Oilwatch Monthly November 2009
Posted by Rembrandt on November 19, 2009 - 10:18am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: demand, eia, exports, iea, imports, joint oil data initiative, non-opec, oilwatch, opec, original, stocks total liquids, supply, world production [list all tags]
The November 2009 edition of Oilwatch Monthly can be downloaded at this weblink (PDF, 1.24 MB, 33 pp).

The Oilwatch Monthly is a newsletter that is available free of charge with the latest data on oil supply, demand, oil stocks, spare capacity and exports.
A summary and latest graphics below the fold.
Some predictions on the forthcoming Russian-Ukrainian gas 'crisis'
Posted by Jerome a Paris on November 17, 2009 - 10:16am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: europe, european gas, gas pipelines, pipelines, russia, ukraine [list all tags]
- the internal infighting between groups of powerful Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs for the control of unofficial Russian gas deliveries to Ukraine (more on this below) is still not conclusively settled, and requires "action" using official levers of State and interference with Gazprom's export deliveries through Ukraine;
- Russia thinks it stands a better chance to focus European blame on Ukraine and, even more importantly, to get Europeans to buy off the Ukrainians (thereby increasing the available unofficial gas loot for the players involved).
So let's try to make some predictions and unravel what's actually going on.
Originally posted on European Tribune. See also my full series of articles on earlier episodes of the Russian-Ukrainian crises here
The US stimulus and "green jobs" for wind energy
Posted by Jerome a Paris on November 13, 2009 - 10:26am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: clean energy tax stimulus act of 2008, industrial policy, taxation, wind [list all tags]
I'd like to make a few comments on this.
This is part of my series on wind power.
The Future of Nuclear Energy: Facts and Fiction - Part IV: Energy from Breeder Reactors and from Fusion?
Posted by Francois Cellier on November 10, 2009 - 10:51am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: fast breeder reactors, fossil fuel depletion, michael dittmar, nuclear energy, nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, thorium, uranium [list all tags]
This is the fourth part of a four-part guest post by Dr. Michael Dittmar. Dr. Dittmar is a researcher with the Institute of Particle Physics of ETH Zurich, and he also works at CERN in Geneva.
The accumulated knowledge and the prospects for commercial energy production from fission breeder and fusion reactors are analyzed in this report.
The publicly available data from past experimental breeder reactors indicate that a large number of unsolved technological problems exist and that the amount of "created" fissile material, either from the U238 → Pu239 or from the Th232 → U233 cycle, is still far below the breeder requirements and optimistic theoretical expectations. Thus huge efforts, including many basic research questions with an uncertain outcome, are needed before a large commercial breeder prototype can be designed. Even if such efforts are undertaken by the technologically most advanced countries, it will take several decades before such a prototype can be constructed. We conclude therefore, that ideas about near-future commercial fission breeder reactors are nothing but wishful thinking.
We further postulate that, no matter how far into the future we may look, nuclear fusion as an energy source is even less probable than large-scale breeder reactors, for the accumulated knowledge on this subject is already sufficient to say that commercial fusion power will never become a reality.
EROWI - energy return of water invested
Posted by Ugo Bardi on November 5, 2009 - 10:15am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Tags: energy, eroei, eroi, water [list all tags]
Energy Return of Water Invested (EROWI). From an article by Robert Service in Science Magazine. The data in the table originate from "Energy demands on water resources",report to the congress, 2006 link.
An interview with Stoneleigh - the case for deflation
Posted by Euan Mearns on October 31, 2009 - 10:57am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Economics/Finance
Tags: crash, deflation, depression, economics, stock market, stoneleigh [list all tags]
At the ASPO conference in Denver, October 2009, I had the good fortune to meet Stoneleigh, former editor of The Oil Drum Canada, who left the The Oil Drum crew with colleague Ilargi to set up The Automatic Earth where they publish stories, news and analysis of the unfolding financial crisis. I spent a couple of days chatting with Stoneleigh where she recounted her rather gloomy prospects for the immediate future of the global economy. The following interview is a summary of her analysis of the unfolding situation. Note that in a departure from convention, my questions are set in "blockquotes" to distinguish these from Stoneleigh's responses.
Stoneleigh, the world economy seems to be suffering from two great structural woes at present, namely stubbornly high energy prices that are linked to demand that is persistently ahead of the supply curve, and a level of debt that has destabilized the global finance and banking systems. Can you explain for us the scale and structure of this debt and to what extent write-downs and quantitative easing (QE) have solved this problem?
The Future of European Transport: iTREN-2030
Posted by Rembrandt on October 30, 2009 - 10:23am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: brussels, eu, europe, itren-2030, oil consumption, transportation [list all tags]
On 21 October the final workshop was held in Brussels (Belgium) of the integrated transport and energy baseline until 2030 (iTREN-2030) modeling project. At the workshop a final scenario was presented that incorporated likely transport and energy policies, and the effects on European transport of a continued global plateau in oil production up to 2030. The integrated scenario was generated by four energy and transport models that have been linked in iTREN-2030 to increase the forecasting power of the transport policies of the European Commission.
In this post I describe the iTREN-2030 project and the different models, covering the POLES global energy supply and demand model in more detail, highlight the conclusions of the present integrated scenario, and give my reflection on the workshop commenting on some areas of improvement to augment the potential of the models.
The iTREN-2030 project is all the more important because the resulting model set and integrated scenario will be used by the European Commission (DG-Tren) in preparing the white paper on transport policies due for 2010. After discussion with the European Parliament and approval by the council of Minister, the European Union will as a result have set out its new course for the future of transport in the period up to 2020.
European gas buyers unwilling to pay for security of supply
Posted by Jerome a Paris on October 27, 2009 - 10:28am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Policy/Politics
Tags: gazprom, long term contracts, natural gas, take-or-pay [list all tags]
Even as we've been going through years of hand-wringing about security of supply, and about how Russia was an unreliable gas supplier, it comes out the European gas buyers are themselves increasingly refusing to pay the price that underpins the security of their Russian supplies, and are breaking their contractual obligations towards Gazprom, making Europe, erm, a less reliable customer... something that's likely to come and bite us in the near future:
European Energy Firms Fall Short in Gazprom Purchases
European energy companies, faced with weakening demand and plentiful lower-cost fuel supplies, have bought far less natural gas from Russia's OAO Gazprom this year than they are obliged to under long-term contracts -- setting the scene for a potentially damaging showdown with Moscow.
Insights Regarding Future World Oil Production Based on ASPO Denver Presentations
Posted by Rembrandt on October 26, 2009 - 10:27am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: aspo, aspo denver, aspo-8, aspo-usa, oil production, peak oil [list all tags]
"Peak oil can be a very tricky topic, the way I talk about it and deal with it at the end of the day is: We need to revolutionize the way we consume and produce energy... We need to really be the leaders in saying: the future for our children and our grandchildren as far as energy consumption and as far as production, it looks like this" with those words Colorado Governor Bill Ritter started his closing speech at the ASPO conference in Denver that took place from 10 to 12 October 2009.
Telling our children and grandchildren where they will draw their heat, electricity and liquid fuels from was not a topic of discussion in Denver. Nonetheless, much information was conveyed on the relationship between the economics crisis and the future of oil. This post is an attempt to summarize the main points on oil and the economy from the conference presentations--concluding that there are three distinct future trajectories as we go forward.
At the Denver conference, world oil production was discussed from both the supply side (what flow rate can be reached) and the demand side (how much can the economy afford). It is really the combination of the two that is important--so I bring together both in this post.
Oilwatch Monthly October 2009
Posted by Rembrandt on October 23, 2009 - 10:43am in The Oil Drum: Europe
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: demand, eia, exports, iea, imports, joint oil data initiative, non-opec, oilwatch, opec, original, stocks total liquids, supply, world production [list all tags]
The October 2009 edition of Oilwatch Monthly can be downloaded at this weblink (PDF, 1.37 MB, 33 pp).

The Oilwatch Monthly is a newsletter that is available free of charge with the latest data on oil supply, demand, oil stocks, spare capacity and exports.
A summary and latest graphics below the fold.


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