Users of Microsoft's Hohm energy management software can now access real-time meter readings from anywhere with a wireless signal.  The company has partnered up with Blue Line Innovations, which will provide a wireless sensor that links your meter to your Hohm account.

While the online Hohm service has been free, the Blue Line upgrade will cost extra.  It's $250 for the package, which includes the sensor that mounts to the meter, a wireless in-home energy monitoring device and a WiFi gateway.  But the benefits include being able to see energy usage data in real-time and make adjustments, like turning off lights or electronics, if needed.

Before now, users could monitor their energy use only through analyzing past data provided by their utilities or by manually entering information from energy bills.  This upgrade will likely show the true value of energy management software:  the ability to instantly see the impact of your energy use, at any time, any where.

The only downer is that while Hohm has been accessible by any browser or operating system, the upgrade will only work with a Windows machine.

via TechFlash

Recently, ASPO-USA's newsletter printed an interview (Part 1 and Part 2) with Oil Drum staff member Art Berman (aeberman). Art is a geological consultant whose specialties are subsurface petroleum geology, seismic interpretation, and database design and management. The people doing the interview are members of the "Peak Oil Review Team," abbreviated POR in the text below. This is the shale gas portion of the interview.

POR: Can you give us your latest updated perspective on the shale gas story?

Art Berman: You have to acknowledge that shale gas is a relatively new and significant contribution to North American supply. But I don’t believe it’s anywhere near the magnitude that is commonly discussed and cited in the press. There are a couple of key points here. First the reserves have been substantially overstated. In fact I think the resource number has been overstated.

If you investigate the origin of this supposed 100-year supply of natural gas…where does this come from? If you go back to the Potential Gas Committee’s [PGC] report, which is where I believe it comes from, and if you look at the magnitude of the technically recoverable resource they describe and you divide it by annual US consumption, you come up with 90 years, not 100. Some would say that’s splitting hairs, yet 10% is 10%. But if you go on and you actually read the report, they say that the probable number-I think they call it the P-2 number-is closer to 450 Tcf as opposed to roughly 1800 Tcf. What they’re saying is that if you pin this thing down where there have actually been some wells drilled that have actually produced some gas, the technically recoverable resource is closer to 450. And if you divide that by three, which is the component that is shale gas, you get about 150 Tcf and that’s about 7 year’s worth of US supply from shale. I happen to think that that’s a pretty darn realistic estimate. And remember that that’s a resource number, not a reserve number; it has nothing to do with commercial extractability. So the gross resource from shale is probably about 7 years worth of supply.

For a project that a colleague and I did for a client, I actually went in and looked at all the shale plays and assigned some kind of a resource number to them. I also used some work that was done by Wendell Medlock at Rice University’s Baker Institute. He did an absolutely brilliant job of independently determining what the size of the resource plays in Canada and the US might be.

The resource hasn’t been misrepresented but the probable component has not been properly explained as a much smaller component of the total resource; I guess they just didn’t read the PGC’s report carefully enough. If you take the proved reserves plus the report’s probable technically recoverable number, we have something like 25 years of natural gas supply in North America, which is quite a bit. It’s a lot. I don’t say any of this to give shale gas a bad name.

The other interesting thing about the PGC’s report that nobody seems to pay attention is this: they said there is something like 650 Tcf of potential shale gas. Well, there’s 1000 Tcf of something else. What’s the something else? It’s conventional reservoirs plus non-shale/non-coalbed-methane unconventional reservoirs. So there’s 70 percent more resource in better quality rocks than shale. It just astonishes me that nobody has paid any attention to that.

So that’s the simple view. And then the other thing that we see empirically is that if you look at any of these individual shale-gas plays-whether it’s the Haynesville or the Barnett or the Fayetteville-they all contract to a core area that has the potential to be commercial that is on the order of 10 to 20 percent of the geographic area that was originally represented as all being the same. So if you take the resource size that’s advertized-say for the Haynesville shale, something like 250 Tcf-and you look at the area that’s emerging as the core area, it’s less than 10 percent of the total. So is 25 Tcf a reasonable number for the Haynesville shale? Yeah, it probably is. And it’s a huge number. But the number sure is not 250 Tcf, and that’s the way all of these plays seem to be going. They remain significant. It hasn’t been proved to me yet that any of it is commercial, but they’re drilling it like mad, there’s no doubt about it.

Those are sort of the basic conclusions. And when you look at it probabilistically, which I think is the only intelligent way to look at anything which you have any uncertainty about, what you realize is that the numbers that are being represented by all of these companies as “truth” are probably like the P-5 case, having a 5 percent probability of being true. So they say, “well, our average well in the Haynesville is going to be 7 Bcf,” and I say there will certainly will be wells that make 7 Bcf but there’s no way that the average is that high. My take is that there will probably be 5 percent of wells that will make 7 Bcf.

I just think everybody is caught up in this. I have a slide where I say, you guys need to get over the love affair and get on with the relationship. You keep talking about how big it is and how great it is, but at some point you have to live together and that’s hard work. You have to be honest with yourself and with each other and you have to do some work. I just don’t think we’ve moved past the love affair.

One other important thing is the Barnett shale. We keep coming back to it because it’s the only play that has much more than 24 months worth of history. I recently grouped all the Barnett wells by their year of first production. Then I asked, of all the wells that were drilled in each one of those years, how many of them are already at or below their economic limit? It was a stunning exercise because what it showed is that 25-35% of wells drilled during 2004-2006-wells drilled during the early rush and that are on average 5 years old-are already sub-commercial. So if you take the position that we’re going to get all these great reserves because these wells are going to last 40-plus years, then you need to explain why one-third of wells drilled 4 and 5 and 6 years ago are already dead.

POR: When you say one-third of the wells are already sub-commercial, do you mean they have been shut in, or that they are part of a large pool where no one has sharpened the pencil?

Berman: Some of them never produced to begin with. No one talks about dry holes in shale plays, but there are bona fide dry holes-maybe 5 or 6 or 7 percent that are operational failures for some reason. So that’s included. There are wells that, let’s just call them inactive; they produced, and now they’re inactive, which means they are no longer producing to sales. They are effectively either shut-in or plugged. Combined, that’s probably less than 10 percent of the total wells. But then there are all the wells that are producing a preposterously low amount of gas; my cut-off is 1 million cubic feet a month, which is only 30,000 cubic feet per day. Yet those volumes, at today’s gas prices, don’t even cover your lease/operating expenses. I say that from personal experience. I work in a little tiny company that has nowhere near the overhead of Chesapeake Energy or a Devon Energy. I do all the geology and all the geophysics and there’s four or five other people, and if we’ve got a well that’s making a million a month, we’re going to plug it because we’re losing money; it’s costing us more to run it than we’re getting in revenue.

So why do they keep producing these things? Well, that’s part of the whole syndrome. It’s all about production numbers. They call these things asset plays or resource plays; that reflects where many are coming from, because they’re not profit plays. The interest is more in how big are the reserves, how much are we growing production, and that’s what the market rewards. If you’re growing production, that’s good-the market likes that. The fact that you’re growing production and creating a monstrous surplus that’s causing the price of gas to go through the floor, which makes everybody effectively lose money….apparently the market doesn’t care about that. So that’s the goal: to show that they have this huge level of production, and that production is growing.

But are you making any money? The answer to that is…no. Most of these companies are operating at 200 to 300 to 400 percent of cash flow; capital expenditures are significantly higher than their cash flows. So they’re not making money. Why the market supports those kinds of activities…we can have all sorts of philosophical discussions about it but we know that’s the way it works sometimes. And if you look at the shareholder value in some of these companies, there is either very little, none, or negative. If you take the companies’ asset values and you subtract their huge debts, many companies have negative shareholder value. So that’s the bottom line on my story. I’m not wishing that shale plays go away, I’m not against them, I’m not disputing their importance. I’m just saying that they haven’t demonstrated any sustainable value yet.

POR: How have analysts and investors responded to your studies and your viewpoints?

Berman: My biggest clients, for this kind of talk and work, are investment bankers and investment advisory companies. I gave two talks in Calgary over the last week-one to CIBC and the other to Middlefield Capital. I’ve given multiple talks to energy investment companies. They’re the people who are really paying attention to this. The answer is that a significant portion of the investment banking sector takes what I’m saying quite seriously, but what they do with that I can’t tell you.

POR: How has the gas-producing industry responded to your studies and views?

Berman: The U.S. companies have pretty much chosen to ignore me. Or they’ve made public statements that I’m a kook or I don’t understand or I’m hopelessly wrong. Some them-especially the Canadian companies for some reason-want me to advise them even though my message is not a message that they prefer.

It’s a fascinating process. My sense of it is that the level of interest, and whatever notoriety I have, has only increased. I credit the ASPO 2009 peak oil conference in Denver with really kicking that off. That presentation was a tipping point in awareness about the truth of shale gas reserves and economics. After my presentation, I had almost five hours of discussions with analysts that had attended the talk. Associated Press reporter Judith Kohler published an article -Analyst: Gas shale may be next bubble to burst? that was distributed to hundreds of outlets in the national press and that brought this topic into the mainstream. U.S. E&P executives responded with a series of ad hominem opinion editorials and earnings meeting statements that minimized the fact-based positions that were presented at the ASPO 2009 meeting.

Before that, I spent months making presentations to professional societies of geologists, geophysicists and engineers throughout the Gulf Coast. These are colleagues who do the work of the petroleum industry that gave me what amounted to a peer review. I know that there were silent people in those audiences who disagreed with me, but the overall response was supportive and enthusiastic. I also got hundreds of e-mails responding to my World Oil articles that included testimonials about companies’ experience with shale gas wells in the real world.

E&P executives don’t have any such base, nor do they know about this experience. In all of my presentations, I acknowledge people that include some of the most respected E&P CEOs, opinion leaders, and experts on oil and gas price formation, reservoir engineering, economic evaluation and risk analysis. In addition, there are also many industry analysts in research companies, financial advisory and fund management firms, and reporters in the energy press that consult and publish opinions about my position on shale gas.

The point is that I am not alone. I have a large community of supporters with impeccable credentials. I am a cautious and somewhat conservative person in my professional work because I advise clients on high-risk and very large bets on wells and investments. My reputation and future income depends on the credibility of my evaluations and the quality of my research. I do not believe that the same can be said for the CEOs of the U.S. public companies that dispute my findings.

I’m a fairly busy guy, and a lot of people want to hear the story; I talk to Bloomberg and Platts and others all the time. If anything, I feel as if I’m sort of slipping into the mainstream, in a weird way. It’s a scary thought. I’m now asked to participate in august panel discussions, albeit representing the radical fringe; but a year ago nobody even wanted to talk to me.

I don’t know where it’s going. It seems inevitable to me that it is sort of a bubble phenomenon; but bubbles can go on for 25 years or so, even though everyone knows that’s what’s happening. As long a capital markets continue to fund these things it’s going to keep on going. I’m not saying that’s even a bad thing, though I wouldn’t put any money in it, that’s for darned sure.

POR: Back in the 1960’s the phrase “too cheap to meter” was introduced, by some promoters, as being the future of nuclear energy. Over time, the reality obviously didn’t match the hype. It feels to us that there could be a parallel with the recent 100-year-supply statement…

Art Berman: It could be a big denial issue…

POR: Like that early era for atomic power, the shale gas story still seems so new that there are a lot of uncertainties about the shale gas bucking bronco, if you will. How will the industry respond to the uncertainties? How are they responding to the current tough price signals?

Berman: Not at all right now. I had a whole series of talks that I gave last spring called, “North American Natural Gas: Acknowledging the Uncertainty.” That’s all I want people to do. Not that they shouldn’t drill for it or that I’m right; all I’m saying is acknowledge the uncertainty.

A Few Related Links

Art Berman's Presentation at October 2009 ASPO-USA Meeting Shale Plays: A Time for Critical Thinking

Shale Gas Estimates Perhaps Optimistic - An Interesting and Worrying Talk at ASPO by Heading Out, October 2009

More Natural Gas Controversy by Gail the Actuary, November 2009

ExxonMobil’s Acquisition of XTO Energy: The Fallacy of the Manufacturing Model in Shale Plays by Art Berman, February 2010

This is the EIA's Natural Gas forecast from the current Annual Energy Outlook. While shale gas didn't amount to a very large percentage of production through 2008, the forecast they are using is for it to provide a large increase. Without it, US natural gas production would fall.

This allows flow down the drill pipe in the well, and then back up through the gap between the drill pipe and the steel and concrete casing of the well that is known as the liner. This gap that the mud will flow through is known as the annulus, and mud will be pumped down the pipe and up the annulus in a process known as circulation, which, because the mud will leave the drill pipe at the bottom of the well is known as “bottoms up.” According to Mr Wells in his later brief, once everyone is sure that the well is in good condition, they will pull the packer. This will likely occur tomorrow, and once that is out of the way and the well recleaned, the final length of casing for the relief well will be run down to the bottom of the well and cemented in place.



Normally this is a job for which Halliburton would be subcontracted (as they would have been contractor for the earlier cementing of the casings higher in the well bore). However, in the brief Admiral Allen became a little coy in regard to who would actually be doing the work.

You know I don’t know off ha(n)d but we can find that out and get it to you. You know a lot of these things are done by subcontractors and there are a lot of them that are out there. And they aggregate together to do what their specialty is and we will get that and pass it to you. I just don’t know off hand.

I expect that this operation will follow much along the same lines, only the relative locations of the choke and kill lines may be relatively displaced by the changes in circuitry that happened during the oil collection phase of the effort.

There is increasingly less concern over the likelihood of there being an additional leak of oil from this well, into the Gulf, though that does not preclude other accidents from happening elsewhere. As Admiral Allen noted:

. . . the Coast Guard received a report that the uninspected towing vessel, Pere Ana C pushing the barge Captain Beauford collided with an oil and natural gas rig in the northern part of Barataria Bay south of Lafitte.

The structure itself is called C117 and that is a state owned well. We have about 6,000 feet of boom around the facility right now, there’s an over flight in progress with Admiral Paul Zukunft and Governor Jindal right now and they are assessing the issues on scene, and will be available to report updates on that later today and out of the JIC and so forth.

India’s new dams threaten Pakistan’s farming sector

The World Bank, which had been a party to the original treaty, appointed a Swiss civil engineer to arbitrate the technical aspects. In 2007, the engineer released his findings. While modifying some of the project’s design, he found technically that India’s argument was sound and ruled in its favour as far as the spillway gates were concerned.

As a result, Pakistan lost its single assurance that India would not manipulate the flow of water. And, now that it had the capability, India used it. To quote a recent article by John Briscoe, a former senior adviser to the World Bank who has worked on water issues on the subcontinent for 35 years: “This vulnerability was driven home when India chose to fill Baglihar exactly at the time when it would impose maximum harm on farmers in downstream Pakistan.”

Michigan oil spill Enbridge’s ‘highest priority’

A serious pipeline leak in Michigan has cast a dark shadow over what would otherwise have been an upbeat financial report from major oil and gas pipeline operator Enbridge Inc. on Wednesday.

The Canadian company said crews are doing their utmost to deal with a spill of about three million litres of oil, which has affected the Kalamazoo River in Michigan.

Top 7 suppliers of oil to the US

Really big oil: Where does the US get its crude? Here's what you need to know.

Saudi Aramco Awards Yanbu Refinery Works to Tecnicas, Daelim Industrial

Saudi Aramco, the biggest state- owned oil company, awarded contracts at the planned 400,000 barrel-a-day Yanbu refinery in Saudi Arabia to companies including Tecnicas Reunidas SA and Daelim Industrial Co.

Tecnicas Reunidas will do work on the coker unit, Daelim will build the gasoline and hydrocracker units and SK Engineering & Construction Co. will work on the crude unit, Saudi Arabia’s state oil company said today in a statement. Tecnicas said separately it got $700 million contract.

Global lands Pemex pipeline contract

US-based Global Industries has won a $40 million contract from state-run Pemex for pipeline work in its Ku-Maloob-Zaap field in the Bay of Campeche.

BP to Pay Estimated $60MM in Advance Payments

BP estimates it will pay at least $60 million in advance payments in August to claimants across the Gulf Coast who have lost income or net profit due to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

BP, which has paid $256 million to date for claims including $30 million in the last seven days, will start making the advance payments by the end of this week. Claimants will receive their check about 30 days after they received their July payment.

Bangladesh and India sign electricity deal

DHAKA, Bangladesh (UPI) -- Bangladesh and India signed a power transmission agreement Monday for electricity to be imported to energy-starved Bangladesh.

Initially, 250 megawatts of power would be available to Bangladesh from India, with transmission to start in 2012.

Homeowners face £277 fuel-bill hike: Move towards 'green energy' will come at a price

Plans to tackle climate change will add £277 to annual household fuel bills unless consumers give their homes a ‘green makeover’, ministers warned yesterday.

Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Huhne admitted the massive expansion of wind farms across Britain – along with clean coal power stations – will send electricity and gas prices soaring.

But Mr Huhne claimed that the price increases would be offset by government plans to improve the energy efficiency of millions of British homes.

"Brilliant": Prepare for the fluorescent future

In the book you argue that a more brightly lit street isn't necessarily a safer street. Why is that?

There was a big study in Illinois that showed that a reduction of street light reduced the amount of crime; it also increased the amount of crime that happened during daylight hours. We automatically assume that a well-lit street is safer, but I'm not sure if that basic assumption holds. A lot of cities thought stationary oil lanterns would hinder crime when they were first set up, but there were several cities, including Cologne and Birmingham in Britain who refused to put out streetlights because they thought it would aid and abet criminals. Absolute dark isn't safe but neither is absolute brilliance. The more light we have, the more light we feel we need to be safe.

Canning preserves summer's bounty for colder seasons ahead

"If you have your own vegetable garden, if you're shopping at farmers markets or if you belong to a CSA [Community Supported Agriculture farm share program], you're going to end up with more than what you need," she says.

What to do with the excess is the subject of "Saving the Seasons: How to Can, Freeze or Dry Almost Anything," a new book Meyer edited for her employer, Herald Press, the mainstream publishing arm of the Mennonite Publishing Network, with offices in the United States and Canada.

Mitsui Says Oil Tanker Possibly Attacked Near Hormuz

Mitsui O.S.K. Lines Ltd., operator of the world’s second-largest oil-tanker fleet, said one of its ships may have been attacked near the Strait of Hormuz, deemed by the U.S. to be the most important chokepoint for oil supply.

An explosion, which “may have been caused by an external attack,” occurred at 5:30 a.m. Tokyo time, slightly injuring one of the crew of 31, Mitsui said in a statement. The vessel, M. Star, is on its way to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates to assess the damage and no oil is leaking, Mitsui said.

Oil dips to near $77 after surprise US supply jump

Oil prices dipped to near $77 a barrel Wednesday after a report showed U.S. crude supplies unexpectedly rose last week, suggesting demand remains weak.

...Crude inventories jumped 3.1 million barrels last week, the American Petroleum Institute said late Tuesday. Analysts had expected a drop of 2.3 million barrels, according to a survey by Platts, the energy information arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.

Supplies of gasoline and distillates also rose, the API said.

Oil May Rise Only as Far as $80 Fibonacci Resistance

Crude oil, which fell the most in more than three weeks yesterday, remains in a rising channel on technical charts and will continue to face resistance near $80 a barrel, according to Societe Generale SA.

Jeff Rubin: China’s energy consumption a zero-sum game

It wasn’t sheer coincidence that last year marked two pivotal events in the world’s vehicle industry. In 2009, China became the largest car market in the world, while in the same year there were four million fewer vehicles on the road in the United States. In a world where the supply of economically viable oil has peaked, or is, at best, growing marginally, driving has suddenly become a zero-sum game.

That means that if millions of new drivers are about to get on the road in China, then somehow millions of other drivers will have to get off somewhere else. Last year, that’s exactly what happened in America for the first time since World War II. And unless T. Boone Pickens is miraculously able to convert the American vehicle stock to natural gas–powered engines, some 40 million other vehicles in the U.S. will similarly be taking the exit lane over the next decade.

Refining Hits 10-Week High as Japan Starts Idled Factories

Oil refining in Japan, the world’s third-largest consumer of crude, rose to a 10-week high as producers resume operations after maintenance shutdowns.

China lifts its gas use in first half

China’s use of natural gas jumped by 22 per cent in the first half of the year from the previous six months, government figures showed yesterday, propping up a global industry that has seen a supply glut push down prices.

China’s insatiable demand for energy has steered the direction of the world oil market for years but the country’s power industry and manufacturing are now turning increasingly to gas, with a new emphasis on shipping in the fuel from Qatar and other Gulf states. Chinese demand for tanker imports will increase fourfold by 2020, according to a study released yesterday. That could make up for the weaker-than-forecast growth in US demand and a flat outlook for liquefied natural gas (LNG) in Japan and South Korea.

China, India shift to gas for clean growth

Asia is boosting consumption of liquefied natural gas (LNG) relative to oil as nations from China to India try to pollute less while driving economic growth.

Shell's Impact in Australian Oil, Gas `Only the Beginning,' Goldman Says

Royal Dutch Shell Plc is set to have an even bigger impact in Australia in the next year, potentially joining with Santos Ltd. to develop a gas project in Queensland and selling its refining assets, Goldman Sachs JBWere said.

Chevron in Australia native land title deal for plant

(Reuters) - Chevron Corp has signed a preliminary agreement with a group of native land owners in western Australia that will allow it to construct a liquefied natural gas processing plant, it said on Wednesday.

UK gas halts slide as maintenance restricts supply

LONDON (Reuters) - Prompt British gas prices were
firm on Wednesday as terminal maintenance restricted supply,
while forward contracts were mixed on more scheduled North Sea
field and pipeline outages and liquefied natural gas imports.

Reliance Profit Growth May Peak on Failure to Raise Gas Output

Earnings growth at Reliance Industries Ltd., India’s largest company by market value, may slow from the fastest pace in more than two years as the company falls behind schedule to increase gas production, investors said.

ENI announces energy venture with Egypt

MILAN (AFP) – Italian energy group ENI said on Wednesday it had signed an agreement with Egypt on the production and transportation of oil and gas which would raise Egypt's profile as a supplier to the Middle East and Mediterranean region.

ENI and the two Egyptian state-owned oil companies EGPC and EGAS will establish a joint venture and work together on oil and gas upstream activities in Iraq and Gabon, the Italian company said late on Tuesday.

Shell Conducting Repairs at Australia Refinery; Unit Still off After Fire

Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s largest oil company, says it’s carrying out maintenance at its Geelong refinery in Australia, declining to provide details of what units are being serviced.

“The facility is still functioning,” Paul Zennaro, Melbourne-based spokesman for Shell, said by telephone today. The bitumen unit, damaged in a May fire, remains offline and it isn’t known when it will return to service, he said.

Formosa Says 1-2 Weeks Before Two-Thirds of Oil Refinery Online After Fire

Formosa Petrochemical Corp., Taiwan’s only publicly traded oil refiner, said it may need one to two weeks to have two-thirds of its Mailiao oil refinery fully operational after a fire damaged a unit three days ago.

Enbridge posts 19% profit rise

Canadina pipeline player Enbridge said today that second-quarter operating profit rose 19%, driven by growth in both its natural gas delivery and oil pipeline businesses.

Congress Set to Tackle Oil Spill Liability, Drilling Safety

U.S. Senate Democrats are set to unveil a slimmed-down energy bill Tuesday aimed at reforming offshore drilling, but House lawmakers are taking up a tougher bill on Friday that adds another hurdle to get a bill signed into law this year.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to pass a bill before lawmakers leave for their summer recess next week, focusing on holding BP Plc accountable for its massive oil spill. Debate on the Senate bill could begin as soon as Thursday.

U.S. readies criminal probe of oil spill-report

(Reuters) - Several U.S. government agencies are preparing a criminal probe of at least three companies involved in the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, though it could take more than a year before any charges are filed, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

BP gets "wake-up call" and $32 billion in spill charges

LONDON/HOUSTON (Reuters) – BP Plc's newly named chief executive on Tuesday called the Gulf oil spill a "wake-up call" for the entire industry as the company tallied up its losses and disclosed two U.S. investigations.

Bob Dudley, who will replace gaffe-prone Tony Hayward as chief executive on October 1, said safety would be among his highest priorities as the first American to lead BP tries to refurbish the British oil company's battered reputation.

New CEO Dudley faces daunting task at BP

BP has been here before. Hayward himself was named to succeed a predecessor who oversaw a series of safety lapses that culminated in a blast at a refinery in Texas City, Texas, that killed 15 people in 2005.

Now, Dudley will embark on the clean-up of a company saddled with huge liabilities, a broken corporate culture, strained government relations and a badly damaged brand.

'Demonised' BP boss sparks fresh US anger on exit

LONDON (AFP) – BP's outgoing chief executive Tony Hayward was the target of fresh US anger Wednesday after claiming he had been "demonised and vilified," threatening efforts to draw a line under the Gulf oil spill.

The comments by Hayward, who resigned Tuesday following his heavily criticised handling of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, drew renewed criticism from Washington as BP struggles to restore its reputation after the spillage.

BP CEO change won't diminish Gulf response: govt

HOUSTON (Reuters) – The top U.S. official overseeing the response to BP Plc's Gulf of Mexico oil leak said on Tuesday he doesn't expect the company's commitment to cleaning up the spill to be diminished with its change in leadership.

"I don't see any diminishing of performance or priorities," retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said of BP's earlier announcement that Bob Dudley, who has been BP's top executive handling the spill response, will replace Chief Executive Tony Hayward on October 1.

Lift 'reckless' oil drilling ban, Gulf residents plead

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama's "reckless" moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is suffocating small businesses and destroying livelihoods, lawmakers and residents said Tuesday.

"The decision to stop energy exploration in the Gulf of Mexico appears to have been made in an uninformed manner that borders recklessness," Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu told the small business committee, which she chairs.

X Prize to offer millions for Gulf oil cleanup solution

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – The X Prize Foundation launches a competition this week promising millions of dollars for winning ways to clean up crude oil from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The nonprofit group will hold a press conference in Washington on Thursday to reveal details of an Oil Cleanup X Challenge inspired by the disaster.

Gulf flow has stopped, but where's the oil?

NEW ORLEANS – In the nearly two weeks since a temporary cap stopped BP's gusher at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, not much oil has been showing up on the surface of the water.

Scientists caution that doesn't mean the crude is gone. There's still a lot of it in the Gulf, though no one is sure quite how much or exactly where it is.

BP Oil Is Dissipating, Easing Threat to East Coast

Oil from BP Plc’s record spill in the Gulf of Mexico is biodegrading quickly, probably eliminating the risk that crude will go around Florida and hit the U.S. East Coast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

Oil has been dissipating through evaporation since BP stopped the flow from its Macondo well off the coast of Louisiana on July 15, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco told reporters yesterday on a conference call. Crude that’s dispersed into the sea is being gobbled up by bacteria, she said.

On the Surface, Gulf Oil Spill Is Vanishing Fast; Concerns Stay

The oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico appears to be dissolving far more rapidly than anyone expected, a piece of good news that raises tricky new questions about how fast the government should scale back its response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Gulf spill has not fouled most beaches but hurts tourism

The massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill has not fouled the vast majority of the area's beaches but is still scaring tourists away, according to a report to be released Wednesday.

100 Days Into Spill, Gulf Life Forever Changed

(AP) A hundred days ago, shop owner Cherie Pete was getting ready for a busy summer serving ice cream and po-boys to hungry fisherman. Local official Billy Nungesser was planning his wedding. Environmental activist Enid Sisskin was preparing a speech about the dangers of offshore drilling.

Then the oil rig Deepwater Horizon exploded off the coast of Louisiana, and in an instant, life along the Gulf Coast changed for good.

Appeals Court Rejects Effort to Create Hybrid Taxi Fleet

The Bloomberg administration’s years-long attempt to force the city’s cab owners to switch from gas guzzlers to hybrid vehicles was rejected by a federal appeals court Tuesday morning.

The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a judge’s 2009 ruling, in a suit brought by taxi fleet owners, that the city’s rules amounted to an effort to mandate fuel economy and emissions standards, something that only the federal government is allowed to do.

Wind Drives Growing Use of Batteries

The rapid growth of wind farms, whose output is hard to schedule reliably or even predict, has the nation’s electricity providers scrambling to develop energy storage to ensure stability and improve profits.

As the wind installations multiply, companies have found themselves dumping energy late at night, adjusting the blades so they do not catch the wind, because there is no demand for the power. And grid operators, accustomed to meeting demand by adjusting supplies, are now struggling to maintain stability as supplies fluctuate.

On the cutting edge of a potential solution is Hawaii, where state officials want 70 percent of energy needs to be met by renewable sources like the wind, sun or biomass by 2030. A major problem is that it is impossible for generators on the islands to export surpluses to neighboring companies or to import power when the wind towers are becalmed.

Is the welfare state in terminal decline?

As with cheap oil, we assumed that state services would continue at a certain level for the foreseeable future. Now we are moving into a period where the best of the state's provision may be behind us and, as with our oil reserves, we will be struggling to manage an increasingly scarce resource.

Many people still assume that, once the fallout from the economic crisis has worked through and the economy starts to grow again, things will get back to normal. The concept of the peak state, though, presents a different future.

Doomsday shelters making a comeback

Jason Hodge, father of four children from Barstow, Calif., says he's "not paranoid" but he is concerned, and that's why he bought space in what might be labeled a doomsday shelter.

Hodge bought into the first of a proposed nationwide group of 20 fortified, underground shelters — the Vivos shelter network — that are intended to protect those inside for up to a year from catastrophes such as a nuclear attack, killer asteroids or tsunamis, according to the project's developers.

Transition Town Star

Rob Hopkins and a group of compatriots decided to help Totnes begin the process of what they call "powering down." Powering down means relocalizing food and energy production, working to transform fossil-fueled behaviors, and increasing the community's capacity to deal with any systemic shocks caused by climate change or disruptions in fuel availability.

And thus the Transition Town movement was born.

China's Environment Accidents Double as Growth Takes Toll

China, the world’s largest polluter, said the number of environmental accidents rose 98 percent in the first six months of the year, as demand for energy and minerals lead to poisoned rivers and oil spills.

“Fast economic development is leading to increasing conflicts with the capacity of the environment to absorb” demands, the environmental protection ministry said in a faxed statement in response to Bloomberg questions.

Research ship Akademik Fyodorov leaves for 100-day Arctic expeditn

ST. PETERSBURG (Itar-Tass) -- The polar fleet flagship Akademik Fyodorov leaves the port of Arkhangelsk on Wednesday for a 100-day scientific expedition to the Arctic Ocean.

The expedition is launched within the implementation of a major state project, sources at the Arctic and Antarctic Scientific Research Institute told Itar-Tass.

Spread of Deadly Cryptococcal Disease in U.S. Northwest Linked to Global Warming

A deadly infectious disease once thought to be exclusively tropical has gained a toehold in the Pacific Northwest, and health experts suspect climate change is partially to blame.

Last week the CDC issued a report warning U.S. doctors to be alert for patients showing signs of a cryptococcal infection.

Cap and Trade is Dead. Long Live Cap and Trade.

Hard on the heels of the Senate Democratic leadership’s decision to put aside climate legislation intended to cap carbon dioxide emissions, another carbon-capping precinct was heard from this week.

Debate over China's role in reversing climate change

At the Copenhagen summit, did China sink the chance for an international deal to confront global warming, or merely refuse to be bullied by the United States and Europe? One truth underlined by the Copenhagen failure is that if there is to be a climate change solution it will have to be acceptable to China.

Chinese Consider Setting Coal Production Ceiling by 2015 to Cut Emissions

China, the world’s biggest polluter, may impose a cap on the country’s coal production by 2015 and enforce energy consumption targets to cut carbon emissions and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

“There must be a ceiling on coal output in the future, and energy needs can be met with new and renewable energy,” Wu Yin, a deputy director at the National Energy Administration, told the official China Energy News weekly newspaper in an interview. Wu didn’t specify any production targets.

Global warming is turning 35! Not only has the current spate of global warming been going on for about 35 years now, but also the term “global warming” will have its 35th anniversary next week. On 8 August 1975, Wally Broecker published his paper “Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?” in the journal Science. That appears to be the first use of the term “global warming” in the scientific literature (at least it’s the first of over 10,000 papers for this search term according to the ISI database of journal articles).

In this paper, Broecker correctly predicted “that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide”, and that “by early in the next century [carbon dioxide] will have driven the mean planetary temperature beyond the limits experienced during the last 1000 years”. He predicted an overall 20th Century global warming of 0.8ºC due to CO₂ and worried about the consequences for agriculture and sea level.





Global temperature up to June 2010 according to the NASA GISS data. Grey line is the 12-month running average, red dots are annual-mean values. The thick red line is a non-linear trend line. Broecker of course did not have these data available, not even up to 1975, since this global compilation was only put together in the late 1970s (Hansen et al. 1981). He had to rely on more limited meteorological data.

To those who even today claim that global warming is not predictable, the anniversary of Broecker’s paper is a reminder that global warming was actually predicted before it became evident in the global temperature records over a decade later (when Jim Hansen in 1988 famously stated that “global warming is here”).

Broecker is one of the great climatologists of the 20th Century: few would match his record of 400 scientific papers, a full sixty of which have over 100 citations each! Interestingly, his “global warming” paper is not amongst those highly-cited ones, with “only” 79 citations to date. Broecker is most famous for his extensive work on paleoclimate and ocean geochemistry.

It is very instructive to see how Broecker arrived at his predictions back in 1975 – not least because even today, many lay people incorrectly assume that we attribute global warming to CO₂ basically because temperature and CO₂ levels have both gone up and thus correlate. Broecker came to his prediction at a time when CO₂ had been going up but temperatures had been going down for decades – but Broecker (like most other climate scientists at the time, and today) understood the basic physics of the issue.

Basically his prediction involved just three simple steps that in essence are still used today.

Step 1: Predict future emissions

Broecker simply assumed a growth in fossil fuel CO₂ emissions of 3% per year from 1975 onwards. With that, he arrived at cumulative fossil CO₂ emissions of 1.67 trillion tons by the year 2010 (see his Table 1). Not bad: the actual emissions turned out to be about 1.3 trillion tons (Canadell et al, PNAS 2007 – estimate extended to 2010 by me).

A shortcoming, from the modern point of view, is that Broecker did not include other anthropogenic greenhouse gases or aerosol particles in his calculations. He does however discuss aerosols, which he calls “dust”. In fact, the first sentence of the abstract (quoted above) in full starts with an if-statement:

If man-made dust is unimportant as a major cause of climate change, then a strong case can be made that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide.

That is a nod to the discussion about aerosol-induced cooling in the early 1970s. Broecker rightly writes:

It is difficult to determine the significance of the next most important climatic effect induced by man, “dust”, because of uncertainties with regard to the amount, the optical properties and the distribution of man-made particles,

citing a number of papers by Steve Schneider and others. Because he cannot quantify it, he leaves out this effect. Here luck was on Broecker’s side: the warming by other greenhouse gases and the cooling by aerosols largely cancel today, so considering only CO₂ leads to almost the same radiative forcing as considering all anthropogenic effects on climate (see IPCC AR4, Fig. SPM.2).

Table 1 of Broecker (1975)

Step 2: Predict future concentrations

To go from the amount of CO₂ emitted to the actual increase in the atmosphere, one needs to know what fraction of the emissions remains in the air: the “airborne fraction”. Broecker simply assumed, based on past data of emissions and CO₂ concentrations (Keeling’s Mauna Loa curve), that the airborne fraction is a constant 50%. I.e., about half of our fossil fuel emissions accumulates in the atmosphere. That is still a good assumption today, if you look at the observed CO₂ increase as fraction of fossil fuel emissions. Broecker calculated that about 35% of the emissions is taken up by the ocean and the other 15% by the biosphere (again not far from modern values, see Canadell et al.). On this basis he argued that if the ocean is the main sink, the airborne fraction would remain almost constant for the decades to come (his calculations extend to the year 2010).

Thus, with a 3% increase in emissions per year and 50% of that remaining airborne, it is easy to compute the increase in CO₂ concentrations. He obtains an increase from 295 to 403 ppm from 1900 to 2010. The actual value in 2010 is 390 ppm, a little lower than Broecker estimated because his forecast cumulative emissions were a little too high.

Step 3: Compute the global temperature response

Now we come to the temperature response to increased CO₂ concentration. Broecker writes:

The response of the global temperature to the atmospheric CO₂ content is not linear. As the CO₂ content of the atmosphere rises, the absorption of infrared radiation will “saturate” over an ever greater portion of the band. Rasool and Schneider point out that the temperature increases as the logarithm of the atmospheric CO2 concentration.

Based on this logarithmic relationship (still valid today) Broecker assumes a climate sensitivity of 0.3ºC warming for each 10% increase in CO2 concentration, which amounts to 2.2ºC warming for CO₂ doubling. This is based on early calculations by Manabe and Wetherald. Broecker writes:

Although surprises may yet be in store for us when larger computers and better knowledge of cloud physics allow the next stage of modeling to be accomplished, the magnitude of the CO₂ effect has probably been pinned down to within a factor of 2 to 4.

The AR4 gives the uncertainty range of climate sensitivity as 2-4.5ºC warming for CO₂ doubling, so there still is about a factor of 2 uncertainty and Broecker used a value near the very low end of this uncertainty range. Modern estimates are not only based on model calculations but also on paleoclimatic and modern data; the AR4 lists 13 studies that constrain climate sensitivity in its table 9.3.

In Broecker’s paper the warming calculated with the help of climate sensitivity happens instantaneously. Today we know that the climate system responds with a time lag due to ocean thermal inertia. By neglecting this, Broecker overestimated the warming at any given time; accounting for thermal inertia would have reduced his warming estimate by about a third (see AR4 Fig. SPM.5). But again he was lucky: picking ~2ºC rather than the more likely ~3ºC climate sensitivity compensates roughly for this, so his 20th-Century warming of 0.8ºC is almost spot on (the actual estimate being closer to 0.7ºC, see Fig. above). (A modern version of this back-of-envelope warming calculation is found e.g. in our book Our Threatened Oceans, p.82.)

Natural Variability

Broecker was not the first to predict CO₂-induced warming. In 1965, an expert report to US President Lyndon B. Johnson had warned: “By the year 2000, the increase in carbon dioxide will be close to 25%. This may be sufficient to produce measurable and perhaps marked changes in climate.” And in 1972, a more specific prediction similar to Broecker’s was published by the eminent atmospheric scientist J.S. Sawyer in Nature (for a history in a nutshell, see my newspaper column here).

The innovation of Broecker’s article – apart from introducing the term “global warming” – was in combining estimates of CO₂ warming with natural variability. His main thesis was that a natural climatic cooling

has, over the last three decades, more than compensated for the warming effect produced by the CO₂ [....] The present natural cooling will, however, bottom out during the next decade or so. Once this happens, the CO₂ effect will tend to become a significant factor and by the first decade of the next century we may experience global temperatures warmer than any in the last 1000 years.

The latter turned out to be correct. The idea that the small cooling from the 1940s to 1970s is due to natural variability still cannot be ruled out, although more likely this is a smaller part of the explanation and the cooling is primarily due to the “dust” neglected by Broecker, i.e. due to the rise of anthropogenic aerosol pollution (Taylor and Penner, 1994). However, the way Broecker estimated and even predicted natural variability has not stood the test of time. He used data from the Camp Century ice core in Greenland, arguing that these “may give a picture of the natural fluctuations in global temperature over the last 1000 years”. Ironically, Broecker’s own later work on Atlantic ocean circulation changes showed that Greenland is likely even less representative of global temperature changes than most other places on Earth, it being strongly affected by variability in ocean heat transport (see our recent post on the Younger Dryas, or Broecker’s latest book The Great Ocean Conveyor). However, Broecker was right to conclude that the buildup of CO₂ would sooner or later overwhelm such natural climate variations.

Overall, Broecker’s paper (together with that of Sawyer) shows that valid predictions of global warming were published in the 1970s in the top journals Science and Nature, and warming has been proceeding almost exactly as predicted for at least 35 years now. Some important aspects were not understood back then, like the role of greenhouse gases other than CO₂, of aerosol particles and of ocean heat storage. That the predictions were almost spot-on involved an element of luck, since the neglected processes do not all affect the result in the same direction but partly cancel. Nevertheless, the basic fact that rising CO₂ would cause a “pronounced global warming”, as Broecker put it, was well understood in the 1970s. In a 1979 TV interview, Steve Schneider rightly described this as a consensus amongst experts, with controversy remaining about the exact magnitude and effects.

Reference

BROECKER WS, 1975: CLIMATIC CHANGE – ARE WE ON BRINK OF A PRONOUNCED GLOBAL WARMING?

SCIENCE Volume 189, Pages 460-463.

A huge 3-GW wind project planned for outside of Los Angeles has received a boost in funding and is now on track to be operational by next year.  The Alta Wind Energy Center will be the largest wind project in the country, capable of powering 600,000 Southern California homes.

Terra-Gen Power LLC, the company building the project consisting of five separate wind farms, just secured $1.2 billion in funding, which has kicked construction into high gear.  The project just broke ground today in the Mojave Desert foothills, just 75 miles north of Los Angeles.  The first phase, which will produce about 570 MW, should be up and running by next year, while the full project will be completed in about a decade.

Southern California Edison has already committed to 1,550 MW of electricity produced by the project over 25 years.  Just that slice of energy is twice the capacity of the largest existing wind farm, a 735-MW one in Texas.

via LA Times

The unusual electric car concept that we started following a few years ago is now close to arriving at auto dealerships as the 2011 Chevy Volt. And today, Chevrolet announced the manufacturer's suggested retail price for the Volt will be $41,000. With the full $7,500 federal tax credit, the price comes down to $33,500, and even lower with additional state incentives.

Nissan has tried to position itself as the competitor to GM with its all-electric Leaf, and that is playing out in a number of ways. While the list price of the Volt is several thousand dollars more than the Nissan Leaf, both vehicles will be available for lease at almost identical cost: $350/month for the Volt or $349/month for the Leaf.

Furthermore, on the same day that GM announced the pricing for the Volt, Nissan fired back with an announcement that it, too, would offer a warranty similar to the eight year, 100,000 mile warranty GM has announced for the Volt's battery systems.

The initial markets selected by each company are also interesting to compare: Nissan plans to roll out the Leaf in Texas and Hawaii in January of 2011, then in North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, Alabama and Washington, D.C., in April 2011 and eventually nationwide by the end of that year. None of these are particularly cold-weather states. The Volt will initially be available in California, New York, Washington, D.C., Texas, Michigan, Connecticut and New Jersey in late 2010, and will be expanded into nationwide availability (as well as to Canada) in the following 12 - 18 months.

This will be interesting to follow as both companies (as well both existing manufacturers and new startups with other electric vehicles and hybrids) push the industry further along in developing alternatives to simple internal combustion drive vehicles.

UPS has set a new efficiency goal for its ground delivery fleet.  The company is aiming for a 20 percent increase in overall miles per gallon from the years 2000 to 2020.

The company has already hit a 10 percent improvement for its ground vehicles from 2000 to 2009, which has saved 3.2 million gallons of fuel.  The increase in mpg came from improved vehicle technology and maintenance, and fuel conservation efforts like better routing and minimizing idling.  The addition of hybrid and alternative fuel trucks to the fleet has also boosted overall fuel efficiency.

UPS's goals also include reducing CO2 emissions from its airline by 20 percent by 2020, which would lead to a total reduction of CO2 emissions of 42 percent per package shipped since 1990.

via Treehugger

Although the technology seems settled, new wind power designs are still being developed, especially as engineers try to extend the generating capacity of turbines. The Aerogenerator X is a new 10 MW wind turbine designed for off-shore use combining the best of horizontal axis and vertical axis designs. The engineering firm Arup and architects Grimshaw developed the design (based on an earlier Grimshaw design from a couple years ago) on behalf of the British company Wind Power Limited.

The familiar, three-bladed, horizontal axis turbine is a well established design, but increased stresses as the size of these turbines increases makes it difficult to enlarge them further. Because of the square-cube law, larger wind turbines produce exponentially more power, so there is an incentive to build larger and larger turbines. This led to the innovative design, inspired by the sycamore leaf.

Aerogenerator X has a very large swept area, like a horizontal axis turbine. The span of the turbine is 275 meters (over 900 feet). But the Aerogenerator X is also only half the height of an equivalent horizontal axis turbine. And like a vertical axis turbine, the generator and equipment are located at the base. Stresses on the blades are reduced in this configuration, making it easier to design and build something of this size. This also makes maintenance much easier, especially for an offshore turbine.

Project partners also include Rolls-Royce, Shell, BP, EDF, EON, Caterpillar, and the UK government. The first full-scale versions of this turbine are expected to be completed by 2013 or 2014.

Hat tip to @MelStarrs and BAKOKO!

Steve Mohr is a young man who recently received his Ph. D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Newcastle in Australia. His Ph. D. thesis is titled Projection of World Fossil Fuel Production with Supply and Demand Interactions. We published an article of Steve's earlier, called Forecasting Coal Production Until 2010.

In his thesis, Steve makes projections of future oil, coal, and natural gas production, using approaches he developed that consider both supply and demand for each of these three fuels. He makes these estimates assuming three levels of reserves: low estimate, best estimate, and high estimate. In his analysis, natural gas is the fuel that offers the biggest future potential for energy supply, not coal.

Below the fold, Steve provides a summary of his thesis.

Projection of World Fossil Fuel Production with Supply and Demand Interactions

Historically, fossil fuels have been vital for our global energy needs. However climate change is prompting renewed interest in the role of fossil fuel production for energy. In order to plan appropriately for our future energy needs, a new detailed model of fossil fuel supply is required. It is critical to know whether fossil fuels will continue to be able to supply most of our energy requirements and meet the ever increasing energy demand in the future. This knowledge is essential for identification of possible periods of energy shortage so that alternative energy resources can be utilised in a timely fashion. The aim of this study was to develop a model to predict fossil fuel production for the long term based on historical production data, projected demand, and assumed ultimately recoverable reserves for coal, gas and oil. Also, climate change is an important issue confronting society and it is hoped that the work contained in this thesis will aid climate change modeling by focusing attention on realistic fossil fuel production projections.

The modelling applied an algorithm-based approach to predict both supply and demand for coal, gas, oil and total fossil fuel resources. Total fossil fuel demand was calculated globally, based on world population and per capita demand; while production was calculated on a country-by-country basis and summed to obtain global production. Notably, production over the lifetime of a fuel source was not assumed to be symmetrical about a peak value like that depicted by a Hubbert curve. Separate production models were developed for mining (coal and unconventional oil) and field (gas and conventional oil) operations, that reflected the basic differences in extraction and processing techniques. Both of these models included a number of parameters that were fitted to historical production data, including: (1) coal production in New South Wales, Australia; (2) gas production from the North Sea, UK; and (3) oil production from the North Sea, UK and individual states of the USA.

The combined supply and demand model included the capability that demand and production could be influenced by each other, i.e. if production could not meet demand then future demand for that energy source was reduced. In this study, three options were considered. Firstly, the STATIC option resulted in demand and production acting independently of each other at all times. Secondly, the DYNAMIC option allowed both fossil fuel demand and all fossil fuel production to change from the STATIC situation when there was a difference between the two. Finally, the INDEPENDENTLY DYNAMIC option was an extension of the DYNAMIC situation, but treated each fuel source individually when applying the supply and demand interaction, with both demand and production able to vary.

The model required estimates of Ultimately Recoverable Resources (URR) for coal, gas and oil, where the following definitions were used for each resource:

(1) Coal: anthracite - lignite;

(2) Gas: conventional and unconventional (tight, shale and coal bed methane);

(3) Oil: conventional (API>10o) and unconventional (natural bitumen, extra heavy oil, oil shale).

Following a critical review of the literature, included in this study, three cases were adopted. CASE 1 and CASE 3 being lowest and highest recent estimates, respectively, and CASE 2 being the author's best guess based on the information available. The URR values for CASE 2 were, total (60,800 EJ), coal (19,350 EJ), gas (17,680 EJ) and oil (23,780 EJ).

The supply and demand model was used to obtain future predictions for individual and total fossil fuel production for a number of different scenarios, including CASE 1, CASE 2 and CASE 3 and STATIC, DYNAMIC and INDEPENDENTLY DYNAMIC supply and demand interaction options. The following results were obtained:

Coal: For CASE 2 (based on the author’s best informed guess of URR), peak production year remained constant at 2019 for STATIC, DYNAMIC and INDEPENDENTLY DYNAMIC options, with peak production varying only marginally between 212-214 EJ/y. Similarly, for CASE 1 (based on the lowest recent URR estimate), peak production year was the same at 2014 for all three demand-production interaction options. However, for CASE 3 (highest recent URR estimate), there was some variation in the peak production year at 2020, 2019 and 2030 for STATIC, DYNAMIC and INDEPENDENTLY DYNAMIC options respectively. Of interest also, was the projected peak in Chinese production, accounting for well over a third of the total production, occurring between 2010 and 2018, which compares with reported literature values in the range of 2015-2033.

Gas: For CASE 2 (URR best guess), peak production year varied from 2028, 2047 and 3034 for STATIC, DYNAMIC and INDEPENDENTLY DYNAMIC options, respectively. The corresponding peak production outputs were 145, 157 and 143 EJ/y. For CASE 1 (lowest URR), peak production year varied from 2019, 2033 and 2026, respectively, for the production interaction options. For CASE 3 (highest URR), the peak year range was much narrower, varying between 2060 and 2062. The overall range of between 2019-2062, was much wider than that reported in most of the literature of 2020 ± 10 years. While it was found that the production of unconventional gas was considerable, it was unable to mitigate conventional gas peaking.

Oil: For CASE 2 (URR best guess), peak production year remained almost constant at 2011-12 for STATIC, DYNAMIC and INDEPENDENTLY DYNAMIC options, with peak production varying only marginally between 179-188 EJ/y. Similarly, for CASE 1 (lowest URR), peak production year was the same at 2005 for all three supply and demand interaction options. For CASE 3 (highest URR), peak production year varied only slightly at 2019, 2011 and 2016 for STATIC, DYNAMIC and INDEPENDENTLY DYNAMIC options, respectively. The important outcome was that, of all scenarios, the latest peak year was 2019.