Firefighters have extinguished a fire that raged for more than 15 hours after two oil pipelines exploded in the port of Dalian in northeast China, the Xinhua news agency said on Saturday.
The end of fossil fuel use, especially oil and coal, is a moment that has arrived. Lately world news seems to be stories of one fossil fuel disaster after another. The Gulf of Mexico cap on the well is probably not going to hold, as it was found to be leaking last weekend. There was a coal mine disaster and cave in again in China this weekend. An oil pipeline at a busy Chinese port exploded late last week, causing a massive fire that burned for 15 hours before being put out Saturday. Officials said no one was killed. Story at MSNBC.
The following peak oil news is from Solveclimate and the Guardian. I am on vacation this week so enjoy some news you might have missed.
Lloyd’s of London, one of [London's] most respected institutions has warned of “catastrophic consequences” for businesses that fail to prepare for a world of increasing oil scarcity and a lower carbon economy.
The Lloyd’s insurance market and the highly regarded Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House, says Britain needs to be ready for “peak oil” and disrupted energy supplies at a time of soaring fuel demand in China and India, constraints on production caused by the BP oil spill and political moves to cut CO2 to halt global warming.
“Companies which are able to take advantage of this new energy reality will increase both their resilience and competitiveness. Failure to do so could lead to expensive and potentially catastrophic consequences,” says the Lloyd’s and Chatham House report Sustainable energy security: strategic risks and opportunities for business.
The insurance market has a major interest in preparedness to counter climate change because of the fear of rising insurance claims related to property damage and business disruption.The review is groundbreaking because it comes from the heart of the City and contains the kind of dire warnings that are more associated with environmental groups or others accused by critics of resorting to hype.
It takes a pot shot at the International Energy Agency which has been under fire for apparently under-estimating the threats, noting: “IEA expectations [on crude output] over the last decade have generally gone unmet.”
The report the world is heading for a global oil supply crunch and high prices owing to insufficient investment in oil production plus a rebound in global demand following recession. It repeats warning from Professor Paul Stevens, a former economist from Dundee University, at an earlier Chatham House conference that lack of oil by 2013 could force the price of crude above $200 (£130) a barrel.
It also quotes from a US department of energy report highlighting the economic chaos that would result from declining oil production as global demand continued to rise, recommending a crash programme to overhaul the transport system. “Even before we reach peak oil,” says the Lloyd’s report, “we could witness an oil supply crunch because of increased Asian demand. Major new investment in energy takes 10-15 years from the initial investment to first production, and to date we have not seen the amount of new projects that would supply the projected increase in demand.”
And while the world is gradually moving to new kinds of clean energy technologies the insurance market warns that there could be shortages of earth metals and other raw materials needed to help them thrive.
Lloyd’s also calls on manufacturers, retailers and the wider business community to reassess global supply chains and their just-in time models because the “current system is increasingly vulnerable to disruption.”
The report says government needs to do much more to bring additional price stability and transparency if the global carbon market is to become a reality.
Richard Ward, chief executive of Lloyd’s, said the failure of the Copenhagen climate change talks last December has helped lull many business leaders into a false sense of security about the challenges ahead. “We are in a period akin to a phony war. We keep hearing of difficulties to come, but with oil, gas and coal still broadly accessible – and largely capable of being distributed where they are needed – the bad times have not yet hit … all businesses … will be affected by energy supplies which are less reliable and more expensive.”
Source: Solveclimate and Terry Macalister, Guardian
See Also
DOE Still Disavows Peak Oil Forecast, Despite New Studies
Massive Global Car Growth To Crash Into Peak Oil
I don’t understand what Peak oil has to do with the disasters that have occured. The greed and search for more oil means more risky exploration?!
@Quiet-Environmentalist: We are running out of easy to find oil, that’s why they are drilling in 1-2 miles deep water. Running out of easy to find oil is one sign of Peak Oil. They can’t find oil on land anymore, unless it’s in rock and sand like in Alberta. If they had their way they would drain the oceans to make it easier to get at. Instead they do these risky deep sea operations and that leads to inevitable spills and disasters. There are spills all over the place in the oceans that don’t get reported. There are over 30,000 abandoned wells that may be leaking, no one knows, because they are all under water.