The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand

The bailout of Freddie and Fannie has just been announced by Hank Paulson, with supporting words from Bernanke. What's interesting in what's proposed, as usual, is what's unsaid. This would seem to be an incredibly ambitious gambit: a nationalisation, an attempted bailout of ALL the banks, and an open-ended commitment of taxpayer money to save the financial world.

The following media release is a good news story from Queensland:

Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation
The Honourable Andrew McNamara

Friday, February 08, 2008

The State Government is to develop a strategy to help Queenslanders lessen their reliance on liquid fossil fuels as the price of oil increases and supply diminishes.

Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation, Andrew McNamara, said the future availability of fossil fuel and alternative energy supplies is one of the main sustainability issues facing society today.

This is a guest post by Ian Longfield from Peak Oil Awareness Campaign.

The new Australian government has announced a giant talkfest in April [also discussed here] in which 1000 experts will be gathered for weekend to discuss the big ideas of our times which will be manifest between now and 2020.

2020 of course, is as catchy as Kevin07, and provides a curious timeline which gives an approximate outlook of twelve years, about the same lifetime of recent federal governments, and probably a reasonable expectation of this one.

The talkfest reminds me of Gough Whitlams approach when he first came to power, promising to consult widely and govern in partnership with the people. Of course Whitlam soon found out that giving everyone a say was the best way to paralyze any sort of decision making and at least Kevin Rudd has made it clear that his ministers will pick and choose the best ideas to come out of the summit.

In an attempt to engage with the electorate, last year the UK Government launched an e-petitions service on their website (petitions.pm.gov.uk). The petitions can be created by anyone and gained significant media attention earlier in the year when more than one million people signed the petition against plans to introduce road charging in the UK (BBC News).

One petition focused on peak oil, it read:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to acknowledge that global oil and gas supplies are peaking and will soon decline; a situation requiring immediate action.
Link

The Government have published their official response today (3 October 2007).

The summaries of the first day of the ASPO conference can be found here and here. The second day's morning summary can be found here.

The overlying theme of this year’s conference was Time to React? The final session was set-up to respond to that question, or perhaps it would be more cautious to say to explore it. The session was guided by Eddie Hobbs of RTE , and began with Debbie Cook , a former Mayor of Huntington Beach, CA. She talked about how some the issues should be addressed in local government. She felt that the challenge that we face is more of an adaptive one than that of technology. Because they see some of the highest power costs in the United States, they worked to incentivize power savings for the utilities. As a consequence she learned the benefits of selling problems at the local level. And the scale of the local use was large, with 495,000 gal/yr of fuel used for City Services, 525,000 gal of fuel/year for Waste pickup and recycle (they pick up 4,500 tons of trash a week and recycle 60% though some is sent to China where it is burned to make energy). The City did an Energy Audit and learned that keeping a single Coke machine costs $500 a year in power.

[UPDATE 10/07/2007] The All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and Gas (APPGOPO) now has a website: http://www.appgopo.org.uk/

Bloomberg coverage:

U.K. Parliament Members Form `Peak Oil' Group to Study Reserves

The U.K. parliament formed a group to study peak oil, the theory that world oil production is approaching its zenith, as British lawmakers face up to the country's future as an energy importer.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and Gas, which held its first meeting June 26, comprises 32 members of the House of Commons, or lower chamber, and seven from the House of Lords, or upper chamber.

It aims to collate predictions for when production may peak and consider the implications for energy policy, rather than push a particular view, said the group's chairman, John Hemming, a Liberal Democrat MP for Birmingham Yardley, central England.

This report is from James Howard of PowerSwitch.

On Tuesday 26th June 2007, Tony Blair’s last full day as Prime Minister, the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and Gas (APPGOPO) held its inaugural Annual General Meeting, ensuring that the issue of declining global oil supplies will feature much more prominently in Parliament in the Gordon Brown era.

Palace of Westminster. Photography by Deryc Sands.

Following the unexpected resignation of Lord Sainsbury, the supermarket billionaire, on Friday (10Nov06) from his post as the Minister for Science our Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks has left his post at the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to take up the vacant position of Science Minister.

A new Energy Minister then? Well, kind of. Wicks' ministerial position sat within the DTI, reporting to the Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling. It is Darling who is to take on personal responsibility for the energy brief going forward. This does promote the energy brief to a cabinet level position - long called for by those in the energy industry - but also dilutes attention as Darling maintains his existing responsibilities. The sceptical could perhaps point out the UK no longer has an energy minister though I don't think that's fair.

Goodbye Malcolm Wicks

Hello Alistair Darling

John Hemming MP has recently tabled a written question asking the Chancellor of the Exchequer what oil price his Department predicts for each of the next 10 years.

As is usual the straight forward question didn't result in a column of ten numbers plus the appropriate uncertainties or caveats for use. The get-out seems to be based on semantics since the treasury doesn't actually make its own predictions but works with an average of independent forecasts. It was clear that the information Hemming was actually after was what prices they use internally... However the response did provide an interesting document on the assumptions used by the treasury.

The Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks has recently responded to a letter from energy awareness organisation PowerSwitch. The letter directly addresses peak oil, dismissing peak before 2030 provided the necessary investments are made. On discovery he believes the decline in discovery since the sixties was due to lack of drilling in the Middle East and FSU caused by the large proved reserves but he expects this trend to change, with more and larger fields being discovered as drilling picks up.

There are weaknesses with this position. It is clear that Wicks is subscribing to the flawed 'Economic View' of oil supply as described by Roger Bentley here. Although Wicks doesn't state how much investment would be needed, a government report from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office recently stated $17 trillion would needed by 2030, can/will this investment be made?

What is the contingency plan in event that this investment isn't made and the peak occurs far sooner? Surely if the best case sees peak extraction rates within 24 years we had better get on with an aggressive mitigation strategy rather than building new airport infrastructure?

Complete letter below.

Energy was briefly debated in parliament yesterday (04May06), the debate started with a request to Malcolm Wicks the Energy Minister asking:

If he will make a statement on the current and future diversity of the UK's energy supply.

He duly did so without saying anything substantive apart from saying that the joint energy security of supply working group report will be published next week. We discussed this missing report on TOD here and last week the JESS secretariat promised publication this week - what's one more week after we've waited months - maybe the wait is nearly over.

Wicks was specifically asked whether he regretted saying that the country was awash with gas last winter to which he replied simply that it had been what National Grid had told him. Does Wicks believe everything he is told at face value?

When asked about coal and the potential of carbon capture and sequestration he replied:

I think that that has huge, indeed mammoth potential. Given that the world will be burning huge amounts of carbon--fossil fuels such as gas and coal, not least in China--for a century or more, the only way in which we can square the circle and meet the challenge of climate change is to ensure that we promote technologies that can strip out carbon dioxide and store it safely, for example under the North sea.

On nuclear he had this to say:

The case for new nuclear is strong; however, concerns about waste and safety, and the need to consider the economics and to make a cost-benefit analysis, are also important factors.

I wonder how the case can be 'strong' before considering the economics and cost-benefit analysis. Can there be any case before such considerations?

Full transcript below.