The Coming Energy Wars by Rana Foroohar

Full article from Newsweek online here.

This spring, America hit a historic point. With average gas prices per gallon edging toward $4, America's notoriously profligate ways started to change fast. Americans are driving less, using mass transit more, buying fewer gas guzzlers, indeed shopping less wantonly in general, and lowering their previously unshakable confidence as consumers. Suddenly, Americans are acting differently; if not exactly like Swedes, then not quite like themselves, either. It's a shift that could change the world.

And there are more changes to come. So far the price shock has triggered the most obvious consumer shifts in the United States. Europeans, already greener, are also are buffered by a stronger currency, and Asians are protected from the spiking price of oil by subsidies that control the impact on gas prices at the pump. But if oil prices continue to rise, and the subsidy dam breaks, as seems likely, the energy revolution now transforming America will spread. "We sailed through $80 a barrel," notes energy authority Daniel Yergin, author of "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power" and chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates. "But that doesn't mean we'll sail through $200 a barrel. That sort of price would have enormous global consequences."

A year ago no one was talking about $200 oil, and now everyone in the markets is, for scary reasons. Oil prices climbed from $10 in 1999 to $95 last year without slowing the surging world economy, in large part because the markets believed the spike was at core driven by rising demand, particularly from India and China, which feeds growth. There was concern over supply, too, but nothing like the tumult prompted by the stranglehold OPEC imposed on the world in the 1970s, at least not until recent months. As the per-barrel price climbed over the last few months, with futures reaching $135 last week, the consensus began shifting to a new more gloomy view: that not only would long-term demand, led by China and India, continue to grow, but that the supply threats, including increasing conflict, falling investment, industry bottlenecks and downward estimates of big field reserves in major oil states—aren't going away any time soon. Now many (though not all) serious people take $200 oil—and the prospect of another '70s-style oil shock—seriously. Goldman Sachs warned that the $200 barrier could be hit within the next six to 24 months.
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That's way too fast for comfort (or should be) even for those who welcome high gas prices as a way to induce energy conservation and fight global warming. Already skyrocketing oil prices are causing real pain for ordinary people, threatening global economic growth, and reviving the specter of inflation. The price pressure is now particularly acute in big emerging markets like China and India, which in recent years had become paragons of fiscal responsibility that tended to dampen global inflation by exporting cheap goods and services. Now they threaten to become exporters of inflation, particularly if energy price controls give way. Americans now making up for their losses at the gas pump by flocking to Wal-Mart for cheap Chinese goods would be out of luck. Make no mistake: $200 oil in 2009 would be a painful shock, not just a green tax on gas guzzlers.

DC Velocity: The End of Cheap Oil, Are You ready? by Charles Taylor

Full article here.

Good review of the end of cheap oil by Chuck Taylor, a supply chain consultant and speaker.

Peak Oil on NPR: The Diane Rehm Show

This week, The Diane Rehm Show features peak oil. Click to listen here.

Peak Possibilities -- TIME

Read full article here.

....That's alarming enough in itself. Even the optimists think we have less than three decades to go? But at industry conferences this fall, the word from producers was far gloomier. The chief executives of ConocoPhillips and French oil giant Total both declared that they can't see oil production ever topping 100 million bbl. a day. The head of the oil importers' club that is the International Energy Agency warned that "new capacity additions will not keep up with declines at current fields and the projected increase in demand."....

....It's not that the world is running out of oil. There are massive reserves available in Canadian tar sands, Colorado shale, Venezuelan heavy oil and other unconventional deposits. The problem is that most of this oil is hard to extract and even harder to refine, and it isn't likely to account for a significant share of global production anytime soon. Almost everybody agrees that the pumping of conventionally sourced oil outside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has already peaked or will peak soon, a reality that even discoveries like the recent 8 billion-bbl. find off the coast of Brazil can't alter because production from so many existing fields is declining.....

Oil on Google Video Here

Oil Apocalypse on History Channel's Mega Disasters Tuesday

Just an FYI alert for all you peak oilers. The History Channel has included "Oil Apocalypse" in the field of Mega Disasters. It will air this Tuesday evening, November 13th at 11pm & Wednesday, November 14th at 3am (eastern time?). In the preview, Richard Heinberg was being interviewed. Check the History Channel for times in your area.

I also heard that during a prime-time football game today, T.Boone Pickens was discussing peak oil in between! How odd!

CNN Money headline: 'The end of oil'

Click here for full article.

It's always nice to see the mainstream acknowledging the subject of peak oil.