Greens, Labor and Liberals, what are the difference between each parties peak oil policies.



Fill up now, RAA advises motorists on how to get cheaper petrol

THE state's peak motoring body is advising motorists to fill up their cars today or at the latest tomorrow morning, but doesn't think we will see the price rise to the mid $1.50s it has in the eastern states.

RAA senior analyst Chris West said the price of crude oil fell Monday night.

"But if crude oil prices continue to fall as they did Monday night it could lead to lower pump prices potentially, as long as the Australian dollar also stays strong," he said.

"Crude oil prices in American terms are the highest they have been since July 2008, however the Australian dollar back then was 97c compared to the American, now it is 106-7c.

"Realistically Australian motorists have been buffeted 8 cents a litre."

He said there were a number of factors weighing on the crude oil market currently.

"On the one hand is the political instability in the Middle East, second to that are the debt concerns of Europe and the US ... that could continue and see prices fall, but equally something else could happen in the Middle East and crude prices go up."




http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/fill-up-now-raa-advises-motor...

Bugga electric cars...we need to find cheap and efficient ways of extracting Hydrogen ..once we do that we have a non polluting fuel source until the end of the universe.

Another tool Greens plan to use to help Australians to insulate against peak oil is the Very Fast Train network.

Peak Oil means excessive costs for flying, so the longer the old parties sit on their butts over Greens' very fast train between Capitals along the east coast, the more they will punish interstate travellers when air travel goes the same way as petrol.

Virgin announces carbon price surcharges

Virgin Australia has announced a range of surcharges to cover the costs of Australian and European carbon pricing schemes.

From July 1, every domestic flight will cost an additional $1.50 to $6 depending on the distance travelled.

The airline says the average cost per sector will be $3.

And from March 1, all Virgin Australia codeshare flights in and out of the European Union will cost an additional $US3 per passenger, to cover the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

Earlier this month, Qantas said its carbon tax surcharge would range from $1.82 to $6.86 depending on the flight distance, while flights to and from Europe would attract a flat fee of $3.50.

http://abc.com.au/news/2012-02-28/virgin-announces-carbon-surcharges/3857886



As airline profiteer from carbon pricing, so to will airlines and petrol wholesalers will profiteer from peak oil.


Time for the other parties to join Greens and work with out policies if they have none of their own.

Does Lab and Lib have any policies concerning Peak Oil?

BlOoDy RiPpEr wrote on Feb 28^th, 2012 at 5:04pm:


Nope but they are gonna be rooted big time when it runs out...if they did have a decent tax on their petrol it would go a long way to setting up new industries when the world moves to other fuels or when their oil runs dry.
It is another issue that will effect future generations across the globe..the mess and flow of refugees in and from the Middle East when the money from crude oil dries up.

Woo Hoo, just discovered Lib's little bitch supports hydrogen for transport

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The death of peak oilAlan Kohler

Published 7:17 AM, 29 Feb 2012


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inShare


Here’s another structural transformation to add to all the others that you have to get your head around: it’s the transformation of global energy markets as a result of shale oil and gas.

We’ve already got the digital revolution and the switch from consumption to savings after the GFC, not to mention the rise of China and India. Now we have the death of peak oil.

For years we have assumed that fossil fuel reserves were running out, that peak oil production had occurred some time ago and that it was only a matter of time before the oil price rose to such heights that energy-dependent economies would be crushed, starting with the United States.

In a way these assumptions have helped underpin the movement against global warming (that is, we’ll have to give up oil anyway since it’s running out, so we might as well make the best of a bad lot and embrace electric cars and wind farms and save the planet from climate change while we’re at it).

In fact the existence of vast reserves of oil and gas in shale formations, mainly in the United States, combined with the return of the oil price to $US100 a barrel without, so far, causing a global recession, is producing a profound transformation of energy markets.

Forget declining oil, there is a new global oil rush. The US has an estimated 2 trillion barrels of shale oil reserves – about 70 per cent of the world’s total and eight times the oil reserves of Saudi Arabia. The gas reserves, in the US, Australia and elsewhere, are vast.

The cost of extracting shale oil ranges from $US95 per barrel down to $US12, although the process of fracking, where water is pumped in to break up the shale and release the oil, is very controversial – as highlighted on the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent program last night.

But where there’s oil there’s a way. BHP Billiton has paid $15 billion for shale oil and gas acreage, through its acquisition of Petrohawk, and now owns four large areas in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. The company is spending billions developing the project; its Haynesville project in Arkansas is already the largest shale play in the US, producing 6.5 billion cubic feet of gas per day.

There was an earlier shale energy rush in the 1980s, following the second oil shock, but it quickly collapsed with the oil price.

However, now the price is back to where it was in real terms, making it economic, and extraction technology has advanced enormously as well. It wasn’t until the late 1980s and early 1990s that the first commercial horizontal wells were successfully drilled and modern 'multi-stage' hydraulic fracturing (fracking) techniques did not emerge until ten years ago.

Production of shale gas in the US began to increase rapidly in 2010 thanks to advances in fracking technology. It has now been used in more than 1 million wells, and operators are currently fracturing about 35,000 wells a year.

It’s a remarkable process: the reserves are usually about five kilometres below the surface (much deeper than coal seam gas); wells are drilled down to them and then horizontally through them for another five or six kilometres; the horizontal part of the well is perforated by explosives and then fluid and sand are pumped down at high pressure to fracture the shale. The hydrocarbons then flow to the surface.

The opposition to this in the US is similar to the growing opposition to coal seam gas developments in Australia; whether any of the opponents get anywhere is a different matter, especially in the US.

The drive for self-sufficiency in oil and gas is very powerful indeed, and in pursuit of that there is a massive boom in shale energy development, leading to big fortunes being made in infrastructure and servicing, not to mention the energy itself.

Australia has relatively small shale oil reserves – here it’s more about coal seam methane. China has more shale energy reserves in total than the US but they're deeper and the geology is more difficult. There are big reserves in Poland and France, as well as Russia and the Congo in Africa.

But so far it’s all about the United States, which has the reserves and the largest market close by.

The importance of this for the world is hard to exaggerate. The distribution of energy on the planet is shifting: the stranglehold that Middle Eastern dictatorships have over the world’s energy supply is loosening and just as the rise of manufacturing in China shifted the world’s economic axis, so will the rise of shale energy in North America.

There will be a rapid substitution of coal by cleaner gas, especially as (or perhaps if) emissions trading schemes and carbon taxes spread.

It means renewable energy and nuclear will become less and less economic as the supply of gas increases, whether it’s from coal seams or shale. Gas is less carbon intensive than coal, but it still produces greenhouse gases, so it may be that the policy response to reduce global warming will actually have to increase if the world moves too far towards gas and away from renewables and nuclear.

If the United States could become self-sufficient in energy, its current account deficit would disappear and the US dollar would start rising again.

In fact, shale energy could be responsible for the resurgence of the United States as an economic superpower, with cheap local energy underpinning the second coming of its manufacturing industry as well as helping to balance its twin deficits – the current account and federal budget.

One thing is for sure: the world isn’t running out of oil and gas any more.

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/peak-oil-shale-gas-fracking-energy-nuclear-budget-pd20120229-RWR7C?opendocument&src=idp&utm_source=exact&utm_medium=email&utm_content=17865&utm_campaign=kgb&modapt=commentary

longweekend58 wrote on Mar 1^st, 2012 at 4:34pm:



Any chance of quantitating your measure of 'viable' please.


is this in relation to future peak oil prices, or relative to current oil prices?