I was looking over the ED list and it is interesting to even on of their accepted projects did not escape criticism from the press. The ED site mentions a Dupont project in Kentucky, which I’m guessing is the same one profiled in this Business Week article.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_13/b4027057.htm).

Environmental Defense invited companies to submit projects to be screened, and here are the ones that made it through: http://www.environmentaldefense.org/page.cfm?tagID=13318

The list includes a project from CarbonFund.org, on a dairy farm in California. If you use the links on our page, you’ll only be offered offsets from projects that met our criteria. (Environmental Defense doesn’t get any payment from these companies.)

Thanks, and happy holidays to all!

Although it does not acknowledge a supply peak (yet), even the International Energy Agency has admitted is has been “caught by surprise”:
* By 2015, an extra 37.5 mb/d (million barrels per day) of production will be required. 13.6 mb/d of this is to meet new demand, while 23.9 mb/d is to replace declines in existing oil fields.
* Oil producing countries have policies that should lead to an extra 25 mb/d by 2015. A further 12.5 mb/d will be required but will not be available.
* The current trajectory is to have a supply crunch that starts showing itself by 2012.

(Source: Fatih Birol Presents the IEA World Energy Outlook 2007, http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/3336)

Eventually the IEA will acknowledge what everyone else is starting to: that oil is about to peak and overall production is going to decline no matter what the price of oil. Simply put, we have extracted roughly half of the easy-to-extract oil. Everything else we now bring to market will take billions of $’s more per project, much longer lead times and will not return nearly the amount required. Most people think the tar sands in Alberta are going to come to the rescue. That would be incorrect. The Canadian government acknowledges it will be a struggle to reach even 3 million barrels per day by 2017 (the world uses 86 mb/d of liquids right now). Russia is in decline. Production from Mexico’s Cantarell field is dropping like a stone and the North Sea is in free fall.

So that we don’t fight over the last drops, the next round of international negotiations should include the OilDepletionProtocol.org. Businesses should start preparing immediately to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.

Andre’ Angelantoni
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Peak Oil, Climate Change and Business
Free, Bi-Weekly Executive Briefing
http://www.inspiringgreenleadership.com/peak-oil-climate-change-and-business