Last Light - A Peak Oil Novel

There is a new novel out called Last Light by London author Alex Scarrow. This video is a promo for the book.

The novel deals with a breakdown in society when oil supply is disrupted by terrorist activity all over the world. I haven't read the novel yet but I have corresponded with the author and I have seen reviews (see video) and it sounds like a good thriller built on a Peak Oil premise. He is not sure when the novel will be available in the United States and I don't see it on Amazon yet (one of his earlier novels is there) so if you are in the U.S. you will have to keep an eye out for it. I will update this post if I get any further news.

OPEC countries ignore West's agenda

"Washington apparently didn't note the recent statement of Saudi oil executive Sadad Al-Husseini: 'There has been a paradigm shift in the energy world whereby oil producers are no longer inclined to rapidly exhaust their resource for the sake of accelerating the misuse of a precious and finite commodity."

[Link: St. Cloud Times Opinion:]

It is hard to fault the logic of the Saudis on this one. If there were a hint of logic in the human race, that would be what we would all be trying to accomplish. Oil has been so undervalued these last 100 years. By using oil for heating and transportation we are going to use all of this precious resource up in the next couple of decades even though both of those uses could be done in other, granted less convenient, ways. In the meantime critical uses such as advanced medicines that are derived from hydrocarbons will be withheld from future generations.

I doubt if OPEC will be able to hold on to that goal when the U. S. starts running short of gasoline. Mr. Bush or those that will follow in his footsteps would never be able to let that happen. We are far too committed to this valuable commodity. We are determined to go down driving.

Accumulating risks' to world energy supply

The world is not running out of crude oil and natural gas but there are "accumulating risks" to securing global supplies through 2030, a high-level board of U.S. oil company executives found in a report obtained by Reuters on Thursday.

Those risks include "political hurdles, infrastructure requirements and availability of trained work force," according to the study by the U.S. National Petroleum Council, conducted at the behest of U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman.

[Link: Reuters]

I have seen a lot of these kind of articles lately. Basically they follow a line of logic as follows. We don't really have an oil supply problem. There is plenty of oil out there. Enough to last us for a long time. The only problem is that we are having some difficulty getting to it, or there are political problems barring access to the oil, or there is insufficient funds to provide adequate levels of development of new reserves, or there is a shortage of critically skilled workers to work the fields, or that inadequate technological innovations are being applied to the existing fields, or..... Doesn't it strike you that maybe that is, in fact, exactly what peak oil looks like. When the easy oil is disappearing there are probably uncounted ways that are going to make the rest of the oil hard to get at. Peak oil chroniclers often state that we won't be able to know whether we have reached peak oil until long after the event has actually occurred. The reason for that must at least partly be due to the fact that many of the early manifestations of peak oil just look like another bad day at the office.

Energy crisis cannot be solved by renewables, oil chiefs say

The world is blinding itself to the reality of its energy problems, ignoring the scale of growth in demand from developing countries and placing too much faith in renewable sources of power, according to two leaders of the global energy industry

[Link: Times Online]

This is very serious talk from the heads of major oil. Most of the things they are talking about are not news to anyone who has been following the oil depletion story line. Maybe not news but a little more intimidating when you consider the source.

Demand for hydrocarbon fuels will outstrip supply. Inadequate supply will not be sufficiently bolstered by renewable fuels. Attempts to deal with climate change will falter as we resort to burning coal and trying to convert it to liquids for transportation. If the heads of Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil say so it might make sense to listen.

But what do they suggest we do to tackle these problems? Are you ready for this? Reduce our consumption (otherwise known as conservation or, as they suggest, "energy efficiency"). That is really the revolutionary message in this article. I have not seen anyone of any stature in industry or politics(especially the oil industry) suggest that we actually try to consume less. Isn't consumption what makes America tick? Certainly a politician couldn't say something like that. Let's keep our eye on this trend. It could actually change things.

Coal-to-Liquid Boondoggle - washingtonpost.com

To turn coal into liquid fuel it must be fired up to 1,000 degrees and mixed with water. Then the gas that's created is transformed into fuel that can be used in cars and jets. Unfortunately, creating CTL, as it is known, is a very intensive process requiring coal, water and cash. To wean the United States off of just 1 million barrels of the 21 million barrels of crude oil consumed daily, an estimated 120 million tons of coal would need to be mined each year. The process requires vast amounts of water, particularly a concern in the parched West. And the price of a plant is estimated at $4 billion.

[ Link: washingtonpost.com]

Does anyone notice a huge hole in this discussion of the pros and cons of coal liquification? The purpose of this new wonderful technology is to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, right? Supposedly, that will help us with our national security, help fight climate change (if we handle it right) and lead the way in our response to oil depletion. The only problems are water and financing. We have all the coal we could ever want. The article does mention in passing that the process is accomplished by heating the coal up to 1000 deg. F. However, where that energy is going to come from they don't say. Natural gas? More coal? Oil? Nuclear? Whatever is going to be used to heat the coal is either going to add back to our dependence on foreign energy and/or limit the net energy from the process, isn't it? By definition we don't have any extra fuel laying around or we wouldn't be doing this. And what about all of the energy required to catch and store all of that CO2? I'm sorry but I don't see how this is going to help.

From Peak Oil To Dark Age?

Even if the peakists are wrong, we would still be better off taking these actions. And if they're right, major efforts right now may be the only way to avert a new Dark Age in an overheated world.

[Link: Business Week]

I will have to say that I am surprised at this reasonable opinion under the banner of a publication like Business Week. Like many recent Peak Oil discussions in the media, this article seems to be picking up on the causal relationship that Peak Oil and Climate Change enjoy. A while ago they talked about the two subjects as independent problems. Now they have started talking about the two being like two sides of the same coin. Eventually they will understand that the two problems are really just two, admittedly bad, side effects of recklessly using (AKA: releasing back to the atmosphere) the vast accumulation of carbon pulled from the atmosphere and stored in the earths crust over many millions of years. When they understand that, they will start to comprehend what a real solution looks like. Less consumption or fewer people. Almost certainly both.

As oil production fails to meet demand our climate is going to have more than coal to worry about too. Every thing that can be burned for heat or eaten will be stripped from this earth by the hydrocarbon hordes that have arisen to feed off of the cheap and plentiful oil. If it can't be burned for heat or eaten it will be stripped from the earth to make room for something that can. It won't be pretty.

Reducing your personal footprint while you still can.

Resource limitations and climate change are on the tongues of everyone nowadays. Most of us have a vague idea that we are facing some big change in our lifestyle sometime in the future. Almost nobody, however, has stepped up to the reality of that impending change.

Consider the conversations we all have about reducing our environmental footprint. How many of us really understand why we should do that? Most of our thinking is still stuck in the '70s mindset. We are reducing our energy/resource consumption to do our part in reducing environmental degradation. Wrong! There is little we can do to limit the environmental change that is overtaking us. We (humankind) will use all of the hydrocarbon resources that we can obtain and then some. The climate will adjust to that full load of carbon saturation by reverting to the searing climate profile that it demonstrated the last time all of that carbon was out in the open. No, you are not going to prevent that from happening. There are too many of us.

In fact, what you are doing when you reduce your use of resources is practicing. You are getting ready for a new world that is coming, no matter what any of us do. You are making adjustments to your consumption profile while you still have a choice. Listen carefully. This is not a temporary belt tightening. While you have time, buy a new belt. Better yet, learn how to make one. There are no significant new hydrocarbon resources being created for our next energy binge.

Those who are looking for a change of technology rather than a reduction in consumption are fooling themselves. They are still doing their thinking in an oil-age brain. We should not accept any technological fix until we can see it producing a viable net output entirely independent of hydrocarbons. Show me a windmill that has been built entirely from scratch using only windmill energy to obtain and move raw materials, manufacture the infrastructure and build, install and maintain hardware on site. We won't get nearly enough net power from that model to provide anything approaching the present Western lifestyle for even a fraction of the present population of the earth let alone the projected overshoot population that is set to increase into the future. Technology is energy. With less energy there will be less technology. With less technology there will be less energy.

So make your lifestyle changes. It is important. For you.