ASPO-USA — Record oil prices have sent gasoline costs skyrocketing, and
America’s rickety reliance on oil has claimed the electoral agenda and
public attention. Yet, despite increased drilling, burgeoning demand
continues to strain supply.

“Domestic gas production in the U.S. has not been proportionally
increasing with the dramatic increase in drilling because much of
what’s being found with drilling has very high production declines
during the first year,” commented Vince Matthews, State Geologist of
Colorado and one of many prominent speakers at the 4th annual
Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO)-USA Peak Oil
Conference in Sacramento, Sept. 21-23.

The picture for domestic oil production is not much better as the
U.S. oil infrastructure is severely outdated and in need of serious
rehab.

“It takes millions of tons of steel to pull crude oil out of the
ground, transport it to refineries, and then move and store finished
petroleum products to where consumers can purchase them. The average
refinery in the U.S. is more than 80 years old,” Matt Simmons, chairman
of Simmons & Company International, warned.

While consensus is building that America indeed faces an energy
challenge, a shared sense of how to respond to the energy problem is
not.

Jeff Rubin, Chief Economist at CIBC World Markets predicts that,
“over the next four years (by 2012) some 10 million vehicles in America
will be coming off the road.”

Co-sponsored by the City of Sacramento and the University of
California-Davis, ASPO-USA’s 4th annual conference will highlight a
year of increased attention to the Peak Oil energy challenge and
highlight intelligent responses to meet the future. Conference
participants besides Simmons, Rubin and Mathews are Jim Buckee (former
CEO, Talisman Energy) and Neil King (Wall Street Journal).

ASPO-USA is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to
providing education to the public and decision-makers about peak oil
and natural gas
energy challenges.

ASPO-USA hosts an annual conference to explore intelligent responses
and mitigation steps to lessen the impact associated with the impending
peak of world oil and natural gas supplies. This year the ASPO-USA
World Oil Conference will be held Sept. 21-23 at the Hyatt Regency in
Sacramento. (09/12/08)
more…

Richard Heinberg writes: As oil crosses $100 on its way south, not even a hurricane in the
Gulf of Mexico and a statement from OPEC that the cartel will cut
production by over 500,000 barrels per day seems capable of halting the
bloodletting. In response, the Financial Post features an article
titled “Peak Oil peak,” quoting this writer out of context; compare this with my commentary, which was the source of the quote).

Wasn’t the price of oil supposed to rise endlessly? Wasn’t the world
supposed to end by now? What happened? What does it all mean? 

Patience, gentle reader. All will be explained.

First, why did the price of oil rise this summer to nearly $150? On
this there is little agreement among the mavens. A new report by hedge
fund managers Michael Masters and Adam White (released Sept. 10 by
Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., and Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.) chalks it all up to speculation.
Pension funds, college endowments, and other institutional investors
bought heavily into commodity index funds earlier this year, and that
sent the price of crude to the moon. Recently the same investors have
taken their money out of oil futures, and this accounts for petroleum
plunging back to earth. Move along, folks, nothing to see here.

But this directly contradicts the findings of an earlier study by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. That 100-page report concluded that the price run-up was all about supply and demand.

Confused yet?

Then there is the argument spinning through the rumor mill (sorry,
no www attribution available on this one) that says the fall in oil
prices since the end of July shows support by Wall Street for
Republicans as the nation moves toward the November elections. After
all, the reasoning goes, JP Morgan controls 40% of the puts and calls
in the oil market; add Goldman Sachs and a few other big brokerage
houses and there is the potential for manipulation of roughly half the
total oil futures market.

If gas prices are rising, the electorate will be more likely to want
to throw the (Republican) bums out and demand Changeô. Wall street
likes the favors the Bush administration has doled out over the past
few years and wants more of the same. Or so the story goes.

The more prosaic explanation for the price spike: oil demand was
rising, supply wasn’t, so the price went up. When the price got high
enough, it (along with the credit crisis) caused the US (and world)
economy to go into recession.  That has seriously undercut demand for
oil. Look at the drop in vehicle miles traveled, for example.

One thing we can be sure of: price matters; when the market speaks,
people listen. During the weeks when petroleum was breaking a record 
nearly every day, there was unprecedented discussion of the Peak Oil 
concept in financial journals, both print and online. What’s more 
significant, people started driving less. Hummers sat on car lots, unsold. Airline companies and auto manufacturers teetered on the verge of bankruptcy.

In short, people woke up to the profound vulnerability implied by
having based their economy, and by extension their very lives, on an
impossibility—the extraction of a non-renewable resource at
ever-increasing rates.

As the oil price fell, eyelids drooped.

But the price spike of early 2008 was merely a dress rehearsal. (09/12/08)
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BBC Science –
Scientists have discovered how metal-munching earthworms
can help plants to clean up contaminated
soils.

Researchers at Reading University found that
subtle changes occurred in metals as worms ingested and excreted soil.
These changes make it easier for plants to take up potentially toxic
metals from contaminated land. Earthworms could be the future “21st
Century eco-warriors”, scientists suggested at the British Association
Science Festival in Liverpool.

There are many sites
across the UK with contaminated soil due to previous industrial
activities, including mines, engineering works and lead
smelters.

Earthworms are ideal “soil detectives”:
their presence can act as a reliable indicator to the general health of
the soil. They have evolved a mechanism that allows them to survive in
soils contaminated with toxic metals including arsenic, lead, copper
and zinc.

“Earthworms produce metallothinein - a
protein that is specifically designed to wrap around particular metals
and keep them safe,” explained Mark Hodson from the University of
Reading. “In broad terms, if an earthworm can cope with one type of
metal, it can often cope with a suite of metals.” (09/12/08)
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