The Oil Drum: Local

Worldwide concern is growing over high oil prices, the security of supply of fossil fuels and its impact on many sectors of our society. Such concerns voiced at the oildrum over the past years are becoming part of the mainstream energy discussion. On 21 & 22 January 2009 a major business conference will be held in the Netherlands in which I am involved as an advisor in my role as President of ASPO Netherlands.

I invite you to come and listen to top executives and leaders from many industrial sectors who will explore the effects of high oil prices in their field of expertise or industry. Day 1 is dealing with political and macro economic aspects of changing oil supplies. Day 2 is teaching more about specific economic sectors, like Transport & Infrastructure, Food & Agriculture, Energy Systems and Chemicals & Materials.

There will be many speakers including Maria van der Hoeven (Dutch Minister of Economic Affairs), Matthew Simmons (invited), Peter de Wit (President Shell Netherlands), Kjell Aleklett (ASPO International), Jeremy Tomkinson (CEO The National Non-Food Crops Centre), Jörg Schindler (ASPO Germany) and Ger Bemer (CEO Royal Nedalco). For Conference Agenda and Registration, go to the the Permanent Oil Crisis website.

Under the fold, find the highlights from the program. Come to Amsterdam!

The ASPO conference in Sacramento began here Sunday, September 21, just after lunch – with a set of three concurrent sessions. Unfortunately I could only be in one place, and that was tied by structure, so my report on this afternoon is thus a little constrained.

The first track dealt with Reporting the Oil Story, and while the speaker list was strong, including Rob Collier, Bart Anderson of the Energy Bulletin, and Neil King of the WSJ, in the first session – having to sneak through the back of a mass to get to the room may have limited attendance a little. The second part of that track included presentations by Stuart Leavenworth of the Sacramento Bee; Lisa Margonelli of the New America foundation; Tom Whipple, who gives us the Peak Oil Daily News, and Review.

On Monday 20th and Tuesday 21st of October, Barcelona, Spain hosts the seventh annual international conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO). The programme is under the fold and includes papers from TOD staff Jérôme Guillet, Luís de Sousa and Ugo Bardi.

Most of The Oil Drum: Europe team will be there and we look forward to meeting you.

7th ASPO International Conference: Barcelona

On Saturday 26 July, the Sustainable Energy Forum and Engineers for Social Responsibility are holding a joint one-day conference at Unitec in Auckland, New Zealand on the theme "Responding to Oil Depletion and Climate Change".

The programme is below. The registration form is available online at http://www.sef.org.nz/conferences/2008_Registration.doc

Dedicated members of the TOD audience and public transport fans may be interested to hear the call for papers from UITP, the International Association of Public Transport, for a conference to be held in Vienna in June 2009. The theme for the 58th World Congress and Mobility & City Transport Exhibition is Public transport: making the right mobility choices.

This is the fourth segment on the ASPO Conference and follows a report on the Workshop day, the first morning report, and the rest of Thursday. We pick up on Friday morning, which began with a talk by Peter Tertzakian on the impact of resource constraints. He began by showing the rate at which the electric light was adopted into American homes, noting that essentially 100% was not reached until the 1980’s from inception in 1890. Initially the rate of change was very slow. To make a change there has to be a compelling alternative at a cheaper price, and yet as energy consumption has grown there has been a pattern. First the economy grows, then pressure starts to build up, then there is a breaking point, with the introduction of “a magic bullet”, and the cycle restarts. We have reached a point where the cycle has reached the breaking point – and now we look for the magic bullet. He pointed out that this occurred early in Japan in the 1970’s, and that they made the switch and by adding LNG and nuclear they have been able to stabilize oil consumption.

Oil, however, has many attractive properties, so why should we now change from it? From the 1908 arrival of the model T car growth has led us to congestion, urban growth and commuting times that have increased more than 20%. And change is not necessarily productive, after buying fluorescent lights, he now leaves them on longer.

The problem is one of scale, with few realizing not only the size of the current problem but also that to come. In India Tata Motors are about to introduce a car that will cost a Lakh (100,000 rupees or $2,500) which can be anticipated to become an enormous success with their growing middle class, and concurrently a large fuel demand generator. Within the $65 trillion world GDP the largest growth rates are in the developing countries.

The pace of information that comes at you during the ASPO meetings is so intense, and immediate that it is sometimes hard to capture all the information, particularly where it is tabulated data on a slide that is on the screen for only a short time. The organizers have, however, taken pity on the ineptitude of your humble scrivener, and from sometime in the morning (i.e. Saturday) they will have the Powerpoints up on their website . For the full power of the debate you will still, however, have to buy the DVD’s.

I had left you at the end of my earlier post with George Baker reviewing the situation in Mexico. We have seen Cantarell dramatically decline from the point that it was providing more oil than Mexico exported to the United States, to the current position where it produces significantly less. I asked George later about whether, given the choice between reneging on their contracts, and dropping internal use, which they would select. In contrast to Westexas views that countries will always look out for the internal demands first, he expected that they would fulfill their contracts. He was also curious as to why Pemex had installed an FPSO at the Ku Maloob Zaap field, since there is existing infrastructure that should have handled all the product. Mexican deepwater production is likely to come on in 2013, but the issue of cross-border fields has not been addressed.