From Tom Dispatch
By Michael T. Klare

Every summer, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy issues its International Energy Outlook (IEO) — a jam-packed compendium of data and analysis on the evolving world energy equation. For those with the background to interpret its key statistical findings, the release of the IEO can provide a unique opportunity to gauge important shifts in global energy trends, much as reports of routine Communist Party functions in the party journal Pravda once provided America’s Kremlin watchers with insights into changes in the Soviet Union’s top leadership circle.

As it happens, the recent release of the 2009 IEO has provided energy watchers with a feast of significant revelations. By far the most significant disclosure: the IEO predicts a sharp drop in projected future world oil output (compared to previous expectations) and a corresponding increase in reliance on what are called “unconventional fuels” — oil sands, ultra-deep oil, shale oil, and biofuels.

So here’s the headline for you: For the first time, the well-respected Energy Information Administration appears to be joining with those experts who have long argued that the era of cheap and plentiful oil is drawing to a close. Almost as notable, when it comes to news, the 2009 report highlights Asia’s insatiable demand for energy and suggests that China is moving ever closer to the point at which it will overtake the United States as the world’s number one energy consumer. Clearly, a new era of cutthroat energy competition is upon us.

Read more Cheap Oil

From TruthOut
By Greg Palast

“Gail, Please! Stick your hand in it!”

The petite Eskimo-Chugach woman gave me that you-dumb-ass-white-boy look.

“Gail, Gail. STICK YOUR DAMN HAND IN IT!”

She stuck it in, under the gravel of the beach at Sleepy Bay, her village’s fishing ground. Gail’s hand came up dripping with black, sickening goo. It could make you vomit. Oil from the Exxon Valdez.

It was already two years after the spill and Exxon had crowed that Mother Nature had happily cleaned up their stinking oil mess for them. It was a lie. But the media wouldn’t question the bald-faced bullshit. And who the hell was going to investigate Exxon’s claim way out in some godforsaken Native village in the Prince William Sound?

So I convinced the Natives to fly the lazy-ass reporters out to Sleepy Bay on rented float planes to see the oil that Exxon said wasn’t there.

The reporters looked, but didn’t see it, because it was three inches under their feet, under the shingle rock of the icy beach. Gail pulled out her hand and now the whole place smelled like a gas station. The network crews wanted to puke.

And now, with their eyes open, they saw the oil, the vile feces- colored smear across the glaciated ridge faces, the poisonous “bathtub ring” that ran for miles and miles at the high tide level. And it’s still there. Less for sure. But twenty years later, IT’S STILL THERE, GODDAMNIT. And I want YOU, dear reader, to stick your hand in it. I want YOU, President Obama, to stick your hand in it before you blithely fulfill your Palin-esque campaign promise for a little more offshore drilling.

Read more Lies

From The Guardian UK
By James Hansen

President Barack Obama has committed to fight global warming. In just his first few weeks in office, the president has already taken steps to move America in a direction that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The most important step so far is the indication that tailpipe emissions will be regulated as needed for improved fuel efficiency. Similar steps will be needed to improve energy efficiencies in buildings and homes.

In my opinion, and in the view of most economists, these steps must be accompanied by a rising price on carbon emissions, if we hope to stabilise atmospheric composition. Incentives must be provided for economic development that steadily replaces outdated fossil fuel based energy infrastructure. Such transformation is needed if we are to preserve for future generations the remarkable planet that we inherited from our elders.

Now Obama is about to head off on his first foreign trip – destination Canada. Few realise that Canada is America’s number-one source of oil. And, unlike energy conversations in prior administrations, science and the environment are expected to be an important part of the agenda. Let us hope so.

The Canadian press is full of speculation that the Canadian government will push for special treatment and protections from global warming regulation of its fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions: the tar sands oil development in Alberta, where much of Canada’s oil is derived. Such protection would be disastrous for life on our planet.

Read more Tar Sand

From Tom Dispatch
By Michael T. Klare

Only yesterday, it seems, we were bemoaning the high price of oil. Under the headline “Oil’s Rapid Rise Stirs Talk of $200 a Barrel This Year,” the July 7 issue of the Wall Street Journal warned that prices that high would put “extreme strains on large sectors of the U.S. economy.” Today, oil, at over $40 a barrel, costs less than one-third what it did in July, and some economists have predicted that it could fall as low as $25 a barrel in 2009.

Prices that low — and their equivalents at the gas pump — will no doubt be viewed as a godsend by many hard-hit American consumers, even if they ensure severe economic hardship in oil-producing countries like Nigeria, Russia, Iran, Kuwait, and Venezuela that depend on energy exports for a large share of their national income. Here, however, is a simple but crucial reality to keep in mind: No matter how much it costs, whether it’s rising or falling, oil has a profound impact on the world we inhabit — and this will be no less true in 2009 than in 2008.

The main reason? In good times and bad, oil will continue to supply the largest share of the world’s energy supply. For all the talk of alternatives, petroleum will remain the number one source of energy for at least the next several decades. According to December 2008 projections from the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), petroleum products will still make up 38% of America’s total energy supply in 2015; natural gas and coal only 23% each. Oil’s overall share is expected to decline slightly as biofuels (and other alternatives) take on a larger percentage of the total, but even in 2030 — the furthest the DoE is currently willing to project — it will still remain the dominant fuel.

A similar pattern holds for the planet as a whole: Although biofuels and other renewable sources of energy are expected to play a growing role in the global energy equation, don’t expect oil to be anything but the world’s leading source of fuel for decades to come.

Read more Cheap Oil

From The Baltimore Sun
By Thomas M. Spangler III

President-elect Barack Obama’s energy team is in place, and he has ambitious plans to reform the nation’s energy system.

Where should he start? How about with the nation’s largest consumer of petroleum – the Pentagon.

Historically, the Department of Defense and national security concerns drove innovation and inventions that have changed the world. The issue of energy reform presents a timely opportunity for the department to reclaim that critical role.

Mr. Obama has laid out a “Plan for Energy and Environment” acknowledging that our addiction to foreign oil undermines our national security. Since the Defense Department is charged with ensuring our nation’s security, should it not lead the way to our nation’s energy independence?

The Pentagon is as addicted to foreign oil as the rest of the U.S. A 2001 internal review by the Defense Science Board found that the Pentagon may be the single largest consumer of petroleum in the world. According to the Defense Energy Support Center 2007 Factbook, the department spent $11.5 billion on petroleum in 2007 alone.

That’s why the Pentagon needs a comprehensive energy strategy linked to its budget process, technology development efforts, and acquisition activities. This strategy will have to address the disparate needs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps and provide overarching budget recommendations on energy priorities.

Read more Pentagon

From Mother Jones
By Nick Baumann

Did Barack Obama just break his first campaign promise?

On the campaign trail, Obama railed against big oil companies. He often criticized John McCain for backing tax cuts that would reward ExxonMobil and other top oil manufacturers. But now Obama’s proposal to apply a windfall tax on big oil has vanished… at least from his transition website. The President-elect’s transition team hasn’t explicitly announced it will drop the windfall tax plan, but a transition aide, commenting on the condition he not be identified, backed off the promise in an email. “President-elect Obama announced the [windfall profits tax] policy during the campaign because oil prices were above $80 per barrel,” he said. “They are currently below that now and expected to stay below that.”

The windfall profits proposal was deleted from the transition website almost three weeks before the eagle-eyed American Small Business League (ASBL), an advocacy group for small businesses, noticed the change and protested in a press release Tuesday. The plan was mentioned in a version (PDF) of the site that existed after Obama’s election win. But when the transition website relaunched on November 8, references to a excess profits tax on the oil and gas industry were gone.

Obama talked about a windfall profits tax as early as April. As crude oil prices topped $110 a barrel, Obama promised to “put a windfall profits tax on oil companies and use it to help … families pay their heating and cooling bills and reduce energy costs.” And in August, the Democratic nominee issued a campaign ad that promised “a windfall profits tax on big oil to give families a thousand dollar rebate.” The windfall profits tax was a key point of contention between President-elect Obama and McCain in June, when McCain criticized Obama for the plan, calling it “dangerous”.

Read more Policy Retreat

From Thomas Paine’s Corner
By Steven Jonas

It is often said that the United States “has no energy policy,” that we “need to develop one as quickly as possible,” and that it should be based on alternate fuels and more importantly, alternative and renewable energy sources. The first part is true. The second should read “we need to develop a new one.” The third is of course correct. As we enter an era of debate on and development of a new energy policy, it is very important to understand these facts. If and when we develop a new one, we would not be substituting something for nothing. Rather we would be replacing the current energy policy with another one. Further, the new one would be highly antithetical to the interests (to say nothing of the profits) of the developers and defenders of the old one. They would (and indeed will) constitute a very powerful enemy of change. It is impossible to estimate just how far they will go in defending their interests. But these folks have fought dirty in the past and there is no reason to believe that they will change their stripes anytime soon. However, no old policy can be changed to a new one if one does not clearly understand just what the present one is.

The present U.S. energy policy is not written down, at least not in publicly available sources. The clearest statement/description of what it is currently is to be found, if one were to somehow gain access to it, in the notes/reports of the meetings of the Cheney Secret Energy Task Force. It is known to have started meeting right after the 2000 election. Since Cheney made it clear from the time that word of the first meeting or two leaked out that no records of the meeting(s) would be released and was obviously very unhappy that there was any public knowledge that the meeting(s) had even occurred, it is left to speculation as to whether there were further meetings. Since the subject is highly complex, it is highly likely that there were. One thing is certain. The known and unknown records of any and all such meetings will have either been destroyed or removed to an undisclosed location safer than Yucca Flats by the time the Obama Administration takes office. Nevertheless, its basic components are clearly discernable by looking at the history of energy production and use in the United States.

Read more Shills

From Tom Dispatch
By Michael T. Klare

Of all the challenges facing President Barack Obama next January, none is likely to prove as daunting, or important to the future of this nation, as that of energy. After all, energy policy — so totally mishandled by the outgoing Bush-Cheney administration — figures in each of the other major challenges facing the new president, including the economy, the environment, foreign policy, and our Middle Eastern wars. Most of all, it will prove a monumental challenge because the United States faces an energy crisis of unprecedented magnitude that is getting worse by the day.

The U.S. needs energy — lots of it. Day in and day out, this country, with only 5% of the world’s population, consumes one quarter of the world’s total energy supply. About 40% of our energy comes from oil: some 20 million barrels, or 840 million gallons a day. Another 23% comes from coal, and a like percentage from natural gas. Providing all this energy to American consumers and businesses, even in an economic downturn, remains a Herculean task, and will only grow more so in the years ahead. Addressing the environmental consequences of consuming fossil fuels at such levels, all emitting climate-altering greenhouse gases, only makes this equation more intimidating.

As President Obama faces our energy problem, he will have to address three overarching challenges:

1. The United States relies excessively on oil to supply its energy needs at a time when the future availability of petroleum is increasingly in question.

2. Our most abundant domestic source of fuel, coal, is the greatest emitter of greenhouse gases when consumed in the current manner.

3. No other source of energy, including natural gas, nuclear power, biofuels, wind power, and solar power is currently capable of supplanting our oil and coal consumption, even if a decision is made to reduce their importance in our energy mix.

Read more Challenges

From The Boston Globe
By Derrick Z. Jackson

There is no recession. So what if Americans have dying 401(k)s, are getting foreclosed on their homes, or are telling their children they cannot have their first choice for college. Never mind that nearly 4,200 US soldiers have died in two wars. No worries. We have Pax at the Pump.

Gasoline has dropped back to between $2 and $3 a gallon after soaring past $4 a gallon. This week, the Globe had the headline, “Old habits return fast: As gas prices fall, some drivers are less worried about being fuel efficient.” On the same day, The New York Times had the headline, “Drivers Take to the Road Again as Gas Prices Fall.”

In the Times, economist Christopher Knittel of the University of California, Davis, said, “If oil prices continue to fall and the economy recovers, I would expect consumers to return to wanting larger and less fuel-efficient cars.”

In the Globe, Hobart and William Smith economics professor Tom Drennen said, “I think if they had stayed at four bucks for awhile longer you really would have seen dramatic change in people’s behavior. Now we’re being hit with a double whammy. Credit is so bad and the lots are overflowing with SUVs that people sold when prices went up, so now is really a good time to get a deal on a SUV.”

This makes you scream. Can Americans ever forgo the good deal and get a grip on the future?

Read more Gas Prices

From The LA Times
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

I was water-skiing with my children in a light drizzle off Hyannis, Mass., last month when a sudden, fierce storm plunged us into a melee of towering waves, raking rain, painful hail and midday darkness broken by blinding flashes of lightning. As I hurried to get my children out of the water and back to the dock, I shouted over the roaring wind, “This is some kind of tornado.”

The fog consolidated and a waterspout hundreds of feet high rose from the white ocean and darted across its surface, landing for a moment on a moored outboard to spin it like a top, moving toward a distant shore where it briefly became a sand funnel, and then diffusing into the atmosphere as it rained down bits of beach on the harbor. For 24 hours, a light show of violent storms illuminated the coastline, accompanied by booming thunder. My dog was so undone by the display that she kept us all awake with her terrified whining. That same day, two waterspouts appeared on Long Island Sound.

Those odd climatological phenomena led me to reflect on the rapidly changing weather patterns that are altering the way we live. Lightning storms and strikes have tripled just since the beginning of the decade on Cape Cod. In the 1960s, we rarely saw lightning or heard thunder on the Massachusetts coast. I associate electrical storms with McLean, Va., where I spent the school year when I was growing up.

In Virginia, the weather also has changed dramatically. Recently arrived residents in the northern suburbs, accustomed to today’s anemic winters, might find it astonishing to learn that there were once ski runs on Ballantrae Hill in McLean, with a rope tow and local ski club. Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don’t own a sled. But neighbors came to our home at Hickory Hill nearly every winter weekend to ride saucers and Flexible Flyers.

Read more Big Oil