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Written by Andrew Nikiforuk
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Monday, 15 January 2007 |
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From the August 14-September 10, 2006 issue of Canadian Business magazine
Jessica Ernst is a combative Alberta businesswoman with an unusual
problem: she can set her tap water on fire. No kidding. After filling
up a plastic pop bottle, the owner of Ernst Environmental Services, a
well-respected oilpatch consulting company, can light a match and
create a blue or yellow flame, complete with a rocket-like roar. Ever
since she made the explosive discovery last November, the
environmental-impact scientist has been asking a lot of questions about
aggressive shallow-gas developments in booming Alberta.
Ernst
now finds herself at the centre of a major resource controversy, as
well as something of a folk hero. "She has been a lightning rod for
rural Albertans, as well as a source of credible information," says
Liberal environment critic, David Swann. Ernst has not only forced
major groundwater investigations, but also prompted Alberta's leading
oil-and-gas regulator, the Energy and Utilities Board (EUB), to
temporarily suspend contact with her for alleged security reasons. The
board's legal counsel, Rick McKee, now endearingly refers to her as a
"pain in the butt."
The shy 49-year-old oilpatch consultant
says that the ongoing controversy has been a very unwelcome experience.
"I'd rather be running my business in peace," explains Ernst, who
frequently works with major oil and gas firms and First Nations on
northern wildlife issues. "But I had no choice. The regulators just
didn't do their due diligence.
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Written by Andrew Nikiforuk
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Monday, 15 January 2007 |
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From the October 9-22, 2006 issue of Canadian Business magazine
K
jell
Aleklett, a perky and persuasive physicist at Uppsala University,
talks with characteristic Swedish candour. As president of the
Association for the Study of Peak Oil, he jokes that all the big
"strawberries" in the world's oilfields have been thoroughly picked
over. ("Peak oil" just means the end of cheap oil.) Fifty years ago,
the world burned four billion barrels of oil a year and happily
discovered lots of big berry patches — 30 billion barrels a year.
Today, those figures are exactly reversed, which goes a long way toward
explaining volatile oil prices and Sweden's determined plan to get off
fossil fuels by 2020. "Money is not running the world," the jaunty
global player likes to say during his talks. "Money is used to buy
energy." Right.
Aleklett, whose first name (I kid you not) rhymes with Shell, can
also be cheeky. Last year, for example, he told the U.S. House
Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality that the American people — just
5% of the world's population — shouldn't be gobbling up 25% of the
world's oil production, because peak oil will probably start to hobble
most economies by 2010. Aleklett spelled out another inconvenient
truth: since 1900, not one country in the world has increased its GDP
without a corresponding increase in oil consumption. He ended his talk
by reminding the Yanks that Canada's fabulous and much-lauded oilsands
was no lifesaver. Don't count on it, he said.
The Swede, who
recently gave his berry-and-oil talk to the international Pulp and
Paper Products Council in Vancouver, later backed up his contrarian
conclusion with a 46-page report entitled A Crash Program Scenario for
the Canadian Oil Sands Industry. The provocative analysis, all based on
Canadian industry and government data, looks at the maximum that
companies could squeeze out of the tarry sands in the near future, and
asks whether this boreal smashing exercise would actually ease prices
at global gas pumps.
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Read more...
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Written by Administrator
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Sunday, 14 January 2007 |
Peak oil theory states: that any finite resource, (including oil), will have a beginning, middle, and an end of production, and at some point it will reach a level of maximum output as seen in the graph to the left.
Oil production typically follows a bell shaped curve when charted on a graph, with the peak of production occurring when approximately half of the oil has been extracted. With some exceptions, this holds true for a single well, a whole field, an entire region, and presumably the world. The underlying reasons are many and beyond the scope of this primer, suffice to
say that oil becomes more difficult and expensive to extract as a field ages past the mid-point of its life.
In the US for example, oil production grew steadily until 1970 and declined thereafter, regardless of market price or improved technologies.
In 1956 M. King Hubbert, a geologist for Shell Oil, predicted the peaking of US Oil production would occur in the late 1960's.
Although derided by most in the industry he was correct. He was the first to assert that oil discovery, and therefore production, would follow a bell shaped curve over its life. After his success in forecasting the US peak, this analysis became known as the Hubbert's Peak.
- The amount of oil discovered in the US has dropped since the late 1930s.
- 40 years later, US oil production had peaked, and has fallen ever since.
World discovery of oil peaked in the 1960s, and has declined since then. If the 40 year cycle seen in the US holds true for world oil production, that puts global peak oil production, right about now; after which oil becomes less available, and more expensive.
Today we consume around 4 times as much oil as we discover.
If we apply Hubbert's Peak to world oil production we estimate that approximately half of all oil that will be recovered, has been recovered, and oil production may reach a peak in the near future, or perhaps already has.
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