Just got this news release. Looks like people are starting to wake up. Be sure to check it out on the History Channel.
What Happens When Demand for Oil Outstrips Supply? … and There’s No ‘Plan B’
Source: PRNewswire PRESS RELEASE
Publication date: 2007-11-07
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 7 /PRNewswire/ — This week, the price of crude oil is trading at a shocking $96 a barrel. By year’s end, analysts predict petroleum will reach $100. And it’s not going to stop there. The world we’ve created runs on oil. But energy experts say the world is running out of oil. Much faster than previously thought. Demand will continue to outpace supplies, shortages are inevitable, and the price will only continue to rise dramatically — causing a ripple effect of disastrous economic, social and political consequences.
On Tuesday night, November 13th, (at 11 p.m. EST/PST – 10 p.m. CST), the History Channel will present Megadisasters: Oil Apocalypse, a documentary that Los Angeles-based filmmaker Martin Kent is calling “a wake up call,” about the world’s energy crisis. “We can no longer count on getting all the gasoline we need — and there’s no plan B.”
By “plan B,” Kent is referring to a coordinated system of alternative energies laid out in his film, that could replace our addiction and dependence on oil, if society mobilizes quickly to make it happen. It’s long been known that oil is a finite, non-renewable resource, that pollutes the environment, and now mankind is coming to realize that it is also most likely causing climate change. With China and India rapidly industrializing, creating an energy-hungry middle class, demand for oil will increase from the world’s current consumption of 84 million barrels a day, to 100 million barrels within the next 5 years. Unfortunately, while oil producers and refiners are scrambling to develop new techniques and sources of production, as yet there are no sure means to meet the growing demand.
Oil Apocalypse presents a terrifying set of scenarios. True to the laws of supply and demand, we are fast approaching the breaking point, when the imbalance could destabilize the economies and infrastructures of virtually every nation on the planet. The worst-case scenario, say experts in the film, is a worldwide depression, which could lead to a world war. Still, they say it’s not too late. But we have to act fast. Says Kent: “My hope is that upon seeing this film, everyone will be inspired to become an energy activist — instead of sitting back and hoping that the scientists and leaders will somehow pull everything together and fix this in the eleventh hour. The time to act is now.”
Energy experts appearing on camera in Oil Apocalypse include authors Richard Heinberg, Matthew Simmons, David Goodstein, Kenneth Deffeyes, Michael Economides and Christine Woodside; Oppenheimer energy analyst Fadel Gheit, PFC Energy chairman J. Robinson West, RAND Corp.’s James Bartis and U.S. Congressman Roscoe Bartlett. Megadisasters: Oil Apocalypse is a Creative Differences, Inc. production.
Check out this US Carbon Footprint Map, an interactive United States Carbon Footprint Map, illustrating Greenest States to Cities. This site has all sorts of stats on individual State & City energy consumptions, demographics and much more down to your local US City level…
http://www.eredux.com/states/
Relax, economists will rescue us.
And they are taking questions!
Q&A: Ricardo Hausmann will answer your questions on Thursday 15 November. Post a question now
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ad770a0c-8c7d-11dc-b887-0000779fd2ac.html
“First, technology is bound to deliver a biofuel that will be competitive with fossil energy at something like current prices. It probably already has. Brazil has been exporting ethanol to the US at an average delivery price of $1.45 for an amount with the energy equivalence of a gallon of petrol. It is doing so profitably and in increasing amounts, in spite of a 54 cents a gallon tariff to protect American maize-based ethanol producers. Many countries are following suit.”
I worked with History Channel indirectly through an industry association last year on a Megadisaster program. Don’t expect a lot of good science. They sensationalize and overdramatize rather than present a balanced view.
I expect they will show us riots, wars, famines, and lots of scary stuff. In reality, if $100 oil stays around very long, we have a number of alternatives that are technically feasible. We will see a shift to coal and stranded gas that isn’t viable at $40 oil.
“There is no plan B” is scare-mongering IMO. It’s a favourite tag line of doomer eco-activist neo-marxists. They ignore nuclear energy, a fairly obvious plan B, because it has no place in their post-apocalyptic fantasy world.
Hey Doug,
Given any thought to how nuclear fuel gets mined and processed lately? I could be wrong, but it seems like it was done with some sort of petroleum…
MegaDisasters, huh. Scare-mongering is what that series is all about, I’ve seen some of their shows, and have enough background to spot how over-blow they get.
In the past few years we’ve had two new large fields discovered, but it will take time for them to be developed. And Shell Oil is starting to do the political groundwork for getting the way smoothed for their in situ oil shale extraction technology.
Sustained high oil prices will undermine opposition from the tree-huggers, politics and time are the biggest obsticles.
The high price of oil has already increased the use of coal
I concur that MegaDisasters is NOT where you want to be.
In fact, I was blogging that just a day or two ago based on their “glaciers melting” promo.
In fact … I almost worry that it is a contra-indicator.
Is Mega Disasters where only the crazier peakists (doomers) belong? Or is it where peak oil belongs?
(BTW, check out mega disasters “swarms” … it seems a locust disaster is “very likey” in the US!)
So, LarryD, please give details on the ‘two new large oilfields’ that have been discovered ‘in the past few years’.
The current gap between supply and demand is over 1 million barrels a day. Oil has peaked at 85 million bpd, while demand is projected to hit 110 million bpd before Shell’s most optimistic projection for their ill-thought 2-5m bpd in their dreams alchemy. Nothing anywhere near large enough to cover the gap to 110m bpd has been discovered in the past 15 years or will be discovered, ever.
The ‘in situ’ extraction is Shell blowing smoke up your butt. At best, it is a net-loss conversion between other forms of energy and refineable oil. At a cost of huge amounts of water (which doesn’t exist in western Colorado) and huge impacts to the environment.
That natural gas captured by the process could be captured without the bizzare process of freezing and heating, and used to directly heat homes or run plants to generate electricity.
This is a scheme by Shell OIL. ‘OIL’, get it?
The ‘article’ is basically a Shell press release.
In ten years when oil is $300 a barrel and Shell is saying they are ‘almost there’ with oil shale as they have been saying since the 80’s, we’ll finally come to the realization that we have to actually chnage the way we live, and build nuclear power plants to power our electric cars. The Oil companies will scream and whine and go down in flames. Finally.
The best you can say for this type of “zombie-mentary” is that it can be a good springboard for discussion.
Anyone who thinks that $100 (much less $300!) “per barrel” petroleum is viable for the extended future does not know anything about the petroleum industry or market.
Sadly, just being an expert on petroleum is enough to cause the zombies to “ad hominem” all over you and stop listening to what you say. Curious, when such people have so much of substance to add to the discussion.
Regardless of the “information-lite” nature of the public discussion on oil, there are sources of substance available for learning more about The Age of Oil.