Jack Be Nimble, Jack Be Quick  

Chevron's much ballyhooed announcement of a largish find in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico called "Jack 2" seems to be getting almost undivided attention in the peak oil world this week. I'll start with Byron King at Whiskey and Gunpowder on "Chevron conquers the rock".

Among other things, the Los Angeles Times has reported that to drill the Jack #2 well and conduct the follow-up testing, Chevron paid $216,000 a day to lease Transocean Inc.'s Cajun Express drilling rig. Do the math: That is almost $80 million per year just to rent the rig. Geologists, geophysicists, petroleum engineers, drill bits, pipe, mud, wireline services, helicopter rides and all the rest come extra. And that is if you can obtain the necessary equipment and skilled personnel in an industry that is experiencing critical shortages of both. Looking forward, the rental rate for the Transocean rig will rise to $460,000 a day from 2007-2010 (not quite $170 million per year). In essence, the bigger the rig, the higher the day rate. So this deep-water drilling effort takes some serious money. Only deep pockets need apply.

...

Neither Chevron nor its partners have described the quality of the oil or gas, sulfur content, or the oil-to-gas ratio of the reservoirs. However, the implication is that the reservoirs are oil-dominant. Oil from other deep Tertiary formations in the Gulf has tended to be of heavy grade, with up to about 4% sulfur content. Not terrible, but not so great, either.

The Jack #2 well is remote from all existing subsea oil-gathering pipelines, so moving any oil to shore poses a major logistic problem. Chevron and Devon have held discussions with the U.S. Minerals Management Service concerning the possibility of using floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) vessels. If the facility, when productive, produces associated natural gas, then that too will present a handling problem. MMS frowns on "flaring" natural gas (just burning it off at the end of a long boom), so any production-associated gas could be used to power the production platform, or it might have to be reinjected into the rock formations.

Early-stage figures on field development in the vicinity of Jack #2 are yielding cost estimates of $80-120 million per well drilled, plus as much as $1.3-1.5 billion for subsea facilities. Again, only deep pockets need apply.

By way of comparison, Chevron's Tahiti project, located elsewhere in the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico, will begin producing in 2008 and carries a $3.5 billion price tag. Tahiti will produce an estimated 125,000 barrels per day, thus carrying an up-front price tag of $28,000 of capital expenditure per barrel of oil equivalent produced per day. In another Gulf of Mexico project, Chevron's Blind Faith project will cost an estimated $1 billion and yield an estimated 30,000 barrels per day, for a capital expenditure of $33,000 per barrel of oil equivalent produced per day.

This is quite a contrast to the historically adjusted cost of capital expenditure for shallow-water, shelf development in the Gulf of Mexico, which is about $1,000 per barrel of oil equivalent produced per day. In other words, deep-water development may be 30 times as expensive as shallow-water offshore development. That is what I call "oil patch sticker shock."

...

And it is critical that Chevron has conquered the rock just now, because mankind is in the process of crossing its own significant peak. The rock is fighting back.

As I mentioned above, and as frequent Whiskey & Gunpowder readers certainly know by now, mankind is entering upon the backside of Hubbert's curve. Global oil production is on the verge of entering the phase of irreversible decline.

For many years, cumulative worldwide oil extraction and depletion has exceeded new oil discovery by a wide margin. So the fact that Chevron has drilled, tested, and completed Jack #2 does not nullify Peak Oil. Jack #2, in fact, demonstrates a key element of the Peak Oil thesis. That is, that the "easy" oil is gone. Mankind has been drilling it up, lifting it out of the ground, and burning it into heat and vapor for the past 147 years. The oil that mankind will lift from the earth in the future, on the far side of Peak Oil, will be in faraway places, in harsh climates, under excruciatingly difficult conditions, deep down, heavy, sour, and overall expensive.

MonkeyGrinder comments that the surge of peak oil denial after the Chevron announcement simply proves that
some people know jack.

Following the personalities and trends of oil in the news, a few things have become clear.

For one, while there is a subculture of people for whom the concept of peak oil has meaning, ranging from permaculture folk to one Michael Lynch, it is still a background meme, something that exists below the active conciousness of western culture. Peak oil is an idea to argue over at cocktail parties or to spray paint on a train trestle.

That said, there is an industry response to the observed reality of peaking oil, (or more precisely, the peaking of oil reservoirs that can be produced at useful rates).

The response is identical to that directed at climate change and global warming. Deny, prevaricate, lie. Attack scientists.

Buy time.

Of course, in these latter days, oil industry interests are grudgingly acknowledging climate change, and even suggesting that governments of the world take action.

Seventeen years late.

Tom Whipple's latest column in the Falls Church News Press is called "The Peak Oil Crisis: Hyping Jack No. 2".

A few, mostly financial journalists, took the announcement as an opportunity to disparage the idea of imminent peak oil. These writers are aware that should world oil production go into decline within the next decade the world’s economy would be in a lot of trouble, not to mention the credibility of those who make a living by forecasting decades of growth ahead. Therefore, they eagerly accepted the dubious premise that this one test proves that plenty of oil can be found by drilling deeper so long as oil prices remain high enough to support the costs of ultra-deep oil production; advanced technology is used to the fullest; and environmental restrictions are lifted. Several pronounced peak oil a dead issue.

As the week wore on however, knowledgeable geologists and petroleum engineers began to question all the euphoria. First they noted that the Jack No. 2 test was not conducted on a single oil field that might contain 15 billion barrels oil. Rather, it was one test of a well in a zone that extends for hundreds of miles under the Gulf of Mexico. Whatever producible oil the zone contains will likely be found in numerous smaller deposits.

A number of wells have already been sunk in the Lower Tertiary. Some were dry holes and a few struck oil bearing rock, which may have the potential to produce oil profitably. So far, only a handful of these exploratory wells have struck deposits of light oil, which may be possible to produce. Others have struck thicker oils that may be impossible to extract from extreme depths at acceptable rates.

What seems to be turning up in the deeper waters of the Gulf are a series of smaller oil fields — some of which may someday be profitable to produce and some of which probably won’t. Extrapolating this situation to a major new discovery that will delay the onset of peak oil is clearly a reach.

To extract oil from 20,000 feet below the surface, where the pressures run to 20,000 pounds per square inch (psi) and the temperature of the oil is in the order of 200 degrees centigrade, is going to be a major technical challenge. Wells drilled to these depths will cost in the range of $100 million each. To drill and set in place the production equipment for The story broke the morning after Labor Day, when the Wall Street Journal ran a front-page piece reporting that Chevron along with two partners had announced the results of a major oil production test in the Gulf of Mexico. The partners Chevron, Statoil, and Devon Energy ran the test on a well known as Jack No. 2 that was drilled last year in the Lower Tertiary zone of the Gulf of Mexico. This zone is about 80 miles wide, 300 miles long and is located about 175 miles off shore. The well was unusual in that it went to a depth of 28,000 feet and the drilling began under 7,000 feet of water.

The Oil Drum has a comprehensive look at the discovery, summarised at The Energy Blog.

With the successful test drilling of Jack-2 in the ultra deepwater Gulf of Mexico, there has been a media blitz proclaiming the good news. The "peak oil" theory is under attack. Business Week's September 7, 2006 article Plenty of Oil--Just Drill Deeper The discovery of reserves in the Gulf of Mexico means supply isn't topping out, is one of the most blatant attacks which the OD refutes point by point with the following conclusion: Business Week's assertion that really, really ultra-deepwater production from offshore regions like the LTGOM will "tip the balance of supply and demand in the long term" globally is unwarranted speculation.

Three of of their points that are consistent with my views and which I consider very important are :

1) US petroleum production averaged 5.093/mbd in the first 7 months of 2006. Assuming a generous future decline rate of about 5% for the US as a whole, production will be 4.149/mbd in 2010, a net decline of 0.944/mbd. Future production from the LTGOM might be 0.500/mbd sometime after that. If we add production from fields like Chevron's Tahiti, which is expected "to have a maximum daily production of 125,000 barrels", then it is reasonable to expect that Gulf of Mexico production will be a wash—declines will be offset six to eight years from now in the best case.

2) The current "peak oil" bashing going on in the media is more an indication of underlying concerns about the long term supply situation, not a refutation of peak oil theories. Those concerned about global oil depletion have never said that the world is running out of oil in the near-term or denied that advanced technology can increase recoverable reserves.

3) Rather than indicating continued abundance in oil supply, such measures may be viewed more accurately as indicating the great lengths oil producers must go to in order to find more oil to meet the world's insatiable demand. The "low-hanging fruit" is gone and so is the era of the cheap oil. Ultimately, this is the meaning of the Jack-2 test well and hopes for production from the Lower Tertiary of the Gulf of Mexico.

Past Peak also comments on the discovery.

A reader emailed to complain that I haven't posted anything on Chevron's announced discovery of a significant deepwater oil/gas field in the Gulf of Mexico. So let's look at it.

Some skepticism is called for. In March, Mexico announced discovery of a Gulf of Mexico oil field with the potential to yield 10 billion barrels. By July, it turned out that the field was a modest natural gas find equivalent to less than 1% of the original 10 billion barrel figure. Oops.

According to Energy Bulletin, Mexico's original announcement may have been politically motivated to pressure Mexico's parliament, which was soon to vote on the budget for PEMEX (the Mexican national oil company) and possible expansion of its drilling rights.

Here in the US, coincidentally enough, Congress is about to take up a bill that would "end a 25-year bipartisan moratorium on coastal drilling". (Newsday) Coincidentally or not, the timing of Chevron's announcement is great news for the people who want offshore drilling opened up.

But let's assume the announcement turns out to be on the level. And let's assume it comes in at the midpoint of their announced potential — i.e., at 9 billion barrels. How much oil is that? Enough to supply the world for 3 to 4 months. Nothing to sneeze at, but not the answer to our problems. Best case, it will be years before the newly discovered field is producing at a substantial rate. The world's not going to stand still in the meantime. Demand will continue its exponential growth as long as there's enough supply available. Meanwhile, most of the world's important oil fields are already in decline.

Peak oil is not the end of oil. It's the beginning of the end of oil. It's the end of cheap oil. Deepwater oil isn't cheap. World oil discoveries peaked over 40 years ago, but oil will continue to be discovered. It just won't be discovered quickly enough to offset decline.

Or look at it another way. It's great that Chevron found oil five miles below the surface of the Gulf. But why are they even looking for oil five miles below the surface of the Gulf, considering the enormous additional cost involved? It's because all the easy oil was discovered long ago. This is exactly what peak oil looks like: increasingly expensive scrambling for the last remaining reservoirs of oil on the planet.

See also Energy Bulletin, Mobjectivist and Jeff Vail.

EXTRA: Oil Discovery Saves Civilization!
For 35 days.

In 2013.

Except for decline in other fields.

Maybe.

The huge news today is that Chevron, Norway's Statoil, and Devon Energy have jointly discovered our collective salvation in the "Jack 2" deepwater oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico. CNN, Fox, and ABC have all been carrying this as the top story all day.

MSNBC and CBS have relegated it below the much more significant story of the Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin's death--where it belongs.

Before we discuss conspiracy theories of why this news is coming out now, let's first look at the facts in the absence of cable-news hype. This larger field, of which Jack 2 is just a small part, may someday yield between 3 and 15 billion barrels of recoverable crude. It won't even start to produce oil until 2013, if everything goes according to schedule. Then, it (the entire tertiary GOM zone) may eventually produce 400,000 barrels per day. That's about how much Mexico's Cantarell field declined in production this year. And how much it will decline next year. And the year after. Ultimately, 3 billion barrels of oil will fuel the world--at current consumption levels--for about 35 days.

Did I forget to mention? Chevron first confirmed Jack 2's viability in 2004. They've known all along the expected size of the field's reserves, and this figure has long been part of Peak Oil calculations. In fact, the 6000 barrel per day flow rate of the test well was finalized and published in May of this year. There is absolutely no new information about this event to surface in the past three months. So why all the hype now?

One theory--and I should be the first to admit that I cannot prove motive or intent here--is the upcoming November election.

Jeff follows up this thoery with a more detailed post called "Brainstorming on Oil Price Manipulation" - I guess its a reasonable enough theory, though the mainstream explanation (falling oil and metals prices are based on expectations of a US economic slowdown or recession due to the rapidly slowly housing market) is sound enough (but not sound enough to make me ignore a good conspiracy theory).

While on holiday I went to a visit a friend who designs subsea gear for a living and got to watch a few disaster videos of what happens when things go wrong, which was quite entertaining except when I had money in the companies involved (as remediating failures is rather expensive). My wife asked him when he thinks the peak will be and he basically echoed the Chevron line - "we'll just keep going deeper - peak oil is their problem", indicating the kids playing in the backyard.

Al Gore has been in town promoting "An Inconvenient Truth" and has gained quite a lot of publicity for both the film and his stance against the Iraq war. The best interview I noiced was with Kerry O'Brien on the 7:30 Report - he also went on the Andrew Denton show "Enough Rope".

KERRY O'BRIEN: In his powerful documentary - in Australian cinemas this week - which describes global warming as the greatest crisis the world has ever faced, Al Gore introduces himself as the man who used to be the next president. The man who was Bill Clinton's vice-president for eight years is referring to the 2000 presidential election in which George W Bush took the prize, but only after the US Supreme Court ruled 3-2 in his favour. Al Gore may yet run again in 2008 or even the election after that, but he spent much of the past five years on a sophisticated lecture tour around the United States, presenting compelling arguments about what lies ahead on climate change. And Australia is one of his targets. That mission has culminated with the documentary and a book called, An Inconvenient Truth. He's here on a promotional visit, and I spoke with him in Sydney yesterday.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Al Gore, given the date, I'd like to reflect, first up, on September 11. Looking beyond the emotional wrench of such a shocking event, the loss of life, the grief of families and friends, what price has America paid for September 11?

AL GORE, FORMER US VICE-PRESIDENT: I believe that in the aftermath of 9/11, President Bush did a terrific job in rallying the country initially. I think he was wise to go into Afghanistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda gang. But after those decisions, I think what came later has been proven to be a series of mistakes. I think we should have continued to pursue Osama bin Laden, instead of withdrawing troops and diverting them to Iraq. I think the evidence has borne out the warnings of the time that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and, therefore, the decision to focus all the energy and anger - all of it justifiable - on the wrong target - at least wrong insofar as it was believed by some to be connected to 9/11 - that was a mistake. And, I think, from that mistake, other difficulties have flowed. And some of the goodwill that helped America in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 was dissipated.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Are you one of those who believes that America's involvement in Iraq has actually assisted the recruiting of terrorists?

AL GORE: Well, it seems to have.

KERRY O'BRIEN: You opposed that war...

AL GORE: I did.

KERRY O'BRIEN: ..in Iraq. You made a series of speeches about it before President Bush made the decision to go in. But whether you were right to argue that or not it can't be reversed now, so, should America extricate itself reasonably quickly or stay on indefinitely?

AL GORE: Well, if that's the choice then we should clearly, in my view, extricate ourselves as quickly as possible, but it's not that simple because even though I felt that it was a serious strategic mistake to go into Iraq - and, incidentally, I supported the first Gulf War - circumstances were entirely different. But even though this one was a mistake, we still - now that we're there - bear the moral responsibility for taking care not to make the situation even worse in the manner of our leaving. Insofar as we do, now, clearly seem to be right in the middle of a civil war it's questionable what good comes from staying, other than to avoid a catastrophic worsening of the potential for all-out civil war by an ill handled withdrawal. But withdraw we must, because it gets worse with each passing day. So taking care to withdraw and doing it while mindful of our obligations there, that's one thing; but getting out of there as quickly as possible, I think, is imperative.

...

AL GORE: That's the only one that could be deemed comparable but human civilisation could survive, could have survived a nuclear exchange between the superpowers. The consequences would, of course, have been so devastating. But what is unique about the climate crisis is that it could end all human civilisation. It will not - I'm convinced because I'm certain that we will act in time - but if we allow the melting of the polar caps, if we allow the radical reorganisation of the earth's environmental system, then those conditions that were favourable to the emergence of the human species and to the development of the human civilisation could well be lost and people could be driven from the areas that we now populate toward the pole-ward areas, and there are few of them.

AL GORE (EXCERPT FROM 'AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH'): We have the ability to do this. Each one of us is a cause of global warming, but each one of us can make choices to change that, with the things we buy, the electricity we use, the cars we drive. We can make choices to bring our individual carbon emissions to zero. The solutions are in our hands. We just have to have the determination to make them happen. Are we going to be left behind as the rest of the world moves forward? All of these nations have ratified Kyoto. There are only two advanced nations in the world that have not ratified Kyoto, and we are one of them; the other is Australia.

KERRY O'BRIEN: Our Prime Minister, John Howard, says that he's accepted that global warming is real and does represent a challenge, but says he's sceptical about a lot of the more gloomy predictions. He wouldn't be alone in that view, would he?

AL GORE: He's increasingly alone in that view among people who've really looked at the science. He also said, in that same interview, that he wants to know about the science. Well, that's why I would urge him to see the movie. The scientific community has endorsed the validity of the science in the movie. All of the living climate scientists in my country were asked to comment. Of those who responded to our Associated Press that you know, 100 per cent of them said, "He's got it right, the science is right". So look at the facts. The so-called " gloomy predictions" are predictions of what would happen if we did not act. It's not a question of mood. It's a question of reality. And, you know, there's no longer debate over whether the earth is round or flat, though there are some few people who still think it's flat, we generally ignore that view because the evidence has mounted to the point where we understand that it shouldn't be taken seriously. And that is the case with the consensus view of the National Academy of Sciences in Australia, in the United States and every advanced country, with the international group, an unprecedented body of 2,000 scientists in 100 countries who've worked for 20 years, each year coming with a new version of their consensus. It never changes on the central points that I communicate in this movie and in this book. But look at what's at risk here in Australia. You have an advanced civilisation ingeniously built in the driest inhabited continent on the planet. You have such low water availability on average already. That particular quality is most affected by global warming and, as predicted, you now have growing water shortages in Brisbane, here in Sydney, in Canberra, in the west, in Perth. The water availability is really one of the biggest dangers. You have greater fires, increasing every decade. The Great Barrier Reef is being killed by the warming of the temperatures, also by the acidification of the oceans purely from all the millions of tonnes of CO2 dumped there by all of us worldwide every single day. 70 million tonnes per day. Stronger storms, category 5 cyclones. You had a couple of them this March and April. All of these things are predicted to get worse still until we turn the earth's thermostat down, which means reducing the pollution that's causing it to go up.

KERRY O'BRIEN: What do you say to the argument made by some in Australia that, on the one hand, we have a lot to lose economically by trying to move away from coal-based energy, but on the other hand, we could cut our emissions substantially at some pain and still have no impact on the planet's problem because unlike America, our total contribution to global warming is tiny?

AL GORE: Well first of all I think that the old argument that you have to choose between the environment and the economy has been discredited over and over again. The polluters always say, "Oh no we can't put our pollution because it will hurt the economy," but, in fact the opposite is usually true. The American automobile companies have made that argument for years and the government policy makers listened to them and kept the standards ridiculously low and now the companies are near bankruptcy because the consumers want to buy the more efficient less polluting cars that are coming from Japan and Asia and from Europe, and so the old phrases, "Be careful what you pray for" should be amended to, "Be careful what you lobby for". The Stone Age did not end because of a shortage of stones and the fossil fuel age will not end because of a shortage of fossil fuels. It will end when we find something better. And we have found something better. And the leading-edge businesses are substituting renewables and conservation and efficiency. They're getting not only less pollution as a result, but more consumers, more jobs, better and cheaper products.

Crikey also noted that the Murdoch press (in the UK at least) has now given up the global warming denial game and admitted "we were wrong" (word from on high hasn't reached the Oz yet unfortunately).

"Too many of us have spent too long in denial over the threat from global warming. The evidence is now irresistible: Searing summers and dry winters in the UK; increasingly frequent tornados and hurricanes worldwide; the shrinking Arctic ice cap."

The voice of Al Gore? Nope. Try Rupert Murdoch. The excerpt is from the editorial in yesterday's London Sun. Last week we pointed to James Murdoch and his growing influence on the News Ltd stable when it came to climate change, but The Sun's backflip is something else entirely. The paper acts as Rupert Murdoch's megaphone -- and now The Sun is saying it was wrong:

Only the severity and immediacy of the threat is open to debate. This week The Sun will present the evidence and suggest how every one of us can help.

This is not just a backflip for Murdoch, it's a double pike with twist. It's safe to say that this paper is Rupert without the quote marks, and this week it's running a massive campaign entitled "Go Green with The Sun."

There's suggestions on how to go green, "20 wacky green facts", a tiny picture of Al Gore ("Al Gore ... he's a bore no more") under the headline "You HAVE to see this film" and a call for an "eco-basher tax."

But it looks like Murdoch's global warming memo got lost at the branch office and never made it to The Oz -- today's editorial, "An inconvenient cost" reads:

The problem, according to Dr Lomborg, Danish author of The Sceptical Environmentalist, is that even if you accept the warming thesis, today's best climate models show immediate action will do little good. The Kyoto Protocol is designed to cut industrial nations' CO2 emissions by 30 per cent of what they would have been in 2010, and by half in 2050. Yet even if every country adhered to the protocol's rules through this century, Dr Lomborg asserts, the change would have slowed global warming by just six years in 2100.

CleanTech blog has an interesting post on some comments by Shell CEO John Hofmeister.

Hofmeister made some interesting comments at a private reception and at a luncheon at the City Club:

* World oil supply at 85 million barrels per day was barely exceeding world oil demand at 85 million barrels per day. Although he didn't say so explicitly, Hofmeister certainly implied that the 85 million barrel per day production level was going to be very difficult to increase -- certainly from existing production fields, and maybe even if all untapped opportunities were pursued. Is 85 million barrels per day as good as it gets? In other words, if you believe that "peak oil" production is rapidly approaching, his comments did little to dispel your belief.
* Oil prices are thus high for legitimate reasons, but oil prices are higher than Shell would like. Clearly, Shell feels the heat from the public and politicians for the huge profits that they are generating these days. Hofmeister claims that Shell would like to see oil prices in the $30-40/barrel range -- enough to earn good profits, but not so high that customers complain so loudly (or -- heaven forbid! -- start consuming less fuel).
* World oil demand growth is being driven by China and India...and US SUVs. He indicated that the shift to SUVs caught the experts by surprise. This was the first time I'd ever heard an oil company executive almost "blame" US automakers and the public for being so gluttonous. This thought was further embellished later by noting that...
* It is "immoral" that the US consumes so much energy, far in excess of its world share of population. Hofmeister got his facts wrong (he said the US represented 8% of world population, when it's more like 4%), but he was right to indicate that the US accounts for 25% of world energy demand. He said that the US really ought to change its habits of energy consumption -- but didn't go so far as to suggest that US policy-makers had an obligation to do anything about it. Hofmeister noted that high oil prices are already having a salubrious effect on demand ("A lot of people are parking their RVs"). OK, fair enough, but that alone won't cut our energy consumption by 80+%. Does he really think we'll significantly reduce our energy consumption to more in line with our population without someone making us do it via some kind of regulation? Yeah, right.
* Climate change is in fact happening, and that carbon emissions from energy consumption is a significant contributor. Well, it was encouraging for Hofmeister to not weasel on that one. Hopefully, eventually, that message will be heard and understood by all of his employees, his competitors and his customers. It amazes me that there are still so many Luddites who aren't there yet.
* Energy independence for the US is not only not achievable, it's not even a good idea. Hofmeister's point is that trade is global, and that it's not necessarily bad that the US imports at least some of its energy requirement. He did go on to say, however, that importing 62% of oil requirements is very bad for the US. Thank goodness he didn't use this observation as an excuse for punching holes in ANWR, at least partly because he sees that...
* There are lots of opportunities for unconventional oil production. While he noted Shell's involvement in the Alberta tar sands and the Orinoco reserves in Venezuela, Hofmeister went on at length about Shell's involvement in new technology development to recover oil from the massive (1+ trillion barrel) shale resource in the US Rocky Mountains. Shell's technology involves using downhole electric resistance heaters to "bake" the oil out of the rock in-situ. Theirs is not the only in-situ shale recovery technology under development -- see, for instance, Independent Energy Partners' geothermic fuel cell approach, which I believe has more economic merit -- but their active and public involvement in shale, and expectation that it is a viable resource at ~$30/barrel, is important to take seriously.
* With 100 years of operation in the Middle East, Shell would like to operate in Iraq, but is not present there because they will not put their employees in an unsecure situation, in a country with no rule of law. While Hofmeister steered clear of political views, his observation that "respect among and between peoples is currently lacking" was both a reserved understatement and a pretty clear signal that Shell is not optimistic about the situation there for the foreseeable future.
* Shell is committed to alternative energy, as they see themselves as an energy provider to humans for the indefinite future, rather than an oil and gas company. He noted Shell's activity in ethanol (mainly focused on second-generation "cellulosic" ethanol rather than first-generation corn/sugar based ethanol, which he didn't seem enthusiastic about), wind and solar energy as areas for growth. In particular, he defended Shell's recent decision to exit its active photovoltaics (PV) business in favor of R&D in copper indium diselenide (CIS) thin-film PV because of limited future economic/cost improvement potential in the now mature crystalline-silicon technology. I agree wholeheartedly.

Well heeled doomer surivavlist types might find this marketing campaign for the "Ultimate Secure Home" in Colorado enticing.

The world's largest wind farm (for the moment) is in - you guessed it - Texas.

FPL Energy, LLC, a subsidiary of FPL Group had completed 662MW of the Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center in Texas making it the largest wind farm in the world as of the end of August.

When the last phase of the project is complete later this month, the Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center will have a total capacity of 735MW. The Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center is comprised of 291 GE 1.5MW wind turbines and 130 Siemens 2.3MW wind turbines spread over nearly 47,000 acres in Taylor and Nolan County, Texas. The first phase of the project consisting of 213MW was completed in late 2005; phase two consisting of 223.5MW was completed in the second quarter of 2006; and, phase three consisting of 299MW, of which 225MW are already operational, is expected to be completed by the end of September.

I was somewhat amused to note Channel 10 put on a 911 conspiracy movie called "In Plane Site" to mark the 5 year anniversary (I didn't watch it, but I think this was the first in the genre, based on the French book casting doubt on the hole in the Pentagon and whether or not it is possible it was made by a jumbo jet). The Australian naturally got its knickers in a knot about this, and managed to combine the topic with some peak oil denial as well - maybe they are trying to be the opposite of Oil Empire.

While I've yet to reach a conclusion on which is the correct 911 story (and probably never will) I do enjoy RI's never ending series on the subject (which started long ao with "The Coincidence Theorist's Guide to 9/11" - the most recent installments are " License to Spin" and "The Clown at Midnight").

PERHAPS one might have expected nothing better from the network that brought us Big Brother Uncut, but on Saturday night Channel10 broadcast the so-called documentary 9/11: In Plane Site, which is a calculated insult and defamation of the American people and the victims of September 11.

Ten's major shareholder, Mr Izzy Asper of CanWest, should sack the programming director of Channel 10 for broadcasting this barking-mad conspiracy program, which claims that all American political parties, officials, airlines and news networks were collaborators in a plot to murder their fellow citizens, over 3000 innocent people, including some of our countrymen, Australians.

Are there no standards we can expect from Channel 10?

Have they no sense of shame for trying to kill again the memory of those cruelly murdered five years ago by al-Qa'ida? Can you imagine the reaction if a US network produced a similar broadcast about the murders of Australians in Bali?

I am sure I share the contempt and derision of the Australian people and its parliament for this abominable act of bad taste by Channel 10 on the eve of the September 11 anniversary.

Questioning 9/11 seems to be a common theme - with Paul McGeogh writing in the Herald:

Just who is the enemy of the US becomes more complicated by the day, especially as Americans try to wrap their heads around the emergence of Tehran as a regional power in the Muslim Middle East, at a time when the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have reignited the Sunni-Shiite schism that is at the heart of Islam?

Bush and Rumsfeld now hector a non-specific entity they call the "Islamofascists". But who are they - the Shiite-controlled Government of Iraq, which, nominally at least, is a US ally but also increasingly an ally of Iran and is dependent for political support on murderous militias? Or are they the mad mullahs of Tehran, who also are Shiite? Or are they the West-friendly Sunni House of Saud, which controls Saudi Arabia's huge oil wealth and has for decades funded the propagation of the virulent Wahabi strain of Islam that underpinned the Taliban in Afghanistan and al-Qaeda? And what of Washington's other ally, Pakistan? Does the distribution of nuclear know-how and parts to rogue states or the provision of shelter to al-Qaeda fugitives make it Islamofascist?

Billmon also had a bit to say about 9/11 and the decline of an empire.

What I've learned (from 9/11, the corporate scandals, the fiasco in Iraq, Katrina, the Cheney Administration's insane economic and environmental policies and the relentless dumbing down of the corporate media -- plus the repeated electoral triumphs of the Rovian brand of "reality management") is that the United States is moving down the curve of imperial decay at an amazingly rapid clip. If anything, the speed of our descent appears to be accelerating.

The physical symptoms -- a lost war, a derelict city, a Potemkin memorial hastily erected in a vacant lot -- aren't nearly as alarming as the moral and intellectual paralysis that seems to have taken hold of the system. The old feedback mechanisms are broken or in deep disrepair, leaving America with an opposition party that doesn't know how (or what) to oppose, a military run by uniformed yes men, intelligence czars who couldn't find their way through a garden gate with a GPS locator, TV networks that don't even pretend to cover the news unless there's a missing white woman or a suspected child rapist involved, and talk radio hosts who think nuking Mecca is the solution to all our problems in the Middle East. We've got think tanks that can't think, security agencies that can't secure and accounting firms that can't count (except when their clients ask them to make 2+2=5). Our churches are either annexes to shopping malls, halfway homes for pederasts, or GOP precinct headquarters in disguise. Our economy is based on asset bubbles, defense contracts and an open-ended line of credit from the People's Bank of China, and we still can't push the poverty rate down or the median wage up.

I could happily go on, but I imagine you get my point. It's hard to think of a major American institution, tradition or cultural value that has not, at some point over the past five years, been shown to be a.) totally out of touch, b.) criminally negligent, c.) hopelessly corrupt, d.) insanely hypocritical or e.) all of the above.

It's getting hard to see how these trends can be reversed. Maybe they can't (which would explain why all empires, at least so far, have eventually declined and fallen.) In the past I've used the economic concept of market failure to describe the process whereby dissident voices and uncomfortable views are gradually weeded out of the "marketplace of ideas," allowing errors to go uncorrected, lies to go unchallenged (or ignored) and ideological orthodoxy to calcify into self-delusion:

Watching the punditocracy spin its ideological wheels these days, it's hard not to be reminded of the later years of the Soviet Union -- a nation dedicated to proposition that the marketplace of ideas should never be allowed to clear. As the system declined into senility it, too, became increasingly detached from reality. Soviet pundits and academic ideologues churned out reams of bad ideas and stupid policies. Soviet Krauthammers advised the Politburo to invade Afghanistan. ("It will be a cakewalk.") Soviet [James] Glassmans told it to crank up the central planning. ("Traditional capitalist measures of valuation mean nothing.")

When the public discourse on Edward R. Murrow's old network consists of Katie Couric introducing Rush Limbaugh's buffoonish views, you know the intellectual and ideological rot is well advanced -- maybe not quite as far as the Soviet Union in the '80s, but getting there. One of my favorite books about the Soviet collapse was titled "The Age of Delirium" which I think perfectly captured the progressive insanity of a system that could no longer even understand, much less believe, its own lies. I think of that book practically every time George W. Bush or Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld open their mouths in public.

Some time ago, back when I still had comments on this blog, a jihadi sympathizer left a note on one of my posts bragging about his movement's success in taking down the Soviets -- just as the armies of the Prophet succeeded in taking down the Persian Empire. The new Rome (that is, us) would be next, he boasted.

At the time I thought it was daft -- exactly the kind of thing a crazed religious fanatic would say. But these days I'm not so sure. The jihadis in Afghanistan didn't really take down the Soviet empire -- they just delivered a very hard punch to a giant that was already falling. Looking at the state of America five years after 9/11, it no longer seems completely implausible that the same thing might one day be said of us.

This is not, I know, the most inspiring way to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the event that essentially kicked off the new American century -- which at this point seems unlikely to last even a decade. If you want the standard patriotic rhetoric (hallowed ground, blessings of democracy, forward strategy for freedom, etc.) you'll have no trouble finding it elsewhere. There's no shortage of the stuff today (whitehouse.gov is a good place to start). But I personally don't think the record of the past half decade (or the current condition of Ground Zero) really justifies that kind of self-serving, self-justifying pablum.

Do you?