's how many barrels of oil the world consumes every day.

1.9 million . . . That's how many barrels of oil the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would produce per day, at best and not for 20 years, if Congress opened it to drilling today.

2 million . . . That's how many barrels of oil that protected areas of the Outer-Continental Shelf would produce per day, at best and not for 7 years, if Congress opened them to drilling today. LINK

2.5 million . . . That's how many barrels of oil we'd save per day by 2020 if Washington, instead, doubled federal gas mileage standards for new cars and trucks.

$10 billion . . . That's how much we're still spending every month on the war in Iraq.

Those Damn Speculators!

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 04:25:15 -0700

Herein we learn that it really isn't the fault of speculators for the drastic rise in the price of oil we've witnessed lately. It's foreign governmental fuel subsidies:

The oil company BP, known for thorough statistical analysis of energy markets, estimates that countries with subsidies accounted for 96 percent of the world’s increase in oil use last year — growth that has helped drive prices to record levels.

So, I guess that other 4% is due to speculators, no?

As for the subsidies, well, they are a serious problem for the governments which subsidize petrol prices. How to resolve it without serious pain? I have no idea.

But maybe now we can finally put to bed the finger pointing at rogue speculators, please?

Would you rather pay for: .04 seconds of war, or 25 days of health care?

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:34:19 -0700

A couple of weeks ago, over at the Progressive Future headquarters, a couple of us started wondering out loud how much of of our taxes went to fund the Iraq War. My colleague did a little research and found a formula for how to figure this out. After discovering that in 2007, I paid for $204 of war, my first thought was, “Dang. That money could have gone to pay a month of my health care premium.”

So then, as a fun little game (yes, we over at Progressive Future have an interesting take on what's fun), we decided to make an internet tool that would not only calculate someone's contribution to the war from their 2007 income, but would also tell that person how many days that money could have covered their health care, education, powered their home with renewable energy, or paid for a veteran to receive higher education.

Turns out, any of those last four options would be the more lucrative investment.

Fly Me To The Moon

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:32:32 -0700

Crossposted at MLW

There has been a lot of talk recently about the “energy crisis”. I wonder if this is the same energy crisis we heard about in the 70’s? If it is then that means for over 30 years instead of solving our domestic energy needs, we have ignored them and allowed them to grow. In 1970 we were importing about 24% of the oil we used and the embargo back then threw our economy into a tail-spin, imagine what would happen today when we import about 70%. Rather than using the past 30 plus years to develop new or existing technologies to reduce or break our dependence on oil, we have elected to do something worse than nothing. Instead of our vehicles getting smaller and more fuel efficient during this time they have actually gotten larger.

Oil survey says Arctic has riches

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:24:02 -0700

Jad Mouawad | July 24

IHT - The Arctic may contain as much as a fifth of the world's yet to-be-discovered oil and natural gas reserves, the United States Geological Survey said Wednesday as it unveiled the largest-ever survey of petroleum resources north of the Arctic Circle.

Oil companies have long suspected that the Arctic contained substantial energy resources, and have been spending billions recently to get their hands on tracts for exploration. As melting ice caps have opened up prospects that were once considered too harsh to explore, a race has begun among Arctic nations, including the United States, Russia, and Canada, for control of these resources.

"For a variety of reasons, the possibility of oil and gas exploration in the Arctic has become much less hypothetical than it once was," Donald Gautier, the chief geologist for the survey, said during a news conference Wednesday. "Most of the resources are on the continental shelf in areas already under territorial claims."

The assessment, which took four years, found that the Arctic may hold as much as 90 billion barrels of undiscovered oil reserves, and 1,670 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This would amount to 13 percent of the world's total undiscovered oil and about 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas.

New French reactor to supply nuclear-shy neighbours

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 04:48:44 -0700

Muriel Boselli | Paris | July 23

Reuters - Atomic power champion France is building a new generation reactor largely to supply power for neighbours that are wary of having nuclear plants, although its own need is for more flexible sources of energy such as gas.

President Nicolas Sarkozy said earlier this month France would build a European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) by 2017, bringing to 60 the number of nuclear reactors in Europe's biggest atomic energy nation.

But many argue France needs other types of power generation, such as gas-fired or coal-fired plants that can be switched on and off quickly to meet peak demand, rather than more reactors steadily producing electricity.

"In a strictly national framework we don't really need an EPR," said Jean-Marie Chevalier, head of the geopolitical energy centre at Paris Dauphine University.

"But if we position ourselves at a European level, the bloc needs new baseload output capacity, so a second EPR in France could to a large extent provide electricity to its neighbours," Chevalier added.

Solar power from Saharan sun could provide Europe's electricity, says EU

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 04:17:11 -0700

Alok Jha | July 23

The Guardian -

A concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in Spain that uses panels to reflect light on to a central tower to produce electricity. Similar plants are proposed for north Africa. Photograph: AP

A tiny rectangle superimposed on the vast expanse of the Sahara captures the seductive appeal of the audacious plan to cut Europe's carbon emissions by harnessing the fierce power of the desert sun.

Dwarfed by any of the north African nations, it represents an area slightly smaller than Wales but scientists claimed yesterday it could one day generate enough solar energy to supply all of Europe with clean electricity.

Speaking at the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, Arnulf Jaeger-Walden of the European commission's Institute for Energy, said it would require the capture of just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts to meet all of Europe's energy needs.

The scientists are calling for the creation of a series of huge solar farms - producing electricity either through photovoltaic cells, or by concentrating the sun's heat to boil water and drive turbines - as part of a plan to share Europe's renewable energy resources across the continent.