Russ Steele
Ben Emery recently re-surfaced the issue of peak oil. This morning Benny Peiser's emails from The Global Warming Policy Foundation provided some insight in to the current events driving peak oil over the horizon.
- Supplies of natural gas could last more than 250 years if Asian and European economies follow the U.S. unconventional reserves, the International Energy Agency said. --United Press International, 19 January 2011 More details here.
- Chinese geologists have detected "super-thick" oil and gas-bearing stratums (sic) in the northern part of the South China Sea and identified 38 offshore oil and gas-bearing basins, a senior official said on Saturday. Wang Min, vice-minister of land and resources, said thanks to the efforts of the geologists, new resources detected in the past 10 years accounted for about half of all resources found in the past half century, and the amount of new resources found each year has surpassed their annual consumption. – China Daily, 19 January 2011. More details here.
- Bill Gates Jumps Into Oil Exploration; Brazil's Reserves to Double? Bill Gates has read the tea leaves, and thinks that there is money in advanced oil exploration technologies. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is tossing his financial support behind a Houston company which hopes to utilize detailed analytics and measurement technologies to take some of the guesswork out of onshore oil and gas exploration. NEOS GeoSolutions -- whose investors include the legendary venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and investment bank Goldman Sachs -- today announced a $60 million investment from Gates and others. More detials here.
Exit queston: Is peak oil just a myth being promoted by environmentalist?
Update #1(01-20-11, 17:15) Investors are abandoning green energy after huge new gas and oil finds a according to an article in Energy & Fuel.
The rush away from green energy began in earnest in December 2010 when first a pro-green Spain slashed funding for wind projects by 35% and declared photovoltaic plants would be cut by 45%.
France then announced a four-month freeze on all solar projects. Then Germany announced it might discontinue the solar industry’s sweetheart tariffs in 2012. The German Energy Agency, the country’s official advisor on renewables called for Germany’s drive toward solar to be “cut back quickly and drastically.”
Dr Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency. told an assembled London audience that it was now “impossible” to meet targets to restrict agreed limits on emissions of carbon dioxide.
Birol conceded that as the eco-energy market stumbles the traditional energy sources show a sudden surge in reserves. Birol blames the shale gas boom in the US that has led to a 50% drop in investment in renewable energy. "There's suddenly much more gas available in the world than previously thought."
Read more at Suite101: Investors Abandon Green Energy after Huge New Gas and Oil Finds/
