Crude and Condensate Reached New Highs in Jan

Stuart at Early Warning has a post on global oil production, showing oil production has managed to reach a new high after a long plateau - Crude and Condensate Reached New Highs in Jan.

The EIA helpfully produces a breakdown of the global liquid fuel supply into components. This allows us to distinguish change in the supply of "oil" - narrowly defined as crude oil plus condensates (hydrocarbons which come out of the ground as liquid) - from changes in other things (natural gas "liquids", most of which are actually gases like ethane, propane, and butane, ethanol, and refinery volume changes.

The above graph shows these four substreams - the crude and condensate (C&C) is on the right scale and the others on the left scale. This approach is designed to make it easiest to compare changes. The interesting news is that crude+ condensate, which has been pretty much plateaued since late 2004, has now made new highs. So clearly "peak monthly oil" is not behind us.

At the same time, the data still seem to me to be consistent with the overall "peak oil moderate" worldview - that in 2005 we entered into a situation in which it became very difficult to raise oil production and that placed significant constraints on the global economy and made recessions more likely, but that the decline in global production will be slow and fears that this would lead to an abrupt collapse of the global economy were overblown (the "doomer" view).

At the moment, the plateau in C&C has a slight upward tilt and its not possible to say declines in global oil production have begun.

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In marine current energy Siemens wants to be 800 lb gorilla

GreenBang reports that Siemens its expanding its presence in the ocean energy market - In marine current energy, Siemens wants to be 800-lb gorilla.

There’s a lot of energy in the world’s oceans, and Siemens wants to play a big part in developing that power for our use.

The Germany-based technology giant announced today that it’s taken on a larger stake in a British marine-energy company, Marine Current Turbines Ltd. Siemens first dipped its toe into the marine current tidal energy sector in February of 2010, when it acquired a minor stake in the company. It now has a 45-percent stake.

“With this increase in its stake, Siemens is strengthening its activities in ocean power generation,” said Michael Axmann, CFO of the newly founded Solar & Hydro Division within Siemens’ Energy Sector. “We will actively shape the commercialization process of innovative marine current power plants.” ...

Some estimates say tidal power plants deployed around the world could generate up to 800 terawatt-hours of clean energy each year. That’s enough to meet 3 to 4 percent of the world’s energy needs, and 25 percent more than all the energy used in Germany.

Marine Current Turbines plans to present two project investment prospectuses to the market in November: one for the 8 megawatt (MW) Kyle Rhea project in Scotland and another for the 10MW Anglesey Skerries project in Wales. The company also has lease approval to deploy a 100MW tidal farm off Brough Ness on the southernmost tip of the Orkney Islands in Scotland. ...

The company has already demonstrated its first commercial-scale project, SeaGen in Northern Ireland. Since November 2008, two turbines with a combined capacity of 1.2MW have been plugged into the grid and providing enough power to supply about 1,500 homes. With more than 2.7 gigawatt-hours of electricity generated so far, SeaGen is so far the top electricity producer in the marine current power sector.

EarthTechling reports that the Japanese are also getting in deeper with tidal energy - Kawasaki Testing Tidal Power In Scotland.

The name “Kawasaki” may be most readily associated with motors of the two-wheeled, gasoline-powered variety; but the Japanese multinational company has recently announced that it will soon be getting into the tidal power generation business. Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI) has announced that it will work with Okinawa Electric Power and Okinawa New Energy Development to prepare a new tidal power generator technology for testing off the coast of Okinawa, Japan. Then, KHI will test the technology at the European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) in Orkney, Scotland.

The EMEC is the first center of its kind to offer developers an opportunity to test full-scale, grid-connected prototypes under high velocity wave and tidal conditions. High velocity currents at the tidal test site at the Fall of Warness, where the KHI technology will be tested, reach almost 4m/sec (7.8 knots). The facility offers seven test beds at depths ranging from 12 to 50 meters, in an area of over three square miles.

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Finding protection from tumor growth in unexpected places

As just about anyone who takes even the simplest medications knows, almost everything has side-effects. Generally, theres no free lunch. The aspirin that reduces your fever and (maybe) makes your hangover a little less painful can also cause ulcers and stomach bleeding.

Among the many thousands of proteins, hormones, enzymes, and the like that are active naturally in your body at any one time, most presumably are there for a beneficial purpose. But not always. Some have a distinct Jekyll/Hyde quality about them.

Consider, in particular, the hormone known as angiotensin II. It is part of what is called the renin-angiotensin system, which helps regulate blood pressure. Overlooking a number of details, one of the key functions of angiotensin II is to quickly constrict blood vessels, to minimize blood loss in the event of serious injury. However, because it raises blood pressure, the body needs for it not to be around most of the time, to avoid dangerous hypertension.

The way the body handles this is by producing a slightly different hormone instead, angiotensin I, which can be quickly converted, when required, into angiotensin II by means of an enzyme called simply angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE). Its ACE were really here to talk about in this note, because it appears to have several other functions besides the one its named for. Ironically, one of the strategies for treating hypertension is to inhibit ACE, because of the need to keep blood pressure under control. Yet some of its side effects, unrelated to blood pressure, seem beneficial.

Finding Protection From Tumor Growth In Unexpected Places

Researchers have discovered that an enzyme commonly involved in regulating blood pressure also provides protection from tumor growth when strongly expressed in immune cells.

ACE, in fact, is involved in a surprising number of other processes in addition to restraining tumor gowth via its immune system activity.

Angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) plays a direct role in controlling blood pressure and is a common therapeutic target in hypertension. However, it also plays roles in such diverse processes as fertility, immune cell development, and atherosclerosis, and a few studies have even suggested a role for ACE in generating an effective immune response.

The researchers used experimental mice (ACE 10/10 mice) that express ACE only in their macrophages. The findings were quite intriguing.

When injected with aggressive melanoma cells, normal mice developed large melanoma tumors whereas ACE 10/10 mice developed only very small tumors. The resistance of ACE 10/10 mice to melanoma growth was confirmed using several different melanoma cell lines and by using different strains of mice expressing high levels of ACE in macrophages. Interestingly, the small tumors of ACE 10/10 mice contained significantly higher numbers of white blood cells, suggesting a large anti-tumor immune response.

To confirm the existence of an ACE-specific anti-tumor immune response, normal mice were depleted of their bone marrow and transplanted with ACE 10/10 bone marrow. When the transplanted normal mice were then injected with melanoma cells, they too were able to control tumor growth. The immune response involved not just the ACE-expressing macrophages but also increased numbers of cytotoxic T cells and levels of immune-activating chemicals and decreased levels of immune-suppressing chemicals. Finally, the ACE 10/10 macrophages alone could direct the immune response and convey protection as direct injection of these cells into melanoma tumors of normal mice yielded decreased tumor size.

It will be very interesting to learn what further research reveals about how ACE enhances the immune system.

Tags: angiotensin-converting enzyme, cancer, immune system

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Stellar Birth in the Galactic Wilderness

Stellar Birth in the Galactic Wilderness (4/16/08)

A new image from NASAs Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows baby stars sprouting in the backwoods of a galaxy -- a relatively desolate region of space more than 100,000 light-years from the galaxys bustling center.

The striking image, a composite of ultraviolet data from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer and radio data from the National Science Foundations Very Large Array in New Mexico, shows the Southern Pinwheel galaxy, also known simply as M83.

In the new view, the main spiral, or stellar, disk of M83 looks like a pink and blue pinwheel, while its outer arms appear to flap away from the galaxy like giant red streamers. It is within these so-called extended galaxy arms that, to the surprise of astronomers, new stars are forming.

M83 – click for 800×800 image

More: here

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General relativity passes cosmic test Einsteins theory holds in extreme gravitational fields

Chalk up another win for "orthodox" scientific theories. General relativity has again passed stringent tests.

General relativity survives gruelling pulsar test — Einstein at least 99.95 percent right

An international research team led by Prof. Michael Kramer of the University of Manchesters Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK, has used three years of observations of the "double pulsar", a unique pair of natural stellar clocks which they discovered in 2003, to prove that Einsteins theory of general relativity - the theory of gravity that displaced Newtons - is correct to within a staggering 0.05%. Their results are published on the 14th September in the journal Science and are based on measurements of an effect called the Shapiro Delay.

The double pulsar system, PSR J0737-3039A and B, is 2000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Puppis. It consists of two massive, highly compact neutron stars, each weighing more than our own Sun but only about 20 km across, orbiting each other every 2.4 hours at speeds of a million kilometres per hour. Separated by a distance of just a million kilometres, both neutron stars emit lighthouse-like beams of radio waves that are seen as radio "pulses" every time the beams sweep past the Earth. It is the only known system of two detectable radio pulsars orbiting each other. Due to the large masses of the system, they provide an ideal opportunity to test aspects of General Relativity.

The large mass of the pulsars and their proximity to each other is the key thing, resulting in a very strong gravitational field. The binary pulsar system provides an opportunity to check the validity of general relativity under conditions that are more extreme than any studied before.

Shapiro delay can be described as an apparent change in the speed of light in a strong gravitational field. It occurs because spacetime itself is warped in the field, which effectively forces light to travel a larger distance. Since the radio-frequency beam from each pulsar sweeps across Earth at a very precise frequency (22.8 milliseconds for one, 2.8 seconds for the other), like an exceptionally accurate clock, it is possible to predict exactly when the beam should be seen. Any departure from this prediction would be due to the Shapiro delay. The orbital period of the two pulsars around each other is about 2.4 hours. During this period, the distance between the pulsars varies, so the mutual gravitational fields vary correspondingly. This allows the theoretical delay time to be calculated, and the observations match the prediction very well.

This effect is distinct from the time dilation which occurs in a large gravitational field. The dilation causes time intervals to appear to lengthen. So the period of rotation of each pulsar appears to change, and the spectrum of radio waves from each object is redshifted, as the pulsars experience a change in the gravitational field. Here again, the observations match the predictions of general relativity very well.

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Additional information:

Pulsars Gyrations Confirm Einsteins Theory

News article about the research from Science. (Subscription required for full access.)

Tests of General Relativity from Timing the Double Pulsar

The actual research paper from Science. (Subscription required for full access.)

Millisecond Pulsars as Tools of Fundamental Physics

A review paper by Kramer posted to the arXiv in May 2004. It explains the underlying physics in some detail. It also describes the binary pulsar system, which had only recently been discovered.

The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment

An expository paper by Clifford M. Will that reviews the status of experimental tests of general relativity and of theoretical frameworks for analyzing them.

General relativity passes cosmic test - Einsteins theory holds in extreme gravitational fields.

News article at Nature.com news. (Subscription required)

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Tags: relativity, general relativity, pulsars, astrophysics

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Biofuels Production Has Unintended Consequences on Water Quality and Quantity in Mississippi

Science Daily has a look at the impact of biofuel production on water quality in the Mississippi river - Biofuels Production Has Unintended Consequences on Water Quality and Quantity in Mississippi.

More water is required to produce corn than to produce cotton in the Mississippi Delta requiring increased withdrawals of groundwater from the Mississippi River Valley alluvial (MRVA) aquifer for irrigation. This is contributing to already declining water levels in the aquifer. In addition, increased use of nitrogen fertilizer for corn in comparison to cotton could contribute to low dissolved oxygen conditions in the Gulf of Mexico.

These are some of the key findings from a study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to assess water quality and quantity in the Mississippi Delta, in relationship to biofuels production.

"Because corn uses 80 percent more water for irrigation than cotton, exchanging corn for cotton will decrease water-levels," according to Heather Welch, USGS Hydrologist and author of this USGS Report. Declining water levels in the MRVA aquifer are particularly significant in the Mississippi Delta, where the infiltration of rainfall to replenish the aquifer is low. "This is a low flat area. When it does rain, much of the precipitation is lost through evapotranspiration and to streamflow, so the rainwater never reaches the aquifer," explains Welch.

In 2006, the U.S. Department of Energy Biomass Program implemented the Biofuels Initiative. The initiative calls for the replacement of 30 percent of gasoline levels by ethanol by 2030 and the reduction of ethanol costs to prices competitive with gasoline by 2012. In the Mississippi Delta, implementation of this initiative resulted in a 47-percent decrease in the number of acres dedicated to producing cotton, which resulted in a corresponding 288-percent increase in corn acreage in the region from 2006 to 2007.

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The most secure bike lock in the world

Grist points to an interesting bike lock concept - The most secure bike lock in the world.

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Radiation Readings in Fukushima Reactor Rise to Highest Since Crisis Began

Bloomberg has an update on the Fukushima nuclear disaster - Radiation Readings in Fukushima Reactor Rise to Highest Since Crisis Began. Weirdly this story has changed since it was first published, which initially claimed radiation readings had fallen to zero - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-27/tokyo-water-radiation-falls-to-zero-for-first-time-since-crisis.html.

Radiation readings at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-Ichi station rose to the highest since an earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems, impeding efforts to contain the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl.

Two robots sent into the reactor No. 1 building at the plant yesterday took readings as high as 1,120 millisierverts of radiation per hour, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at Tokyo Electric Power Co., said today. That’s more than four times the annual dose permitted to nuclear workers at the stricken plant.

Radiation from the station, where four of six reactors have been damaged by explosions, has forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of people and contaminated farmland and drinking water. A plan to flood the containment vessel of reactor No. 1 with more water to speed up emergency cooling efforts announced yesterday by the utility known as Tepco may not be possible now.

“Tepco must figure out the source of high radiation,” said Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear engineering professor at Kyoto University. “If it’s from contaminated water leaking from inside the reactor, Tepco’s so-called water tomb may be jeopardized because flooding the containment vessel will result in more radiation in the building.”

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Obama addresses climate energy infrastructure in State of the Union

TreeHugger reports that US President Obama is still talking a reasonably good game when it comes to global warming and clean energy - Obama addresses climate, energy, infrastructure in State of the Union.

President Obama on 3D Printing:

Last year, we created our first manufacturing innovation institute in Youngstown, Ohio. A once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything. There’s no reason this can’t happen in other towns. So tonight, I’m announcing the launch of three more of these manufacturing hubs, where businesses will partner with the Departments of Defense and Energy to turn regions left behind by globalization into global centers of high-tech jobs. And I ask this Congress to help create a network of fifteen of these hubs and guarantee that the next revolution in manufacturing is Made in America. President Obama on Energy Policy:

After years of talking about it, we are finally poised to control our own energy future. We produce more oil at home than we have in 15 years. We have doubled the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas, and the amount of renewable energy we generate from sources like wind and solar – with tens of thousands of good, American jobs to show for it. We produce more natural gas than ever before – and nearly everyone’s energy bill is lower because of it. And over the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen.

On Climate:

But for the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Yes, it’s true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it’s too late.

The good news is, we can make meaningful progress on this issue while driving strong economic growth. I urge this Congress to pursue a bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change, like the one John McCain and Joe Lieberman worked on together a few years ago. But if Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will. I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.

On Clean Energy:

Four years ago, other countries dominated the clean energy market and the jobs that came with it. We’ve begun to change that. Last year, wind energy added nearly half of all new power capacity in America. So let’s generate even more. Solar energy gets cheaper by the year – so let’s drive costs down even further. As long as countries like China keep going all-in on clean energy, so must we.

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Global Investment in Renewable Energy Germany

Fifth on our list is a country well known for its technological ingenuity and becoming increasingly popular for its renewable energy initiatives, Germany

Renewable energy technologies have deployed rapidly in Germany since 1990 largely as a result of energy policies adopted by the German government and the European Union.  The growth of renewable energy in Germany has often been cited as a model success story.  The German government launched a comprehensive series of promotions for renewable energy in the early 1990s, which has since been augmented with additional legislation and policy actions to increase renewable energy use.

 

Policies

Here are some of Germany’s energy plans:

The Electricity Feed Act came into force on 1 January 1991. In April 2000, it was replaced by the Renewable Energy Sources Act, which was amended a first time in July 2004 and again in 2008. The Renewable Energy Act is based on the following principles:

Obligation of grid operators to purchase the electricity produced from renewable energy .

Fixed price (“tariff”) for every kilowatt-hour produced from renewable energy for 20 years.

Tariffs are differentiated by source and size of the plant.

Equalisation of additional costs between all grid operators and electricity suppliers.

Motives

The first issue is the phase out of nuclear power. An early energy policy action of the Red-Green government was an initiative for the complete phase out of nuclear power in Germany by 2020.

The second issue is greenhouse gas control. The future challenges incumbent in nuclear phase-out are compounded by the ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reductions targets adopted by the German government.

(See larger image)

Renewable Energy Availability

Germany’s onshore wind generation in totalled 25,509 gigawatt-hours in 2004. Together with hydro power (21,076 gigawatt-hours), it dominates the market.

Biomass electricity is also contributing significantly (9,326 gigawatt-hours), with strong growth in the solid biomass sector (average annual growth of 34% between 1997 and 2004).

Solar energy has increased on average by 53% per year.

Stay tuned for more countries coming up!

Thank you for taking the time to learn more about renewable energy - Knowledge Is Power! For more information go to www.endeavorscorp.com or write to us at info@endeavorscorp.com if you have questions or want to get involved. Have a green day!

Global Change, EREC, Global Change, Europa, Bloomberg New Energy Finance and United Nations Environment Programme (2011)

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NRG Energy Deploying Dean Kamen’s Solar Smart In Home Generator

Greentech Media has an article on one of Dean Kamens cleantech experiments (in this case a Stirling Engine cogeneration device) - NRG Energy Deploying Dean Kamen’s Solar-Smart In-Home Generator

Few executives are more outspoken about the threat that distributed energy poses to utilities than NRG Energy CEO David Crane, so it’s not surprising that NRG Energy plans to sell a product that is disruptive to the centralized power business model.

The company is working with Deka Research on an on-site “energy appliance,” according to NRG Energy’s corporate sustainability report. In an interview last week with The Atlantic, Crane said the device, called Beacon 10, can generate electricity from natural gas, work with a battery and rooftop solar, and provide backup in the case of a grid outage. “When there’s not enough solar, you turn on the Beacon 10. Then, ideally, the grid itself would just be the ultimate backup. It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said.

Deka Research is headed by Dean Kamen, a renowned inventor best known for creating the Segway transporter who has worked extensively with Stirling engines. Earlier this year at the Fortune Brainstorm Green conference, NRG Energy showed a portable Stirling engine, and Crane said that the company is working with Kamen to test 200 of the machines in homes. Kamen has already made a multi-fuel, Stirling-engine-based water purifier called the Slingshot, which Coca-Cola will distribute to rural Latin America and African villages.

A specification sheet seen by the website Energy Choice Matters indicated that the Stirling engine of Beacon 10 is capable of producing 15 kilowatts of power, can send excess energy to the grid, and is slightly larger than a washing machine. The NRGBeacon10.com website has apparently since been taken down, and an NRG representative declined to provide more details on Beacon 10.

Beacon 10 is one of a number of products NRG Energy has that are outside the typical offerings of conventional utilities. The company has developed a solar canopy and has installed EV charging stations at retail locations. It’s also one of the utilities working with Nest Labs to offer consumers a two-way thermostat.

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Rwanda targeting 300 MW of geothermal power in next six years

Engineering News has an article on interest in geothermal power in Rwanda (the country also has some interesting power generation potential using gas from the great lakes) - Rwanda targeting 300 MW of geothermal power in next six years .

Rwanda plans to include geothermal power in its energy mix in a bid to tackle severe electricity challenges and power its fast-expanding economy. The East African nation says it has set itself a target of generating 300 MW from geothermal sources in the next six years.

Stephen Onacha, an energy expert at Rwanda’s Ministry of Infrastructure, says that the drilling of three geothermal exploration wells, at a cost of $20-million, will start this year.

The decision to invest in geothermal energy is part of a comprehensive energy diversification programme aimed at expanding Rwanda’s installed capacity to 1 000 MW in seven years, connecting more people to the grid and driving economic growth.

The programme is expected to cost a staggering $900-million, and various financers, such as the African Development Bank, the World Bank and the European Union, have already committed to assisting Rwanda in the implementation of key projects, including the upgrading of the country’s dilapidated transmission and distribution infrastructure and the construction of new generation plants.

Although Rwanda is East Africa’s fastest-growing economy, with the World Bank forecasting gross domestic product growth of 7% in 2010, the country has been facing major energy challenges.

The Rwanda Electricity Corporation says the country’s installed capacity stood at a mere 69 MW in 2009, but plans are under way to increase this capacity to 130 MW by the end of next year through investments in small hydropower plants and methane gas plants. Only 6% of the population is connected to the electricity grid.

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Heroes of the Motherland How the NSA Won the War in Iraq Or Wants You To Think It Did

Billmon has made one of his rare appearances at Daily Kos to mock the Washington Post - Heroes of the Motherland: How the NSA Won the War in Iraq (Or Wants You To Think It Did).

Earlier this week the Washington Post treated us to an in-depth profile of Gen. Keith Alexander, the military commander charged with running the world’s most omnivorous spy agency. And when I say “treat,” I mean it in roughly the same sense that the old Pravda used to “treat” its readers to accounts of the latest triumphs of Soviet tractor production ...

“Under Andropov, the KGB grew noticeably in political power, in personnel, and even in the number of buildings its occupied . . . Andropov was probably not deliberately pursuing any evil goals and was not attempting to create a police state; more likely, his actions were simply a question of gaining administrative turf . . . However, nothing constructive could have come out of this. Growing bureaucratic structures always search out activities to occupy their energies, and when they don’t find them, they invent them.”
Georgi Arbatov
The System: An Insider’s Life in Soviet Politics 1993

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Vanuatu in line for geothermal power station

Radio NZ has a report on a geothermal power project in Vanuatu - Vanuatu in line for geothermal power station.

An Australian company is planning a geothermal power plant on north Efate in Vanuatu. The company plans to set up the plant around the hot pools of Takara village. It aims to provide cheap electricity for Efate by early 2014.

The company says it’ll spend as much as nine billion vatu, or around 99 million US dollars on the project.

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India’s first tidal energy plant coming up in Gujarat

The Weekend Leader has an update on a proposed tidal power plant in India - India’s first tidal energy plant coming up in Gujarat.

The Gujarat government is all set to develop India’s first tidal energy plant. The state government has approved Rs 25 crore for setting up the 50 MW plant at the Gulf of Kutch. It will produce energy from the ocean tides.

The state government signed a MoU with Atlantis Resource Corporation last year to develop the plant.

According to an estimate, India has a potential of 8,000 MW of tidal energy “The proposal was approved in this year’s budget session,” says Rajkumar Raisinghani, senior executive with Gujarat Power Corporation Limited (GPCL).

Atlantis Resource Corporation is a UK-based developer of tidal current turbines. “The equipment has been imported and work will start anytime soon. We are awaiting Coastal Regulation Zone clearance from Ministry of Environment and Forests, which is expected soon,” adds Raisinghani.

According to the GPCL officials, if this 50 MW plant is successfully commissioned, its capacity will be increased to 200 MW. As per a study conducted by Atlantis Resource Corporation and the state government two years ago, the Gulf of Kutch has a total potential of 300 MW. The biggest operating tidal station in the world, La Rance in France, generates 240 MW.

According to the estimates of the Indian government, the country has a potential of 8,000 MW of tidal energy. This includes about 7,000 MW in the Gulf of Cambay in Gujarat, 1,200 MW in the Gulf of Kutch and 100 MW in the Gangetic delta in the Sunderbans region of West Bengal.

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Commodity supercycle in rude health despite shale oil

Ambrose Evans Pritchard has his own farewell to The Oil Drum at The Daily Telegraph, remaining skeptical that weve got an endless supply of oil just waiting to flow out of the ground - Commodity supercycle in rude health despite shale.

The Oil Drum is closing down after eight years, giving up the long struggle to alert us all to "peak oil" and the dangers of an energy crunch. Readers have been drifting away. The theme has gone out of fashion, eclipsed by shale and fracking in the US. ...

But though fracking is a Godsend, let us not lose our heads. The US Energy Department expects shale oil to add 3.1m bpd to Americas oil output by 2020, a remarkable feat but far less than the 5.4m estimates of a much-cited study by Leonardo Maugeri at Harvard.

The depletion rate on rigs at the Bakken field in North Dakota - the biggest US shale field - is precipitous. Output falls 30pc within two years, and a third is leaking into the air. Shale bears say average declines are nearer 70pc in the first year, and dismiss the whole craze as a bubble.

That is going too far. The technology is improving every week. The decline rate may flatten over time. Yet claims of a 100-year bonanza in the US are wishful thinking. "The upper limit of supply is likely closer to 23 years using present day rates of consumption," said the Eos report.

Kevin Norrish from Barclays said US drillers have already tapped the "best plays" for shale, with newer Utica ventures in the north east of the US and Canada coming up short. The biggest productivity leaps may already have happened. "We expect a steep slowdown in the rate of tight oil production growth from the middle of this decade onward," he said.

Barclays is defiantly holding to a Brent crude forecast of $184 in 2020, betting that spare capacity in global output will prove thinner than supposed, and that oil shocks will come back to haunt us.

We should think of shale as one-generation play for the US, enough to ensure American superpower primacy into the middle of the century. Whether the rest of the world can follow suit in any meaningful time-frame is an open question. Boston Consulting Group said there were 110,000 shale wells in the US and Canada by the end of last year, and just 200 in all other countries combined. Argentina, Poland and Ukraine may try to get going after 2015 but they have almost no service infrastructure, and all score badly on "ease of doing business". Australia may do better from 2017 onwards.

China has the worlds biggest reserves on paper. It is itching to start but much of its shale is in the north-west desert where there is no water, and frackers have yet to find a viable extraction process without water. Not one of the 19 drilling awards issued by the Communist authorities in January went to companies with oil and gas experience. They were mostly power utilities or coal miners.

Even if China seizes the prize, it will first have to build a vast network of pipelines. That will take a great deal of energy, long before shale supply reaches the market. ...

We all love a fresh narrative but consensus has swung too fast from the 2008 oil panic to the energy complacency of 2013, and done so on slender evidence. As matters stand, peak cheap oil remains an incontrovertible fact. To Oil Drum, a fond farewell.

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Chevron Uses Solar Thermal Steam to Extract Oil in California

Bloomberg has an article on enhanced oil recovery using solar thermal energy in California - Chevron Uses Solar-Thermal Steam to Extract Oil in California.

Chevron Corp. (CVX), the second-largest U.S. oil company, began extracting crude from a southern California field using steam produced by a 29-megawatt solar- thermal power plant. BrightSource Energy Inc.’s system uses mirrors to focus sunlight on a boiler at Chevron’s Coalinga, California, enhanced oil recovery project, the solar company said in a statement after extraction began today.

Solar-thermal technology companies such as BrightSource are targeting industrial users in the oil-recovery and food- processing industries as customers as well as power generation. Mining and metals processing are also very promising, especially in remote areas where power can also be generated along with heat, Charlie Ricker, BrightSource senior vice president of business development, said today in an interview. ...

The Coalinga plant consists of 3,822 mirror systems, or heliostats, each with two 10-foot (3-meter) by 7-foot mirrors mounted on a 6-foot steel pole focusing light on a 327-foot solar tower. Steam created by the heat is fed into the oil reservoir, making it easier to bring to the surface. The system began generating steam in August, Kristin Hunter, a spokeswoman for Oakland, California-based BrightSource, said today in an e- mail.

Areva SA’s Areva Solar, Seville, Spain-based Abengoa SA, Erlangen, Germany-based Solar Millennium AG (S2M) and Burbank, California-based eSolar Inc. are competing with BrightSource with their own solar-thermal technology. Glasspoint Solar Inc., based in Fremont, California, makes solar steam generators for the oil and gas industry using mirrored troughs inside of glasshouse enclosures to protect the mirrors.

Enhanced oil recovery, or EOR, fits very well with solar temperatures, Glasspoint Vice President John O’Donnell, said today in an interview.

Some 32 percent of California’s industrial and commercial gas use is for EOR as its use grows in the U.S. and all over the world, O’Donnell said. The state produces about 40% of its oil using EOR and in a few years that will grow to 60%, he said.

The company can produce heat for EOR for about $3 per million British thermal units, compared with about $4 for a comparable natural-gas plant in the U.S. and between $10 to $12 for other conventional solar thermal technologies, O’Donnell said. “We are the only ones below natural gas right now in the U.S.”

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Oceanlinx moving forward with wave power project in South Australia

The ABC reports that wave power company Oceanlinx is moving forward with a project off South Australia, with construction due to be complete by the end of the year - Oceanlinx applies for licence to generate electricity using ocean waves off south-east coast of South Australia.

The Essential Services Commission (ESC) has received the first application in South Australia for a licence to generate electricity using the energy of ocean waves. The application has been lodged by New South Wales-based company Oceanlinx. A generator is being built off the coast from Port MacDonnell in the south-east of South Australia and all energy generated would be sold to electricity suppliers.

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Renewable energy sources in Minnesota – Quick outlook

Minnesota has made rapid renewable energy development in the last couple of years and is today one of the nations clean energy leaders. The most important renewable energy source in the state is wind power, that currently provides satisfies than 10% of states energy demand.

Minnesota’s currently installed wind power capacity is bigger than 2,500 MW. If wind power capacity will continue to grow at current pace the state will have no problems in achieving its goal of obtaining 25% of energy coming from renewable energy sources by 2025.

Wind energy is not all about clean, emission-free energy because wind energy industry is also major job creator. According to American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), Minnesotas wind energy industry supports around 3,000 jobs annually.

Wind power still remains the best clean energy option for Minnesota but the state also looks anxious to add more solar power to the grid. There is still an ongoing debate whether Minnesota should focus on solar power or not because while some consider solar power as an excellent renewable energy option for Minnesota the others say that solar power is not an economically viable energy option for Minnesota due to states rather average solar insolation values. Solar energy still accounts for only around 0.1% of Minnesota’s energy supply.

The rather interesting 2012 study by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research concluded that Minnesota could become 100% renewable with a combination of wind and solar energy, given that these two renewable energy sources are combined with big energy storage and serious grid improvements.

It also has to be mentioned that Minnesota is currently the fourth largest ethanol producer in United States by producing more than 1.1 billion gallons of ethanol per year and biofuels are expected to play a very important role in Minnesotas renewable energy industry in years to come.

The future renewable energy outlook for Minnesota remains very positive, and Minnesota should remain one of nation’s clean energy leaders for foreseeable future.

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The manipulative pro war argument in Libya

Glenn Greenwald has a rare example of an intellectually honest article opposing the intervention in Libya (personally I still think the no-fly zone is a good thing, as long as we dont extend operations to actually occupying the country and attempting to control the oil, as the US did in Iraq) - The manipulative pro-war argument in Libya.

Advocating for the U.S.s military action in Libya, The New Republics John Judis lays out the argument which many of his fellow war advocates are making: that those who oppose the intervention are guilty of indifference to the plight of the rebels and to Gadaffis tyranny:

So I ask myself, would these opponents of U.S. intervention (as part of U.N. Security Council approved action), have preferred:

(1) That gangs of mercenaries, financed by the country’s oil wealth, conduct a bloodbath against Muammar Qaddafi’s many opponents?

(2) That Qaddafi himself, wounded, enraged, embittered, and still in power, retain control of an important source of the world’s oil supply, particularly for Europe, and be able to spend the wealth he derives from it to sow discord in the region?

(3) And that the movement toward democratization in the Arab world -- which has spread from Tunisia to Bahrain, and now includes such unlikely locales as Syria -- be dealt an enormous setback through the survival of one of regions most notorious autocrats?

If you answer "Who cares?" to each of these, I have no counter-arguments to offer, but if you worry about two or three of these prospects, then I think you have to reconsider whether Barack Obama did the right thing in lending American support to this intervention.

Note how, in Judis moral world, there are only two possibilities: one can either support the American military action in Libya or be guilty of a "who cares?" attitude toward Gadaffis butchery. At least as far as this specific line of pro-war argumentation goes, this is just 2003 all over again. Back then, those opposed to the war in Iraq were deemed pro-Saddam: indifferent to the repression and brutalities suffered by the Iraqi people at his hands and willing to protect his power. Now, those opposed to U.S. involvement in the civil war in Libya are deemed indifferent to the repression and brutalities suffered by the Libyan people from Gadaffi and willing to protect his power. This rationale is as flawed logically as it is morally.

Why didnt this same moral calculus justify the attack on Iraq? Saddam Hussein really was a murderous, repressive monster: at least Gadaffis equal when it came to psychotic blood-spilling. Those who favored regime change there made exactly the same arguments as Judis (and many others) make now for Libya: its humane and noble to topple a brutal dictator; using force is the only way to protect parts of the population from slaughter (in Iraq, the Kurds and Shiites; in Libya, the rebels); its not in Americas interests to allow a deranged despot (or his deranged sons) to control a vital oil-rich nation; and removing the tyrant will aid the spread of freedom and democracy in the Middle East. Why does that reasoning justify war in Libya but not Iraq?

In Foreign Policy, Stephen Walt argues that "liberal interventionists" and neocons share most of the same premises about Americas foreign policy and its role in the world, with the sole exception being that the former seek to act through international institutions to legitimize their military actions while the latter dont. Strongly bolstering Walts view is this mornings pro-war New York Times Editorial, which ends this way:

Libya is a specific case: Muammar el-Qaddafi is erratic, widely reviled, armed with mustard gas and has a history of supporting terrorism. If he is allowed to crush the opposition, it would chill pro-democracy movements across the Arab world.

Wasnt all of that at least as true of Saddam Hussein? Wasnt that exactly the "humanitarian" case made to justify that invasion? And wasnt that exactly the basis for the accusation against Iraq war opponents that they were indifferent to Saddams tyranny -- i.e., if you oppose the war to remove Saddam, it means you are ensuring that he and his sons will stay in power, which in turn means you are indifferent to his rape rooms and mass graves and are willing to stand by while the Iraqi people suffer under his despotism? How can the "indifference-to-suffering" accusation be fair when made against opponents of the Libya war but not when made against Iraq war opponents?

But my real question for Judis (and those who voice the same accusations against Libya intervention opponents) is this: do you support military intervention to protect protesters in Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and other U.S. allies from suppression, or to stop the still-horrendous suffering in the Sudan, or to prevent the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Ivory Coast? Did you advocate military intervention to protect protesters in Iran and Egypt, or to stop the Israeli slaughter of hundreds of trapped innocent civilians in Gaza and Lebanon or its brutal and growing occupation of the West Bank?

If not, doesnt that necessarily mean -- using this same reasoning -- that youre indifferent to the suffering of all of those people, willing to stand idly by while innocents are slaughtered, to leave in place brutal tyrants who terrorize their own population or those in neighboring countries? Or, in those instances where you oppose military intervention despite widespread suffering, do you grant yourself the prerogative of weighing other factors: such as the finitude of resources, doubt about whether U.S. military action will hurt rather than help the situation, cynicism about the true motives of the U.S. government in intervening, how intervention will affect other priorities, the civilian deaths that will inevitably occur at our hands, the precedents that such intervention will set for future crises, and the moral justification of invading foreign countries? For those places where you know there is widespread violence and suffering yet do not advocate for U.S. military action to stop it, is it fair to assume that you are simply indifferent to the suffering you refuse to act to prevent, or do you recognize there might be other reasons why you oppose the intervention?

In the very same Editorial where it advocates for the Libya intervention on the grounds of stopping government violence and tyranny, The New York Times acknowledges about its pro-intervention view: "not in Bahrain or Yemen, even though we condemn the violence against protesters in both countries." Are those who merely "condemn" the violence by those two U.S. allies but who do not want to intervene to stop it guilty of indifference to the killings there? What rationale is there for intervening in Libya but not in those places? In a very well-argued column, The Washington Posts Eugene Robinson today provides the only plausible answer:

Anyone looking for principle and logic in the attack on Moammar Gaddafis tyrannical regime will be disappointed. . . . Why is Libya so different? Basically, because the dictators of Yemen, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia -- also Jordan and the Persian Gulf sheikdoms, for that matter -- are friendly, cooperative and useful. Gaddafi is not. . . .

Gaddafi is crazy and evil; obviously, he wasn’t going to listen to our advice about democracy. The world would be fortunate to be rid of him. But war in Libya is justifiable only if we are going to hold compliant dictators to the same standard we set for defiant ones. If not, then please spare us all the homilies about universal rights and freedoms. Well know this isn’t about justice, its about power.

I understand -- and absolutely believe -- that many people who support the intervention in Libya are doing so for good and noble reasons: disgust at standing by and watching Gadaffi murder hundreds or thousands of rebels. I also believe that some people who supported the attack on Iraq did so out of disgust for Saddam Hussein and a desire to see him removed from power. Its commendable to oppose that type of despotism, and I understand -- and share -- the impulse.

But what I cannot understand at all is how people are willing to believe that the U.S. Government is deploying its military and fighting this war because, out of abundant humanitarianism, it simply cannot abide internal repression, tyranny and violence against ones own citizens. This is the same government that enthusiastically supports and props up regimes around the world that do exactly that, and that have done exactly that for decades.

By all accounts, one of the prime administration advocates for this war was Hillary Clinton; shes the same person who, just two years ago, said this about the torture-loving Egyptian dictator: "I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family." Theyre the same people overseeing multiple wars that routinely result in all sorts of atrocities. They are winking and nodding to their Yemeni, Bahrani and Saudi friends who are doing very similar things to what Gadaffi is doing, albeit (for now) on a smaller scale. They just all suddenly woke up one day and decided to wage war in an oil-rich Muslim nation because they just cant stand idly by and tolerate internal repression and violence against civilians? Please.

For the reasons I identified the other day, there are major differences between the military actions in Iraq and Libya. But what is true of both -- as is true for most wars -- is that each will spawn suffering for some people even if they alleviate it for others. Dropping lots of American bombs on a country tends to kill a lot of innocent people. For that reason, indifference to suffering is often what war proponents -- not war opponents -- are guilty of. But whatever else is true, the notion that opposing a war is evidence of indifference to tyranny and suffering is equally simple-minded, propagandistic, manipulative and intellectually bankrupt in both the Iraq and Libya contexts. And, in particular, those who opposed or still oppose intervention in Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt, Iraq, the Sudan, against Israel, in the Ivory Coast -- and/or any other similar places where there is widespread human-caused suffering -- have no business advancing that argument.

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