Energy News and Notes

On September 26, Congressman Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-MD) conducted a conference in Frederick, MD to discuss, among other things, the state of energy production and consumption in this country and what might be done about current conditions. Dr. Bartlett appears to be unique among Congressional representatives in that he knows about the subject of Peak Oil and discusses it freely on the floor of the House.

The conference featured a number of diverse speakers who talked about: the excessive use of natural gas to produce fertilizers for agriculture, the need to adopt alternate forms of transporting goods, the possibility that New Orleans could be the first city lost to global warming, and possible increases in nuclear and solar power use in the coming years.

I would love to have attended but instead I was stuck in a conference of my own about 100 miles southeast. Dr. Bartlett’s office has thoughtfully provided a transcript of the conference on his website for detailed reading. Summaries of the conference also appear on websites for the Falls Church (VA) News-Press and the Hagerstown Herald-Press in Dr. Bartlett’s home district.

Among the speakers was Dr. Kenneth Deffeyes, author of the book Beyond Oil. Among other things, he has advanced the work of W. King Hubbert, who first studied the phenomenon of Peak Oil in the 1950s. Dr. Hubbert predicted in 1956 that US oil production would peak in 1970 (it actually took place in 1971) and that world oil production overall would peak around 2000. Earlier this year, Dr. Deffeyes made the prediction that the day of World Peak Oil, the day when total world oil production will start to decline, will take place on Thanksgiving Day this year. However, at Dr. Bartlett’s conference, he allowed that there is some margin for error in his calculations. The actual day, he said, could take place up to three weeks earlier or later, so possibly we can put off the big day until December 15.

In other energy news, oil prices have remained stable for the last few days at around $64 a barrel. This is good news by itself, but if this is a low period for oil usage and the oil price is incapable of getting any lower, it implies that no relief will be forthcoming and that even $2.50/gallon gasoline is a thing of the past. Meanwhile, the price of natural gas is $14.29 per million BTUs, or roughly 1000 cubic feet. This is a 15% increase in just the last eight days.

At Energy Bulletin, Alex MacSporan (http://www.energybulletin.net/9394.html) presents an extremely gloomy view of the distant future when the oil is gone and almost everyone is reduced to the life of subsistence farmers. I am skeptical of most of it, but he does eloquently relate our current situation to that of the characters in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and since this is Middle Earth Journal, I think it is worth a read.

Finally, Jon Talton, a columnist for the Arizona Republic in Phoenix, presents a humorous (sort of) view of what the USA will look like in 2031, after a series of energy disasters caused by an endless series of bad political decisions.