Saturday, July 16, 2005

peak oil - the big flip

Oil has peaked just about everywhere. Quick - on to the consequences.

Liquefied gas fills gap left by North Sea decline
THE first cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNG) arrives in the Thames Estuary this morning and will be the start of many shipments of gas from Algeria that will help to replace Britain’s declining North Sea gas reserves.
The Berge Arzew, a third of a kilometre long, will moor at the Isle of Grain, Kent, and begin to pump 138,000 cubic metres of LNG into National Grid Transco’s new LNG terminal.

Better yet, Britain snuck this load out from under the United States. Read the article: Volatility to follow. Oh yeah? So the North Sea peaks. Britain now needs to import energy, and the powers that be aren't making any more oil on timescales that matter to humans.

It will be interesting to see how many natural gas ports at dollars a million by 500 plus can be built, and whether after having completed said ports, they'll even have ships docking at them. Algeria, the source for the gas in the article above, had a big blowup at an LNG gassification facility over a year ago. LNG trade should prove the most disruptable in a volatile world.

But maybe we should do LNG to save the oceans:

Warmer oceans may be killing West Coast marine life
Coastal ocean temperatures are 2 to 5 degrees above normal, apparently caused by a lack of upwelling — a process that brings cold, nutrient-rich water to the surface and jump-starts the marine food chain. Upwelling fuels algae and shrimplike krill populations that feed small fish, which provide an important food source for a variety of sea life, from salmon to sea birds and marine mammals.

What in the heck could cool down the oceans? How about a LNG De-Gassification terminal, say, 10 miles offshore, sucking in the warm water and spitting out 100 million gallons of ice water a day?

Behold, the future. Attacking dilemmas with problems.

The salmon are in heaven, with a million tiny halos, and they are judging us.

Without salmon around, I expect shrimp to start growing to the size of Enron executives. Look what happened to those stupid rodents when the dinosaurs died.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home