From Cap on wind power riles critics:

The Stelmach government foresees nearly doubling the amount of wind-power generation allowed in Alberta, even as the province remains the only jurisdiction in Canada to cap the production of wind energy.

“There is every possibility that (the cap) could move to, in the interim, someplace around 1,500 megawatts,” said Energy Minister Mel Knight. “As we move along and Alberta’s system becomes more robust, and we’re able to integrate more wind, I can see it moving beyond that.”

The wind power industry is demanding the province go further than raising the amount of production permitted and remove the cap outright.

Yowza! Did Canada run short of politicians and borrow Senator James Inhofe from the US? I don’t know how else to explain a freaking cap on wind power still being in place in 2007 anywhere on the planet.

From To Peak or not to Peak – A View from the Front Line:

These remarks are my response to comments on the NPC report.

…

And now to put on a slightly more defensive hat - I feel it appropriate to comment on the motives of the NPC. Yes, I work for a company that is a member of the NPC, but I am not a big hairy monster who dips his food in crude oil before devouring it. Similarly, I do not believe that the NPC and its affiliate members are conspiring to cover up a scenario that paints a dire end time for the world as we face more and more extreme difficulties on the O&G supply side. I challenge you to read and reread the NPC’s executive summary bullet points, both the observations and also the recommendations. I put forth that if one did not know the identity of the authoring body, or if one were not as intimately in tune with the current energy situation as all of you reading this assuredly are, you might think that this was a rather enlightening piece of work. Admittedly I may be biased as an industry participant, but please know that my passions reside firmly in the middle ground here and I seek only solutions as do all of you.

I have to admit–I don’t know what to think of this one. I’ve read it a couple of times, and I don’t know whether to play nice and say, “Yes, it’s definitely a ’step in the right direction’, and we need to encourage further dialog an openness,” or listen to the evil little man perched on my shoulder and scream, “Are you freaking kidding me???”

Please go read the original and tell me what you think.

From Big Oil spends more, pumps fewer barrels:

The world’s three largest fully publicly traded oil firms are investing billions of dollars more this year and the extra spending has yet to result in higher production.

Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc posted falling second-quarter output, even though they plan up to a total of $61 billion in 2007 capital spending, up 5.5 percent from 2006.

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The drop in supply reflects declining output from fields in mature oil regions like the North Sea, violence by militants in Nigeria that has cut output for some companies and slow access to big sources of new reserves.

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Resources are increasingly located where extraction is technically harder, such as beneath seas that ice over in winter off Russia’s Sakhalin Island, or in politically volatile regions like the Middle East.

“Access to easy oil and easy gas…there’s less access and less of those hydrocarbons around,” said Shell Chief Executive Jeroen van der Veer when the company reported earnings last week.

“The new supplies will come out of more complex projects — far away, very cold, different political regimes. They’re usually large-scale projects, with risks.”

You know the routine–this is precisely what peak oil theory predicts, no matter how many detailed descriptions you see that avoid using The Term Which Must Not Be Mentioned, peak oil.

This article and many others talk about the years of underinvestment by the oil industry, something I want to address briefly.

In my opinion we have essentially two choices of what to believe. Either the oil companies all over-reacted to the low oil prices in the late 1980’s and throughout the 1990’s (in which case they’re not the brightest bulbs on the tree), or they saw peak oil coming and they intentionally cut way back on capital spending. (And no, I’m not about to suggest that this was a massive case of market manipulation; show me proof of that, and I’ll make the accusation.)

The “wrong guess” hypothesis doesn’t need much more explanation. They misread the market, underinvested in critical resources, and contributed to the mess we’re in now. As Matt Simmons has pointed out in several of his presentations, the oil companies have a pretty bad track record in reading the market trends, so this could very well explain their underinvestment.

The “dodging peak oil” hypothesis is intriguing. Imagine the top people at one of the major oil companies in a meeting, and they conclude that peak oil is coming soon. Why should they invest in a lot of capital that could well be underutilized long before its normal service life ends? Further, if we are approaching the peak, then doesn’t it make sense to limit investment, push the price of oil even higher pre-peak than it would go on its own, help kick start the big transition away from oil (oh, the humanitarians!), and, by the way, maximize our profits from a dwindling resource base? How hard would it be for people who believed the peak was coming soon to talk themselves into that course of action? They could see it as the ultimate win-win, in biz talk: They maximize profits while they help save the dumb old consumers from themselves.

This is yet another situation where I’m not sure what to believe. Can the oil companies not have seen peak oil coming? Alternatively, how could they have been so wrong in the past?

A gold star to the first person who identifies the movie and the character who delivered the unbastardized version of the title of this post.