Shale oil

- Can we please just declare the end of 'peak oil' and start worrying about something important?
- The U.S. Has A Lot Of Shale Oil, So What?
- Chevron VP: Technology can unlock new fields, curb fears of peak oil
- The Biggest Threat to High Oil Prices
- Amory Lovins: A 50-year plan for energy (video)
- U.S. energy independence is no longer just a pipe dream

- Thomas Homer-Dixon: Exploring the climate “mindscape” (oil supplies and energy junk)
- Government influence is negative for energy fuel policy
- The German Switch from Nuclear to Renewables
- Scientists’ Arctic drilling plan aims to demystify undersea greenhouse gases
- Ancien directeur de TOTAL: Nouvelles découvertes et gaz de schiste retarderont à peine le pic pétrolier

A weekly roundup of peak oil news, including:
-Oil and the global economy
-the Iranian confrontation
-the EU's debt crisis
-Argentina nationalizes YPF
-Quote of the week
-Briefs

The New York Times has shown that it is not concerned about Peak Oil. On 23 March it headed page 1 with an article that reminds us that since Nixon’s time every president has had the same goal of giving the USA “independence from foreign energy sources”. One can interpret the article as saying that the USA is now on the way to reaching this goal but let us compare some of the statements in the article to what the USA’s Energy Information Agency (EIA) says.

As we have seen with the Bakken and the various natural gas bearing shales we have been drilling of late, it takes an awful lot of expensive wells and environmental disruption to get the oil out. One estimate of the Energy Returned on Energy Investment (EROEI) for the Bakken shale suggests that the EROEI is six. This means that it may take one oil barrel's worth of energy to produce six barrels of Bakken shale oil. This is getting very close to the theoretical point at which it really is not worth the effort and all the economic disruption.

The aspect of this "energy independence" story that the optimists continue to ignore is that, while oil production from shale may be climbing, depletion of our other sources of oil continues apace

We have a brand-new entrant to the oil-eating-bug-runs-amok tradition: the self-published novel Petroplague. It's a Crichton-esque thriller written by microbiology professor-turned author Amy Rogers, who says she aims to "blur the line between fact and fiction so well that you need a Ph.D. to figure out where one ends and the other begins." The plot involves a batch of experimental, oil-hungry bacteria inadvertently loosed upon Los Angeles, which proceed to wreak a near biblical swath of destruction. Part ecology lesson and part cautionary tale, Petroplague is an entertaining entrée into the subject of oil depletion and its implications for society, human health and the environment.

Far from being discouraged by the rash of peak oil denunciations in the media lately, I am invigorated by it. Remember: we're now on offense; they're on defense. The opposition has to explain why oil production has been flat since 2005 despite high prices. And, the twisted logic and demonstrably false assertions they offer will provide ever better opportunities to trump them again and again.

Outrageous, snarky, “madly engaging,” bileful—these are a few of the terms that have been used to describe author and social critic James Howard Kunstler. But he’s actually a great deal more than these things, as anyone who's really come to know him, even if only through his books and Internet postings, can tell you. His most personal writings reveal a human, vulnerable, wonderfully versatile, cheerful side that few people know exists.

As long as we allow proponents of unconventional oil and gas to claim a false choice between energy and economic security and the environment, and as long as we allow them to vilify opponents as being somehow unpatriotic or radical, we run the very real risk of losing a battle where the future of our planet and species is at stake. Ok, so maybe I am being a little bombastic. But am I wrong?

Richard Heinberg joins James Howard Kunstler, Nicole Foss, Dmitri Orlov and Noam Chomsky in a panel discussion. Reviewer: "These extraordinary clearseers analyse precisely the catastrophic crises which -- amongst many other things -- are bringing on the steady, relentless collapse of the US empire. "

- Tom Whipple: E=mc2 (cold fusion developments)
- The Estonian connection: Or how I started worrying about oil shale
- Experts see demand for oil and gas declining
- La fin du pétrole, c'est pour quand ?

Big Oil's campaign for energy complacency is picking up steam. They say tar sands and fracking are bringing a new era of plenty. But whatever happened to peak oil?

Bill McKibben's latest book is a well-chosen and arranged collection of climate-related writings by the likes of James Hansen, Al Gore and George Monbiot, which McKibben edits and introduces. Significantly, the book contains writings by Inhofe and his ilk as well, the better to understand “the lines of attack climate deniers have used over and over,” in McKibben’s words,

“Imagining a world without oil” describes in stark detail what might happen if one day the world decided to decommission all its oil tankers, rigs, pipelines and strategic reserves. The authors, environmental scientist Steve Hallett and journalist John Wright, expect that we’d initially see sky-high prices and long lines at pumps. After a few weeks, fuel wouldn’t be had at any price and even first-world citizens would struggle to stay fed and out of the elements. This is no Hollywood doomsday scenario—it’s a levelheaded extrapolation from current trends in the fast deteriorating world energy situation. [An essay prefiguring the book originally appeared in The Washington Post.]

"Because money talks and BS walks, if the hydrogen economy was an apprentice working for Donald Trump, it would’ve been fired in the first season." This is just one of the pearls of wisdom from Transition Voice's new "Snarky Guide to Peak Oil." It's got the facts you need to debunk energy myths and the attitude you need to defuse a heated discussion with a smile.