Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Iran Opens Its First Oil Products Bourse
Note the word "first." There is talk of a second, to be priced, possibly, in rubles.
Paul Krugman on Peak Oil
Military Continues to Surround Cheyenne Mountain with Renewables
Peak Oil, Missing Oil Meters and an Inactive Pipeline: The Real Reason for the Invasion of Iraq?
Depression Risk Might Force U.S. to Buy Assets
GAO Head Leaves to Run Blackstone Chairman's Foundation
Iran/U.S. Meeting
China Denies U.S. Spying Charges
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed - Guilty?
Michael Kane blog.
Indonesian Tsunami Detector Severed
No Ocean Untouched by Hand of Man (New Study)

12 comments:

Butch said...

This sentence is from the article on Iran and the U.S. meeting. Does anybody notice anything funny about this? ;-)

"Daniel Glaser, the Treasury Department's deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, was the meeting's co-chairman."

murph & freeacre said...

It's been a while since I checked in and read what is posted and comments. I am somewhat taken back that there is no discussion about the relationship of energy availability and population. If history is going to show accurately that relationship, then we must conclude the 6+billion now on this earth is a direct relationship to the amount of cheap energy in abundance. If we conclude that fossil energy is finite and over half of it has been used, we then must conclude that unless we are able to provide a substitute, we are then also at peak food production and if if oil decreases in availability and/or increase in price, food production will decline. I think we can all speculate what that means.

Rice Farmer said...

Murph & Freeacre -- There's been no discussion as I think everyone here just considers that a given. The undiscerning argue that Malthus was wrong because the world population just keeps going up and up, but what they overlook is that the supply of easy energy has also gone up and up, from wood to coal to oil. So, the chickens are coming home to roost. Of course a great deal of misery and death could be avoided by a redistribution of money and resources, immediately changing land use patterns, restructuring economies, and powering down, but unfortunately it ain't gonna happen because elites like the current arrangement.

Peter J. Nickitas said...

Broken link on missing meters and peak oil. Is there an alternative site for this story? I first saw it here in 2007.

Peter N., Minneapolis

Anonymous said...

Peter J. Nickitus - common glitch caused by blogger adding to the url. Here's the working link:

Peak Oil, Missing Meters.

Anonymous said...

Peter J. Nickitas - I apologize for misspelling your name in the previous comment.

A peon said...

Here you go Peter J. this one should work: http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Iraq%20and%20Saudi%20Arabia.html

brell said...

that Iraq-Saudi Arabia oil transfer document sounds spot-on to me... good sleuthing!!

Anonymous said...

Japan politicians to get wake up on peak oil -
There will be a Peak oil conference on Feb 29. at Sangiin in Tokyo (House of Councillors, The National Diet of Japan). The speaker will be Ishii Yoshinori who wrote a book about peak oil is former head of the National Institute for Environmental Studies and has a website here: http://www007.upp.so-net.ne.jp/tikyuu/index.html

Information about the meeting here (in Japanese): Ishi Yoshinori talk on Peak Oil

Tyler Havlin said...

Oil Prices Close at New High Above $100

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080226/oil_prices.html

Oil futures surged to close at a new record Tuesday as traders focused on supply concerns and a bullish stock market rather than renewed signs of a shaky U.S. economy.

Crossing the psychologically significant $100 mark once again -- oil prices previously crossed that hurdle last week -- in itself may have helped fuel the rally by triggering computer programs set to buy at certain levels and enticing new speculators into the market, said Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Ill.

Meanwhile, the Labor Department reported that wholesale inflation jumped 1 percent in January, more than twice what analysts had been forecasting. That report, coupled with the consumer confidence index, pointed to an economy that is slowing even as prices are rising.

And Standard & Poor's added to homeowners' angst when it said its quarterly home price index tumbled 8.9 percent in the final quarter of 2007 -- the indicator's sharpest decline in its 20-year history.

Tyler Havlin said...

Investment in North Sea falls sharply

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e962d85e-e3dd-11dc-8799-0000779fd2ac.html

Insufficient investment, project slippage and depletion of the mature fields developed in the North Sea’s heyday meant that production was likely to fall short of objectives set at the start of the decade, the association said. The government and the industry agreed a target of keeping Britain’s UK’s oil and gas production at about 3m barrels of oil equivalent a day by 2010. It now looks likely to be only about 2.4m boe/d.

The UK sector is thought to still hold 16.5bn-25.5bn boe of oil and gas. However, the resources are increasingly being found in very small pockets that are difficult to exploit commercially. About half of last year’s discoveries held less than 20m boe: enough to provide the UK North Sea’s production for just a week.

Tyler Havlin said...

Worries Grow for Worse 'Stagflation'

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080226/economy_twin_evils.html

It's a toxic economic mix the nation hasn't seen in three decades: Prices are speeding upward at the fastest pace in a quarter century, even as the economy loses steam.

Economists call the disease "stagflation," and they're worried it might be coming back.

Already, paychecks aren't stretching as far, and jobs are harder to find, threatening to set off a vicious cycle that could make things even worse.

The economy nearly stalled in the final three months of last year and probably is barely growing or even shrinking now. That's the "stagnation" part of the ailment. Typically, that slowdown should slow inflation as well -- the second part of the diagnosis -- but prices are still marching higher.

The latest worrisome news came Tuesday: a government report showing wholesale prices climbed 7.4 percent in the past year. That was the biggest annual leap since 1981.

"We're in a slowdown," Press Secretary Dana Perino said at the White House, where the economics talk was still upbeat until recently.