Oil strike: Government failure on energy security

It is increasingly looking like we will go from oil strike to oil shock to oil famine before Green solutions are adopted - and they must - see below my letter to the press last night - and also below an answer to a query on a new oil find.

Photo: Bakken oil field (see discussion below)

Before all that I must mention the fascinating and at times heated Coffee House Discussion at Star Anise last night on biofuels - Colin Hygate from Green Fuels (Europes largest biodiesel equipment supplier) in Stonehouse, Dave Cockcroft, a Green party Town councillor who has been researching energy and John Meadley all talked. Plus there was input from Biofuelwatch and many others - there seemed to be general agreement about the damage that palm oil is doing - and indeed a majority of the people there also were totally against the corn being used in the states - and against the Government's recent targets - See my recent comment on that here. However the role biofuels played should not be underestimated - a third of the world uses biofuels of one sort or another (incl wood etc) - and new technologies are looking at algae or crops that could only be grown in certain arid conditions.

But could we feed ourselves and drive cars (see my recent posts on this by clicking on label below)? Dave Cockcroft had calculated if all Stroud District was put down to rapeseed it would still only provide 25% of our current use - and there is clearly no way rapeseed could grow across the whole District - and of course that would leave nothing for food. Biofuels have a place - only a small place - extreme caution is needed before considering their use (except of course waste oils like chip fat etc). Anyhow to the letter....

The strike at the Grangemouth oil refinery, with it's possible month long fuel shortage in Scotland and the north of England, highlights our Governments inability to ensure energy provision. In 2006, Green MEPs failed to get sensible answers from Government ministries, when they asked what steps were being taken to prepare for a decrease in national fuel supplies. It seems clear now that the Government have no serious plans.

This week, oil reached its highest price ever. Some oil traders are betting on it doubling by the end of the year. Even if this doesn't occur, many recognise that oil production is probably nearing its peak. Some consider it has peaked. If so, we are in for a rough ride. If producers start keeping their fast-dwindling resources for their own economies then the forecast oil shock will become an energy famine.

The need to tackle our energy use has never been greater. Yet it is still only Greens that have the initiatives to protect us from the consequences of a sudden decrease in fuel supplies. Policies like free insulation and sustainable energy would mean that our homes would be increasingly off-grid and not dependent on fossil fuel supply. While locally sourced food production would ensure food security for communities is not dependent on long haul transport and the whims of the fuel market.

We must surely wake up to this issue and act. We can only do this together.

Cllr. Philip Booth,
Stroud District councillor for the Randwick, Ruscombe and Whiteshill ward

And what of the new oil find?

The US imported about 14 million barrels of Oil per day in 2007 , which means US consumers sent about $340 Billion Dollars over seas building palaces in Dubai and propping up unfriendly regimes around the World....I read with some interest that: "America is sitting on top of a super massive 200 billion barrel Oil Field that could potentially make America Energy Independent and until now has largely gone unnoticed. Thanks to new technology the Bakken Formation in North Dakota could boost America’s Oil reserves by an incredible 10 times, giving western economies the trump card against OPEC’s short squeeze on oil supply and making Iranian and Venezuelan threats of disrupted supply irrelevant."

Some gave the figures even higher and talked of a 25% increase in oil for the states...

A 25-fold increase? That's huge – or so it sounds. But then you start comparing numbers. Assuming all 4.3 billion barrels could be retrieved, it would represent nine months of oil consumption in the United States. Here is one report: "...let's consider the nature of the Bakken oil. It doesn't sit in big underground pools where you can just pop in a metal straw and suck it out. This oil is trapped in layers of shale – a sedimentary rock – up to 3,000 metres deep. Getting at it is expensive and difficult, and certainly damaging to the surrounding landscape and environment. You thought the oil sands were messy and energy-intensive? Bakken is tough oil. You have to drill down and then horizontally through rock, which has to be fractured to release the oil that is tucked away in small pores....Now, with oil at $110 (U.S.) a barrel, some of those Bakken reserves just might make it into our vehicles one day. What's perplexing, however, is the oil industry's determination to go after this expensive, dirty stuff when other, cleaner alternatives do exist."

Hermann Scheer, president of the World Council for Renewable Energy commented: "The reason is very simple. The oil companies have tied all of their investments to transportation, refineries and distribution. That means they're prisoners of their own energy supply chain."

So all in all while it maybe nice oil, but it is still difficult to extract and no serious delay to any peak oil...