One And Done

I started this blog a year ago with the idea that while oil and other conventional hydrocarbon energy sources were dwindling, mankind would find a way around them. I still feel that way, but I no longer have any strong itch to cross swords with the millennialist Greens, nor do I especially care for the "commie fag" comments I get occaisionally from children with nothing better to do with their days. Regardless of the reason, I've said all I'm going to say on these topics for now. There may be more coming in the future, but I've successfully resisted posting about several interesting stories now (like this one from the Knight-Ridder newswire talking about oil exploration driving up the cost of rig rental), and expect to do so in the future as well. Oil prices are on the rise, no doubt about it. It's unlikely we'll find enough oil to satisfy all the demands from across the globe, and somehow, whether peacefully, or as Dubya has decided to do, through military means, the remainder will be distributed. The consequences will be enormous, but I want to get myself away from all the doomsaying. It's time for me to go.

Thank you for reading.

Google: Energy To Run Servers Could Outweigh Acquisition Costs

Well, duh, and hasn't anyone else been paying attention to this problem? Of course, it makes sense that Google, whose architecture is based on thousands of commodity computers, would run into this problem.

"If performance per watt is to remain constant over the next few years, power costs could easily overtake hardware costs, possibly by a large margin," Luiz Andre Barroso, who previously designed processors for Digital Equipment Corp., said in a September paper published in the Association for Computing Machinery's Queue. "The possibility of computer equipment power consumption spiraling out of control could have serious consequences for the overall affordability of computing, not to mention the overall health of the planet."

...

If server power consumption grows 20 percent per year, the four-year cost of a server's electricity bill will be larger than the $3,000 initial price of a typical low-end server with x86 processors. Google's data center is populated chiefly with such machines. But if power consumption grows at 50 percent per year, "power costs by the end of the decade would dwarf server prices," even without power increasing beyond its current 9 cents per kilowatt-hour cost, Barroso said.

EIA: $50/Barrel Crude Here To Stay

Among other things:

The agency said it added about $21 to the projected future price of a barrel of crude because analysts no longer believe today's tight global oil market would ease in the coming decades. This is primarily due to a belief that OPEC oil production, now 30 million barrels a day, is not expected to grow as much as had been expected. The EIA projects OPEC production at 44 million barrels a day in 2025, about 11 million barrels less than had been predicted a year ago.

"The oil is there," said Caruso, dismissing suggestions by some oil economists that global oil reserves may be peaking. But Caruso said, "It appears the pace of investment in oil production is less than what was anticipated a year ago" among OPEC countries. He did not name specific countries.

Er... how would he know?

CERA: Really, There's Plenty Of Oil, Honest

On the occaision of Kjell Aleklett testifying before the House on the subject of peak oil, CERA asks for us to take their word that peak oil isn't about to hit, claiming

A field-by-field analysis of global oil production and development shows the world is not running out of oil in the near- or medium-term, and a large increase in the availability of unconventional oils will expand global liquid hydrocarbons capacity by as much as one-fourth in the next ten years, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), an IHS company, testified to a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee this morning

“We see no evidence to suggest a peak before 2020, nor do we see a transparent and technically sound analysis from another source that justifies belief in an imminent peak,” CERA Senior Consultant and Director of Global Oil and Gas Resources Robert Esser testified before a House Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee hearing on Understanding the Peak Oil Theory. “It will be a number of decades into this century before we get to an inflexion point that will herald the arrival of an ‘undulating plateau’ of global hydrocarbon production capacity,” Esser said.

Wouldn't it be nice if he were right?

Chiasm Stuff

Wow, John Atkinson's been slow too, just like me, but that doesn't mean he isn't doing good work. For instance, check out his Winds of Change energy roundup (with a few links back here -- thankee), as well as some good stuff from Gary Jones, who makes the eminently sensible point about using biomass for fuel that

... it isn't as if we were doing a good job of feeding people now. Nearly 1 in 6 humans is food insecure now, and we expect another 3 billion in coming decades. It isn't yet clear just how we will feed them since it is estimated that to do it all we must double existing food production. It just seems silly to count on growing crops for the express purpose of burning them when people are starving.

"It becomes ever truer that the greatest enemies of the environment are environmentalists," he writes, and I largely agree with him.

The other post I wanted to highlight was this one about "Methane to Markets", a rare Bush win in all the mess that is energy/environment/blah. Rather than vent the stuff into the atmosphere -- where it is a killer greenhouse gas -- the plan is to find ways to get the stuff to market. Sounds like a good idea to me. We're gonna need all we can get.

Iran's Twelfth Imam

Wow -- what a freaky story about Iran's recently elected president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He's demanded Israel should be "wiped off the map", and with stories of Iranian nuclear capabilities hitting the newswires are to be believed, he'll have the means to do it on the cheap, too.

By some accounts, the new president's first deputy, Parvis Davoudi, recently asked cabinet members during a formal meeting to pledge their allegiance to the Mahdi in a signed letter. And when Ahmadinejad was Tehran's mayor, he reportedly refurbished a major boulevard on grounds that the Mahdi was to travel along it upon his return. Last week, a videodisc began circulating that reportedly shows the president chatting with one of the country's leading clerics, Ayatollah Javadi Amoli. Referring to his September speech to the United Nations, during which he called for the return of the 12th imam, the Iranian president confides that he felt himself surrounded by a radiant light. Not one foreign diplomat blinked during his speech, he adds. All this has caused a major stir, prompting some critics to wonder if Ahmadinejad has come to fancy himself as the 12th imam's representative on Earth—a dangerous notion for a man with a Ph.D. in traffic management.

Maybe the most important sentence in this article in the context of this blog is that

He's thrice nominated individuals for the position of Oil minister whose qualifications for the job were light or nonexistent. All have been rejected by Parliament.

If the Iranians are having trouble with their reservoirs, as with Venezuela, it won't help that the guys at the top don't know the oil business. As expected, much of his political success is seen as hinging on his ability to buy votes, and one key program -- the "Love Fund", so named because it hands out make-work jobs and loans to newlyweds -- has already failed parliamentary muster. If there's one thing that's increasingly becoming clear, the political problems associated with oil wealth will make peak oil more difficult, not less, to bear.

They Last How Long?

Fuel cells are one of those just-over-the-horizon technologies that never seem to get any closer. Plug Power didn't do themselves any favors by hyping their technology as something that would eventually go into every home; the costs are too great. But at least they've been able to find another market: cellphone towers. Sounds great: the cost isn't unreasonable compared to current lead-acid batteries, and including replacement costs, is actually slightly better. What I don't get -- and maybe this is something the writer of this piece failed to understand or convey properly -- is the claim that the fuel cells "last 15 hours". Huh? Are they a one-time-only operation? Or is that a function of the typical amount of fuel stored locally?

Saudis Abdicate "Swing Producer" Role

The Saudis have given up on playing the role of the world's swing producer, according to the International Herald Tribune. These days, it's all about keeping up with demand.

Way Late: Richard Smalley Dies

Very, very tardy on this one: Rice University researcher and Nobel laureate Richard Smalley died last month after a protracted battle with leukemia. He was 62.

Along with Robert F. Curl, Jr. and Sir Harold W. Kroto, he discovered buckminsterfullerene, which in turn led to the discovery of carbon nanotubes.

Lord Browne On Peak Oil

Sounding the same notes that got this blog launched, Lord Browne of BP talks about peak oil production in a speech to the Brookings Institute. Excerpts:

The last two years have brought energy back to the top of the agenda in this country, and around the world.

There are at least four reasons why that is so.

First global demand for energy is growing day by day. Demand now is nearly 50 per cent higher than it was only 20 years ago.

Demand is driven by the twin forces of population growth, and the spread of prosperity.

The world’s population has risen by almost 10,000 in the last hour- so far this year by around 80 million.

More and more of those new citizens have the resources to buy the energy they need. They want the heat, light and mobility which we take for granted.

As economic prosperity spreads and poverty recedes more people can afford that energy. On some estimates there are perhaps 200 million new customers for commercial energy every year.

...

Some believe that these problems will escalate to the point of crisis, and in particular that prices will rise and rise.

You could call that the “peakist view”. We believe that is a mistaken view because it ignores a fundamental characteristic of human behaviour, which is to respond to perceived risk by finding an alternative way forward.

Much more over there, of course. Thanks to Eric McErlain for the link.

Drilling Little Holes

Interesting story on AAPG Explorer about drilling very small -- <= 4.75 inches -- holes for natural gas. One such series of holes in the Niobara reservoir of Kansas and Colorado may contain as much as 1 Tcf of natural gas.

Norwegians Start Drilling In Kurdish Areas Of Iraq

The Los Angeles Times reports that Norwegian oil company DNO is drilling in Kurdish-controlled areas of Iraq, essentially without the knowledge of the central government.

"We need to figure out if this is allowed in the constitution," said Adnan Ali Kadhimi, an advisor to Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari. "Nobody has mentioned it. It has not come up among the government ministers' council. It has not been on their agenda."

The start of drilling, called "spudding" in the oil business, is sure to be worrisome to Iraq's Sunni Arab minority. They fear a disintegration of Iraq into separate ethnic and religious cantons if regions begin to cut energy deals with foreign companies and governments. Sunnis are concentrated in Iraq's most oil-poor region.

Iraq's neighbors also fear the possibility of Iraqi Kurds using revenue generated by oil wells to fund an independent state that might lead the roughly 20 million Kurds living in Turkey, Iran and Syria to revolt.