Chevron: the era of cheap oil is over

Energy giant Chevron started a new media campaign in a few newspapers today to warn people about the dangers of declining oil supplies. They launched the informative Will You Join Us website and started advertising it in several large newspapers.

The company says it took us 125 years to use the first trillion barrels of oil and it will only take 30 years before we'll use the next trillion.

Energy will be one of the defining issues of this century. One thing is clear: the era of easy oil is over. What we all do next will determine how well we meet the energy needs of the entire world in this century and beyond. Demand is soaring like never before. As populations grow and economies take off, millions in the developing world are enjoying the benefits of a lifestyle that requires increasing amounts of energy. In fact, some say that in 20 years the world will consume 40% more oil than it does today. At the same time, many of the world’s oil and gas fields are maturing. And new energy discoveries are mainly occurring in places where resources are difficult to extract, physically, economically and even politically. When growing demand meets tighter supplies, the result is more competition for the same resources.

We can wait until a crisis forces us to do something. Or we can commit to working together, and start by asking the tough questions: How do we meet the energy needs of the developing world and those of industrialized nations? What role will renewables and alternative energies play? What is the best way to protect our environment? How do we accelerate our conservation efforts? Whatever actions we take, we must look not just to next year, but to the next 50 years.

At Chevron, we believe that innovation, collaboration and conservation are the cornerstones on which to build this new world. We cannot do this alone. Corporations, governments and every citizen of this planet must be part of the solution as surely as they are part of the problem. We call upon scientists and educators, politicians and policy-makers, environmentalists, leaders of industry and each one of you to be part of reshaping the next era of energy.

I think this is a very nice initiative from Chevron to warn people about our upcoming energy problems. Check out the site, it's definitely worth a visit. It has a discussion board, and quite a lot of pages to educate yourself. Oh and the index page has a counter which measures how many barrels of oil are consumed during your visit.

They also have a second advertising campaign running which claims we consume two barrels of oil for every barrel discovered and this newly discovered oil is mostly of the type that requires a greater investment to refine.

How we can slow down peak oil with existing technologies

Resource Investor wondered where we are today on King Hubbert's oil production curve and takes a look at what the world can do the meet and fulfill its energy needs in the face of the declining oil production.

Firstly they talk about the fear that oil might reach the $100 per barrel price, up from about $60 today. The peakoil theory is quite interesting. It's not a doom scenario that worldwide oil supplies will be exhausted within a few years. No, current analysis from oil firms shows out we got about 40 years of supply left.

Oil is very important for our economy and contrary to what most people think it isn't solely used for fueling cars! Besides transport it's also used in power plants and for other very important applications because many chemical products use oil. Many people don't realize this but synthetic materials are made of oil! And it's also used for hundreds of other applications such as fertilizers, pesticides, solvents, asphalt, ...

Many production materials and transport use oil so as the oil price keeps increasing these products will also become more expensive.

Dr. Gal Luft regarding $100 a barrel:
My position on Peak Oil is that you know you've been there only a number of years after the fact. We are quite concerned about the fact that oil companies cannot ramp up production, but a lot of this is the fact that they don’t have access to reserves, more than the fact that the oil isn’t there. One of the other reasons that oil could reach $100 per barrel is the lack of spare capacity.
Read more at Resource Investor.

Biodiesel doesn't work - it's energy inefficient

Scientists at Cornell University and the University of California-Berkeley have investigated the production of ethanol and biofuel. Ethanol and other biofuels supporters claim they burn cleaner than fossil fuels but the new report claims the production of these biofuels uses more fossil energy than you can get back by burning the biofuel.

Here are the results:

But researchers at Cornell University and the University of California-Berkeley say it takes 29 percent more fossil energy to turn corn into ethanol than the amount of fuel the process produces. For switch grass, a warm weather perennial grass found in the Great Plains and eastern North America United States, it takes 45 percent more energy and for wood, 57 percent.

It takes 27 percent more energy to turn soybeans into biodiesel fuel and more than double the energy produced is needed to do the same to sunflower plants, the study found.

The study concludes ethanol production in the US doesn't benefit the nation's energy security, agriculture, economy nor environment.

More details and reactions from people who oppose this study can be found at Yahoo.