North Sea gas drying up faster than hoped

North Sea gas reserves are being used up faster than anticipated, MPs said yesterday, warning that energy shortages will be impossible to avert in the event of the predicted harsh winter. Taking evidence from government ministers and energy industry experts, the House of Commons trade and industry committee heard that Britain's gas is being depleted well ahead of schedule.

The natural gas reserves in the UK "Continental Shelf" area are about 600 billion cubic metres [21 trillion cubic feet], and production is declining from its peak in 2000. According to current official estimates, the UK is expected to be 50 per cent dependent on imported gas by 2010, and 80 per cent dependent by 2020.

The MPs calculated that for every 10 per cent increase in fuel prices, an extra 400,000-500,000 households in England and 60,000 in Scotland fall into "fuel poverty", spending more than 10 per cent of their income on energy. Despite government attempts to downplay talk of a gas crisis this winter, Scottish MPs of all parties yesterday insisted there could be severe problems ahead.

Peak Gold?

peakoil.com (thread) -> theglobeandmail.com :

There's a growing gap between what gold consumers want and what producers can pull out of the ground. As gold soars past $530 an ounce, the same talk of peak oil that accompanied this year's energy price boom is starting to resurface, only this time its about how much gold is left to mine and how quickly producers can mine it. According to the World Gold Council, total gold supply in the third quarter of 2005 was 920 tonnes, which is 12.8% lower than total supply in the third quarter of 2003.

One of the main drivers of world demand for gold is jewellery. Sales in India, the world's biggest consumer of gold, have soared as the country's massive middle class scoops up the culturally important commodity. So far this year, end use consumption of gold for jewellery is up about 20 per cent from the same period last year.

The industry is reeling from high production costs. Currency fluctuations and rising commodity prices have made the energy-intensive work of mining gold all the more expensive, forcing companies to mothball pricey projects, Mr. Butler said. "At these prices lots of projects make more sense," he said. "But I don't think any big investors are going to make plans [based on] $525 gold just yet." ...

The Rainwater Prophecy

energybulletin.net -> fortune.com, peakoil.com :

Richard Rainwater made billions by knowing how to profit from a crisis. Now he foresees the biggest one yet. Richard Rainwater doesn't want to sound like a kook. But he's about as worried as a happily married guy with more than $2 billion and a home in Pebble Beach can get. You don't get to be a multibillionaire investor — one who's more than doubled his net worth in a decade — through incremental gains on little stock trades. You have to push way past conventional thinking, test the boundaries of chaos, see events in a bigger context.

The next blowup, however, looms so large that it scares and confuses him. Every morning he rises before dawn at one of his houses in Texas or South Carolina or California and spends four or five hours reading sites like LifeAftertheOilCrash.net or DieOff.org, obsessively following links and sifting through data. How worried is he? He has some $500 million of his $2.5 billion fortune in cash, more than ever before. "I'm long oil and I'm liquid," he says. "I've put myself in a position that if the end of the world came tomorrow I'd kind of be prepared." He's also ready to move fast if he spots an opening.

"Peak oil" theorists posit that global production is at or near its historic ceiling and will begin a long, inexorable decline. They worry that America is not ready for the downturn, for skyrocketing prices and even shortages. Savinar's site's opening line is, "Civilization as we know it is coming to an end." Rainwater has been checking it every morning since September, when his personal anxiety alert level moved to orange.

Rainwater sides with the imminent peak crowd, and can rattle off facts to back up his argument. "In 1988 there were 15 million barrels a day of shut-in production" - meaning surplus that could be tapped - "and the world was using about 55 million barrels of oil. Today the world is using over 80 million, and there's no shut-in production left. We've used it up, through the combination of depletion and growth." In other words, the spigot can't be opened any wider ...

(2005-12-14 11:31:00 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

Firefighters extingush final blazing tank at British oil depot

channelnewsasia.com :

Firefighters battling a massive fuel depot fire near London said they had extinguished the final blazing tanks. Flames were still leaping high into the twilight sky from burning fuel at the depot near Hemel Hempstead, 25 miles (40 kilometres) northwest of London, on Tuesday.

Nearly 60 hours after Sunday's gigantic pre-dawn explosions at the Buncefield depot sent dark smoke billowing over southeast England, all 20 of the container tank fires were out.