Public Invited to Discuss Oil Task Force

Council will hold two meetings today before vote

by Sam Taylor, the Bellingham Herald

WHAT: Bellingham City Council members will discuss and then vote on a peak oil task force.
WHEN: 1 p.m. today in committee and at the 7 p.m. council meeting.
WHERE: Council Chambers, City Hall, 210 Lottie St.

BELLINGHAM — Residents have at least two more chances today to talk about a peak oil task force. City Council members decided to hold off voting on the project at their last meeting.

Council members didn’t vote on a resolution to create the task force — though all signaled their agreement with creating the volunteer group — after Councilman Gene Knutson pointed out that the document hadn’t been discussed in committee.

Councilman Jack Weiss has proposed that an 18-member group study the effects of declining oil supplies worldwide, which could mean either no fuel for vehicles or increasingly skyrocketing gas prices...

http://www.bellinghamherald.com/102/story/414038.html

Higher gas prices are only the tip of the iceberg
Another View by Myron Wlaznak, Whatcom Independent
So much has been written these past weeks about rising gasoline prices... Let’s look at what the high price of energy in general and gasoline in particular will have on us in our little spot of paradise…The upshot of these rising prices is that we will have to live with each other for a long, long time before solutions to address our energy needs emerge. America’s brain trust is hardly a world leader in this area so we’d better get used to seeing a lot of each other – up close and personal. There you have it, a few things for the Neighborhood Planning Academy and the proposed Peak Oil Task Force to think about. For me, Tuesdays and Thursdays have become no driving days.
http://www.whatcomindy.com/oped_story.php?subaction=showfull&id=1210869770&archive=&start_from=&ucat=22&

Online video: Glenn Beck interviews James Kunstler about his new book ‘World Made by Hand’ 
Wwhat the world would be like with much less oil.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2008/05/14/beck.life.oil.cnn?iref=videosearch

We Were Warned: Out of Gas
CNN, Sunday evening, May 18th at 8pm
Documentary looks at how oil shortages could affect the U.S. economy.

Oil and Politics
By Richard Heinberg, Truthout
...It's understandable that our elected leaders would want to do something about the meteoric rise of gasoline, diesel and heating oil prices that are now bankrupting independent truckers and forcing many folks in colder states to choose between being able to stay warm and being able to drive to work. Yet, efforts like the ones just mentioned are based on a profound misperception of why oil prices are rising. The real problem is summed up in the phrase Peak Oil. Petroleum is a finite substance and we have reached the inevitable point at which it simply isn't possible to increase the rate at which we extract it from the ground. Most oil-producing countries, including the US, have already seen their glory days and are now watching output from their wells gradually dwindle. Only a few nations are early in the production cycle and able to ramp up the rate of flow.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051408R.shtml

The Oil Nonbubble
By Paul Krugman, the New York Times
“The Oil Bubble: Set to Burst?” That was the headline of an October 2004 article in National Review, which argued that oil prices, then $50 a barrel, would soon collapse. Ten months later, oil was selling for $70 a barrel. “It’s a huge bubble,” declared Steve Forbes, the publisher, who warned that the coming crash in oil prices would make the popping of the technology bubble “look like a picnic.” All through oil’s five-year price surge, which has taken it from $25 a barrel to last week’s close above $125, there have been many voices declaring that it’s all a bubble, unsupported by the fundamentals of supply and demand.

…The only way speculation can have a persistent effect on oil prices, then, is if it leads to physical hoarding — an increase in private inventories of black gunk. This actually happened in the late 1970s, when the effects of disrupted Iranian supply were amplified by widespread panic stockpiling. But it hasn’t happened this time: all through the period of the alleged bubble, inventories have remained at more or less normal levels. This tells us that the rise in oil prices isn’t the result of runaway speculation; it’s the result of fundamental factors, mainly the growing difficulty of finding oil and the rapid growth of emerging economies like China. The rise in oil prices these past few years had to happen to keep demand growth from exceeding supply growth…
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/opinion/12krugman.html

Stop Me Before I Fill Up Again!

by Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights

It is a supreme irony that a wealthy Bedouin should be playing the role of a tough-love drug counselor to the world's oil-addicted consumers even as he continues to be the globe's biggest pusher. It was not the intention of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah to take on such a role, but merely the bizarre consequence of his consent to plans by his oil minister to limit the country's oil production to no more than about 12 million barrels per day from 2009 onward.

It's a move that should have been on the front page of every newspaper and that should have led every news broadcast the day it was announced. The world's largest exporter, an exporter that every major oil-consuming nation had been counting on to boost production to at least 15 million barrels per day over time, had just told the world that it wasn't likely to get what it wanted. Since most of the public still has no inkling that we are approaching the peak in world oil production, the announcement came and went with little notice...

http://www.energybulletin.net/44395.html