Ancient woodland vs oil supply

The Guardian reported today:

Oil company to drill in ancient Sussex woodland

Conservationists reacted angrily today to Sussex county council's decision to grant an oil company permission to prospect in a protected area of the Douth Downs.

Northern Petroleum was granted a temporary three-year consent to test in Markswell Wood in the village of Forestdale, near Chichester. Council officers said that there was a "clear and overriding need" for oil exploration but that the company would have to seek further permission to extract oil.

I guess with oil hitting record high prices every week (it's up 100% on a year ago), and existing fields declining fast people are getting desperate. I'm not surprised they're drilling there if they think there's oil to be had, but it's a shame to damage the woodland. You'd think with today's drilling technology they could go in at an angle from the side and not touch the woodland...

For the background on why oil is so expensive right now, visit PowerSwitch UK (a group I helped start a few years ago).

Mike

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Oil hits inflation-adjusted record high

From Reuters:

U.S. oil surged to a new inflation-adjusted record high on Thursday, surpassing the previous record of $102.53 set in 1980, according to the International Energy Agency.

Full story here

and the reason behind it all (and why we own a wood!).


Mike

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Einstein and Peak Oil

I like this:
If anyone's wondering, the equation ER/EI is "energy return" divided by "energy invested" (more info here), the point being that the oil (and coal and gas) we extracted in the past was easy to get at, so the energy return was large compared to the energy invested.

Today, the EROEI (as it's more commonly known) ratio is a lot lower, as we go for difficult-to-get fossil fuels, such as polar oil and tar sands, and is falling as each year goes by. That means that there's less energy for the human race to live on, just as demand is rising. I expect you don't need me to tell you that means trouble...

So now you know one of the incentives for us buying a wood - it grows renewable fuel for us!

So what's the EROEI for a chainsaw? Well, we've only burned about 12 litres of petrol so far, which might move a small car 120 miles or so, and contains in the region of 500MJ of energy. That fuel has enabled us to cut 10 tonnes of wood (at a conservative guess, it could be a lot more), which once seasoned could yield about 150,000MJ of energy. I think that's a better return than burning it in a car! I think I'll go and burn some more tomorrow...

Mike

p.s. More info on Peak Oil is available at PowerSwitch UK, which I helped set up a few years ago. Other good sites are The Oil Drum and EnergyBulletin.

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