Panning for black gold, a global challenge

February 13 2008: 3:07 PM EST

HOUSTON (CNNMoney.com) Oil industry executives and experts are gathering here this week for the Cambridge Energy Research Associates' annual conference, one of the sector's most impressive showings of energy industry clout outside of an OPEC meeting. The backdrop of the meeting is tight supplies and rising demand for crude. Executives said, the industry faces serious challenges getting oil to market.The consensus is that the world has enough oil to meet growing demand, but that the industry must focus more attention on harvesting the oil.

John Hess, chief executive of Hess Corp, says that an oil crisis is coming, and sooner than most people think. He also says that all oil producers are not investing enough today while there is enough oil in the ground.

A small but growing number of analysts disagree with Hess' assertion that there is enough oil in the ground. They say production of oil has peaked or will peak soon, and it will cause a major social unrest. Mark Albers, a senior vice president at Exxon Mobil says that there is no question oil is a finite resource, but it's far from finished. He says the world has three trillion barrels of oil left but it's just hard to reach. He also says that producers have to work closely with countries that hold a significant chunk of the remaining supplies. One of those countries is Saudi Arabia. The head of the Saudi state oil company said his firm is making the necessary investments to increase oil production to 12 million barrels a day by 2009, up from between 9 million and 10 million barrels a day currently.
Abdallah Jum'ah, chief executive of the Saudi Arabian National Oil Company, believes that if the prevailing confusion over energy policy continues, there is considerable risk the expansion of resources will be compromised. Jum'ah didn't specify which policies he was referring to, but cautioned against putting too much faith in alternative energy. He also believes that there are expectations for an unrealistic development rate for such resources and that the world cannot afford to leave massive quantities of oil in the ground and move to uncertain technologies.

In this article they ask themselves if renewable energy will cause the problems. The U.S. government says that, under current policies, renewable energy will only meet 2 to 5 percent of the country's total energy needs by 2030. But supporters of renewable energy say it could be much higher up to 50 percent.
Jum'ah said that global warming demands our most serious attention but that we cannot afford to abandon fossil fuels. Because oil helps drive the economic growth and lifts people out of poverty.
Other executives were more forceful in pushing the industry to address the climate change challenge.

James Mulva, chief executive conocoPhillips of the third largest oil company in the U.S., believes that if the industry doesn't engage we'll lose the option of influencing policy.
Mulva chastised the U.S. government for not taking a more active role in dealing with greenhouse gasses. He finds that the United States failed to ratify the Kyoto treaty.
Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the International Energy Agency, said a mandatory target to reduce greenhouse gasses may not solve the global warming problem.
Tanaka outlined a plan calling for massive reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, a big jump in energy efficiency along with big investments in conventional energy infrastructure.
The plan would be costly $50 trillion by 2050. And the investment would cause a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent by 2050 and avoid the most serious effects of global warming such as widespread flooding and drought.
"The primary scarcity facing the planet is not resources, it's not money," said Tanaka. "It's time."

http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/13/news/economy/oil_conference/index.htm

Power from the people
Now you can recharge things just by walking around

Wind-up radios have turned into consumer products in rich countries too, along with wind-up torches, wind-up mobile-phone chargers and wind-up music players. But all these gadgets rely on people having to do some specific work in return for their entertainment.

So many things work with batteries, but in fact, batteries are probably the most problematic things ever made. Thats what I think about it..

Now, there is (maybe) a nice alternative.

Max Donelan of Simon Fraser University and his colleagues introducing the "energy harvester". It looks like an orthopaedic knee-brace. It tucks behind its wearer's knee and has extensions that strap around the front of his calf and his thigh. When the wearer walks, the knee's motion drives a set of gears which turn a small generator.
On the face of it, that sounds like a recipe for making walking difficult. Surprisingly, it is not.
It looks a promising invention to me and probably to many other people too. At the first sight it looks very easy to use, and when it will be finetuned that you almost don't even feel it when you wear it, it will be a big succes!

With the generators in the harvesters engaged all the time, walking produced seven watts of power. When the generators were engaged only during deceleration, however, they produced almost five watts (enough to power ten mobile phones simultaneously). Moreover, in that second case, the amount of extra energy used by walkers wearing the harvesters was insignificant, since the harvesters were absorbing energy that would otherwise be dissipated as heat—which is exactly the principle used by regenerative braking in a petrol-electric hybrid car.

So.. Wouldn't it be great to just walk around with your I-Pod when its recharging at the same time and, more important, when you help to save the world by this way?! This is definately not the last thing that we heard about this way of producing green energy and it certainly has a very big potential, don't you think?

SOURCE
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10640707

US gas prices hit highest level since June, high supplies could pull prices down

NEW YORK _ Nowadays, it’s known that gasoline prices are on their highest level ever. This is also the case in the U.S. The gasoline prices are on their highest level since June. Many analysts predicted that there would be a record spike in pump prices this spring so it looks like they will be right.

Jim Ritterbusch, president of energy consultancy Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, said that they have got a major supply cushion.

Gas prices rose 2.9 cents overnight to a national average of $3.115 a gallon at the U.S. pumps. In Canada, retail pricing is different because of taxes, currency fluctuations and other factors. A litre of gasoline costs about 111.673 Canadian cents now while a year ago the price was standing on 94.748 cents a litre. Again an example that it’s not normal anymore how prices keep on rising. In London, April Brent crude futures rose 77 cents to settle at $97.01 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

Analysts think that new records will still be made in the future, but Ritterbusch doesn’t agree with that. He thinks the high level of supplies will lower the prices. He doubts because prices won’t rise if there isn’t a major overseas supply disruption or domestic refinery outage.

Source: http://www.theenergynews.com/news/cp_article.php?storyid=2319
INDEX: BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL OIL&GAS
© 2008 The Canadian Press

Going solar is a luxury few can afford

Today everybody knows that there’s something wrong with the way our climate changes. But the question is what are we going to do about it …
One of the solutions is to generate power from renewable sources of energy, for example solar power. But this must be stimulated by the governments because for the moment it’s a luxury only few can afford.
The problem is that the solar-energy technology keeps improving but the costs are falling down slowly.

For example people in the United State even those with the best intentions aren’t going to switch onto solar energy. This would cost up to $65,000 at best with a $12,000 worth of local assistance plus a $2,000 federal grant. All this for saving $75 electricity a month. It’s more like a status symbol then it’s about being concerned about our climate.
Nevertheless now is the moment to try and persuade people to switch over to solar-energy because of the high energy prices and the fact that global warming is more in the media than ever. A lot of people are willing to adjust their way of live but it has to be at a reasonable price. So it’s up to the governments to stimulate this as much as possible. Like the Belgian governement who gives out green certificates to support solar-energy.

Source

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