To put this question in perspective, it is necessary to first look at the environmental situation prior to the crisis.Michael Klare: The Crisis and the Environment
Brian Beutler
...are liberals and environmentalists being honest when they say green jobs will offset the jobs lost when the fossil fuel industry is forced to downsize, and, if so, why are labor leaders so reluctant to support climate change policies? My own view on this is that it's an extremely narrow, hazy, and unanswerable question.
Nobody really knows what sorts of advancements investment in alternative energy projects will yield in the coming years, or how labor intensive the production of a kilowatt-hour will prove to be a decade or five from now. If a green energy revolution does in fact mean a net job loss in the energy sector, nobody really knows how many jobs will be created when people (who will eventually be saving on energy costs) have more money to toss around in other markets. And nobody really knows if the economic impact of that displacement will be worse than the economic impacts of climate change.
Gas cartel could have a significant impact on Europe
As the secretary-general of Opec flew into Moscow yesterday to talk about oil, Alexei Miller, the chairman of Gazprom, was jetting out of Tehran after concluding talks about gas with Iran and Qatar.[break]We need not worry that Russia is about to join the oily club. Today's visit by Abdullah al-Badri is a formality, but the talk of a gas cartel is a different matter. A combination of leading gas exporters, no matter how tentative, could pose a serious economic threat to Europe. We should first discount the hoopla from Gholam Hossein Nozari, the Iranian Oil Minister, who proclaimed yesterday that the talks between Russia, Iran and Qatar had reached “a consensus to set up a gas Opec”.
No such thing is likely - we can forget any notion of horse-trading gas production quotas — but what we can expect, and what we ought to fear, is the exchange of information about prices, development schedules and investment plans. Mr Miller said as much: “We have agreed to hold regular — three or four times per year — meetings of the 'big gas troika' to discuss key issues of gas market developments.”
LONDON - With oil prices tumbling below $70.00 per barrel on Wednesday, the pressure is on for the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries to put a lid on as much production as possible. But even though the 13 member cartel has stepped up efforts to recruit non-OPEC members, such as Russia and Norway, don't expect these countries to offer a bailout with cuts of their own.
OPEC Risks Split on Cuts as Economies Reel, Oil Drops
Bloomberg) -- OPEC, founded five decades ago to unify oil producers, risks dividing members as the group plans to cut output and raise prices just as developed nations face their worst recession since 1983.
ConocoPhillips Profit Rises 41% on Oil, Gas Prices
(Bloomberg) -- ConocoPhillips, the third-largest U.S. oil company, posted a 41 percent profit increase, exceeding analyst estimates, after gains in petroleum prices more than made up for a drop in production.Third-quarter net income climbed to $5.19 billion, or $3.39 a share, from $3.67 billion, or $2.23, a year earlier, the Houston-based company said today in a statement. Excluding such items as a divestiture gain, per-share profit was about $3.32, 13 cents higher than the average of 14 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.
Big oil prospect in New Zealand, says Canada firm
Canadian oil explorer Trans-Orient Petroleum Ltd. said Wednesday it has found shale rock with the potential to contain billions of barrels of oil on New Zealand's East Coast.The "world class source rocks" find in the East Coast basin region are "highly prospective for a fractured oil shale play," Trans-Orient Chief Executive Garth Johnson said in a statement.
McMoRan Discovery May Open `Frontier' of Oil Deposits
(Bloomberg) -- McMoRan Exploration Co.'s South Timbalier 168 oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico may become a catalyst for finds in areas previously deemed too far below the earth's surface to hold large crude deposits.The field, abandoned two years ago by Exxon Mobil Corp., is yielding crude at depths where only natural gas was thought to exist, said John Rogers Smith, a petroleum engineering professor at Louisiana State University. It's under shallow waters off Louisiana and may be drilled to almost 7 miles (11 kilometers) beneath the seafloor.
Proponents Push Fusion Power as Renewable Energy Source
The International Atomic Energy Agency and ITER, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor Organization have signed a Cooperation Agreement, which aims to further the development of fusion nuclear energy.
How to Catch Evolution in the Act
Scientists are planning to take advantage of global climate change and catch evolution in the act. They hope to collect millions of seeds from wild plants over specific time intervals and, for the first time, document how individual plants adapt to changes in the climate.
Report warns of greenhouse gas leap
Beijing - China's greenhouse gas pollution could double or more in two decades says a new Chinese state think-tank study that casts stark light on the industrial giant's role in stoking global warming.
Russia may create oil reserve to influence prices
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia may create an oil reserve to influence global prices, the country's top energy official said on Wednesday, as OPEC's Secretary General prepared for his first ever meeting with a Russian president.The resurrection of a decade-old idea of inventories comes as another sign of Russia's growing ties with OPEC, which has unnerved global consumers already worried by talks between Russia, Iran and Qatar to create an OPEC-style gas cartel.
"The Ministry of Energy is considering creating an oil production reserve, which would allow it to work more efficiently with prices on the market," said Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who oversees the energy sector.
Oil falls below $70 on US recession fears
LONDON – Oil prices fell below $70 a barrel Wednesday as investors shrugged off a looming OPEC production cut after company forecasts suggested the U.S. may be headed for a severe economic slowdown that would crimp demand for crude.Light, sweet crude for December delivery dropped $2.63 to $69.55 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by noon in Europe.
The November contract expired Tuesday and fell $3.36 to settle at $70.89. Last Thursday, that contract had declined as low as $68.57 a barrel, the lowest since June 2007.
VTB Says $47 Oil Will Hit Refiners
Russian oil producers that have refining assets are likely to cut their planned investments if the price for Brent oil falls to below $47 per barrel, VTB said Tuesday.Such integrated oil companies will break even at $28 per barrel of Brent oil, unless they take cost-cutting measures, the bank found in a research.
Petrobras May Extend Pre-Salt Investments on Crisis, Folha Says
(Bloomberg) -- Petroleo Brasileiro SA, Brazil's state-controlled oil company, may extend investments in the pre-salt oil area over a longer period of time because of the financial crisis, Folha de Sao Paulo reported, citing Chief Executive Officer Jose Sergio Gabrielli.
6 pipeline incidents occurred in B.C. in past 3 years
There have been six pipeline incidents involving hydrogen sulphide that meet Level 3 criteria — the highest — in British Columbia in the past three years, a spokesman for the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission said Tuesday.Those six incidents include two in the Dawson Creek area, the region where police and other authorities are now investigating two recent explosions that appear to have been deliberately set.
ANALYSIS - Iraq spared worst of credit crisis, exposed to oil drop
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - By any measure, Iraq has had a terrible time since 2003. Yet when it comes to the global financial crisis, Iraq may for once be in a privileged position.Tens of thousands of Iraqis have died in five years of rampant bloodshed. Much of the country's public works and infrastructure has been reduced to rubble. Educated Iraqis have fled the country en masse and reconciliation remains elusive.
But years of sanctions and isolation under Saddam Hussein's rule mean Iraq has not been woven into the fabric of a global financial system that is in the grips of its worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. "The good news, perversely, is that Iraq is not that tied into the international economy," an official at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Nigeria says not in its interest to cut oil output
ABUJA (Reuters) - Nigerian Oil Minister Odein Ajumogobia said on Wednesday it would not be in the country's interest to cut oil production as it would eat into badly needed revenues.
Russian Stocks Fall, Led by Lukoil, Rosneft as Oil Prices Slide
(Bloomberg) -- Russian stocks declined, led by oil producers OAO Lukoil and OAO Rosneft, after crude prices fell below $70 a barrel.The Micex Index of 30 stocks dropped 21.09, or 3.2 percent, to 631.42 AS of 1:15 p.m. in Moscow, heading for the first decline in three days. The dollar-denominated RTS Index slipped 3.5 percent to 692.02.
Gazprom Net Reaches Record $10 Billion on Gas Prices
(Bloomberg) -- OAO Gazprom's first-quarter profit jumped 30 percent, as Russia's largest energy producer reaped record earnings from higher prices and greater natural-gas sales to Europe.
LONDON - Frozen credit markets are making it impossible to borrow funds even for Gazprom, the Russian gas goliath that aims to become the world's largest company. Releasing its first quarter earnings on Wednesday, the Moscow-based company warned that the ongoing global liquidity crisis "could affect the ability of the group to obtain new borrowings and re-finance its existing borrowings," on similar terms to the past.
Jan Lundberg continues campaign against petroleum dependency
Jan Lundberg has been in the oil business a long time. For the last 37 years, the life-long activist -- who called Arcata home for 12 years -- has worked as both an oil industry analyst and in the nonprofit world, championing the campaign against society's dependence on petroleum and what he calls the “synthetic sea.””Some things have to change and it's not really about policies or better laws or identifying the criminal, it's more like what is our culture all about? Is it about bowing down to technology?” he said on the phone Tuesday from Portland, where he was scheduled to give a talk on the concept of peak oil.
Kunstler: The end of suburban life is coming
Americans had better get used to the idea that, one day, they'll live more like their great, great-grandparents than their parents.A powerful combination of depleted oil fields, climate change, population growth and financial crisis soon will conspire to change the American lifestyle drastically, according to best-selling writer James Howard Kunstler.
And any hope offered by the recent dip in oil and gas prices is false hope, Kunstler, author of "The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes," said in a lecture Tuesday in the University of Georgia Chapel.
"Because the price of oil has gone down in recent weeks, the American public is once again going to get the false idea that we don't have a problem," he said. "We do have a problem, and it's a big problem."
Preparing for Peak Oil: Local Authorities and the Energy Crisis
"Global oil production is approaching a peak, followed by a permanent decline. It will radically change the way our societies are run: our transport systems, how we produce food, where we work and live.There are a great many things that councils must do, and policies that need to be changed, if we are to have any chance of mitigating the economic effects of peak oil. On the plus side, some of these initiatives already exist (recycling, road pricing, etc.) but these efforts need to be significantly expanded, and there remain entire areas of policy that have yet to be addressed... "
Drilling rhetoric: Lifting the veil on four national energy plans
For many of us, conservation was always easy to resent. It represented all the stuff you wanted to do but couldn’t. Tied to land, oceans, and all that natural stuff upstream of the sawmill, conservation tells us to cool our consumption. That our motorbike isn’t welcome in this state park.By comparison, “efficiency” (as in “marvel of”) is in blinding ascendance. Efficiency is for those of us downstream of the dam, where the power lines faithfully stream into our entertainments, lubricated motors, and chiming gadgetry. Efficiency doesn’t insist on self-denial, it promises technical patches that will allow us to do more with less. (Time will tell how far it actually goes toward shielding us from our high-waste lifestyle.) But the shift in rhetoric is as much to thank for today’s new energy debate as global warming’s conquest of Suburban Mind, the summer’s spike in gas prices, and Repub Swiftboater T. Boone Pickens’ rebirth as a new-style Energy Patriot.
Efficiency forever consigns Cheney’s Vader-like loathing to the afterword of the now-concluding Age of Oil. And it leaves the future open wide.
So, it should come as no surprise that all of the most significant national energy plans before us — those of Obama, McCain, Pickens, and Google — have efficiency, the smartest use of our generated electricity, at their core. Energy innovation is fast becoming our first stop on the road to the New Energy Economy, rather than gathering place of 4-cylinder weaklings. Obviously, the choices before us will require more than simply stopping the anticipated one-percent annual growth in energy demand. To eliminate the release of greenhouse gases, reduce our energy imports, and spur a sagging economy, will require much more than efficiency alone.
Energy: McCain and Obama share goals, if not strategies
WASHINGTON — John McCain and Barack Obama share remarkably similar energy policy goals, but they disagree on how best to achieve them.
Oil sands are model of development, U.S. official says
CALGARY - Canada's oil sands are a great example of responsible development of a natural resource, a senior U.S. energy department official said Tuesday.Jeffrey Kupfer, acting deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, said he felt "invigorated" after visiting the Syncrude Canada Ltd. Oil sands project near Fort McMurray.
"It's a great example of developing an important natural resource, for Canada, the U.S. and the whole world, and doing it in an environmentally responsible way," he said in an interview.
Why Data Centers Can't Save Energy
The Department of Energy is asking for industry input on where it should place future research and development priorities in reducing data center energy consumption. It has much to learn--and much to teach.For the immediate future, the DOE should de-emphasize improvements to facility technology as "the" solution. We already know a lot, and users aren't paying much attention. Working to make facility components marginally more efficient, when the driver of data center power consumption is the increasing numbers of servers and storage, misses the root cause of data center energy consumption growth.
Wal-Mart sees shifts in shoppers' buying habits
LOS ANGELES — Financial insecurity is forcing Wal-Mart shoppers to change buying habits, cut credit card use and live more paycheck-to-paycheck, the CEO of the U.S. division of the world's largest retailer said Tuesday.Economic pain is leading to what Eduardo Castro-Wright termed "disturbing behaviors" among shoppers over the past few months.
...About 80% of shoppers cite "personal financial security" as their top concern in internal surveys, up from 65% just a few months earlier, he said. A year ago, the price of gasoline was the top concern.
Report: Toyota to post first sales drop in 10 years
TOKYO (AP) — Toyota Motor Corp. will post its first decline in annual global sales in a decade this year, hit by slowing demand worldwide amid the financial crisis, a Japanese newspaper predicted Wednesday.
Tao built River Dragon from a start-up with four employees into one of China's biggest textile printing firms in just five years. He had even grander dreams: He wanted to see his company's stock trade on Nasdaq alongside the likes of Microsoft and Intel.The dreams are dead. River Dragon shut down on Oct. 7. Tao and Yan have vanished, leaving behind more than $290 million in debt and a lot of anger in this city 140 miles south of Shanghai in the Yangtze River Delta. The company's demise put 4,000 workers on the street and jilted hundreds of suppliers and creditors.
Tokyo leader berates countries on climate change
TOKYO (AFP) – Tokyo's outspoken governor on Wednesday berated world leaders for their "foolish" failure to halt global warming as major cities met to plan action on the climate.
Seoul turns to bicycles to combat global warming
SEOUL (AFP) – The Seoul city government has announced plans to build 207 kilometres (129 miles) of cycle paths over the next four years extending to all corners of the South Korean capital, according to officials.The 120-billion-won (88-million-dollar) plan is based on a "road diet" programme, under which the number of lanes for passenger vehicles in major roads will be cut to create new cycle paths.
Data show U.S. riding out worst storms on record
More frequent and powerful hurricanes from the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico since the mid-1990s have created one of the most dangerous and costliest storm eras in recorded history, a USA TODAY analysis of weather data shows.Since 1995, there have been 207 named storms in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Gulf of Mexico — a 68% increase from the previous 13 years, according to statistics from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Of those storms, 111 were hurricanes, a 75% increase over the previous period.
Finance, climate crises two sides of same coin: experts
GENEVA (AFP) – The financial and climate change crises facing the world are interlinked and businesses can only tackle them through concerted, coordinated and coherent action, environmental experts said Tuesday."They can't be separated, they're two sides of the (same) coin and therefore the solutions have to be coordinated too," said Erik Rasmussen, head of a Danish think tank and member of the Copenhagen Climate Council.
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