Banks of the World

You've been warned. Twice.

Link Round up for Q1/09

Shamelessly stolen from Energybulletin, PeakOil and The Oil Drum.

Total Oil - World Oil Production Near Peak

"The world will never be able to produce more than 89m barrels a day of oil, the head of Europe's third-largest energy group has warned.

Meanwhile, Mr de Margerie now expects a faster decline in production at older fields, such as those in the North Sea."

IEA warns again on Oil Supply Crunch due to lack of investments

"Currently the demand is very low due to the very bad economic situation," he said. "But when the economy starts growing and recovery comes again in 2010 and onward, we may have another serious supply crunch if capital investment is not coming."

OPEC: Oil industry capital investments have collapsed due to crisis

"Investments in the oil industry in the Gulf region have faced a major contraction due to the global financial crisis which could endanger the future of the industry."

Crisis slowing investments in renewables

"Economic slowdown and the recent collapse in oil prices is slowing investment in alternative energy, needed to wean the world off dependence on hydrocarbons, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said"

Sir David King predicts century of Resource Wars

"Future historians might look back on our particular recent past and see the Iraq war as the first of the conflicts of this kind - the first of the resource wars.

Unless we get to grips with this problem globally, we potentially are going to lead ourselves into a situation where large, powerful nations will secure resources for their own people at the expense of others."

Are We In The Post-Peak Era?

"Due to the factors (Russia, the tar sands, etc.) explained above, it will no longer be possible to replace over 2 million barrels of lost production each year after 2010 as production follows the general decline shown in Figure 1. Thus if OPEC capacity gains do not exceed losses outside the cartel, world oil production peaked in July, 2008."

Water running out for oil, coal and tar sands production

"Water is increasingly moving from an operational issue to one of strategic significance, according to Thirsty Energy: Water and Energy in the 21^st Century, a new report by the World Economic Forum and Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), an IHS company (NYSE: IHS). The report warns, “Energy’s share of water is likely to be squeezed in the future in many parts of the world.”

The big picture matters. Everything else is mere noise.

Need a primer? Here's one

The Crash Course in 38 minutes with American style over-simplification. You can't get easier than this.

Click image for Windows Video streaming version or download a Quicktime video.

Ignore the presentation if it rubs you the wrong way. Understand the contents and its meaning.

Tidbits for February 2009

US, UK and Europe are bankrupt

Everybody seems to know that US is toast, printing money to finance debt that they can't ever imagine to repay back. UK is crashing down the twin black hole of energy and financial debt which together will make the 70's look like a picnic to them.

But Europe? The home of the old steady bundesmark? Yup. Bankrupt. Overleveraged, over-debt-ridden, over-illiquid and soon over-insolvent. As in nobody has enough of money to bail out all the European banks. At least none of the Europeans. Good luck going to the Republic of China with a hat in hand.

Time for a Reality Check

"Reality check: The "stimulus" that President Obama will sign Monday is a band-aid.

But European banks may be in far worse shape.

The problem revealed in the report is an estimated write-down by European banks in the range of 16 trillion pounds, or about $25 trillion dollars!

The euro is going to get a lot weaker if bank problems are even half of what the report says they are."

So what, if the economy is slowing down a bit and we'll end up nationalizing all the banks through debt that our grandchildren will pay? Let's just print money!

At least we'll have cheap oil from here to kingdom come!

Um... well, no.

Oil party over

Christophe de Margerie, CEO of oil company Total and one of the most publicly outspoken peak oil aware oil execs gives us the future:

"The capacity that the oil industry has to go to 93-95 million barrels per day is already over. There will be a shortage of energy in the medium to long term."

Ok, so the Party's over. What now?

Well, that has got to be a good sign for the environt and for the climate in particular? No.

CO2 hits new peaks, no sign global crisis causing dip

"Atmospheric levels of the main greenhouse gas are hitting new highs, with no sign yet that the world economic downturn is curbing industrial emissions. Levels of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from human activities, rose to 392 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere."

So much for that stabilization at below 380ppm. Nobody really believed in that to begin with, it was all pep talk. Get ready for the next rounds of pep talk at 480ppm. I'm sure it'll be of great relief to all the Australians.

Are we beginning to see the larger picture emerging here?

As proclaimed earlier, this is not a doom blog, but a realist one. World will recover, economies just as well. One way or the other people will muddle through.

So, nobody knows anymore what 'one' or 'the other' actually entails in the future. We will recover, but how?

To automatically assume that we can - or more importantly that it makes any sense - to get back to Business As Usual, is pure insanity. Or actually, just very human. We're not very good at foreseeing disruptions in semi-linear continuations.

Expect the unexpected and keep on keeping in action and you'll be ready for anything.

Do more, as self-delusional talk is rapidly approaching it's end of shelf-life.