David Strahan | Articles

BP’s troubles have only just begun

admin — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 05:00:35 +0000

First published in the The Independent on Sunday, 20 June 2010 As BP reels from its toughest week yet since the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon, investors warn the longer term outlook for the embattled supermajor is likely to worsen. Even as the share price bounced towards the end of last week – in relief at [...]

Why America should thank BP

admin — Mon, 31 May 2010 06:00:06 +0000

This article was first published in the The Independent, 1 June 2010 Hollywood loves its villains to have an English accent. After the Deepwater Horizon disaster it was inevitable American commentators would deride BP as British Petroleum and its CEO as Tony Wayward. But even as Gulf Coast residents despair and BP fumbles from one seat-of-the-pants [...]

World at One interview: BP slick

admin — Fri, 28 May 2010 13:31:07 +0000

To hear my interview on BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme today, about the implications of the Gulf of Mexico disaster for global oil production, follow the link below. Listen to the interview. BBC World at One NB Some listeners have reported problems with lastoilshock.com podcasts using Quicktime, but they seem to play perfectly [...]

Correction

admin — Thu, 20 May 2010 20:33:00 +0000

The article Oil production hit by BP slick was written on the presumption the 5000 barrels per day estimate was roughly right. It is now increasingly clear that it was a gross underestimate. But I stand by my assessment of the slick’s likely impact on Gulf of Mexico oil production and the industry more widely. [...]

Secret agenda of coalition energy policy

admin — Fri, 14 May 2010 09:46:55 +0000

There is much to welcome in the new coalition’s energy policy. In particular, the commitment to a “huge increase” in anaerobic digestion; raise renewables targets; the “full establishment” of feed-in-tariffs; shifting aviation duty from people to planes; and not only to scrap Heathrow’s third runway but also block new ones at Stanstead and Gatwick. Some [...]

Oil production hit by BP slick

admin — Sun, 09 May 2010 06:34:48 +0000

First published in the The Independent on Sunday, 9 May 2010 Even as the first oil from BP’s stricken Macondo well in the US Gulf of Mexico washed ashore this weekend, and as the clamour against the company mounts, experts claim the slick will be nothing like as catastrophic as forecast – for either the environment [...]

Why I agree with Nick

admin — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:09:37 +0000

So that’s it. Tomorrow we troop to the polling stations with almost no discussion of the most critical issue: energy. The last best hope of any meaningful exposure was lost when the final leaders’ debate focused overwhelmingly on immigration and the economy. But this is short sighted in the extreme: immigration will become a massive [...]

The end of the road

admin — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 15:11:37 +0000

It was never much to look at, but I was sorry to see it go. On the mean streets of Hampstead, my 13 year old Peugeot 406 diesel estate (42mpg) has reached the end of the road. At first it looked like a case for Autoglass, but on closer inspection, the thief-cum-vandal had jemmied the [...]

Coping with wind

admin — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 11:29:59 +0000

This article was published in Ecologist on 27 April 2010, and in the June edition of Energy World. Texas is full of surprises. In the historic home of the oil industry, the electricity supply is going green. A landscape that for over a century has been carpeted with ‘nodding donkey’ oil wells is now sprouting [...]

Peak at the polls

admin — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:50:10 +0000

Peak oil has come a long way in the last few years: from bug-eyed millennial cult to mainstream consensus, embracing academia, much of the oil industry, and now the US military. There’s a growing consensus global oil production will peak this side of 2020, with many forecasts clustered around the middle the decade and [...]

How long before the lights go out?

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:23:32 +0000

This article was first published in the Telegraph on 4 February 2010. Bad news for energy consumers continues to come thick and fast. Bills have more than doubled in the last six years, and could rise a further 25% in the next decade according to a wide-ranging report published yesterday by Ofgem. But even more [...]

Who’s afraid of the tar sands?

admin — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:25:11 +0000

This article was first published in Ecologist on 8 December 2009. Criticizing the Canadian tar sands used to be so simple. Environmentalists condemned them as a ‘climate crime’, while peak oilers argued they could never fill the gap left by conventional depletion. It turns out neither critique captures the full magnitude of the problem. In the [...]

Can non-conventional oil fill the gap?

admin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:10:13 +0000

A version of this article was published in New Scientist on 3 December 2009. The oil crisis is not dead, only sleeping, according to an emerging consensus. The price may have collapsed from last year’s all-time high of $147 per barrel to around $75 today, as the recession grinds away at demand for crude, [...]

Crawford deal signed in oil, not blood

admin — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:39:35 +0000

Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain’s former ambassador to Washington, mused last week that Tony Blair may have reached a secret deal with George Bush to topple Saddam Hussein a full year before the invasion took place. The deal was apparently clinched during a summit at the president’s Crawford ranch in April 2002, where the two leaders [...]

Last Oil Shock in Japan

admin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:51:57 +0000

The Last Oil Shock has now been published in Japanese, and is available online in Japan.

Last Oil Shock in Portugal

admin — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:45:02 +0000

The Last Oil Shock has now been published in Portuguese, and is available online in Portugal.

Peak oil report exposes UK position

admin — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:02:05 +0000

First published at The Ecologist, 8 October 2009. There is a “significant risk” that conventional oil production will peak before 2020, and forecasts that delay the event beyond 2030 are based on assumptions that are “at best optimistic and at worst implausible”. So says a major new report that puts the excitement over recent ‘giant’ [...]

BP’s ‘giant’ oil discovery would last three weeks

admin — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:35:57 +0000

BP announced the discovery of a ‘giant’ oilfield in the Gulf of Mexico last week, but what does it really amount to? The company issued guidance that the discovery, at its Tiber Prospect in the deepwater US Gulf of Mexico, is bigger than its Kaskida discovery of 2006, which it said was over 3 billion [...]

Peak oil around 2030 says IEA

admin — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:05:47 +0000

An article in the Independent caused a stir recently by claiming that the International Energy Agency’s chief economist Fatih Birol had predicted peak oil in ‘about ten years’ – a radical departure from the IEA’s position to date. Under the headline Warning: oil supplies are running out fast, the Independent’s science editor Steve Connor wrote: [...]

The Economist strikes again

admin — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:50:19 +0000

Bill Emmott argued in the Times this week that the world’s oil supply problems are simply down to OPEC greed, dismissed peak oil as the work of “planetary gloomsters” and assured readers that the world is not running out. Trotting out a series of discredited arguments, he maintains there would be plenty of cheap crude [...]

The great biogas bungle

admin — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:44:01 +0000

First published in The Ecologist on 4 August 2009, and Sustainable Business, October 2009. When David and Ruth of The Archers decided to set up an anaerobic digester to make biogas from farm waste, they quickly ran into trouble. Intended to produce electricity for the national grid and heat for their poly-tunnels, the project was [...]

Iraqi oil gameshow loses the plot

admin — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 06:32:08 +0000

A shorter version of this article was published in the The Independent on Sunday, 5 July 2009 The auction of Iraqi oil production licences last week was truly historic – not least because it was the first such exercise ever to be broadcast live on television. Over 30 companies were expected to compete for 8 contracts, [...]

Global warming: send in the tanks

admin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:57:52 +0000

First published in the Guardian, 18 June 2009. Forget expensive high tech silver bullets like nuclear fusion and carbon capture and storage, the solution to climate change lies in the humble electric immersion heater that sits in your hot water tank under the stairs. That’s the view of Dr Mark Barrett, senior researcher at the [...]

We’re in OPEC’s hands, but are they tied?

admin — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 09:49:58 +0000

This article was first published in the The Independent on Sunday, 14 June 2009 BP famously ‘doesn’t do’ oil price forecasts. After 18 months in which crude has ricocheted from just under $100 per barrel to an all time high of $147, then down to less than $40, and now up to $73 again, you can [...]

Renewable supergrid by 2030

admin — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 09:42:14 +0000

A short version of this article was published in the The Independent on Sunday, 14 June 2009 Europe could build an electricity supply based entirely on renewable energy by 2030, according to scientists making a presentation at the House of Commons this week. MPs will hear that an electricity ‘supergrid’ across Europe and North Africa could [...]

Still no UK energy policy

admin — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 08:56:14 +0000

First published in the The Independent on Sunday, 26 April 2009 “All targets and no trousers” seemed to be the gist of the reaction from environmentalists to the Budget this week. Greens of various shades welcomed the introduction of new legally binding carbon reduction goals but attacked the lack of a clear roadmap showing how they [...]

Electric avenues

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 09:49:58 +0000

First published in the The Independent on Sunday, 29 March 2009 ‘The future has not been cancelled,” quipped BP chief executive Tony Hayward in a bullish presentation about the company’s prospects recently. But one thing the company has been forced to cancel, or at least postpone, is a reception to celebrate its centenary at the British [...]

Green grid

admin — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 07:58:04 +0000

A version of this article was published in New Scientist on 12 March 2009. Thomas Edison might have relished the irony. Just as his most famous legacy, the incandescent light bulb, heads for extinction, his other great passion, direct current, is set to boom. The bulb that dominated lighting for over a century is now [...]

Why $40 per barrel is no cause for complacency

admin — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:25:29 +0000

By David Strahan and Gary Kendall of SustainAbility These days it is comforting to have one thing not to worry about. As the world teeters on the edge of a full-blown depression, and business is crushed between slumping sales and seized-up credit markets, at least the oil price is in retreat. From an historic [...]

Channel 4 News interview: London oil summit

admin — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:25:05 +0000

My interview on Channel 4 News on 19 December, about the London oil summit, can now be seen on You Tube. Click on ‘read more’. The segment starts about one and a half minutes into the recording. Channel 4 News.