Peak Oil- what it is and how it will impact your life

Sit-Rep on the current fuel shortages

I have had many queries over the last several days about what I thought the ramifications of hurricane Katrina would be on the oil situation. Here are some observations. Some drawn from information gathered within my company and some from searching out relevant reports from varied sources.

First off the supply of fuel to the rest of the country seems to be this at present.
The major pipelines supplying the Northeast and Atlantic states are back operating, but at less than 50% capacity.
And most of what is being pumped is reserve capacity, not new fuel. So those in that region may have a brief respite but expect a possible shortage to recur in a few weeks time.

The major pipelines to the Southwest U.S. are the ones that are the most troublesome. If you are in that area stock up now and expect supply disruptions to continue for some time.

Nine refineries are closed down and four are running on severely limited capacity. So I would think that refueling across the country is going to go to priority areas first and the more rural and less populated cities and areas will be at the bottom of the list. You can bet that the D.C. area will be at the top.

My company specializes in maintenance and repairing of existing wells. We are being advised to prepare for a massive amount of work in the Gulf. Dozens if not hundreds of wells are feared damaged and shut down.
It took 9 months to repair the devastation from hurricane Ivan last year and return the Gulf back to it’s normal average of 1.5 million barrel a day production.(about 25% of American domestic production).It is being predicted that it will take 2 to 3 times that long to recover from this.

It is known that at least 20 offshore rigs have been swept away or sunk. These rigs are not easily replaced. There are not many new rigs being built and with high crude prices the existing fleet is near maximum utilization now.

On the global scene. Europe has an excess capacity of refined fuel and will be shipping some to the U.S. to help offset shortages. The main oil port in La., the louisiana offshore oil port, was not significantly damaged and is able to receive shipments.
Saudi has stated that they will up production to offset the loss to global supplies, but there are 2 problems with that.
1) They have been saying that for months now and so far have not been able to make any significant increases. Many oil industry people believe that the Saudi fields are pumping at maximum capacity now and that future increases in production are wishful thinking.
2) Even if they do ramp up production it will not help to alleviate the shortage that our domestic energy is facing. Saudi crude is of a much different variety and consistency than American crude and our existing and functioning refineries are not set up to process it.

Most oil analysts are closely watching how this is going to affect the world markets. It may mean much more than just high gas prices and shortages for us in the US. The fear is that this could be the spark to ignite a worldwide energy crises. With the volatility of our current markets and the ever ebbing world production, this could well be the event that forces peak oil into the limelight and forces the rest of the world to wake up to the situation.
That’s my take on how things are shaping up and is just my opinion and analysis of the information that I have seen. It could be that we recover rather quickly and get our supply problems solved. But I highly doubt that. I think that it would be more prudent to expect long term shortages and ever increasing prices.
For folks in the NE like Righthand I would recommend filling your heating oil tanks now and not wait until winter. For those in the Mid-West and NW I’d say have your propane tanks, (if that’s what you have), filled now and buy additional tanks if you can. Wood heat sources are good to have as is kerosene. I have a small Kerosene heater that will heat up to 1100 sq. ft.. I have used it many times over the years to heat our entire house.
I think it is going to be a long cold winter.
I would not at all be surprised to see fuel rationing adopted soon.
One idea I have been toying with is converting at least one of my vehicles to propane. A lot of farmers around my neck of the woods run their farm trucks on it. It burns clean, making your engine last much longer, and you can flip a switch and go back to gasoline. A tank of propane will last for hundreds of miles. And if fuel rationing does occur I don’t foresee it affecting propane sales. It will probably only be for gasoline and diesel.MM

 

I have been monitoring a web site that has a lot of oil industry people posting on it.There is a lot of info on the aftermath of the hurricane and how it is affecting GOM production.None of it very good.Instead of trying to re-cap I'll just post the link and anyone interested can check it out.

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/8/31/83553/8973#more

* a note of caution
Some of the posters on the above site are speculators and brokers and are not familliar with the oil industry itself and how it works.They are very mistaken on some of thier remarks.ie; "Saudi oil is the same as GOM oil".Not even close.Suadi oil is "Light Sweet" some of the purest oil in the world.And a lot of our refineries, especially Gulf Coast ones are not set up to handle it. MM

 

An interesting article in the Houston Chronicle.It has been an interesting ride watching the media ever so slowly coming to grips with Peak Oil.It was only a couple of years ago that it was completely ignored,then ridiculed and scoffed at and now accepted as fact.I am still amazed at the number of people who have never heard of it and when told just blow it off. "I'ts all a scam to drive up prices" or " The Government will do something".We have become a nation of ostriches.


Sept. 4, 2005, 1:18AM

PEAK OIL
Hurricane Katrina's aftermath only hints at what will happen when demand for crude outstrips supply.
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

THE July-August edition of Alcalde, the magazine for University of Texas at Austin alumni, contains an article about peak oil — the moment when global oil production will crest and then decline. According to the article, "How Long Do We Have," the year U.S. oil production peaked, 1971, was accurately predicted by a Shell Oil geophysicist in 1956. The same formula puts peak global production in this decade or the next.

Many predictions about a shortage of oil have come and gone, always superseded by new technology and newly discovered reserves. However, economic catastrophe need not wait until we run out of oil, or even for production to peak. As the experience inflicted by Hurricane Katrina merely hints, there is no margin in today's energy markets. Disruption of markets, shortages and steep price increases require only for demand to slightly exceed supply.

Natural gas pipelines are slowly returning to normal, but the supply of crude and refined products is strained. Katrina forced the temporary halt of oil and gas production in a region that supplies a quarter of the nation's domestic supply. It knocked out or reduced capacity in 10 refineries. Terminals for imported oil were shut, reducing the ability to replace lost sources of supply.

It will take weeks to repair refineries and distribution networks. Many firms lost offshore rigs and platforms, reducing current production and the ability to explore for and replace proven reserves.

The Bush administration is releasing millions of barrels of crude from the nation's strategic reserve. Led by German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the International Energy Agency has agreed to release oil from Europe's reserves, dampening upward pressure on prices. Reserves, however, are useful only in a crisis. They do not have the ability to make supply equal rapidly growing demand, spurred by developing economies such as China's and India's.

The U.S. gas lines during the 1970s persuaded many drivers to opt for more efficient cars. But memories fade, and all too soon the trend was for gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs.

Perhaps the shock of Katrina's destruction, the demonstrated vulnerability of the nation's energy supply and the rapid doubling of gasoline prices will move many Americans to ride mass transit, live closer to work or drive smaller cars. History, however, suggests that the moment will pass, things will settle down, and we will be grotesquely unprepared for the moment when there simply is not enough oil to go around and only the wealthy can afford it.

 

The word is spreading.From Houston to Boston.


Published on Tuesday, September 6, 2005 by the Boston Globe
The End of Oil
by H.D.S. Greenway

Some time ago National Public Radio collected the recorded voices of the last five or six American presidents and broadcast them, each with his own distinctive tone, all saying exactly the same thing: America has to end its dependency on foreign oil.

Today President Bush makes much the same kind of statements as his predecessors did, but the measures he recommends hold only a little promise. And today the problem is rapidly becoming not just foreign oil, but oil itself.

To be fair, the president is absolutely right when he says that our energy problems cannot be solved overnight. ''Most of the serious problems, such as high gasoline costs or the rising dependence on foreign oil have developed over decades. It's going to take years of focused effort to alleviate those problems."

His critics have said that the $14.5 billion energy bill is a giveaway of tax breaks to energy companies, including nuclear, but the world is going to need all the oil it can get in the next three or four decades, and alternatives have to be financially encouraged. The trouble comes when the ''focused effort" wanes, and politicians become unwilling to pay even a short-term price for a long-term gain.

The disappointing and weak side of Bush's approach is symbolized by the disinterest in both the White House and Congress in imposing better gas mileages in the automobile industry. The United States, the world's largest oil importer, consumes 20 million barrels a day, and 40 percent of that goes out the exhaust pipes of cars and trucks. Car manufacturers, however, complain to the Republicans that mandatory fuel efficiency might hurt their flagging businesses, and labor complains to Democrats that jobs might be endangered.

Experts disagree on when the world's oil will start to run out, when production will reach its peak and start its downward slide. But they do know that demand is rising extraordinarily quickly. In 2002 the world consumed 79 billion barrels of oil each day. In 2003 the figure had risen to 82.5. Last year it was 84.5 -- much of due to China's industrial revolution.

An ad paid for by Chevron, America's second biggest oil company, says: ''It took us 125 years to use the first trillion barrels of oil. We'll use the next trillion in 30." This is all the more startling when some experts hold that there are only about 1 trillion barrels of oil left in the ground. Chevron's chairman David O'Reilly says, ''Some say that in 20 years the world will consume 40 percent more oil than it does today. At the same time, many of the world's oil and gas fields are maturing." For ''maturing" read running out, and predictions of $100 a barrel and more in the not too distant future are becoming common.

Unlike the oil crisis of 1973, the current rise in prices is not coming as a result of war or boycott. It is coming because of high demand and not enough supply, a delicate balance which a hurricane can too easily upset. And although the world's economy has survived petroleum price increases remarkably well so far, this is now beginning to show the inevitable strain.

Some hope that new oil fields will be found, but I was surprised to read in The New York Times that a US Department of Energy report earlier this year had said that such discoveries have been ''disappointing," and that if ''recent trends hold, there is little reason to expect that exploration success will dramatically improve in the future. . .

''The world has never faced a problem like this," the report concluded. ''Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary." Whereas the world's shifts from wood to coal and coal to oil were gradual, ''oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary."

Optimists put their faith in extraction technology to save the day, but this can only temporarily slow petroleum's depletion and will do nothing to curb demand -- unless alternative energies are found and conservation implemented.

While one can sympathize with President Bush for wanting to apply the brakes slowly, he needs to glance at the gas gauge too, which may be falling toward empty more quickly than he knows.

 

Recent article on the peak of natural gas

Viewpoint: We are facing a severe survival test

By Joe Baker, Senior Editor Print this page


This is the winter of our discontent and also of our discomfort. Our wake up call has arrived. U.S. News, in a recent article analyzing the energy outlook, predicts the next several months will test our survival skills to the maximum.
Peak Oil and Gas are beginning to weigh upon us. Experts in the energy field have been saying for months that natural gas will be our biggest problem this winter, and we are seeing its cost heading for the moon as supplies tighten up.

Some look at the prices at the gasoline pump and believe it all is a matter of big oil companies gouging the consumer, but that analysis is misleading.

Mike Ruppert, publisher of From the Wilderness publications, says it this way: “Peak Oil cannot be a conspiracy of big business to get rich when big businesses are about to be shut down, either because of a lack of energy or a frozen work force. It cannot be a conspiracy of big business when GM and Ford teeter on the edge of bankruptcy; when 800,000 jobs are slated for the ax this winter; when Delta and Northwest are in bankruptcy; when the Federal Reserve has blithely announced it is going to conceal how much money it is printing into the M3 money supply.

“It cannot be a conspiracy to impose a one-world order when the international scene is starting to look like a saloon fight in a ‘B’ Western. It cannot be anything other than what it is: the beginning of the collapse of modern industrialized civilization.”

As the first snowfall of the season smacked the Northeast last week, it became even more apparent that hurricanes Katrina and Rita did a lot more to our energy supply and distribution system than most had thought; the ripples are still spreading through our economy.

Natural gas costs 38 percent more than last year’s record prices, and oil is up 21 percent from that benchmark. So what? So many factories and businesses are going to be closed, and very many people will be out of work, putting additional stress and pressure on poor and low-income families. Few federal dollars will be available to help them.

If this winter brings bitter cold, as it is indicating it might—there will be especially difficult times, particularly in the Northeast, where natural gas shortages will affect electricity supplies, and oil supplies also will suffer. U.S. News quotes Diane Munns, a utility regulator in Iowa who heads the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners. “We pray for warm weather,” Munns said. “We have a prayer chain going. People are talking not just about high prices but actual shortages.”

That sentiment was seconded by Matthew Simmons, a prominent energy investment banker in Houston. “We’re headed into a winter,” said Simmons, “that could be a real winter of discontent.”

Most of the country is still in denial about peak oil and gas, but more are beginning to be aware as the national media finally take note of the problem and start to report on it.

Last summer’s hurricanes hit our oil infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico harder than anyone had anticipated. The oil industry is reporting 23 percent of the Gulf’s natural gas production—2.3 billion cubic feet per day—will be shut down through March. That is very serious business when you consider 52 percent of U.S. homes heat with gas.

According to U.S. News, the U.S. already was using more natural gas than it produced even before the hurricanes and prices were hitting record levels then. Between 1990 and 2004, demand leaped 16 percent, mostly driven by power plant operators. Natural gas is used to generate electricity.

The country is relying on natural gas from Canada and is turning more and more to liquid natural gas (LNG) shipped from Africa, but the imports aren’t enough to satisfy demand. Roger Cooper, executive vice president of the American Gas Association, told U.S. News: “We’re vulnerable. If we were hit in the 1990s, we would not have been in this situation. But when you are consuming 100 percent of your supply, there’s not much room to maneuver.”

The law of supply and demand is operating, big time. Last week, the market price of natural gas hit $15 per million btu [British nethermal units], more than double the price last year. The normal methods of storing gas in underground caverns, such as NICOR does, are not adequate. The result is higher heat bills for homeowners and tougher choices for businesses.

The National Association of Manufacturers says hundreds of factories will be forced to lay off workers and freeze or cut wages because of the high heating costs. Some of the larger manufacturers have shifted operations overseas, closer to cheaper fuel supplies. Smaller companies don’t have that option. Paul Ciccio, executive director of the Industrial Energy Consumers of America, said: “In manufacturing, there’s just one way to use less energy, and that’s to make less widgets.”

For consumers, the higher costs already are taking their toll. Mervalene Eastman lives on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana. She is unable to work because of health reasons and also is caring for a 7-year-old nephew. Her situation is desperate.

She was behind on her payments last winter when a $380 bill in December to heat her four-bedroom home climbed by $100 in January and again in February. Now she owes not only back payments but a reconnection fee and a security deposit. All that comes to more than $850, an impossibility for Eastman.

She uses a couple of space heaters and sometimes fires up the oven of her electric range to try to keep warm in Montana’s winters when temperatures can hit 50 below zero Fahrenheit.

“My electric bill is so high,” she told U.S. News, “what I’ve been saving to pay MDU [Montana-Dakota Utilities] I’ve been tapping into to pay electric. Once January comes, I don’t know how I’m going to keep everybody warm.”

It’s a familiar story to Jerry McKim, chief of Iowa’s Bureau of Energy Assistance. “These households are carrying significant debt from last winter into this winter,” he said. “That’s something people aren’t catching.”

The two biggest threats facing the Northeast are: a heating oil shortage, aggravated by the export of distillate fuel oil, which includes both diesel and heating oil, up nearly 50 percent this year; and secondly, a severe shortage of electricity with possible brownouts or blackouts. Many of the power generators are gas-fired and also deregulated and so are under no obligation to continue supplying power; they can simply shut down and sell their fuel at terrific profit.

In New Orleans, already devastated from Hurricane Katrina, a winter failure of the heating system would be catastrophic. Any lengthy heat loss could cause water pipes in commercial and residential buildings to burst, and “traps” where steam escapes could freeze and fail, causing steam pipes to split and lose pressure.

Jim Woolsey, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, who is dealing with energy issues in the Crescent City, said parts of New Orleans could look like “a frozen New Orleans.”

And the threats don’t stop with the coming of spring. Around the world, agriculture is in trouble. According to the International Society for Ecology and Culture, farmers are going bankrupt in record numbers.

At the same time, global trade in food is booming. Each year, the distance between producers and consumers grows. Today, the average meal in America has traveled more than 1,500 miles to reach your table.

These two trends are linked. Global food economy is harming the majority while enriching the few. Big agriculture is a major contributor to rising carbon dioxide emissions and, as a result, climate change.

We need to be heading in the opposite direction, closing the gap between farmers and consumers. Not only would such a change rejuvenate the land, but it would furnish jobs at the local level, rebuild community and allow farmers to earn a decent living while providing urbanites with healthy, fresh food at affordable prices—without the added transportation costs and fuel consumption.

It may take some time in the dark and cold and some hunger pangs in the belly to wake Americans to that reality. “I hate to sound like the voice of doom,” said McKim, “but somebody has to say this stuff. It’s just like Hurricane Katrina. They knew it was coming, but little was done to prepare an effective response. And the same thing is happening here.”

How are your survival skills?

From the Dec. 21-27, 2005, issue



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Global consequences?

The collapse of many of the great societies of history were preceded by the depletion of the natural resource that that society was built upon. Ours is built on oil.



A risk of total collapse

We would be foolish to take for granted the permanence of our fragile global civilisation

Dylan Evans
Wednesday December 21, 2005
The Guardian


Is it possible that global civilisation might collapse within our lifetime or that of our children? Until recently, such an idea was the preserve of lunatics and cults. In the past few years, however, an increasing number of intelligent and credible people have been warning that global collapse is a genuine possibility. And many of these are sober scientists, including Lord May, David King and Jared Diamond - people not usually given to exaggeration or drama.

The new doomsayers all point to the same collection of threats - climate change, resource depletion and population imbalances being the most important. What makes them especially afraid is that many of these dangers are interrelated, with one tending to exacerbate the others. It is necessary to tackle them all at once if we are to have any chance of avoiding global collapse, they warn.
Many societies - from the Maya in Mexico to the Polynesians of Easter Island - have collapsed in the past, often because of the very same dangers that threaten us. As Diamond explains in his recent book, Collapse, the Maya depleted one of their principal resources - trees - and this triggered a series of problems such as soil erosion, decrease of useable farmland and drought. The growing population that drove this overexploitation was thus faced with a diminishing amount of food, which led to increasing migration and bloody civil war. The collapse of the civilisation on Easter Island followed a similar pattern, with deforestation leading to other ecological problems and warfare.

Unlike these dead societies, our civilisation is global. On the positive side, globalisation means that when one part of the world gets into trouble, it can appeal to the rest of the world for help. Neither the Maya nor the inhabitants of Easter Island had this luxury, because they were in effect isolated civilisations. On the negative side, globalisation means that when one part of the world gets into trouble, the trouble can quickly be exported. If modern civilisation collapses, it will do so everywhere. Everyone now stands or falls together.

Global collapse would probably still follow the same basic pattern as a local collapse but on a greater scale. With the Maya, the trouble began in one region but engulfed the whole civilisation. Today, as climate change makes some areas less hospitable than others, increasing numbers of people will move to the more habitable areas. The increasing population will make them less habitable and lead to further migration in a domino effect. Huge movements of people and capital will put the international financial system under strain and may cause it to give way. In his book The Future of Money, the Belgian economist Bernard Lietaer argues that the global monetary system is already very unstable. Financial crises have certainly grown in scale and frequency over the past decade. The South-east Asian crisis of 1997 dwarfed the Mexican crisis of 1994 and was followed by the Russian crash of 1998 and the Brazilian crisis of 1999. This is another example of the way globalisation can exacerbate rather than minimise the risk of total collapse.

This would not be the end of the world. The collapse of modern civilisation would entail the deaths of billions of people but not the end of the human race. A few Mayans survived by abandoning their cities and retreating into the jungle, where they continue to live to this day. In the same way, some would survive the end of the industrial age by reverting to a preindustrial lifestyle.

The enormity of such a scenario makes it hard to imagine. It is human nature to assume that the world will carry on much as it has been. But it is worth remembering that in the years preceding the collapse of their civilisation, the Mayans too were convinced that their world would last forever.

· Dylan Evans is a senior lecturer at the University of the West of England www.dylan.org.uk

 

During November our heating oil was +/- $2.69/gal. December, $2.38. Today. electricity increased by 22%. But at least, for the time being, we do have oil and we do have electricity.

 

It's not so much that MM, it is the expense to put into production and also the gain for the investment.Believe me if there was a profit in it the oil companies would be pursuing it.But the problem with most of these alternate fuel sources is that the end result is just not enough to make much of a difference,much less a profit. They are good for a small scale operation such as a farm or small industrial business.There is all kinds of ways to produce energy, and there will be isolated pockets of places using everything from methane to bio-diesel to wave power.But there is nothing out there that can replace the massive amount of natural gas and oil that we consume daily.
It is like the answer you hear alot on the news when this subject comes up.They will say "There is billions of barrels of oil in Canada and in our Rocky Mountain region, if the oil companies would just go and get it." The problem with that is that there are billions of barrels oil there but, it is in tar sands and it is very hard and expensive to produce. We could and eventually will produce it but the price per barrel and therefore the price per gallon of fuel will be 3 to 5 times higher than it is now.

 

mm, what do you think of this?:
http://www.silverstockreport.com/email/refuting_peak_oil.html

I read a lot of this guys stuff on PM investments

 

mm is very right about the smell at landfills and sewage treatment plants. But what you smell is not natural gas, it is some of the stuff that goes with it. (For the curious, it is mercaptans, skatoles and a few other things, some are toxic at high concentrations.) Nat gas that is commercially used has a very, very, very small amount of hydrogen suphide (rotten egg smell) added so that leaks can be detected readily, since it is odorless by itself. H2S occurs naturally in sewer systems and landfills as well. Very bad stuff: it will kill you in short order at high concentrations. Commercial nat gas adders are so low in concentration that they are not hazardous.

And, recovery of landfill and sewage digester gas is frequently done here in the States. At landfills, the concentration is too low for commercial recovery, so it is usually wasted in some sort of catalytic convertor to avoid the stink locally. At sewer plants, there can be enough for recovery for use in heating boilers especially at the larger plants. On the very large plants (Deer Island in MA and Blue Plains in DC for two examples) it is also can be used to supplement electrical power requirements and reduce utility bills. The energy in both landfill gas and digester gas is much lower than commercial nat gas due to contaminants that are prohibitively expense to remove.

 

This MM I believe.
I was reading the article and compiling a response. Basically it is very similar to other so called debunkers.They don't argue the facts, they argue their belief that all will be well.This guy has an unshakable faith in market forces and old fashioned capitalism saving the day.It is the same as a scientist I read that refused to believe in depletion.His whole argument boiled down to science will come up with an answer.

This is just blind faith without any supporting fact."Market forces" and "new technologies" didn't save the Mayans,or the Easter Islanders, when they depleted the natural resource that their entire way of life was built on.

This guy tries to equate "Peak Oil" with "Peak Silver".The problem with that argument should be apparent.Our entire way of life is not dependent on silver.If the silver in the world dried up tomorrow, life would go on basically unchanged.But when,not if, oil supplies start to dwindle it will radically alter life as we know it.It may not be the great apocalypse that some predict but it will certainly result in a drastic reduction in world population and the emerging world will be radically different than the one we now know.

One other point I want to address is his use of Bible scripture to emphasize his point.

"Daniel 12:4 "But you Daniel,close up and seal the words of the scroll until the time of the end.Many will go here and there to increase knowledge."

He tries to use this to suggest that there cannot be an energy shortage because people "go here and there". What he is missing is the preceding words "at the time of the end".
Just prior to the apocalypse and the "end" people will travel here and there.

I really have no patience for scoffers like this who don't want to debate the facts of a matter.No matter what the subject is.They just want to promote their belief that they just don't believe in it.

To sit back and wait for capitalism, or science to come up with our salvation is as irresponsible and dangerous as waiting for some miraculous "alternate" fuel to suddenly emerge and save the world.

To quote Matt Savinar "Deal with reality, or reality will deal with you."

 

This is for Monkeyman. I got this in a newsletter that I subscribe to and I remembered your post above about reclaiming methane.


Composting for Heat & Methane Power
January 2006

Hello:

I would like to wish everybody a Happy New Year! Hopefully, you'll learn something from my books and newsletters in 2006 which will help you to become more self-sufficient, save money, and live a more sustainable lifestyle. As you know, I believe that fossil fuels will soon become very expensive and scarce. So... anything you can learn to help you heat your home, generate electricity, grow your own food, and run your car will be valuable information in the coming years. In my eBay store, you can get titles like...

Electricity - Make it, Don't Buy it (click HERE for the instant download eBook version)
From the Fryer to the Fuel Tank
Natural Home Heating
The Oil Age is Over
When Technology Fails
This Organic Life and The Contrary Farmer
and many more informative books!

Speaking of Home Heating.... Here's a great story from Reader's Digest about Jean Pain. Jean developed a system that heats his home and generates electricity from a compost heap! In my electricity book, I tell you how to make a methane digester. Jean puts his methane digester inside a compost heap to keep it warm and generates electricity with a methane powered generator system like the one I describe in my book. Then he siphons off excess heat via coiled water hoses and sends it to the radiators in his house. I used to live in Woodstock, GA. On Hwy 92 there is a company that sold potting soil made from decomposed wood chips. On cold mornings, you could see the steam rising off of their 90 foot high piles of compost. They say these heaps can get hotter than 140 deg F and can actually burst into flames if you are not careful! Anybody can create wood chips by going down to your local Home Depot and renting one of those industrial sized shredders. Maybe you could also contact your local tree cutting service and ask if they have any chips they don't want. Here's the story...

Jean Pain: France's King of Green Gold
By Nicolas Poulain
(From: Reader's Digest -- November 1981 -- pages 76-81)

Using a new, exciting and amazingly simple technique, this self-taught scientist may be helping to solve the world's energy crisis

It is dusk as I arrive at the Domaine des Ternpliers, a 241-hectare timber tract backed on to the Alpes de Provence. Driving over a bumpy mud road that snakes across a barren moor near Villecrore, I come upon a big white house, home of Jean Pain, a 51-year-old Frenchman.

Until recently, Pain was an unknown. Today, he's hailed as "the king of green gold," and energy experts from all over the globe have come to Domaine des Tenipliers to study the miracle Pain has wrought: an amazingly simple, and incredibly inexpensive system that extracts both energy and fertilizer (gold) from plant life (green). These scientists are hopeful that Pain's new process will go a long way in helping overcome the worldwide shortage of fuel.

Says Andre Birre, author of Humus: Wealth and Health of the Earth, concerning the Pain method : "We are so hypnotized by the black gold we call oil, of which the supply is limited, that we fail to see that everyone can exploit that other gold-humus-not only without exhausting the supply, but constantly increasing it."

I knock on the door and am greeted warmly by Jean Pain and his wife, Ida. Jean, I notice, has a wrestler's build and a hermit's calm. He accompanies me to about 50 metres from the front door and shows me the object of the world's attention -- a home-made power plant that supplies 100 per cent of the Pains' energy needs. What I see is a mound, three metres high and six across, made of tiny pieces of brushwood.

This vegetable cocktail, Pain explains, made of tree limbs and pulverized underbrush, is a compost, much like the pile of decaying organic matter that people build in their gardens, using food scraps and leaves. Buried inside the 50-ton compost, he says, is a steel tank with a capacity of four cubic metres. It is three-fourths full of the same compost, which has first been steeped in water for two months. The tank is hermetically sealed, but is connected by tubing to 24-truck-tyre inner tubes, banked nearby in piles. The tubes serve as a reservoir for the methane gas produced as the compost ferments.

"Once the gas is distilled, washed through small stones in water -- and compressed," Pain explains, "we use it to cook our food, produce our electricity and fuel our truck." He says that it takes about 90 days to produce 500 cubic metres of gas -- enough to keep Ida's two ovens and a three-burner stove going for a year. Leading to a room behind the house, he shows me the methane-fuelled internal combustion engine that turns a generator, producing 100 watts every hour. This charges an accumulator battery, which stores the current, providing all the Pains need to light their five-room house (just like in Electricity - Make it, Don't Buy it).

As Ida drives off in their truck, I see on the roof two gas bottles shaped like long cannon shells. These have a capacity of five cubic metres of compressed gas, allowing her to drive 100 kilometres. Jean says that ten kilos of brush-wood supply the gas equivalent of a litre of high-test petrol. All that is needed to use it as motor fuel is a slight carburettor adjustment.

We walk back to the compost. Jean points to a 40-millimetre-thick plastic tube that runs from a well, through the heap and on to a tap inside the house. He explains that compost heats as it ferments, raising the temperature so that cold water, arriving from the well after passing through 200 metres of tubing wound round the tank, emerges at 60 degrees C. I personally confirm that the water arrives cold at the "cake" and comes out scalding. Once inside the house, the hot water circulates through radiators and heats the house. The compost heap continues fermenting for nearly 18 months, supplying hot water at a rate of four litres a minute, enough to satisfy the central heating, bathroom and kitchen requirements. Then the installation is dismantled and a new compost system is set up at once to assure a continuous supply of hot water.

Gigantic Growth

The inert, brushwood compost now provides Pain with still another use. Once fermentation ends, the big, magic cake produces no more energy, but it will still render 50 tons of natural fertilizer. By spreading a layer of this humus on the poor, stony soil around the house, Jean Pain has created a luxurious farm garden where even tropical vegetables grow. I admire tomato plants two-and-a-half metres high, lift a six-kilo watermelon and inspect a chayote (a kind of sweet Zucchini -- hitherto found only in the West Indies and in Africa), What surprises me most is that these giant vegetables need no watering; all the water they require, Pain tells me, is synthesized in the compost.

The ingenious power-plant Pain has developed and built with his own hands took 15 years of tireless effort. lt all started while Pain was gathering brushwood and noticed that wherever it was found the vegetation underneath seemed to grow more abundantly. The reason, he learnt, is that as branches, leaves and shrubs decompose they form the nutritious humus that enriches the earth. To imitate nature and produce humus, he thought, we could trim excess undergrowth from the forests. Then perhaps we could capture the energy produced by the fermentation that transforms this brushwood into humus.

A Discovery
How the Jean Pain process works



Jean Pain has no diploma; but he is intelligent, highly adaptable and keenly observant. And starting in 1965, be devoured dozens of books on science while carrying out his first experiments. He began by fermenting the brushwood cuttings as he brought them in, but soon realized that fermentation would be more efficient if the bigger boughs were chopped up as finely as possible. No machine for this existed, so he invented one, building it in his garage with salvaged material. The potential significance of Pain's discovery is enormous. What it means, to Pain, is that forests can become twenty-first-century man's "guardian angels."

The stakes for France are obviously high. While the French import 126 million tons of oil annually, throwing their balance of payments seriously off the mark, French forests constitute an energy back-up with a potential that biologist Robert du Pontavice estimates as equivalent to 20 million tons of oil. Nor are these merely "theoretical" and unexploitable resources.

Pain has taken the costs of his method into account. He has gone over and over his calculations and the figures are there: 1,000 hectares of forest can supply 6,000 tons of fertilizer a year, 960,000 cubic metres of biogas (or 480,000 litres oil equivalent) and millions of litres of hot water. And exploiting the forest costs only 12 per cent of the energy extracted from it.

What's more, the cycle can be repeated indefinitely as brushwood is renewed every seven years. Thus, not only would the forest remain clean and free from the danger of fire, but would provide an inexhaustible supply of fertilizer and thermal energy.

Multiple Usages

Already in France and throughout the world, many uses are being made of the techniques Pain developed at the Dornaine des Templiers. In France, eight municipalities have chosen to adopt his techniques for recycling vegetation and supplying heat and hot water to public buildings, hot-houses and sports facilities.

"In Sainpuits, a village of 500 inhabitants, we heat several buildings with the object of proving the value of the system," I was told by Etienne Bonvallet, project foreman of the pilot operation. In the Savoie, Chambery began to use Jean Pain's method in January 1980. A 200-cubic-metre compost bed, made of broken wood from plane trees and lime trees, will supply 23,400 kilocalories an hour and heat a 200 square-metre hot-house. Within two years, it will be possible to salvage 80 cubic metres of humus for the community gardens.

Says Henri Stehle, internationally respected agriculture expert and botanist and Institute of France prize-winner, "At the end of the path Pain has opened, stands tomorrow's self-sufficient agribusiness producing its own fertilizer and the power to run its equipment." Pain's methods are beginning to spread to the rest of Europe. In Brussels, Belgium, stands a compost plant and a flourishing garden. This is the experimental station of the International Jean Pain Committee, formed in 1978 by Frederik Vanden Brande, former Belgian secretary-general of the Council of European Townships, to publicize Pain's techniques.

Verdant Future

This station is the showcase of the Jean Pain committee, and its pride. But the committee has many other activities. It puts out brochures, gives lectures, and organizes twice yearly, two-week training programmes where 100-odd farmers, students, and environmental specialists from various parts of the world study grinding, composting, and methane production procedures.

Both in France and abroad, Jean Pain's methods are destined to be applied over a wider field. Pain has devoted followers in Australia, the United States, Tunis, Latin America and Japan.

International energy expert Robert Giry, author of Is Nuclear Energy Useless?, predicts: "In our times of crisis, with European agriculture in danger of one day suddenly finding itself deprived of energy, the path opened by Jean Pain for the production of fertilizer, fuel and electricity could lead to a brimming future."

The simplest principles often underlie the most useful discoveries. Now, when soil exhaustion and the search for new energy sources are the leading brain-twisters in the developed societies, Jean Pain, the self-taught scientist with calloused hands, offers a commonsense solution: the green gold that's to be found almost everywhere in the world. It is here, under our feet; we have only to stoop down to gather it.




Here is the link to the article if you want the links in it.

http://www.network6000.com/news2006/

 

An interesting article

Sunday, 8 January, 2006
Time to get the facts and fiction right on the oil crises

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We should have survived one of the more irritating journalistic traditions by now, or are there so many you just missed one? Late December provokes a universal reporting catharsis whereby entire organs devote themselves to looking back on the year either in pictures or in news stories.

Presumably the purpose is to learn from mistakes made or is it simply a purge in time for a fresh supply of bad news in the year ahead?

Thankfully this is a trap Arabian Business managed to avoid and rightly so. It always struck me as industry ennui. Filling newsprint easily rather than taxing the allegedly fine minds of its reporters. So let’s depart from the chronic ‘look back on 2005’ and look ahead.

There is no shortage of topics locally and so many myths to debunk that one is spoilt for choice. However, ignoring the ridiculous obsession with traffic and house prices for a moment, it’s probably appropriate to try and deal with the one that still drives the region’s future and possesses the potential to destroy everyone else’s — oil.

History suggests that the first half of the oil age has just closed. It lasted 150 years and saw the rapid global expansion of industry, transport, trade, agriculture and financial capital and allowed huge increases in populations.

Alas, the second half now dawns, and will be marked by the decline of oil and all that depends on it, including financial capital.

This is good news and bad news as they say. Good for the region, in that as a net recipient of a forecast US$240 billion from oil within the GCC and US$40 billion for the UAE alone, we can probably expect new airports, business parks, roads and new themed projects, from the overpriced to the under-whelming. Bad in that an economic boom often involves over expansion and diversification due less to business prowess and ability and more to do with egos.

The hinge question is whether we have reached what geologists term peak oil — output at the top of the production bell curve after which supply is always falling, together with higher costs of extraction.

Local minds were forced to consider the realities of this during 2005 when the Burgan field, Kuwait’s largest and the world’s second largest, passed its maximum production point.

That’s not to say oil is running out. On the contrary, it seems likely that there is global capacity for many years yet. However, about 944 billion barrels of oil has so far been extracted, some 764 billion remains extractable in known fields, or reserves, and a further 142 billion of reserves are classed as ‘yet-to-find’, meaning oil that is expected to be discovered. If this is so, then the overall oil peak arrives next year.

What is agreed is that world oil demand is surging. The International Energy Agency, which collates national figures and predicts demand, says developing countries could push demand up to 121 million barrels a day by 2030, and that oil companies and oil-producing nations must spend about US$100 billion a year to develop new supplies to keep pace.

If world demand continues to grow at 2% a year, then almost 160 million barrels a day will need to be extracted in 2035, twice as much as today.

Assurances given recently at the local MEED conference for example, foresee increased oil supply as a result of extra expenditure in lifting capacity.

Meeting the kind of demand above is almost inconceivable. According to industry consultants IHS Energy, around 90% of all known oil reserves are now in production — suggesting that few major discoveries remain to be made.

Shell says its reserves fell last year because it only found enough oil to replace 15% to 25 % of what the company produced. BP told the US stock exchange that it replaced only 89% of its production in 2004.

So if we are at or about to enter peak oil, then global production can be expected to decline steadily at about 2% to 3% a year. Combined with the sort of heady demand outlined above, this can only lead to one thing, strong upward pressure on the spot price.

Despite the assurances from western governments that inventories are sound or a mild winter is expected, this kind of pressure exceeds anything we have experienced so far. The cost of everything from travel, heating, agriculture, trade and plastics rises. And the scramble to control oil resources intensifies.

For the west that will mean, at best, kissing your lifestyle goodbye and, at worst, the foundations for world war three.



Stephen Corley is a business consultant with experience in fund and asset management.

 

The dawning awareness

I like to watch the Sunday morning news shows. Meet The Press, Face the Nation etc., or the PP's as I call them. "Propaganda Programs". But the most interesting thing that I have been seeing of late is not anything in the shows themselves, but in the commercials.
Today nearly every commercial break included a commercial from an oil company telling how they were rising to the challenge of dwindling oil and gas supplies.

Conoco has the one where they show half of the baseball field black and half of the T.V. screen and half of the U.S., but they assure us that they are going to come through for us.
British Petroleum has the ad where they tell us how hard that they are working to keep us all safe and happy in the future with less oil. Thier new motto is BP,beyond petroleum.
And we have the commercials about how we should'nt fear, we just need to grow more corn and we'll run everything on Ethanol.

"And the band played on"

That's the feeling I get when I see these things.The officers telling the band on the Titanic to keep playing and to keep the people calm.

I have been writing about "Peak Oil" for over 2 years now and have seen responses go from outright mocking to grudging acceptance that there may be a problem "but it's not that bad", to outright denial.

When I, and others first began talking about this the government was completely silent. Then we began to see the gradual indoctrination of the people. And now that, I believe, is what we are seeing now. Easing this idea into the phsyche of the public.But slowly so as not to arouse or panic the masses.

Let me say a few things about these ads. First off they are pure propaganda. They are designed to calm the rising fears of the populace.The Peak Oil bombshell has been slowly getting out to the public and people are starting to get worried. It is getting to the point where it can't be hidden much longer. Each new "Spike" in fuel prices gets people talking again, and makes the markets nervous.

These ads are designed to slowly make people aware of the crises that our leaders can no longer keep under wraps. And to offer false hopes to re-assure us that everything will be OK.

Also as fuel prices continue to climb and once again get back up to levels that will adversely effect our economy, people will be clamoring for someone to be held accountable. We are seeing this today with hearings in Washington on Oil Company "Price Gouging".

Folks this is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. It is politicians doing what politicians do. Act like they're doing something for the people. They know full well that the oil companies have very little influence on the price of oil. The price of oil and ergo gasoline is set by market forces and traders on Wall Street. Not in board rooms at Exxon.

Did Exxon make astronomical profits last year? Of course they did. Thier product was selling for three times what it was the year before. Any business in the world whose widgits sold for triple the price would naturally show a staggering increase in profits.

But when it comes to the oil companies we want and demend an investigation. So I believe a lot of these ads are designed to be pre-emptive strikes on public opinion. Also they are designed to calm the fears of the people.

I say they are pure propaganda and for example lets look at the Ethanol commercial. They say "Would'nt it be a better world if we all went green". Implying that we could simply change over to Ethanol and all would be well. This is the most misleading of all the ads that I have seen.Some facts.........

Ethanol is made from corn. Ethanol can be burned in place of gasoline. Is'nt this wonderful news?

Well not really. First off, due to erosion of soils in the worlds most heavily farmed areas it now takes great quantities of fertilizer and pesticides to grow crops. These come from fossil fuels. Which as fossil fuels get more scarce anything made from them will steadily increase in cost. But, take that out of the equation. Even if we could come up with a cost effective substitute for these then would'nt that make Ethanol the fuel of the future?

Again, not really. You see even if you could grow corn without any fossil fuel products, it still takes massive amounts of corn to make Ethanol. Britain toiled with the idea until they realized that to replace any significant amount of thier countries fossil fuel requirements with Ethanol they would have to dedicate every available inch of farmland in the entire country to growing corn. Leaving none whatsoever for growing food.

Here in the U.S. the fact is that, yes some corn is grown and is converted to use as a fuel. However it is such an exspensive process that there is not one single independent company doing it. It is totally impossible to economically produce Ethanol and sell it at a price that would make it profitable. All production in this country is government subsidized.

There are alternative fuels out there, but, there is nothing, now, or on the drawing boards, that has any chance whatsoever of replacing our dependance on oil.

All of these commercials are simply mind control measures to calm the masses. Pretend there's not a problem , then later admit that there is one, but were on top of it, then what's next?

When the next disruption of supplies drives prices to the $5 a gallon level. What tune will the band play then? The old blame game? The work of our enemies, and we all have to tighten our belts and bear with us we will win this fight? The needed excuse to invade other oil rich nations? And/or the evil oil companies are out of control, we have to nationalize them for the good of the country?

What I see is those in charge trying to calm the passengers. Iceberg? What iceberg? Alls well, go back to sleep, we'll take care of you.

And the band played on.