HSV boss pours cold water on hybrids The Age

Holden Special Vehicles boss Tom Walkinshaw claims most hybrids are less-efficient than petrol engines.

Japan to promote solar power for households: Nikkei Reuters

TOKYO (Reuters) - The Japanese government will come up with measures on Tuesday to promote the household use of solar power systems by introducing subsidies and tax breaks from next year, the Nikkei financial daily reported on Sunday.

WA gas crisis to last six months ABC

The company at the centre of Western Australia's gas crisis, Apache Energy, says it will not start limited production from its Varanus Island facility for eight weeks, and full production will take up to six months.

Oil summit step in the right direction: Rudd. The Age

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has hailed an oil summit a step in the right direction, but the opposition says his government is "all blow and no torch" on petrol prices.

Fuel prices hit 4WD sales The Age

Sales of four-wheel-drive vehicles suffered their biggest monthly fall in almost two years as crude oil prices hit a record, new figures show.

ABC - Labor MP rejects Opposition's solar rebate gag claims

A Federal Labor backbencher says the Opposition's claims that the Government is gagging debate on changes to the solar panel rebate are rubbish. Opposition Environment spokesman Greg Hunt will introduce a private members bill today to overturn a budget move to means test the rebate. Mr Hunt says the Government will impose time limits for discussion on the bill.

I just want to introduce myself, I have been lurking here for months and just joined up but don't know how much posting I'll be doing.

Like Commuter my big concern isn't the fairly 'discretionary' concept of commuting home-work but rather how we're going to manage for food. I mean the 'we' of the whole society. If people think they've got problems now, wait til the food machine grinds to a halt.

I was surprised by Kiashu's comments about people going to the shops 5 times a week. Really!? Efficiency can be all sorts of efficiencies, not just energy. Who has the time to go to the shops 5 times a week? Haven't they got real lives? What about their time, isn't it better spent on other things?

I have 3 objectives for my physical life : Efficiency, Building up the Assets/Resource Base, and taking care of me. I use the Permaculture principle of things doing multiple tasks but I was doing so years before ever I read it. I am making changes to my daily life, tho a loooooong way to go yet.

I agree with others who have posted here in the recent and not-so-recent past - depression is a normal response to PO awareness, esp. in the early days.

BTW, am I the only woman here?

I will keep reading even if I don't post often.

Ciao, Sundowner

The last comment from Belinda Robinson of the APPEA in this article is interesting - she must be a closet peaker :-)

ABC - Soaring petrol prices spark oil hunt Down Under

The price of petrol has nudged past $1.70 in some Australia cities, prompting people to question whether there are any untapped oil reserves in our own backyard. And the president of the Geosciences Council, Dr Trevor Powell, has been singled out by the oil exploration industry to identify potential sites. "The areas that appear to have the greatest promise is the southern margin from Australia - extending from roughly Kangaroo Island, round the south-western tip of Western Australia," Dr Powell said.

"The reason why that area is thought to have prospectivity is because there are a series of sedimentary basins which have very thick sediments. They are of the right geological age and there are other characteristics, such as their structure, which may be correct to contain petroleum."

The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association's chief executive, Belinda Robinson, says the best place to look is usually next to existing operations. "That's certainly where the risks and the costs are a lot lower, and that is where we traditionally go and explore," she said.

"But if we are interested in wanting to find another new oil province, then we would need to start looking in those areas that we call frontier areas, or those areas where we haven't explored before. They include places down around the Great Australian Bight in the south-west of Australia, right up north in the Arafura Sea, further in the north-west and in the far east. They're the sorts of areas that Geoscience Australia believes could hold the prospect of another oil and gas province."

The problem is, it won't be cheap to explore there. "Before you've even got the infrastructure challenges, there would also be challenges in actually getting there and exploring because the water is very deep," Ms Robinson said. "But thanks to developing technology, we are able to go into deeper and deeper water. But it is risky and it is costly."

The theory is higher oil prices encourage investment in exploration, but Ms Robinson says costs are also increasing, so exploration efforts won't be enough to replace depleting reserves.

Business Spectator (Alan Kohler) - 2P or not 2P?

The game in the coal seam methane gold rush right now is to move gas from 3P to 2P – that is to move resources from “possible” into the “probable” and/or “proven” box by drilling wells and actually seeing what’s down there.

This morning’s announcement from Queensland Gas that it has more than doubled its 3P resources (proven, probable and possible) and increased 2P (proven and probable) by 80 per cent is purely a function of drilling.

QGC has been putting down wells in the Walloon Fairway section of the Surat basin since chairman Bob Bryan founded the company eight years ago and has now drilled 171 kilometres in 264 wells. Another 200 holes are planned for 2008-09.

I recall there was a well called Gnarlyknots drilled way off Ceduna in the Great Australian Bight. It found nothing. I think it's best to assume there won't be any more big oil patches found onshore or offshore. If there are it will be a bonus.

The Federal Libs have perhaps justifably ridiculed Marn's trip to Mecca or wherever it was. However they need to get their story straight. On the one hand they want to abolish means testing of the solar rebate on the other they want to cut fuel excise. They are also creating alarm about the emissions trading scheme. Alas I fear the ETS will be a dog's breakfast of compromises despite two years to get it right. Rudd needs to prepare a future energy paths white paper which is consistent with the ETS. This document should set out policy leanings on a variety of issues such as transport, oil exploration and alternatives, electrical generation and distribution. Instead of which Rudd is making it up as he goes along.

Larvatus Prodeo - Hansen’s long view

Those who criticise anthropogenic global warming (AGW) science sometimes say we need to take the long view and if we do human activity is relegated to noise in the natural system. James Hansen and his colleagues reckon they have come up with a story about the relationship between atmospheric CO2, temperature and sea level change that fits the whole Phanerozoic Eon, which dates from about 545 million years ago.

Two slightly older links that are worth looking at - first Ross Gittins, who I meant to do a full post on a few weeks ago :

SMH - Too gutless to give us the bad oil

I think I've stumbled on a new law of politics: the harder life becomes in this capitalist economy, the more our supposed leaders soft-soap us. The harsher it gets, the harder they try to persuade us we're living in a Sunday school where no one plays for keeps.

Take the carry-on about petrol prices. Neither side of politics is prepared to speak the obvious truth about them.

Instead we have them endlessly doing their I-feel-your-pain routines (which, of course, they don't because they're on high incomes and, in any case, have most of their travel costs picked up by the taxpayer).

There's little the politicians could or should do to reduce petrol prices, but you simply can't get them to admit it. Instead they pretend there's something. Brendan Nelson would cut the excise on petrol by five cents a litre tomorrow - if only he were in government.

Kevin Rudd will consider cutting the goods and services tax on the petrol excise - worth almost four cents a litre - and he'll let us know his decision in about 18 months' time.

What neither side will admit is that, because small cuts in petrol taxes would cost a fortune in lost revenue, they'd simply shift the problem elsewhere. And with prices changing so often, the relief they offered motorists would be forgotten within days.

Then we have grown men and women arguing furiously for a fortnight about a price watch which, at best, would cut the price by about two cents a litre. And don't think that argument's over yet.

Rudd's latest solution is he's going to press the G8 to press Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to pump more oil. Bet that's got the Saudis worried. Have you noticed the way Rudd and his ministers won't give a straight answer to questions? ...

The trouble with all this soft-soaping is that it encourages the ignorant notion it's the government's job to solve all our problems. It hurts - fix it!

People don't get on with facing up to their problems because they imagine it just a matter of waiting for governments to act. And then the pollies wonder why the punters increasingly regard them as liars and cheats. Why their cynical behaviour breeds cynicism.

Despite the politicians' obfuscation, the plain truth is obvious: one way or another, petrol prices have got nowhere to go but up.

Prices will probably continue to fall back occasionally, but there doesn't seem much doubt that global demand for oil will continue to outpace the global supply of oil.

And that's just the half of it. The thing I find most disillusioning about the Rudd Government's performance is its weak-kneed pretence that the latest rise in oil prices is some kind of hideous natural disaster, brought upon us by a terrible god inflicting death and destruction on the innocent.

This is not a brave government. What it lacks the courage to admit is that the price rises global market forces have been inflicting on us are merely a foretaste of the price rises the Government plans to impose on us through the emissions trading scheme it will introduce in 2010.

The basic principle of such schemes is brutally simple: they force up the prices of fossil fuels so as to discourage us from using them.

SMH - The future price of oil? Pick a number

Mamdouh Salameh believes the oil price would now be no more than $US40 a barrel, less than a third of the current price, if not for the Iraq war.

An oil economist adviser to the World Bank and the UN Industrial Development Organisation, Dr Salameh says that among the world's biggest oil producers, Iraq alone has enough reserves to increase flow substantially. Production in eight others - the United States, Canada, Iran, Indonesia, Russia, Britain, Norway and Mexico - has peaked, he says, while China and Saudia Arabia, the remaining two, are nearing the point of decline. Before the war, Saddam Hussein's regime pumped 3.5 million barrels of oil a day, but this has fallen to just 2 million barrels.

Salameh told a British parliamentary committee last month that Iraq had offered the US a deal, three years before the war, that would have opened 10 new giant oil fields on "generous" terms, in return for lifting sanctions. "This would certainly have prevented the steep rise of the oil price," he said. "But the US had a different idea. It planned to occupy Iraq and annex its oil." ...

At nearly 86 million barrels a day, global oil production has stagnated since 2005, despite soaring demand, suggesting production already has reached the geological limit of "peak oil".

Recession in the West may not provide price relief, because economic demand is increasing in countries such as China, Russia and members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries - where heavy subsidies cushion consumers against rising prices.

The future could unfold in a number of ways. ... There are fears in Europe that oil will soar because Russian output has gone into decline; Saudi Arabia has shelved plans to expand production capacity, and advisers to the Nigerian government predict its output will fall by 30 per cent by 2015. In this scenario, big producers could be expected to divert exports for home consumption.

One more from LP which includes some interesting numbers.

Larvatus Prodeo - Coal and Germany big winners in energy use

Not specifically Aussie, but according to this report, even the US government now accepts that humans are causing climate change.

From the abstract,

It is well established through formal attribution studies that the global warming of the past 50 years is due primarily to human-induced increases in heat-trapping gases.

So any deniers now have the privilege of being more conservative and "sceptical" than the Dubya administration...

You are absolutely right !!!