Royal Dutch/Shell to Hire 1,000 Engineers

The Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Cos. said Tuesday that it plans to hire more than 1,000 engineers to strengthen the unit at the center of last year’s reserves crisis.

The Dutch-Anglo oil giant was forced to cut its proven oil reserves, its most precious asset, by nearly a quarter last year after vastly overestimating how many reserves it held.

The scandal cost the company almost US$150 million in fines imposed by U.S. and British regulators and led to the sacking of three senior executives.

Forbes.com

Greens predict oil crisis in 10 years

“The end of cheap oil is coming towards us with the force of a tsunami and New Zealand is not ready,” she said.

Oil consumption had been so extravagant that in one century the world had used up about half of the planet’s resources and demand was continuing to grow.

When the half-way point in oil reserves was reached – known as peak oil – it would become physically impossible to increase production and an oil crisis would occur

New Zealand Herald

Next stop: Iran

WASHINGTON – U.S. commandos are hunting for secret nuclear and chemical weapons sites and other targets in Iran, and have a plan to turn the hard-line Islamic country into the next front in the war on terrorism.

NY Daily News

India Must Catch Up With China on Energy, Singh Says

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India needs to catch up with neighboring China in securing energy supplies, suggesting competition between the world’s two most populous nations for oil and gas fields may intensify. India’s biggest explorer, Oil & Natural Gas Corp., and other state-run companies face increased competition from China’s three biggest oil companies led […]

The Dollar Can’t Do It Alone

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Global rebalancing appears to be stymied. Nearly three years into the dollar’s correction and the US trade gap keeps hitting new records. The external deficit on goods and services widened to a staggering $60 billion in November 2004. I’m old enough to remember when this would be a […]

Waiting For The First Airline To Die

It looks as if the major airlines have nowhere left to hide. After four years of industry losses in the face of an economic slowdown, punishingly low fares, and high fuel prices, a shakeout now appears all but inevitable.

Businessweek

Shell reopens oil stations in Nigeria

The Anglo-Dutch energy group Shell has reopened all its oil-pumping stations shut down last month because of community unrest in southern Nigeria, a spokesman has said.

“Ekulama I is up,” the spokesman said on Friday, referring to the last of several flow-stations to reopen after angry villagers from the Kula community forced Shell to shut down the facilities on 5 December.

www.aljazeera.net

Hybrid Cars: The Slow Drive to Energy Security

The hybrid car market is slowly ramping up. In the past five years the number of hybrid sales numbers in the U.S. grew tenfold from 9,500 in 2000 to 100,000 in 2004. By the end of 2005, the number of hybrid cars on American roads will grow to 300,000, represented by about seven or eight hybrid models

Institute for the Analysis of Global Security

US special forces ‘inside Iran’

US commandos are operating inside Iran selecting sites for future air strikes, says the American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh. In the New Yorker magazine, Hersh says intelligence officials have revealed that Iran is the Bush administration’s “next strategic target”. Hersh says that American special forces have conducted reconnaissance missions inside Iran for six months. But […]

Russia, India deepening energy cooperation

One of Russia’s biggest oil and gas players said Saturday the country offers fuel-hungry India vast potential to meet its energy demands.

S.S. Neruchev, vice governor of Russia’s giant Sakhalin-I oil and gas field project in the country’s far east, said there were plenty of new areas in the region where Indian companies could make fresh investments.

www.dawn.com

Japan oil firms to drill in East China Sea

Two Japanese companies plan to drill for oil and gas in the East China Sea in a bid to catch up with Chinese exploration in the area, a Japanese daily said on Sunday.

Exploration by Japan may heat up a long-running row with China over rights to resources at a time when relations between the two countries are at a low ebb over Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to a controversial war shrine.

www.chinadaily.com.cn

Blair tried to ditch green policy

Tony Blair’s international credibility on climate change was seriously damaged last night as it emerged that the government tried secretly to ditch key global warming targets.

Leaked documents seen by The Observer reveal that the UK sought to remove targets that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions during high-level meetings to formulate Europe’s climate policy.

www.guardian.co.uk

Green hydrogen buses are a ‘hit’

London Buses Director of Operations, Mike Weston, said passengers had “appreciated the amazing environmental benefits of fuel cell technology and the quiet, smooth ride the buses offer”.

He said that the trials were a “positive indication that hydrogen fuel cells could offer an alternative to diesel in the future”.

BBC

‘Golden economic period’ to end

Ten years of “golden” economic performance may come to an end in 2005 with growth slowing markedly, City consultancy Deloitte has warned.
—
“Although 2005 may not be the year when things go completely wrong, it will probably mark the start of a more difficult period for the UK economy,” Mr Bootle.

BBC

New Zealand Green Party Names Peak Oil as top priority

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?ObjectID=10006843

At it made the national paper! Let’s hope they carry on to momentum – it’s a great start to getting it into general discussion.

Illegal Rain Barrels

http://www.washingtonvotes.org/Legislation.aspx?ID=31223 ·Introduced by Sen. Paull Shin on January 13, 2005, to authorize the department of ecology to require any person using rain barrels and cisterns to collect rainwater to receive a permit from the department prior to collection of rainwater. Rainwater must be intended for beneficial use on the same property from where it was […]

Development vs. Depletion

Is “failing to plan for the future” an American value, or an anti-American value? Real estate speculators seem to care only about making money and not about the long term well-being of their customers. by Ronald Cooke Why aren’t real estate developers taking oil depletion into consideration in their community plans? The proposed 25,000 acre […]

Book Review: Brave nightmare world

as the very lucidly written The End of Oil makes clear, the day of reckoning for the oil industry is in sight, at least for some of us, and the costs when the oil runs out and the world is forced to confront both its energy needs and its abysmal lack of preparation for a successor to petroleum are going to staggeringly high.

Asia Times

Uranium prices are set to climb: Supplies dwindle even as Asia builds more nucle

“You have gone from a buyer’s to a seller’s market,” said Bob Mitchell, who holds physical uranium worth more than $26 million for Adit Capital Management in Portland, Oregon. “Most reactors under construction haven’t secured long-term supply and there is no inventory left among utilities.”

IHT

OPEC official says world oil market adequately supplied

The world oil market is adequately supplied with crude despite concerns over colder weather in the Northern Hemisphere, the OPEC Acting Secretary General Adnan Shihab-Eldin said on Friday in Vienna.

The 11 members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are expected to convene here on Jan. 30 to discuss production cut.

China View

Walking on oil – Alberta’s oil sands

C21ETV of Calgary, Canada, releases a one-hour made for Television documentary, entitled “Walking on oil – Alberta’s oil sands”. The first public screening of the program will be held on January 18, 2005 at Shell Centre, 400 – 4th Ave., S.W., Room SC-447, in Calgary, AB., Canada, from 5:00 to 7:00 P.M. 1. THE PROGRAM […]

America’s Finite Future?

Near the beginning of “Saturday Night Fever,” John Travolta’s Tony Manero, frustrated that his boss thinks he should save his salary instead of spending it on a new disco shirt, cries out, “Fuck the future!” To which his boss replies: “No, Tony, you can’t fuck the future. The future fucks you! It catches up with you and it fucks you if you ain’t prepared for it!” Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but America has morphed into a nation of Tony Maneros

ariannaonline

Global Dimming May Accelerate Global Warming

The sun is getting dimmer at the earth’s surface: since 1950, 10% less light hits the continental U.S., 30% in the former Soviet Union, and 16% in parts of the UK. Blame for this is placed on particulate pollution from hydrocarbons. But solar dimming, paradoxically, may be accelerating global warming.From the article: ——————- What has […]

China: Don’t Fear a US Backlash

If China were to implement a significant revaluation of its currency, as some in the US are demanding, I believe inflation in the US would surge, which could help cause the US bond market to collapse. A major Chinese currency revaluation would shift jobs from China to other developing countries, not the US. Thus, a […]

Mexico: Domestic Production by Petrobras Falls

Domestic production by Brazil’s state-owned oil giant Petrobras SA fell 3 percent in 2004, amid delays getting new production areas pumping and an output decline from existing fields, Petrobras said Thursday. Average oil output from Petrobras’ domestic operations dropped from 1.54 million barrels daily in 2003 to 1.49 million each day in 2004. The company’s […]

Why the West is riding for a fall

A little book with a big title, Dark Age Ahead, published last year, tracked the ebbs and flows of civilisations over centuries. It came to this chilling conclusion: “We show signs of rushing headlong into a Dark Age.” Not slipping towards a Dark Age. Rushing.

www.smh.com.au

An Attack A Day Keeps The Yankee At Bay

Saboteurs in Iraq are systematically attacking Iraq’s petroleum infrastructure, cutting off Baghdad from supply, according to AFP. Oil Minister Thamer Ghadban says, “Without security the oil industry will never be revived.”

Retail Sales Up, Jobless Claims Rise

U.S. retail sales jumped a more-than-expected 1.2 percent in December, but first-time jobless claims posted a surprise climb and import prices dipped more than anticipated, government reports showed on Thursday.

The rise in retail sales in December was fueled by strong sales at auto dealers, furniture stores and on-line retailers, a Commerce Department report said. Retail sales in all of 2004 jumped 8.0 percent, the biggest gain since 1999

www.financialsense.com

Bipartisan Commission Issues Strategy to Address Long-Term U.S. Energy Challenge

“Oil reliance is a fact we will face for some time. So we recommend incentives to spur global oil production, to increase domestic vehicle fuel economy, and to increase investment in alternative fuels. Our climate change plan would both limit greenhouse gas emissions and cap the costs of doing so. At the same time, it provides incentives for low- and non-carbon sources like natural gas, renewable energy, nuclear energy, and advanced coal technologies with carbon capture and sequestration, as well as for increased efficiency of energy end use. We are proposing programs that can work in the real world.”

View from the The National Commission on Energy Policy

MID-DAY BLACKOUT: ‘It has happened. Should not have happened. Cannot happen.’

A less-than-reassuring incredulity was the reaction of Tenaga Nasional deputy president Datuk Abdul Hadi Mohd Deros to the sequence of events leading to the power outage that affected the Klang Valley, Putrajaya and parts of Negri Sembilan, Malacca and Johor for nearly three hours today.

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