[Crossposted at
Bopnews.com]
In the dog days of summer, when everyone, is dogging Rove and Scooter, the two yapping attack dogs of the White House and Naval Observatory, particularly - it's useful to remember that there is a point to all of this. Besides of course, being fun.
While much of the focus has been on the Supreme Court, something else has been making the rounds in Congress, and on both sides of the aisle.
Interest in Peak Oil.
It may be something which has slipped under the radar screen, but it is also a reality: in the last 6 months the group think of Washington DC has changed dramatically, and various politicians are now feeling around for higher ground.
The bricks of this consensus are:
- Iraq is a dry hole.
- The tooth fairie has not found another Saudi Arabia.
- The Chinese are seeking to secure oil at source.
- Something has to be done about all of this.
For people who have been following the energy wars for years, the turn around in Republican group think is particularly dramatic. This time last year the consensus on the right was "there is plenty of oil and if we need to we will take it." Iraq was still going to "work out" after all was said and done. Now the cut and run consensus dominated both sides, and the only question is whether it is called a withdrawal or a strategic withdrawal.
The oil companies as well have admitted that all of the rosy picture bottomless well stuff relied on a few possible locations panning out - and they haven't. Added to this has been that access to Iraqi Oil Ministry documents imply that the Chalabi estimates of another Saudi Arabia in Iraq's Western Desert came from the same orifice as the WMD stories.
As a result, even if not specifically understood by the various elected officials, Peak Oil is now here. In no small part because a number of rather calm observers are predicting that the Peak of Light Oil is close at hand. A number of them are members of the House of Saud. The Saudis have admitted that in order to raise production from Saudi Arabia, they will have to start pumping sour crude, with higher water content and at lower concentrations of the volatiles we love so much. This is why Bush is talking about "more refineries" - it isn't that there is a refinery bottleneck - on the contrary, getting rid of useless midgrade would solve the bottleneck problems - it is that very soon we will need more refinery capacity to deal with the lowered quality of oil that is going to be a fact of life into the next century.
Those working on lobbying Congress on this issue are finding doors open in both the House and the Senate, and from both Democratic and Republican law makers. While the process is still in its very early, and very delicate stages, there seems to be at least a willingness to listen on this issue. Particularly since the Bush energy plan has a few winners, and a ton of big losers. Missouri and Arkansas will join the oil patch and get development of reactors to steam blast kerogenes loose, but Arizona will get shafted, as will much of the rest of the Rockies.
To recap the state of Peak Oil
- The peak of all petroleum production is likely in the 15 to 30 year time frame.
- The demand problem means that regardless of the production curve, oil will be in short supply that entire time.
- The quality of oil is going to drop, and the peak of light oil is much closer.
This is leading to another factor: a drive to control oil strategically, by the Chinese and by the Europeans. Rather than the current market where almost every molecule of hydrocarbon goes on to one big sloshing marketplace, the future is going to have a race to lock up increasingly scarce supplies of fuel, particularly what can be called "high transport grade fuel".