Heinberg on peak oil and options for energy transition

3 Comments on "Heinberg on peak oil and options for energy transition"

Davey on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 8:17 am 



Energy transition will have to include drastic changes in attitudes and lifestyles. This will “Only” happen with a ground shaking crisis where BAU still functions but at a precarious level. After all we are on a knife edge of collapse from here on out. Collapse means little energy to zero energy in many locations. Last crisis sooner the better spoken objectively. On the subjective side “BAU” if you can hear me I need 2 years please.

Arthur75 on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 8:51 am 



Obama had a bit of straightforwardness yesterday :

“It is in our national security interests not to see an all-out civil war inside of Iraq, not just for humanitarian reasons, but because that ultimately can be destabilizing throughout the region. And in addition to having strong allies there that we are committed to protecting, obviously issues like energy and global energy markets continues to be important. ”
(transcript whitehouse gov)

One will remark the kind of euphemism consisting now in using “energy” to refer to petroleum or “oil&gas”.

And regarding oil and the petro dollar, if there is a “myth” or false common image that it would be extremely urgent to get out of these days, it is :

“first oil shock (73) = Yom Kippur/Arab embargo= geopolitical story= nothing to do with geologic constraints”

When the real story was :

– end 1970 : US production peak, the energy crisis starts from there, with some heating fuel shortages for instance (some articles can be found on NYT archive on that), or :
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/US_Oil_Production_and_Imports_1920_to_2005.png
– Nixon name James Akins to go check what is going on.
– Akins goes around all US producers, saying this won’t be communicated to the media, but needs to be known, national security question
– The results are bad : no additional capacity at all, production will only go down, the results are also presented to the OECD
– The reserves of Alaska, North Sea, Gulf of Mexico, are known at that time, but to be developed the barrel price needs to be higher
– In parallel this is also the period of “rebalance” between oil majors and countries on each barrel revenues (Ghadaffi being the first to push 55/50 for instance), and creation of national oil companies.
– there is also the dropping of B Woods in 71 and associated $ devaluation, also putting a “bullish” pressure on oil price.
– So to be able to start Alaska, GOM, North Sea, and have some “outside OPEC” market share, the barrel price needs to go up (always good for oil majors anyway) and this is also US diplomacy strategy
– For instance Akins, then US ambassador in Saudi Arabia, is the one talking about $4 or $5 a barrel in an OAPEC meeting in Algiers in 1972
– Yom Kippur starts during an OPEC meeting in Vienna, which was about barrel revenus percentages, and barrel price rise.
– The declaration of the embargo pushes the barrel up on the spots markets (that just have been set up)
– But the embargo remains quite limited (not from Iran, not from Iraq, only towards a few countries)
– It remains fictive from Saudi Arabia towards the US : tankers kept on going from KSA, through Bahrain to make it more discrete, towards the US Army in Vietnam in particular.
– Akins is very clear about that in below documentary interviews (which unfortunately only exists in French and German to my knowledge, and interviews are voiced over) :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fQJ-0jAr3LQ
For instance after 24:10, where he says that two senators were starting having rather “strong voices” about “doing something”, he asked the permission to tell them what was going on, got it, told them, they shat up and there was never any leak. The first oil shock “episode” starts at 18:00
The “embargo story” was in fact very “practical”, both for the US to “cover up” US peak towards US public opinion or western one in general, but also for major Arab producers to show “the Arab street” that they were doing something for the Palestinians.

In the end, clearly a wake up call that has been missed.

Note : About Akins, see for instance :
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/26/AR2010072605298.html

And his famous foreign affair article :
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~twod/oil-ns/articles/for_aff_aikins_oil_crisis_apr1973.pdf

His report to Nixon in 71 or 72 is still classified to my knowledge though, would be interesting to know if it can be declassified now.

Juan Pueblo on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 10:43 am 



I have been watching and reading RT regularly for the last few months and highly recommend it as a different perspective from western MSM. I particularly enjoy the “CrossTalk” show. Funny and interesing, available online.