Some people who know me don’t believe it, but as a child I wasn’t interested in international politics. But, like most people in Britain in the 1970s, I knew the name of the Saudi oil minister, because he was a household name. Ahmed Zaki Yamani, known in the West as Sheikh Yamani, was the oil… Continue Reading
Tag Archives: energy
Ten years after Fukushima
What happened? At 14.46 on 11 March 2011, the largest earthquake ever to hit Japan started in the Pacific Ocean about 72km (45 miles) from the Japanese coast. Occurring in fairly shallow waters, the earthquake caused a tsunami with a maximum height of 15m (49 ft.), which struck the coast about 50 minutes later with… Continue Reading
The importance of infrastructure
People paid to worry about bad stuff happening concluded long ago that one way to destroy the USA as a functioning state would be to explode a high altitude nuclear weapon above the country; the resulting electromagnetic pulse (EMP) would destroy practically all electrical equipment, including the large transformers that make the electrical grid work.… Continue Reading
Should oil companies invest in renewable electricity?
Oil and gas companies have few skills that are transferable to electricity generation and risk wasting a lot of their shareholders’ money. * “Peak oil” used to refer to supply but in recent years has come to mean the year when global oil demand peaks and then starts to fall. Few people now seriously dispute… Continue Reading
Why an abrupt tightening of climate change policy may be our only hope
To spend time with climate scientists and energy economists these days is to take part in an increasingly tortuous mental conflict. Outwardly, scientists, policy analysts and academics hoping to influence policy must remain positive and optimistic, while keeping a strong sense of urgency. Privately, many are in despair at the lack of progress on cutting… Continue Reading
Natural gas is not (yet) a global commodity
A global commodity, in economic or investment terms, is a standardised, homogeneous good that sells for the same price everywhere, subject to transport costs and tax. Oil is the classic global commodity. A chart from the IMF World Economic Outlook, just published in October 2014, shows that natural gas isn’t. But it probably will become more… Continue Reading