Maine Owl

In ABC News interview with Terry Moran, Bush almost desperate for Saudi help


A Daily Show, January 17, 2008

The part of this Daily Show piece that shows President Bush's plaintive wail for more oil from the Saudi king in a media interview is about 2 1/4 minutes in. America apparently is great at spreading weapons and violence, but its Achilles heel is evident in the president's voice.

But you know what? I'm going to give Bush credit here for actually caring about the very serious issue of high oil prices that land mostly on top of the heads of the poor. Unfortunately, it's a bit pathetic and it's not very likely the Saudis could help much if they wanted to.

See this post yesterday for Bush's "stunning admission" on peak oil.

Saudis are tapped? "Stunning admission" from president

For some years we've been use to hearing a news story that says (roughly) that there is demand pressure/rising price in the oil markets and the Saudis can swing into play and just open the valves wider to pump more oil. That story may be over, and the president has suggested just that.

Because he seems genuinely to understand that high oil prices are hurting the domestic economy, President Bush in the Middle East this week asked for more oil:

Saudis and other exporters using more of their own oil


Year-on-year change in world oil exports, which clearly have peaked ("World Oil Exports: A Comprehensive Projection", The Oil Drum, October 10, 2006)

With oil breaching $100 the last couple of days, it is a good time to analyze a key trend that soon will affect major oil importing countries like the USA in a big, big way. This trend is the falling net quantity of world oil available for export. Just as an example from this key October 2006 post at The Oil Drum, Mexico will no longer export oil after 2015. Mexico! That country currently supplies a significant chunk of US imports.

More recently, a page-one story appeared in the Wall Street Journal for December 12, 2007 that explained what the Saudis have...

"in the works are new seaports, an extended railroad system, a series of new industrial cities and a score of refineries, power stations and smelters." All of that building means that more oil will stay inside the Arab nation. For every 100 barrels of oil produced by Saudi Arabia, 22 are used there. That is up from 16 barrels just seven years ago.

Another story in the International Herald Tribune elaborates:

Oil-rich nations use more energy, cutting exports
By Clifford Krauss - Published: December 8, 2007

The economies of many big oil-exporting countries are growing so fast that their need for energy within their borders is crimping how much they can sell abroad, adding new strains to the global oil market.

Experts say the sharp growth, if it continues, means several of the world's most important suppliers may need to start importing oil within a decade to power all the new cars, houses and businesses they are buying and creating with their oil wealth.

Indonesia has already made this flip. By some projections, the same thing could happen within five years to Mexico, the No. 2 source of foreign oil for the United States, and soon after that to Iran, the world's fourth-largest exporter. In some cases, the governments of these countries subsidize gasoline heavily for their citizens, selling it for as little as 7 cents a gallon, a practice that industry experts say fosters wasteful habits.

"It is a very serious threat that a lot of major exporters that we count on today for international oil supply are no longer going to be net exporters any more in 5 to 10 years," said Amy Myers Jaffe, an oil analyst at Rice University.

Rising internal demand may offset 40 percent of the increase in Saudi oil production between now and 2010, while more than half the projected decline in Iranian exports will be caused by internal consumption, said a recent report by CIBC World Markets.

There is no issue I can imagine that impacts American security more than this situation. America at once consumes oil with an intensity three times that of any other country, yet it is highly dependent on resources that must be brought in from outside. Meanwhile, those countries that supply the oil desire to keep more of it for themselves for their own development.

Individual states are in an even more dangerous situation. Maine, for example, has zero oil resources yet has a high per capita rate of consumption.

Plays on WLBZ, Bangor, local 11pm news

This story by CNN's Jim Boulden just ran on our local NBC affiliate. It's a pretty straight up explanation of the price run-up: demand exceeds supply. I did not hear the term "peak oil", however. But it does feature significant quotes from Matt Simmons, an important commentator on peak oil. The piece does a good job of analyzing possible economic harms from oil stress that are beginning to loom over us like a giant cloud on the future. Happy day!

Geological limits loom, create conditions for price march

The notion of "peak oil" almost certainly will gain some media coverage over the next few days. It's a widely misunderstood concept. I guess it's good that this arbitrary psychological benchmark will at least get some attention for peak oil and increase general awareness. Many world events better can be understood if the peaking issue is factored in because important actors respond to competition for energy-bearing resources.

A common error concerning peak oil is that it's taken to mean that the world will be "running out" of petrol sometime soon. In fact, the world has been running out of petrol since the first day it was put into use. It is a finite, depleting resource. But soon? No. It will not run out soon. In fact, just the opposite is true. Because the world is near production rate peak, there is more oil in the world than there ever has been in the 150-year history of the oil age. The problem is there is no current capacity to grow world production even more to meet ever-faster-growing demand from users.

Perhaps the smartest person blogging energy issues today is Jerome a Paris. For the last 2-1/2 years, Jerome has been on $100 watch. There is a remarkable series of posts at European Tribune and Daily Kos, all linked HERE. It's worth going through these, they reveal a lot about the dips and curves in what has eventually turned out to be a relentless price march. More hydrocarbon links always sit on the sidebar.... Additional comments below the fold....

Carbon-free, nuclear-free?

Peacecast.us is the podcasting sister site for Maine Owl. Your host produced a program for WERU Community Radio featuring a talk at the University of Maine last November by Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, ieer.org. The program broadcast earlier today on WERU's Voices program. An essential drift of the program is that carbon emissions can be eliminated without resorting to a dangerous new episode of building nuclear power plants. Direct to podcast: link.

A December 20 press release from IEER details Dr. Makhijani's new book-length study of the US energy situation, available as a free download (pdf, 4.4MB). The entire press release is reproduced below the fold.