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Climate chief warns battle to curb warming is becoming harder

The struggle to curb global warming is becoming increasingly fraught and costly, the head of the world’s leading climate science authority has warned. “We will have to work much harder to win this battle now than we would have been required to do 10 or 15 years ago,” Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told the FT in an interview. Speaking in London, Dr Pachauri said he was still optimistic the world would find a way of curbing the man-made greenhouse gas emissions that scientists say are warming the planet to potentially dangerous levels. “The challenge is daunting but I don’t for a moment feel pessimistic,” he said, explaining there were many examples of technical advances and political actions underway to combat the problem. The IPCC was set up in 1988 to give governments an expert assessment of how the climate is changing, and […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Ukraine's EU Neighbors See US Gas as Russian Hedge

Four Central European nations are urging the United States to boost natural gas exports to Europe as a hedge against the risk that Russia could cut its supply of gas to Ukraine, but the White House says such a move would take more than a year. Ambassadors from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic made their appeal Friday in a letter to John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. A similar letter was expected to be sent to Harry Reid, the Democratic leader of the Senate. The letter from the four nations, known as the Visegrad Group, asks for Congress to support speedier approval of natural gas exports. It notes that the "presence of U.S. natural gas would be much welcome in Central and Eastern Europe." The ambassadors say the unrest in Ukraine has revived Cold War memories, and energy security […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Ukraine’s EU Neighbors See US Gas as Russian Hedge

Four Central European nations are urging the United States to boost natural gas exports to Europe as a hedge against the risk that Russia could cut its supply of gas to Ukraine, but the White House says such a move would take more than a year. Ambassadors from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic made their appeal Friday in a letter to John Boehner, the Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. A similar letter was expected to be sent to Harry Reid, the Democratic leader of the Senate. The letter from the four nations, known as the Visegrad Group, asks for Congress to support speedier approval of natural gas exports. It notes that the "presence of U.S. natural gas would be much welcome in Central and Eastern Europe." The ambassadors say the unrest in Ukraine has revived Cold War memories, and energy security […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Shale, the last oil and gas train

How much faith can we put in our ability to decipher all the numbers out there telling us the United States is closing in on its cornering of the global oil market? There’s another side to the story of the relentless U.S. shale boom, one that says that some of the numbers are misunderstood, while others are simply preposterous. The truth of the matter is that the industry has to make such a big deal out of shale because it’s all that’s left. There are some good things happening behind the fairy tale numbers, though—it’s just a matter of deciphering them from a sober perspective. In a exclusive interview with James Stafford of Oilprice.com , energy expert Arthur Berman discusses:   Why US gas supply growth rests solely on Marcellus When Bakken and Eagle Ford will peak The eyebrow-raising predictions for the Permian Basin Why outrageous claims should have […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Peak Oil Denial: Reality Is Still Here

Page added on March 10, 2014 At the risk of starting a cat fight where truth may too quickly become a casualty, why don’t we more forcefully challenge those who deny peak oil (and global warming) and who do so for reasons that generally ignore reality in favor of narrowly-defined interests? Those motivations will ultimately do nothing but promote more eventual harm by denying the truths to those who clearly need them the most…. Of course, we run the risk of getting bogged down in he said/she-said arguments that quickly devolve into the lowest forms of ‘debate’, but why let those types of offerings go unchallenged? They feed on themselves, and it is tiresome and time-consuming to have to rebut all the nonsense. But if we don’t, uninformed readers and listeners have no reason to at least consider the possibility that there may indeed be other facts out there […]

Posted On : Published By : ASPO-USA
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Is Natural Gas-Fired Electricity An Intermittent Resource?

Wind power is only available when the wind is blowing. Similarly, cloudy skies means less solar power. The use of renewable energy resources for generating electric power is limited by the fact that renewable resources are not always available. This is why renewable energy is commonly described as an “ intermittent ” energy resource. Intermittency, or “ variability,” is renewable energy’s Achilles heel. Intermittent resources are considered potentially problematic because the output from individual units may vary widely in response to variation in available wind and solar energy, which can only be predicted to a moderate degree of accuracy. The assumption seems to be that non-renewable energy resources – namely, fossil fuels – are not intermittent. If the past three months have taught us anything, it is that not all fossil fuels are created equal in terms of availability. Unlike coal and fuel oil, natural gas cannot be stored […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Oil Choppy as Markets Weigh Ukraine Crisis, U.S. Stockpiles

Crude-oil futures were choppy in Asian trading hours Tuesday on market uncertainty around the Ukraine crisis and concerns over weakening oil demand in the U.S. as winter ends. On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in April traded at $101.06 a barrel at 0447 GMT, down $0.06 in the Globex electronic session. April Brent crude on London’s ICE Futures exchange fell $0.14 to $107.94 a barrel. After reacting sharply to weak Chinese trade data on Monday, oil markets will look to U.S. oil inventory data this week to gauge the trajectory of post-winter oil demand. The weekly data from the American Petroleum Institute are due later Tuesday. Oil inventories at the Nymex delivery point of Cushing, Okla. may fall further and test the bottom of the five-year range at 25.1 million barrels, Tim Evans, energy futures specialist at Citi Futures, said […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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WTI Crude Trades Near Three-Week Low, Brent Holds Steady

West Texas Intermediate traded near the lowest price in more than three weeks amid speculation that crude stockpiles expanded in the U.S., the world’s biggest oil consumer. Brent was steady in London . Futures were little changed in New York after losing 1.4 percent yesterday, the first drop in three days. Crude inventories are forecast to have risen by 1.85 million barrels last week, according to a Bloomberg News survey before an Energy Information Administration report tomorrow. Stockpiles climbed to 363.8 million in the prior seven days, the highest level since December. WTI is trading near a technical indicator that supported prices last week. “There’s an anticipated increase in supply in the U.S. as we make the changeover from the winter grade to the summer grade of petroleum,” said Michael McCarthy , a chief strategist at CMC Markets in Sydney who predicts investors may buy WTI contracts at $100.50 […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Natural-Gas Futures Edge Higher on Forecasts for Cold Weather

Natural-gas futures seesawed Monday but ended the day slightly higher, as traders focused on weather forecasts and storage levels that appear on track to end the season at a multi-year low. Natural gas for April delivery settled up 3.3 cents, or 0.7%, at $4.651 a million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Forecasts are calling for another winter storm to cut across the U.S. this week, and longer-term outlooks are calling for cold temperatures to persist in much of the country, notably the northern central and northeastern states. "A tug of war is going on between seasonally inclined traders looking at the calendar and watching the mid-continent […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple
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Deepwater rig market said to be in pullback mode: analysts

The global deepwater rig market, which was booming for the past few years, appears to be pulling back, with contract dayrate expectations for even high-specification rigs down about $50,000/d from late 2013 and at least one rig temporarily idle, observers said. The trend, which began to surface last year, was initially thought to be one of supply — the sheer number of newbuild floaters announced in 2010-2011 that are only now coming into the market. But experts are now acknowledging demand may also be an issue, International Strategy and Investment Group oil services analyst Jud Bailey said. On the supply side, David Ethan Hensel, driller Ensco’s senior vice president of marketing, said last month 27 new semisubmersibles and drillships are slated for delivery by year’s end, of which 13 are uncontracted. Five of these are in discussions with operators and may find work this […]

Posted On : Published By : Tom Whipple