The Oil Drum: Local

In what feels like the middle of a multi-round heavyweight bout, the world financial markets continue to be buffeted tonight, following the recent trend of lower equities, stronger dollar (vs Euro, SF and Sterling), sinking energy and commodities prices and considerably less confidence in the overall system than in weeks prior. Theoildrum.com has historically focused on the biophysical aspects of a world economy based on energy (and occasionally the human aspects that impact energy demand). Most research here attempts to predict what world oil and gas production might look like in a future where depletion inexorably overtakes technology, and the costs of procuring large amounts of quality fuels continue to increase. However, the spiralling of recent events make it likely that, at least for a time, be it a week - or several years - oil and gas depletion might be more than offset by the reduction in demand due to the manifold implications of the reduction in global financial leverage and resulting credit contractions and dislocations in the real economy. The linkages between finance and energy are becoming more direct, but I'm quite certain there are many under the surface we are yet unaware of.

Below are a few article links followed by some open ended questions. Please deposit data, charts and links of relevance.

How can we cut our energy use for commuting? What methods are working for you? What methods make most sense in our current credit environment? This is mostly an open thread, to give people an opportunity to talk about what is and isn't working for them. If the economy is sputtering, peak oil is around the corner, and hurricane related shortages are becoming more common, these methods are going to more and more important in the days ahead.

Some ideas that have been suggested include:

1. More work at home plans, possibly a few days a week.

Every few years the UK Department of Trade and Industry, now Department of Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform, publish a chart of the nation's energy flows. Here's the most recently published chart based on 2007 data:

Click for .pdf

It's a nice, high level overview of energy in the UK illustrating the flow of primary fuels from the point at which they become available from home production or imports (on the left) to their eventual final uses (on the right). Flows at the bottom represent exports, conversion losses and energy industry and non-energy use. The yellow blocks represent transformation (power stations and refineries).

This competition was announced a little while ago, but still has plenty of time until it closes.

Any younger readers (under the age of 31 that is, which is younger than I am) might like to try their hand at writing an essay to describe their vision for our energy future.

Young Australians are invited to help secure the nation’s energy future by presenting their ideas in an entry paper for The Warren Centre’s National Energy Essay Competition.

Entrants are competing for a total prize pool of $50,000, including two major prizes of $20,000 each (the Sumitomo Australia Prize and the Babcock & Brown Power/Wind Partners Prize).

The NEEC is about Australia’s energy future. Specifically, it is about the next phase of primary power generation and the future beyond that. The NEEC is also about the younger generation and their contribution to the future of Australia’s energy development.

The concept of an essay provides the opportunity for the contestants to create an analytic, speculative, or interpretative composition built on an understanding of the current power generation and delivery system and the influence on it of political, societal, demographic and technological changes, living patterns, technologies, transport and travel needs, existing and emerging industrial processes and other yet to emerge impacts, in a way which is understandable to the layman.

The outcome of the competition is aimed, with the media’s support, to provide a more rigorous and disciplined level of information in the public arena as a catalyst for reasoned debate on Australia’s energy future.

The following is a guest post by Bill James.

Gasoline prices give a a clear measure of consequences of making oil the lifeblood of our economy. As our economic lifeblood, oil is giving us:

1. Heart attacks, unstable price spikes in this plateau of Peak Oil
2. Leukemia, undermining our planets ability to support us with Global Warming

Facing the facts and acting to resolve them can defeat peak Oil and Global Warming, both civilization killers. A primary fact is that our current infrastructure is the cause of these killers. We built the infrastructure. We can build better. The purpose of this essay is a call to action to defeat these civilization killers by changing the way we govern infrastructure from specifying HOW to build it, to stating WHAT is needed and allowing a free market to find the rare individuals with lucky breakthroughs that can build sustainable infrastructure. We must get lucky and discover the energy equivalents of lasers, personal computers, cell phones, the Internet, etc....

This is a post by Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow of The Post Carbon Institute and author of Peak Everything, The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World, and The Oil Depletion Protocol. A special thanks to Global Public Media for facilitating publication of Heinberg's work; GPM is a wonderful resource and plays an important role in peak oil activism. This article is a draft chapter from a forthcoming book, currently titled Coal’s Future/Earth’s Fate.

With oil and natural gas prices rising and coal prices still relatively low, the return of the US to a greater reliance on coal might seem inevitable. However, several recent reports suggest that coal reserves, which have shrunk dramatically during the past century, may still be overstated. Coal prices are likely to rise precipitously during the next two decades due to transport bottlenecks and higher transport costs, falling production trends in many current producing regions, and the lack of suitable new coalfields. This information should give pause to any agency planning new coal power plants today.

This is a guest post by Debbie Cook, Mayor of Huntington Beach, CA, and candidate for California's 46th Congressional District. Debbie has been a peak oil activist for many years; in this post Mayor Cook provides some interesting energy and peak oil-related things to think about from a local government perspective.

Robert Rapier posed an interesting hypothetical yesterday as to how individuals would respond to gasoline at $100/gallon.

However, from my position for the last three years, the question has been “how will local government respond to large increases in energy bills?”

I am the Mayor of Huntington Beach, California, a full service city of 200,000 residents, 27 square miles, 1200 employees and 8.5 miles of beach. We have nearly 200 police vehicles, 3 helicopters, 15 fire engines/trucks, 7 ambulances, 1 HazMat vehicle, and 1 medical decontamination unit. In addition there are hundreds of miscellaneous vehicles and trucks for public works, marine safety, building department, water department, and administration. All said, we consume 495,000 gallons of gasoline/diesel/jet fuel per year. For every $1 fuel goes up, it is a half million dollars out of our general fund budget.

This is an excerpted letter from Members of Congress Don Young and Roscoe Bartlett asking for other MoC's to support and/or co-sponsor H.R. 6107, an Important Step to American Energy Independence and Price Reductions for Consumers.

It would seem to me that it contains policy options we should discuss...more under the fold.

If you wish to find your Representative's number or email to express your support or contempt for this legislation, go to http://house.gov. To learn more about the details of the legislation, look it up at http://thomas.loc.gov .

We must act now and illustrate that we are serious about bringing down the high cost of energy and generating good paying jobs in our communities. Abundant, affordable, and secure supplies of energy are essential to this Nation's economic and national security.

SMH - Oil Search reports drop in profit

Oil Search is following an interesting strategy:

Mr Hartley said exploration expenditure in 2008 would be lower, following a disappointing run of dry holes in PNG and the Middle East.

"Capital expenditure this year will be just under $US400 million ($A438.21 million), similar to 2007/08, with more emphasis on production drilling," he said.

ABC - Govt defends 'hand-me-down' transport ticketing system

The 15-year-old ticket readers from Brisbane are being bought to replace Tcard machines, which were being trialed on buses in Sydney's south.

The machines had to be replaced because the Government cancelled the company developing the Tcard integrated transport system's contract.

.... and Cresswell takes a pot shot at CERA...

Back in November I ran article highlighting Peak Oil in the Mainstream Business Press lifted from the monthly Energy Supplement from the Press and Journal, a broad sheet that serves North Scotland - including Aberdeen, the Houston of the North. This month, two stories by Dick Winchester and Jeremy Cresswell caught my eye.

My, my, Gordon, you really are losing the plot

By Dick Winchester

GORDON Brown has come up with a new way of doing things. What you do is go and visit your biggest competitor, who has saved a few hundred billion quid to invest in or simply buy companies you might own, and who is already making oodles of cash because you’re subcontracting to said competitor most of the things you used to do, and then give them £50million to help them develop new “green” technologies.

Yes, folks, Britain’s PM’s been at it again. In exchange for a couple of carry-outs and a tour of the Beijing Olympic village, he’s offered the Chinese:....