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REFINED, distilled and then burnt, petrol's explosive power propels the world's largest economy. But its soaring price is punching holes in the US engine - and the rest of us are anything but immune. The globe's thirstiest energy consumer is reeling from high petrol prices, with a barrel of oil hitting $US137 ($145) on Thursday's markets. Even if there is still division about whether the high point of global production - "peak oil" - has been reached, most analysts agree that cheap oil is finished.

Perspectives and initiatives for local self-reliant living in the face of energy, climate, and economic uncertainty. In response to awakened Peak Oil awareness, Yuba Gals began producing the weekly 28-minute Peak Moment Conversations.In January 2006. They are hosted and produced by Janaia; directed and edited by Robyn.

This is a guest post from Max Arturo Alcala Sainz. Currently, the list of academic institutions offering relevant and up-to-date information and courses geared to confront the imminent energy slope is awfully short. If you have ever tried to enroll in your local university for some hands-on Peak Oil learning experience, you may have found yourself disappointed in knowing that no such course is offered. Even in certain high-level economics courses that scrape at energy depletion and natural resources, you will probably be able to teach your professor a thing or two (if you are a keen reader of TOD). :)

Richard Heinberg, Post Carbon Institute ... There is a veritable cottage industry of economists and statisticians (including Daniel Yergin, Bjorn Lomborg, Peter Huber, and Michael Lynch) who tirelessly implore their readers not to panic over oil prices because The Market will always come to the rescue. As easy conventional oil depletes, tar sands, oil shale, and biofuels become more economic to produce. Even coal-to-liquids becomes feasible on a large scale. And, as everyone knows, there is an endless amount of coal.

The current debate over offshore oil leases has put America's gargantuan energy appetite back on the discussion table this week. I've tried to stay out of it so far for two reasons. The first is that (here comes the full disclosure) I married into a family that's been making its modest fortune in the oil patches of the American West for over a century, so there's some personal interest at stake here. (The upside: I've got a box seat from which to report on at least some of the festivities.) The second is that as a futurist - trained in America's oil center, Houston, no less - I take a much longer and systemic view of the situation. And that view gives my thinking about our energy future a rather different shape and direction.

You can quote numbers all day about how much oil the US uses and for which purposes, but few things drive the point home like the graph below. This shows US oil consumption for just transportation (broken out by mode), with a line plot of domestic production, revealing a humongous gap and explaining why so many peak oil adherents are so freaked out.

Peak oil is just five years away, and we must start to plan now to avert a truly ruinous crisis If eight companies across a broad spectrum of UK industry had warned, five years ago, that a ruinous credit crunch would hit the global economy this year, might the government have taken the warning seriously? Might UK leadership in damage limitation have been proactive, rather than reactive? Could a softer landing and a faster recovery have been possible as a result?

This year's conference, enhanced through a partnership between Community Solutions and Upland Hills Ecological Awareness Center, is organized around Community Solutions executive director Pat Murphy's just published book, Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change. The book, and this conference, "point to the life we must lead, if we are to survive on this planet."

What are the real implications of peak oil in a culture where common sense has been suppressed by consumerism? A lot of parenting is about common sense. Deep down as parents, we realize that if a child gets showered with gifts, they become unappreciative. If they receive things because they stamp their feet and scream, that behavior will continue because it has been rewarded. In the last few decades however, common sense seems to be on the decline and its commonality is certainly fading. Let me give you an example. When I was growing up, my parents would have a birthday party for me with perhaps five or six friends at maximum. There would be sandwiches, cake, balloons and big back yard in which to play. There might be a treasure hunt or a simple game, if my mother was feeling energetic. For the large part though, I was instructed to entertain my friends on my own, hardly an onerous task. The end result was an enjoyable afternoon and a few small gifts for me to play with, once everyone else had gone home.

Peak Oil blog and website

Next month's edition of National Geographic has an article on the tar sands of Canada - The Canadian Oil Boom. How long the boom lasts if the current downturn continues is questionable of course. In the same issue is an article on Energy Conservation. In Boucher's memory, though, the change begins that day in 1963, on the long trail his grandfather used to set his traps, near a place called Mildred Lake. Generations of his ancestors had worked that trapline. "These trails had been here thousands of years," Boucher said one day last summer, sitting in his spacious and tasteful corner office in Fort McKay. His golf putter stood in one corner; Mozart played softly on the stereo. "And that day, all of a sudden, we came upon this clearing. A huge clearing. There had been no notice. In the 1970s they went in and tore down my grandfather's cabin-with no notice or discussion." That was Boucher's first encounter with the oil sands industry. It's an industry that has utterly transformed this part of northeastern Alberta in just the past few years, with astonishing speed. Boucher is surrounded by it now and immersed in it himself.

Bob Hirsch talking "Worst Case Scenarios" for Oil...as in "maybe $500/bbl" in the next few years...with increasing uncertainty/volatility (yes, that's right, oil could snap back down to $100/bbl, but then snap back up even higher again in a few months...without even considering geopolitics and other "above ground factors," which of course we must.)

Oil giant Royal Dutch Shell today joined the profits bonanza from record prices with a 71 per cent jump in third-quarter earnings. The firm made a mammoth 10.9 billion US dollars (£6.6 billion) between July and September - a period when oil prices hit a peak above 147 dollars a barrel. The news, which is likely to spark fresh calls for a windfall tax, comes two days after rival BP posted its biggest-ever quarterly profits of £6.4 billion.

This is a wonderful clip. Matt Simmons is the author of 'Twighlight in the Desert', is a leading US investment banker, and a long-term advocate of the peak oil argument. When he was asked to go on CNBC's 'Fast Money' to discuss the high oil prices, he clearly stunned the presenters with his forthright analysis of society's current perilous situation. When asked if $147 a barrel is a 'wake up call' he replied "yes, but we're not having a wake up call, we're having a witch hunt for who got us here", a succinct analysis of the current world situation. What was especially fascinating to watch was when he was asked for his prognosis of the near future.

Why are oil prices soaring so high, and will they ever return to Earth? Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency in Paris, explains why peak oil is real, why biofuels are indispensable, and how China determines what you pay at the pump.

The energy dynamics of computing. Includes fascinating insight into the energy requirements of biological computing -- e.g., brain power. Fantastic, a must-read.

The forthcoming IEA report continues to generate plenty of advance press. It seems some of the production decline numbers that generated so much initial chatter are actually for already declining fields - not ones growing or holding steady, so they don't really mean all that much (its the average across all fields that really counts, which may still be around the 4.5% figure CERA predicts). MSN - IEA sees oil above $100, recognizes supply limit. The world will have to live with the risk of an energy supply crunch and an oil price well above $100 a barrel in the years to come, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Thursday. Massive investment of more than $26 trillion will be needed in the next 20 years to offset the impact of falling supply at aging oilfields and ensure the world has enough energy, the IEA said. "There remains a real risk that under-investment will cause an oil supply crunch (by 2015)," the IEA said in an executive summary of the World Energy Outlook (WEO) to be released in full next week. "The gap now evident between what is currently being built and what will be needed to keep pace with demand is set to widen sharply after 2010."

As last week began, Hurricane Gustav was threatening to tear up a substantial portion of the US's oil production and refining capacity in the Gulf as well as devastating New Orleans. However, Cuba, cooler water and the hurricane steering currents intervened so that within hours it became apparent that Gustav was going to be a more benign hurricane than those of three years ago. At the last minute, Gustav turned west, thus sparing New Orleans from substantial damage, but instead managing to tear up most of Louisiana's power grid. With this news, the oil markets focused on the demand destruction that was likely to ensue from sagging world economic activity.

An update on the latest production numbers from the EIA along with graphs/charts of different oil production forecasts.

Facing the facts and acting to resolve them can defeat peak Oil and Global Warming, both civilization killers. A primary fact is that our current infrastructure is the cause of these killers. We built the infrastructure. We can build better. The purpose of this essay is a call to action to defeat these civilization killers by changing the way we govern infrastructure from specifying HOW to build it, to stating WHAT is needed and allowing a free market to find the rare individuals with lucky breakthroughs that can build sustainable infrastructure. We must get lucky and discover the energy equivalents of lasers, personal computers, cell phones, the Internet, etc....