Tuesday June 20, 2006

Global energy crisis cooks to surface

peakoil.com -> rigzone.com :

The growing scarcity of oil and natural gas has provoked worldwide political conflict and a mad rush for renewable resources. Like a volcano before it erupts, the crisis has heated up for decades, out of sight of oil-heated homes and petrol-powered cars. But the signs of trouble are now evident, and not only at the pump, where $70-a-barrel prices eat into the pocketbook. War in Iraq, tensions over Iran's nuclear plans, the international standoff over genocide in Sudan, kidnappings and killings in Nigeria's oil fields - all give frenzied expression to the world's rocketing, insatiable thirst for oil. U.S. columnist Thomas Friedman regularly warns New York Times readers that America's appetite for fuel supports the very movements intent on its destruction.

At the upcoming G8 summit in St. Petersburg in July, energy issues are expected to dominate. Booming economic progress in places like China and India is a key factor, but the U.S. still sucks up one-quarter of the 80 million barrels of oil consumed every day by the world. The looming specter of "peak oil production" - the point at which oil production is expected to drop because reserves are too difficult to pump out - has combined with high prices and increasing political insecurity to boost the search for renewable energy sources.

Long-simmering warnings by environmentalists over global warming from carbon emissions were on their own not enough to provoke serious consideration of energy alternatives. But last year's Hurricane Katrina, which produced the world's first "climate refugees," went a long way to helping convince the general public of the need for change, said Lester Brown, head of the Earth Policy Institute environmental pressure group. "Two years ago, most persons wouldn't have known the price of a barrel of oil," Brown said in a telephone interview. "Now, there's insecurity both on the oil front and on the climate front, and it's beginning to affect people's thinking."

(2006-06-20 16:34:47 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

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