The Oil Drum - Discussions About Energy and Our Future

The Oil Drum | Discussions about Energy and Our Future
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The Oil Drum writers: Where are they now?

Posted by Euan Mearns on October 15, 2013 - 4:56am
Topic: Site news
Tags: big gav, brian maschoff, chris vernon, dave summers, euan mearns, gail tverberg, jeff vail, jerome a paris, lus
de sousa, nate hagens, phil hart, robert rapier, rune likvern [list all tags]
Nate Hagens is at The Monkey Trap
JoulesBurn (Brian Maschhoff) is at Picojoule
Euan Mearns is at Energy Matters
Heading Out (Dave Summers) is at Bit Tooth Energy
Rune Likvern is at Fractional Flow
Gail the Actuary (Gail Tverberg) is at Our Finite World
Chris Vernon is at Chris Vernon
Big Gav is at Peak Energy Australia
Robert Rapier is at Energy Trends Insider
jeffvail is at Jeff Vail
Jrme Paris is at European Tribune
phil hart is at Phil Hart
Lus de Sousa is at At The Edge Of Time
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The Last Post

Posted by Euan Mearns on September 22, 2013 - 9:34am
Topic: Site news
Tags: heading out, professor goose, the oil drum [list all tags]
The Oil Drum (TOD) was an internet energy phenomenon that ran for over eight years from April 2005 to September 2013. The site was
founded by Prof. Goose (also known as Professor Kyle Saunders of Colorado State University) and Heading Out (also known as
Professor Dave Summers formerly of the Missouri University of Science and Technology).
The site took off with the advent of Hurricane Rita in September 2005 and resulted in the first 200+ comment event, indicating that
there was demand for a site where concerned citizens could gather round a camp fire to discuss events impacting their energy supplies
and ultimately, their well being. In eight years, >960,000 comments have been posted. Two other energy linked disasters, the
Deepwater Horizon blowout and the Fukushima Daiichi reactor melt downs would see readership soar to >75,000 unique visits per day.
These pages have hosted over 7,500 articles covering every aspect of the global energy system. It was not unusual for a post to attract
over 600 comments, many of which were well informed and contained charts and links to other internet sources. The site would become
known for a uniquely high level of discourse where armchair analysts of all stripes added their knowledge to threads in a courteous, and
ultimately pro-social way that energy experts at hedge funds, corporations or universities might not have the freedom to do. It is this
emergent property of smart people sharing knowledge on a critical topic to humanity's future that will be missed.
The site was built on twin backbones that would often pull the readership in opposite directions. Drumbeats, edited by Leanan (who
remains anonymous to this day) provided daily energy news digest and a forum for debate. And articles, written by a legion of volunteer
writers, that strove to provide a more quantitative analysis of global energy supplies and the political, social and economic events that
lay behind them. All the content would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of Super G, our site engineer, who maintained
and updated software and hardware as the site grew and evolved for over eight years on a voluntary basis.
In the course of 2013, a decision was made to archive The Oil Drum and the main purpose of this Last Post is to provide some direction
to new and future readers of the vast content it contains. The main contributors are listed below along with links to where their writings
can be now be found. If you are looking for content there are two main options. The first is to look for author specific content where
clicking on the live hyper linked name of the contributor will take you to a page giving access to all the content produced by that author.
The second option is to use the Advanced Search facility at the top left of this page. Simply enter a few key words and this will return a
page of the most relevant articles.
Editorial board
Arthur Berman (aeberman) Arthur E. Berman is a petroleum geologist with 35 years of oil and gas industry experience. He worked 20
years for Amoco (now BP) and 15 years as consulting geologist. He gives keynote addresses for energy conferences, boards of directors
and professional societies. He has been interviewed about oil and gas topics on CBS, CNBC, CNN, Platts Energy Week, BNN,
Bloomberg, Platts, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone and The New York Times.
He was a managing editor and frequent contributor of theoildrum.com, and an associate editor of the AAPG Bulletin. He is a Director of
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the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, and has served on the boards of directors of The Houston Geological Society and The Society
of Independent Professional Earth Scientists. He has published more than 100 articles on petroleum geology. He has done expert
witness and research work on several oil and gas trial and utility commission hearings.
He has an M.S. (Geology) from the Colorado School of Mines and a B.A. (History) from Amherst College.
Nate Hagens is a well-known speaker on the big picture related to the global macroeconomy. Nate's
presentations address opportunities and constraints we face in the transition away from growth based
economies as fossil fuels become more costly. On the supply side, Nate focuses on biophysical economics (net
energy) and the interrelationship between money and natural resources. On the demand side, Nate addresses
the behavioral underpinnings to conspicuous consumption and offers suggestions on how individuals and
society might better adapt to the end of growth. He will be writing at themonkeytrap.us.
Nate has appeared on PBS, BBC, ABC, NPR, and has lectured around the world. He holds a Masters Degree in
Finance from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont.
Previously Nate was President of Sanctuary Asset Management and a Vice President at the investment firms
Salomon Brothers and Lehman Brothers. Nate is the former President of the Institute for the Study of Energy
and Our Future (non-profit publisher of The Oil Drum), is current US Director of the Institute for Integrated
Economic Research, and serves on the Board of the Post Carbon Institute. Nate also served as the lead editor of the Oil Drum for several
years.
Rembrandt Koppelaar has since 2010 been a Research Associate at the Swiss Institute for Integrated
Economic Research (IIER), where he works on modelling of costs of resource and energy flows. Since June
2012 he combines this with a PhD research position at Imperial College London, to contribute to a spatial
simulation of the resource flows of an economy at a micro-level using agent-based approaches. He joined the
Oil Drum in 2006 first as a contributor and later as an editor, triggering by his concern in oil depletion. An
interest that also led him to establish and become President of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas
Netherlands from 2006 to 2010. He is author of the book De Permanente Oliecrisis discussing the end of
cheap oil and its consequences (Dutch language, Nieuw Amsterdam publishers, 2008). Rembrandt holds a
BSc and MSc in economics from Wageningen University, the Netherlands.
Brian Maschhoff (JoulesBurn) earned a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of New Mexico and a Ph.D in
Chemistry from the University of Arizona. He has worked at several academic institutions and government
laboratories, and currently engages in a wide variety of scientific and technical pursuits including web-based
education, data visualization, and research on salmon recovery. His research on the oil fields of Saudi Arabia
is also posted at Satellite o'er the Desert. He also blogs at Picojoule, and he might eventually be found
@joulesburn on Twitter.
Euan Mearns has B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in geology from The University of Aberdeen. Following an
academic career in Norway and a business career in Scotland I took time off work in 2005 to help care for two
sons and two dogs and to allow my wife's career to blossom. In 2006, wondering why the oil price and the
value of my oil stocks kept going up I stumbled upon the The Oil Drum that provided unique insight, at that
time, into The Earth energy system. Feeling the need to put something back I submitted a couple of articles
and have since written roughly 100 posts and hosted many guest posts from worthy authors.
In 2009 I was appointed as Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Aberdeen and teach occasional
courses there. For the last 7 years, writing and editing articles for The Oil Drum has consumed a fair portion of
my time, but I have in return learned a huge amount. I also continue to work as a consultant for the oil
industry. The focus of my interest is the importance of energy to society, society's response to the infrastructure and secondary impacts
of energy provision and the political response. I plan to continue writing about Energy, Environment and Policy at Energy Matters.
New post, 8th October: UK North Sea Oil Production Decline
New post 18th November: Marcellus shale gas Bradford Co Pennsylvania: production history and declines
New post, 28th November: What is the real cost of shale gas?
New post, 9th December: OPEC oil production update July 2013
New post, 18th December: OECD oil production update July 2013
New post, 3rd January: Global Oil Supply Update July 2013
New post, 6th January: The Primary Energy Tale of Two Continents
Paul Sears was born in the UK, and did a Ph.D. in chemistry at Cambridge. Since first coming to Canada on a post-doctoral fellowship
at the University of Western Ontario in 1973, he has worked at the University of Toronto and in the Canadian Federal Government in
Ottawa. Most of his work since the mid 1970s has been on the supply and use of energy in one form or another. His interest in the
limitations to oil supply dates back to about 1962, when he was at school watching a promotional film from an oil company. The subject
of the film was oil exploration, and this caused him to wonder about the dependence of our society on oil and the limits to supply. Other
interests are canoeing, kayaking, skiing, hiking, camping, keeping planted aquaria and learning Mandarin Chinese. Sadly, Paul Sears
passed away on September 13, 2012. You can read an obituary here.
Dave Summers who writes under the pen name, "Heading Out", comes from a family that for at least nine
generations has been coal miners, and he started his working life, as an Indentured Apprentice, in 1961
shoveling coal on one of the last hand-won coal faces in the UK at Seghill, after a few weeks supplying that face
with the help of a pit pony. With bachelors and doctoral degrees from Leeds University in the UK he moved to
Rolla, Missouri and Missouri University of Science and Technology (then UMR) in 1968. He was named
Curators Professor of Mining Engineering in 1980 and for many years directed the Rock Mechanics and
Explosives Research Center at MS&T. His main work has been in the developing use of high-pressure water
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for cutting, cleaning and demilitarization. As one of the quiet revolutions that has crept into industry during
his career, his research group worked in nuclear cleanup, rocket motors, and surgical applications as well as developing tools to cut, drill
and mine more mundane rock, coal and metals. The team carved the half-scale Stonehenge out of Georgia granite, using only water, and
later cut Edwina Sandys Millennium Arch from Missouri granite, both of which are on the MS&T campus. They also used the technique
in a demonstration excavation that resulted in creating the OmniMax theater under the Gateway Arch in St Louis.
He retired from the University, and was named Emeritus in 2010, and lives quietly with his wife Barbara, with occasional commutes to
visit their children, located on the two coasts very far from rural America.
In 2004 he began to write a blog, and in 2005 teamed with Kyle Saunders to jointly found The Oil Drum, a site for discussions on
energy and our future. He now writes on energy, the applications of waterjets, a little on the use of the 3D modeling program Poser, and
occasionally on climate matters. His blog, where the Tech Talks continue, can be found at Bit Tooth Energy. He again thanks all those
who have contributed to The Oil Drum over the years and wishes them joy and prosperity in their futures!
Dr. David Archibold Summers has written numerous articles, a textbook, Waterjetting Technology, and jointly holds several patents,
the last two of which have been licensed and deal a) with the use of waterjets to remove skin cancer and b) for high speed drilling of
small holes through the earth.
Gail Tverberg (Gail the Actuary) became interested in resource limits and how these affect insurance
companies and the economy more generally in 2005. She began writing about this issue while working as a
property-casualty actuarial consultant at Towers Watson. In 2007, she took early retirement to work
specifically on the issue of oil limits.
Between 2007 and its suspension in 2013, Gail worked as a contributor and editor at TheOilDrum.com. She
also started her own blog, OurFiniteWorld.com, where she continues to write on a regular basis. Her writings
include Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis, published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy
in January 2012. She has spoken at at many conferences on subjects related to oil limits, including both
academic and actuarial conferences. She now plans to write a book, tentatively called "Discontinuity Ahead: How Oil Limits Affect the
Economy."
Gail worked for CNA Insurance prior to joining Tillinghast (which eventually became part of Towers Watson) in 1981. She has a BA in
Mathematics from St. Olaf College and an MS in Mathematics from the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is a fellow of the Casualty
Actuarial Society and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries.
Her Twitter feed is @gailtheactuary.
Chris Vernon originally graduated with a masters degree in computational physics before working for ten
years in the field of mobile telecoms specialising in radio network architecture and off-grid power systems in
emerging markets. He subsequently returned to university to take an MSc in Earth system science and a PhD
in glaciology focusing on the mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet. Chris is a trustee at the Centre for
Sustainable Energy, works for the UK Met Office and maintains a personal web page.
Selected contributors
Big Gav studied Engineering at the University of Western Australia in Perth. Since then he has travelled widely and worked in the oil
and gas, power generation, defence, technology and banking industries. He has been blogging about peak oil for almost 3 years at Peak
Energy (Australia) and is probably the most prolific example of a techno-optimist in the peak oil world. He may be alone in thinking that
peak oil represents a great opportunity to switch to a clean energy based world economy, rather than the trigger for the end of industrial
civilisation.
Jason Bradford is currently a Farm Manager in Corvallis, OR and a Managing Partner for a sustainable
farmland fund, Farmland LP. Most of his writing for The Oil Drum occurred while he lived in Willits, CA,
where he was instrumental in the founding of Willits Economic Localization, hosted a radio program called
"The Reality Report," and was a board member of the local Renewable Energy Development Institute. He also
founded and ran a small farm at a local elementary school with a lot of community support and the backing of
The Post Carbon Institute, where he is currently a board member. His brief but enjoyable academic career
began at Washington University in St. Louis and the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG), where he taught
courses in Ecology and from which he received a doctorate in Evolution and Population Biology in 2000. After
graduation he was hired by the Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development at MBG, and between
2001 and 2004 secured grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society for multi-disciplinary
research on issues related to species extinction and ecosystem function. His "aha moment" came during this research period where the
connections between environmental decline, resource consumption, economic growth, belief systems and institutional inertia led to a
dramatic change in the course of his life's work.
He continues to blog at Farmland LP.
David Murphy is an Assistant Professor in the Geography Department and an Associate of the Institute for the Study of the
Environment, Sustainability, and Energy, both at Northern Illinois University. He serves also as an Environmental Policy Analyst for the
Environmental Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory. Dr. Murphys research focuses on the intersection of energy,
economics, and the environment. Recently, his work has focused on estimating how the extraction of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale
has impacted the provision of ecosystem services from the local environment. In addition, he researches how the energy return on
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investment from oil is related to oil price and economic growth. Dr. Murphy's work for Argonne National Laboratory addresses the
environmental impacts associated with energy development.
He tweets: @djmurphy04
Robert Rapier works in the energy industry and writes and speaks about issues involving energy and the
environment. He is Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President at Merica International, a forestry
and renewable energy company involved in a variety of projects around the world. Robert has 20 years of
international engineering experience in the chemicals, oil and gas, and renewable energy industries, and holds
several patents related to his work. He has worked in the areas of oil refining, natural gas production,
synthetic fuels, ethanol production, butanol production, and various biomass to energy projects. Robert is the
author of Power Plays: Energy Options in the Age of Peak Oil. He is also the author of the R-Squared Energy
Column at Energy Trends Insider. His articles on energy and sustainability have appeared in numerous media outlets, including the
Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, and Forbes.
Jeff Vail (jeffvail) is an energy intelligence analyst and former US Air Force intelligence officer. He has a B.S. in engineering and history
from the US Air Force Academy and a Juris Doctor from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. His interests are in global
energy geopolitics and the the "rhizome" theory of social and economic organization. He is the author of the political anthropology book
A Theory of Power and maintains a blog at http://www.jeffvail.net.
Jrme Paris is an investment banker in Paris, specialised in structured finance for energy projects, in particular in the wind power
sector. After graduating from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, he wrote his Ph.D. in economics in 1995 on the independence of Ukraine,
with a strong focus on the gas relationship between Ukraine and Russia, and he worked on financings for the Russian oil & gas industry
for several years after that. He is the editor of the European Tribune, a community website on European politics and energy issues. He
has written extensively about energy issues, usually from an economic or geopolitical angle for the European Tribune and for DailyKos
where he led a collective effort to draft an energy policy for the USA, Energize America.
Rune Likvern After Rune's first time seeing The Oil Drum (TOD and Institute for the Study of Energy and
Our Future; ISEOF), in 2005 he created an account as nrgyman2000 and later got an invitation to become
part of the staff of volunteer writers at what was then TOD Europe. In 2008 he started to post under his real
name.
He is a Norwegian presently living in Norway and holding a masters degree from what is now the Norwegian
University of Science and Technology. For more than two decades he was employed in various positions by
major international oil companies, primarily Statoil, working with operations, field/area developments (in the
Norwegian sector of the North Sea) and implementation (primarily logistics) of Troll Gas Sales Agreement
(TGSA) which is about natural gas deliveries to European customers. This was followed by a period as an independent energy (oil/gas
fields assessments, cash flow analysis, portfolio analysis etc.) consultant and as VP for an energy hedge fund in New York. In recent
years he had a sabbatical to do more in depth research, reading and participating in discussions about energy, biology (what makes
human {brains} what they are and why), and not least financial and economic subjects in several global forums as well as some advisory
work.
Presently he is looking for gainful employment/engagements.
He also posts on his blog Fractional Flow
(primarily in Norwegian, but some future posts are planned for in English).
Phil Hart studied Materials Engineering at Monash University in Melbourne before spending five years with
Shell UK Exploration and Production, based in Aberdeen, Scotland. He worked on two new North Sea oil and
gas field development projects followed by a stint with the Brent field maintenance team as a corrosion
engineer. In late 2006, Phil returned to Melbourne and was for a while an active member of the Australian
Association for the Study of Peak Oil. He provided many briefings to government, business and community
audiences and is still available for presentations around Melbourne and Victoria. Phil now works primarily in
the water industry but consults as required for The Institute for Sensible Transport as well. He is also a keen
astronomer and night sky photographer: www.philhart.com.
Lus Alexandre Duque Moreira de Sousa (Lus de Sousa) is a researcher at the Public Research Institute
Henri Tudor in Luxembourg and a Ph.D. student in Informatics Engineering at the Technical University of
Lisbon. Lus created the first Portuguese language website dedicated to Peak Oil in 2005
(PicoDoPetroleo.net); in 2006 he would be one of the founders of ASPO-Portugal and later that year
integrated the team that started the European branch of The Oil Drum. Since then he has continuously written about Energy and its
interplay with Politics and Economics, both in English and Portuguese. Lus is a regular presence at the collective blog European Tribune
and writes on the broader issues of life on his personal blog AtTheEdgeOfTime.
The House That Randy Built

Posted by Euan Mearns on September 21, 2013 - 5:34pm
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: passive house, randy udall, sustainable living [list all tags]
One of the nice aspects of the 7+ years I have been involved with The Oil Drum has been attending conferences and meeting with some
of my cyber friends, who by and large figure among the nicest bunch of folks I ever met. In 2007 I attended the ASPO meeting in
Houston and it was then that I met Randy Udall for the first time. Well you know what some Americans are like - you meet, you chat a
while, discover you get along, down a couple of beers and before you know it you are invited to go visit. And so it was with Randy Udall....
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The house that Randy built, sunk low in the Colorado terrain, provides shelter from winter storms and from exposure to summer sun.
Photovoltaics, solar hot water (on the roof) and a single wood burner (chimney) provides all the energy needs.
There's more (774 words) | Comments (109) | Share
Twenty (Important) Concepts I Wasn't Taught in Business School Part I

Posted by nate hagens on September 20, 2013 - 12:27am
Topic: Economics/Finance
Twenty-one years ago I received an MBA with Honors from the University of Chicago. The
world became my oyster. Or so it seemed. For many years I achieved status in the metrics
popular in our day ~ large paychecks, nice cars, travel to exotic places, girlfriend(s), novelty,
and perhaps most importantly, respect for being a 'successful' member of society. But it turns
out my financial career, shortlived as it was, occurred at the tail end of an era ~ where financial
markers would increasingly decouple from the reality they were created to represent. My skill
of being able to create more digits out of some digits, (or at least being able to sell that
likelihood), allowed me to succeed in a "turbo" financial system that would moonshot over the
next 20 years. For a short time I was in the 1% (and still am relative to 'all humans who have
ever lived'). Being in the 1% afforded me an opportunity to dig a little deeper in what was really
going on (because I quit, and had time to read and think about things for 10 years). It turns out
the logic underpinning the financial system, and therefore my career, was based on some core
flawed assumptions that had 'worked' in the short run but have since become outdated, putting societies at significant risks.
Around 30% of matriculating undergraduate college students today choose a business major, yet 'doing business' without knowledge of
biology, ecology, and physics entirely circumvents first principles of how our world really works ~ my too long but also too short
summary of the important things I wasn't taught in business school is below.
So, What Are You Doing?

Posted by nate hagens on September 19, 2013 - 12:17am
Topic: Site news
It's September and we still have 7 more 'final' posts in the queue (myself, Joules, Jerome, Jason, Art, Dave Murphy, and Euan...) and will
run them every 2 days until finished. Leanan will post a final Drumbeat later this week where people can leave website links contact
details, etc.
For 8 years we read about what people think about energy related themes. I thought it would be a good idea to use this thread to
highlight what people are actually doing in their lives given the knowledge they've gleaned from studying this topic, which really is more
of a study of the future of society.
What do TOD members plan to do in the future? Herding goats, fixing potholes, creating web sites, switching careers, etc? I'll go first.
Feel free to use my template or just inform others what you're doing. This might be interesting thread to check back on in a few/many
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years.....(Please no posting of energy charts etc. and let's not respond to others in this thread, just a long list of what people are doing w/
their time).
Ere we scatter to the ether, please share, anonymously or otherwise : what are people doing?
The Exponential Legacy of Al Bartlett

Posted by JoulesBurn on September 12, 2013 - 2:32pm
Topic: Miscellaneous
Tags: albert bartlett, limits to growth [list all tags]
Dr. Albert Allen Bartlett, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Colorado, died September 7, 2013 at the age of 90. It is
coincidental that, in the year that he "officially" retired from teaching (1988), I first heard his famous lecture Arithmetic, Population, and
Energy (although I don't recall if that was the title at the time). I was in my last year in graduate school, and his talk was one of the
keynote presentations (or perhaps during dinner) for a scientific conference. It was seemingly out of place given that the subject of the
meeting was surface chemistry and physics, but it most certainly became stuck somewhere in my mind for reasons other than its
novelty.
Most scientists are transfixed on interesting scientific details, some with relevance to technological problems, and perhaps buzz-worthy
enough to attract funding. There has never been much money in solving problems with no real technological solution. I became
reacquainted with this talk in 2006, probably via a link on The Oil Drum. TOD was by its nature dealing with limits to growth (of oil, if
nothing else), and over the last few years, we have discussed the various ways in which we could perhaps keep the oil flowing or replace
it with something else. Perhaps the implications of exponential growth was kept in the back room somewhere, like an embarrassing
relative, while the latest "game changing" solution was bandied about. But we need to continually remind ourselves that, while
important, finding the next energy source or improving efficiencies the keep the economy growing are not long-term solutions for a
finite planet.
Below are some more reflections on Prof. Bartlett's legacy, from ASPO-USA (where he had long been on the advisory board) and from
the University of Colorado.
Of Milk Cows and Saudi Arabia

Posted by JoulesBurn on September 10, 2013 - 9:59am
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: aramco, ghawar, saudi arabia [list all tags]
Under the desert in eastern Saudi Arabia lies Ghawar, the largest oil field in the world.
It has been famously productive, with a per-well flow rate of thousands of barrels per
day, owing to a combination of efficient water injection, good rock permeability, and
other factors. At its best, it set the standard for easy oil. The first wells were drilled
with rather rudimentary equipment hauled across the desert sands, and the oil would
flow out at ten thousand barrels per day. It was, in a sense, a giant udder. And the
world milked it hard for awhile.
However, this article isn't just about a metaphor; it is also about cows, the Holsteins
of Haradh. But in the end, I will circle back to the present and future of Saudi oil
production.
IEA Sankey Diagrams

Posted by JoulesBurn on September 7, 2013 - 11:05pm
Topic: Supply/Production
Tags: iea [list all tags]
The International Energy Agency has taken its share of abuse from The Oil Drum over the years for its rather optimistic forecasts. But it
deserves a hearty shout-out for an invaluable resource it has on its web site: Interactive Sankey Diagrams for the World.
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Sankey Diagram showing world energy flows (Click for larger view)
My Last Campfire Post

Posted by Jason Bradford on September 7, 2013 - 12:13am
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: agriculture energy use, sustainable agriculture [list all tags]
I checked my user profile for this site and discovered that as of today I have been a member for 7 years and 37 weeks. Wow! So much has
happened to me and my family over those years and a lot of it was shared on The Oil Drum. For reasons Ill explain, I havent been
around much lately. My most recent article was over three years ago.
My first writings for The Oil Drum were over six years ago as guest posts through Nate Hagens, and then as a staff contributor for the
Campfire section of the site. I am not an energy expert so my role wasnt about modeling depletion or providing context to the energy
news of the week. What I did was consider the broader relationships between energy, resources and society, and explore the
implications of more expensive and less energy to our consumer-oriented economy and culture. The most complete and succinct
example of this role is probably my Beware the Hungry Ghosts piece, which includes this passage:
Several religious traditions describe what are termed hungry ghosts. These sad beings have insatiable appetites, with tiny
mouths and huge stomachs. Modern society creates hungry ghosts among the living. We have more than ever, but are
constantly bombarded with messages that it is never enough. The poor go to dollar stores, the middle class spend hours at Bed
Bath and Beyond, the rich buy ever larger yachts, and city planners are always looking for more land and water in which to
expand their urban sphere. Wants have become indistinguishable from needs. I anxiously walk among our nation of hungry
ghosts, asking myself what these addicts will do when they can't get their fix?
What many of us found at The Oil Drum was a place to share our anxieties with those who share our anxieties. I am not being dismissive
of this at all! Many here have points of view that place us outside of conventional wisdom, and this can be socially difficult. Where else
can we go to have conversations that may be impolite, misunderstood and dismissed by the hungry ghosts we live among?
A fine example of thinking profoundly differently is in Kurt Cobbs essay Upside Down Economics in which he gives a visual
representation of U.S. GDP from the perspective of an Ecological Economist:
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Figure 1
The Economic and Political Consequences of the Last 10 Years of

Renewable Energy Development
Posted by Jerome a Paris on September 5, 2013 - 9:22am
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: energiewende, germany, natural gas, power, renewable energy, wind [list all tags]
I've been privileged to be an editor of TOD over the past several years, and am glad to have been invited to do a final post as the site
moves to an archive status.
When I started writing about energy on the blogs in 2003/2004, I was writing mostly about Russia, gas pipelines and gas geopolitics.
There were so many conspiracy theories abounding on topics like the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline or (a bit later) Russia
vs Ukraine pipeline conflicts that I felt the need to put out a different version, given that I knew the inside story on many of these issues
- and that got me invited to contribute these to TOD as well. In the meantime, my job (which was, and - full disclosure - remains, to
finance energy projects) slowed moved from oil&gas work to power sector transactions and, increasingly, to renewable sector deals, and
I started writing about the wind business, in my mind from the perspective of a banker wanting to make sure that these projects could
be paid back over periods of 15 or 20 years.
While my work is now almost exclusively focused on offshore wind in Northern Europe, I still do not consider myself a 'wind shill'... but
it does give me a different perspective on the debates currently going on about energy policy in various places, and on the changes to the
power sector caused (among others, by renewables) that are underpinning such debates, and I thought it would be a useful complement,
together with Big Gav's overview of the clean energy sector, to the other articles more traditionally focused on the oil&gas side of
things.
I'll focus on Germany, where the transformation has been most advanced (and even has brought a new word to us: the Energiewende),
and where the consequences of high renewable penetration are most visible.
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The Oil Drum - Discussions About Energy and Our Future

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The Oil Drum - Discussions About Energy and Our Future

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The Oil Drum | Discussions about Energy and Our Future

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