When Al-Jazeera scoops the American MSM on Peak Oil (or, are we really this stupid?)
Posted by Prof. Goose on March 24, 2005 - 12:15pm
Yep, that's right folks. Al-jazeera is talking more about peak oil than our dear MSM. (WTF??!!) You gotta read this one folks.
Money quote:
"It has long been denied that the US government bases any policy around the idea that global oil production may be in terminal decline. But a new US government-sponsored report, obtained by Aljazeera.net, does exactly that.
Authored by Robert Hirsch, Roger Bezdek and Robert Wendling and titled The Peaking of World Oil production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management, the report is an assessment requested by the US Department of Energy (DoE), National Energy Technology Laboratory."
Here's the article link: Aljazeera.Net - US report acknowledges peak-oil threat
Money quote:
"It has long been denied that the US government bases any policy around the idea that global oil production may be in terminal decline. But a new US government-sponsored report, obtained by Aljazeera.net, does exactly that.
Authored by Robert Hirsch, Roger Bezdek and Robert Wendling and titled The Peaking of World Oil production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management, the report is an assessment requested by the US Department of Energy (DoE), National Energy Technology Laboratory."
Here's the article link: Aljazeera.Net - US report acknowledges peak-oil threat
The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas has the abstract of the report. A key section of that abstract reads:
Improved fuel efficiency in the worlds transportation sector will be a critical element in the long-term reduction of liquid fuel consumption, however, the scale of effort required will inherently take time and be very expensive. For example, the U.S. has a fleet of over 200 million automobiles, vans, pick-ups, and SUVs. Replacement of just half with higher efficiency models will require at least 15 years at a cost of over two trillion dollars for the U.S. alone. Similar conclusions generally apply worldwide.
Commercial and near-commercial options for mitigating the decline of conventional oil production include:Â
1) Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), which can help moderate oil production declines from older conventional oil fields;
2) Heavy oil/oil sands, a large resource of lower grade oils, now produced primarily in Canada and Venezuela;
3) Coal liquefaction, an established technique for producing clean substitute fuels from the worlds abundant coal reserves; and
4) Clean substitute fuels produced from remote natural gas.
For the foreseeable future, electricity-producing technologies, e.g., nuclear and solar energy, cannot substitute for liquid fuels in most transportation applications. Someday, electric cars may be practical, but decades will be required before they achieve significant market penetration and impact world oil consumption. And no one has yet defined viable options for powering heavy trucks or airplanes with electricity.