Jesse Parent [INFLUENCE]

Recently in a comment on my editorial at The Energy Collective, it was said ‘oil is so yesterday’. I agree, and left a shorter comment in response. But my full, unabridged response, which has to do with addressing the failures of energy education in America, is below.

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I agree that oil is yesterday, but, for better or worse, it is also today – it’s the vast majority of the US’s present energy (particularly when you include coal and natural gas)*. As far as ‘tomorrow’, conventional exploration and production of fossil fuels has it’s natural limitation, so eventually it will ‘not exist’ on the planet. The reserve we’re using has been built over eons, and will only be replaced at that slow a pace (naturally).

I’m not saying this to singularly promote fossil fuel use, or make renewable energy seem unreasonable. It is said with the hope that people are considering what the transition is going to look like as there is an eventual shift away from fossil fuel consumption. At present, switching out 80% of our energy usage is not feasible in the most immediate sense. * EIA breakdown of US sources of energy http://205.254.135.24/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec1_8.pdf

The real tough questions have to do with: how much do we rely on fossil fuels to assist in the inevitable “post-fossil-fuel world?”. I don’t have an answer I’m comfortable with, yet, and I’m certainly interested in discussing it with others…. ..

Check out my article, featured exclusively on The Energy Collective. It addresses what Michael Spence, a Nobel Laureate, referred to when he mentioned “A substantial failure” in education about America’s energy situation. Hopefully the US can start moving towards energy reality, and soberly determine the best path forward.

It is a curious thing when a mindset develops. Thoughts, data interpretation, reactions, and behaviors become solidified into expectations about what is normal and what is to come as that sense of normal changes. It’s an important process of human development, and it is a particularly interesting thing to look at on a national scale — and when it comes to American perspectives on energy, attempting to sort out the present  situation requires looking at what ‘we’, the collective USA, have been telling ourselves.

Earlier this week, Michale Spence exclaimed:

A substantial failure of education about non-renewable natural resources lies in the background of current public sentiment. And now, having underinvested in energy efficiency and security when the costs of doing so were lower, America is poorly positioned to face the prospect of rising real prices. - “The Energy Deficit” by Michael Spence | Project Syndicate

I agree on both counts; the failure in education and the allusion to difficulties because of a lack of foresight about energy.

Continue Reading at The Energy Collective

Good stuff

NEW YORK – Two months ago, I was introduced to a start-up called CityMart, a for-profit marketplace dedicated to helping vendors and city managers to find one another – and to spreading municipal innovations outside of their home turf. This month, in Thailand, I met Jonathan Hursh, who runs Compassion for Migrant Children (soon to be renamed), which focuses on migrant populations – adults and children with few resources and few rights – in the slums that surround almost every large city in the world. In mid-May, I’ll be attending the New Cities Summit in Paris, a three-day forum focused on the future of cities. 

Illustration by Paul Lachine

Cities matter, as they always have, but now more of the world is starting to take notice of their problems and possibilities. At their worst, cities are slums, places where the social constraints of the village are loosened, people can misbehave in anonymity, and poor and unemployed people live in squalor. At their best, they are places where the best and the brightest congregate, new wealth is created, and scholars and artists sharpen their wits and hone their creativity.

Most cities have grown through evolution, from unpremeditated beginnings. Moreover, they rarely die.

Yes, Fareed, but you are leaving out point “C” which is actually ‘why’ “B” and “A” matter — oil is a finite resource, and peak oil (the point where we reach zenith of production capacities) is upon us. There is ever-more demand, and ever-less supply. Yes, there is a lot of politicizing going on about who can do what, but where is the person who is going to start talking reality about the world’s (and US’s) energy situation. Why does it remain such an unmentionable situation?

(I’ll also use this opportunity to announce the development of a new “Politicization of Energy Discussion in the USA” Case Study. It’s not just about this election year, either, it’s a long-standing trend, and this post is just one piece of a larger puzzle).

Author: Captain Melissa Bert, USCG, Military Fellow, U.S. Coast Guard

A very important article in that it addresses what is happening in the arctic… I’m honestly not sure what to say about arctic policy in general; I’m sure other countries, as mentioned, are taking more initiative, though.

The ice melts as the planet warms at the north pole, and more transportation and other ventures is likely to take place. It seems like a curious case study to follow, that’s for sure. …

Good article. A very unfortunate situation for Japan; nuclear making up 30% of their energy mix - and all fossil fuels requiring transportation to the island nation.

My quest to figure out what happened/is going on Japan continues….

…. Jenkins says Japan’s goal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is now shelved. In fact, emissions are going up. “They’re swapping fossil fuels for nuclear and that’s driving up their CO₂ emissions and the carbon intensity of their electricity supply,” he says. …

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In the meantime, as the economy recovers from the tsunami and earthquake, industry will need more electricity. The Japanese public will be asked to sacrifice, as they have over the past year. Yamaguchi says it’s a daunting future. “It’s a mess, you know,” he laments. “We have to cut our consumption itself. We did it. But whether we can continue for the coming five, six, seven years without sacrificing the Japanese economy, it’s almost impossible.”

But Japan has been through tougher times. Its engineers are second to none and the country is wealthy. The IEA’s Varro says a wholesale shift to green energy isn’t impossible. “It is certainly going to be expensive,” he predicts. “How slow it is, that depends on the decisions that Japan makes. Japan is a rich and technologically sophisticated society. I think they have the potential to surprise us.”…

API has been calling on Obama to act for some time now…

WASHINGTON, March 9 (UPI) — The United States can shield itself against upheavals in the Middle East by tapping into domestic oil and natural gas reserves, a trade group said.

Oil prices are hovering near 9-month highs in part because of unrest in the Middle East. Crude oil prices spiked when Iran announced it was stopping oil deliveries to some European countries and shipping services are wary of delivering Iranian crude because of European sanctions.

Jack Gerard, president and chief executive officer at the American Petroleum Institute, called on U.S. President Barack Obama to send a “powerful signal” to the international markets that U.S. oil and natural gas was ready for swift development.

“The U.S. cannot control unrest in the Middle East, international supply disruptions, or rising worldwide demand, but it can increase world supply of crude oil by developing more of our own ample oil resources,” he said during a conference call with reporters.

The Obama administration said oil production is at historic highs, though Obama’s say that’s because of policies enacted by the previous administration. Gerard said Obama’s “all-of-the-above” energy policy is actually slowing oil and natural gas production.

“We urge him to truly do all of the above to help immediately create downward pressure on crude prices that will benefit American consumers,” said Gerard.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2012/03/09/API-ratchets-up-pressure-on-Obama/UPI-86211331297151/#ixzz1owtkmrcv

Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK) Chief Executive Officer Aubrey McClendon is cultivating investors from Seoul to New Delhi eager to own natural gas that’s 85 percent cheaper than Middle East supplies because of a glut in the U.S.

As head of the second-largest U.S. natural gas supplier, McClendon met executives of Asian power utilities and state-run energy companies on a 14-day trip last month. He said they’re unfazed by Chesapeake’s $10.3 billion debt load, more than twice Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM)’s burden, and gas trading near a 10-year low of $2.23 per million British thermal units — two factors that have helped send its stock down 26 percent in the past year.

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Soaring oil prices have displaced Greece’s sovereign debt as a threat to global economic growth and financial markets, HSBC Holdings Plc, Europe’s largest bank by market value, said.

“With Greece disappearing, at least temporarily, from the headlines, investors have quickly found a new source of anxiety thanks to the recent surge in oil prices,” HSBC Chief Economist Stephen King said in a note today. “If the trend persists, a fragile economic recovery in the developed world could quickly be derailed and inflation could return to emerging markets.”

Brent crude surged to as much as $128.40 a barrel yesterday, the highest since July 2008. Brent for April settlement slipped 1.2 percent to $124.67 on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange at 12:48 p.m. today.

Equity investors should “take insurance” by becoming overweight in energy stocks while foreign exchange investors should favor the currencies of oil-producing nations such as Norway, Malaysia, Brazil and Russia, he said.

Preemptive lawsuit?

This will be interesting to watch…

WASHINGTON — The oil giant Shell filed suit in federal court in Alaska last week against a dozen environmental groups, employing a rare — and rarely successful — legal gambit in an effort to pre-empt anticipated legal challenges to its plans to begin exploration in the Arctic Ocean this summer.

Was the unusual maneuver an act of bravado, even desperation, by a company fearful that it might be thwarted again in its efforts to begin drilling in the seabed off Alaska’s North Slope?

Or was it, as Shell contends, a mark of confidence that the company had finally put in place a plan that could satisfy all the legal, regulatory and environmental requirements to start exploiting one of the last great untapped oil and gas reservoirs in North America?

Marvin E. Odum, Shell’s president for the United States, said in an interview that he was “highly confident” that the company’s plan for preventing and responding to an oil spill would survive any legal scrutiny. He said the company had filed the suit in the hopes of speeding up the judicial review of the plan that will come if and when the environmental groups — who have challenged Shell at every step of the process — file suit.

Wow, the strongest stance against in favor of new fuels I’ve ever seen from recent administrations. I’m impressed such strong words are used.

NASHUA, N.H. — With his re-election fate increasingly tied to the price Americans are paying at the gas pump, President Obama asked Congress on Thursday to end $4 billion in subsidies for oil and gas companies and vowed to tackle the country’s long-term energy issues while shunning “phony election-year promises about lower gas prices.”

Mr. Obama, in an appearance at Nashua Community College here, took a page out of his jobs strategy of last year, calling on Americans to contact their Congressional representatives and demand a vote on the oil subsidies in the next few weeks.

“You can either stand up for the oil companies, or you can stand up for the American people,” Mr. Obama said. “You can keep subsidizing a fossil fuel that’s been getting taxpayer dollars for a century, or you can place your bets on a clean-energy future.”

The president criticized Republicans who have called for the country to increase its own oil production, declaring that “anyone who tells you we can drill our way out of this problem doesn’t know what they’re talking about.” With the United States consuming more than 20 percent of the world’s oil while having only 2 percent of the world’s oil reserves, Mr. Obama said “we can’t rely on fossil fuels from the last century.”