GUEST ARTICLES
ODAC invites guests to write an article of their own choosing. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not reflect the opinions of ODAC. Guest articles are posted on an ad hoc basis.
by Dale Allen Pfeiffer
Dale, a geologist and novelist, was formerly Contributing Editor for Energy with From The Wilderness. He has written extensively on just how dependent our food is on fossil fuel inputs. Last year Dale's book Eating Fossil Fuels was published. Here he writes a short introduction to the book.
[Posted 06 Feb 2007]
An Almost Friendly Update On World Oil
by Ferdinand E. Banks
Ferdinand E. Banks is a semi-retired economics professor from the University of Uppsala. He is not too happy with the rosy outlooks for world oil production from some of his colleagues in the field of economics. In particular, here he reviews a recent edition of the popular US news magazine Newsweek, which ran a series of Peak Oil articles spearheaded by Leonardo Maugeri, senior vice president of strategies and development of the Italian oil company Eni SpA (see ODAC Bulletin Board, That Falling Feeling).
[Posted 08 Jan 2007]
by Barry G. Claverhouse
A contact in the Middle East, Barry G. Claverhouse, will be sharing his thoughts with us regularly. Barry has a keen interest in oil and gas depletion.
[Last updated 03 Nov 2006]
More Facts and Fictions About the World Oil Scene
by Ferdinand E. Banks
Ferdinand E. Banks is a semi-retired economics professor from the University of Uppsala. His intermediate textbook on Energy Economics was published by Kluwer Academic, and his elementary energy economics text will be published soon by World Scientific, who also published his international finance textbook. He has held visiting professorships or research positions at 12 universities outside Sweden, and worked for the UN in Africa and Switzerland. More background can be found via Google. He has a keen interest in Peak Oil.
[Posted 03 Nov 2006]
Not a Good Half for Global Oil Production
by Roger Blanchard
Roger discusses the decline in oil production from very large oil fields and how this decline is likely to ensure that future global oil production growth will not be as big as some authorities assert. Roger is the author of The Future of Global Oil Production, on which he was interviewed by Global Public Media.
[Posted 26 Oct 2006]
by Barry G. Claverhouse
The Dolphin Project is a pipeline that will export gas from Qatar to the United Arab Emirates. Here, Barry G. Claverhouse suggests that India's and Pakistan's wishes to receive gas from an extension of the Dolphin Project are a pipedream, and that there may soon be gas shortages throughout the Middle East. Barry resides in the Middle East, with a keen interest in oil and gas depletion.
[Posted 19 Oct 2006]
by Michael Layden
Michael Layden is a member of FEASTA, The Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability. Michael is fortunate to live in the Arigna Valley in the West of Ireland. His Family mined coal in the hills above the valley for nearly 130 years until 1990 and have developed windfarms on the old coal sites. Michael qualified as an engineer in UCG and worked initially in the Coal mining company, followed by 4 years in the US wind Industry. Wind Energy led to regional energy planning and this led to the management of a local energy agency. This has allowed Michael to develop a good understanding of how energy is used and can be produced at local level. He now works as a sustainable energy consultant. Here he questions the wisdom of investing heavily in biofuels when there are much easier ways of solving the fuel problem.
[Posted 17 Oct 2006]
by Mandy Meikle
Mandy is a member of Depletion Scotland, a small group based in Edinburgh who are trying to raise awareness of Peak Oil. She has given a number of talks to Climate Change/Global Warming pressure groups in the last 3 years, explaining why Peak Oil and Climate Change are two sides of the same coin. Mandy is also Editor of Reforesting Scotland magazine. Here Mandy discusses her most recent success in educating the environmentalists.
[Posted 09 Oct 2006]
Oil Shortages? It’s Happened Before. And It Will Happen Again.
by Ronald R. Cooke
Ronald R. Cooke has over 33 years of professional marketing and business development experience. He has an extensive background in market research, industry analysis, and strategic planning. Prior experience includes technology assessment, operations analysis, and the evaluation of corporate financial performance. An economist by training, Ron has pursued the study of Cultural Economics since 1969. In this essay, he reviews five periods of previous oil shortages, three in the USA, one each in Cuba and Venezuela, their effects on the economy and how people coped, with the suggestion that the USA is vulnerable to another energy shortage.
[Posted 15 Sep 2006]
by Rosamund McDougall
Rosamund McDougall is former Co-chair of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), Founder/Managing Director of Peridot Press, a financial journalist (The Banker, Financial Times), and a former director of Population Stabilisation. From the OPT website: " The Optimum Population Trust was founded in 1991 by the late David Willey, its first chairman. Its purpose was to collect, analyse and disseminate information about the sizes of global and national populations, and their relations with the carrying capacities of different countries and the quality of life of their inhabitants. It was intended that such information should help people to make informed choices about policies affecting their and their descendants' welfare. Special emphasis was given to the situation in the United Kingdom... The need was also seen in a general neglect of the role of population pressure by bodies concerned with the relief of poverty and protection of the environment, and the consequent tendency of those bodies to promote ineffective or counterproductive policies. OPT was granted charitable status on 9 May 2006."
[Posted 25 Aug 2006]
Notes from Peak Speak 2, London, 15 July 2006
by Mandy Meikle
Mandy Meikle is a member of the Scottish-based oil depletion awareness group Depletion Scotland. In July she attended the Peak Oil awareness event Peak Speak 2 in London organised by PowerSwitch. These are the notes she took of the talks during the event. Mandy works for Reforesting Scotland.
[Posted 11 Aug 2006]
Can Biofuels Pose a Serious Challenge to Crude Oil? (PDF)
by Dr Mamdouh G. Salameh
Dr Mamdouh G. Salameh is an international oil economist, a consultant to the World Bank in Washington DC and a technical expert to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Vienna. He is Director of the Oil Market Consultancy Service in the UK and a member of both the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London and the Royal Institute of International Affairs as well as the Energy Institute in London. This paper was originally presented at 29th IAEE [International Assoc. for Energy Economics] International Conference, “Securing Energy in Insecure Times”, 7-10 June 2006, Potsdam/Berlin, Germany.
[Posted 30 June 2006]
Corporate bashing of speculators signals breakthrough in CSR - Corporate Social Responsibility
by Paul E. Metz
Dr Paul E. Metz founded and is managing consultant of INTEGeR... consult, based in The Netherlands. He advises companies, governments and organisations on solutions for the major challenges to a more sustainable process of globalisation - especially those energy-related. He informs his clients on geopolitics and developments in the information on climate disruption and oil and gas depletion, and helps them develop pro-active strategies using "market-improving policy instruments" for innovative ways of cleaner energy generation, mobility and housing.
Paul Metz co-founded e5 - the European Business Council for Sustainable Energy - and is actively involved in Kyoto Protocol negotiations and its European implementation. This article is an edited version of a copy that originally appeared in the Dutch media. Paul will be expanding on his ideas presented in this article in his presentation at the ASPO-5 conference in Pisa, Italy next month: Peak Oil and Corporate Social Responsibility - CSR.
[Posted 23 June 2006]
The Global Oil Consumption Reduction Programme - Mandatory 100mpg Fuel Economy
by William Tahil
William Tahil is Research Director at Meridian International Research, a Renewable Energy, Aerospace and Technology Research firm. The report 2007 Peak Oil: The EV Imperative is available at www.meridian-int-res.com.
[Posted 16 June 2006]
It's Called Bad Good News About Oil
by Ferdinand E. Banks
Ferdinand E. Banks is a semi-retired professor from the University of Uppsala. His intermediate textbook on Energy Economics was published by Kluwer Academic, and his elementary energy economics text will be published late this year by World Scientific, who also published his international finance textbook. He has held visiting professorships or research positions at 12 universities outside Sweden, and worked for the UN in Africa and Switzerland. More background can be found via Google.
[Posted 09 June 2006]
Last updated: 06-Feb-2007