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The Oil Drum writers: Where are they now?Posted by Euan Mearns on October 15, 2013 - 4:56amTopic: Site newsTags: big gav, brian maschoff, chris vernon, dave summers, euan mearns, gail tverberg, jeff vail, jerome a paris, lusde sousa, nate hagens, phil hart, robert rapier, rune likvern [list all tags]

Nate Hagens is at The Monkey TrapJoulesBurn (Brian Maschhoff) is at PicojouleEuan Mearns is at Energy MattersHeading Out (Dave Summers) is at Bit Tooth EnergyRune Likvern is at Fractional FlowGail the Actuary (Gail Tverberg) is at Our Finite WorldChris Vernon is at Chris VernonBig Gav is at Peak Energy AustraliaRobert Rapier is at Energy Trends Insiderjeffvail is at Jeff VailJrme Paris is at European Tribunephil hart is at Phil HartLus de Sousa is at At The Edge Of Time

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The Last PostPosted by Euan Mearns on September 22, 2013 - 9:34amTopic: Site newsTags: heading out, professor goose, the oil drum [list all tags]

The Oil Drum (TOD) was an internet energy phenomenon that ran for over eight years from April 2005 to September 2013. The site wasfounded by Prof. Goose (also known as Professor Kyle Saunders of Colorado State University) and Heading Out (also known asProfessor Dave Summers formerly of the Missouri University of Science and Technology).

The site took off with the advent of Hurricane Rita in September 2005 and resulted in the first 200+ comment event, indicating thatthere was demand for a site where concerned citizens could gather round a camp fire to discuss events impacting their energy suppliesand ultimately, their well being. In eight years, >960,000 comments have been posted. Two other energy linked disasters, theDeepwater Horizon blowout and the Fukushima Daiichi reactor melt downs would see readership soar to >75,000 unique visits per day.

These pages have hosted over 7,500 articles covering every aspect of the global energy system. It was not unusual for a post to attractover 600 comments, many of which were well informed and contained charts and links to other internet sources. The site would becomeknown for a uniquely high level of discourse where armchair analysts of all stripes added their knowledge to threads in a courteous, andultimately pro-social way that energy experts at hedge funds, corporations or universities might not have the freedom to do. It is thisemergent property of smart people sharing knowledge on a critical topic to humanity's future that will be missed.

The site was built on twin backbones that would often pull the readership in opposite directions. Drumbeats, edited by Leanan (whoremains anonymous to this day) provided daily energy news digest and a forum for debate. And articles, written by a legion of volunteerwriters, that strove to provide a more quantitative analysis of global energy supplies and the political, social and economic events thatlay behind them. All the content would not have been possible without the tireless efforts of Super G, our site engineer, who maintainedand updated software and hardware as the site grew and evolved for over eight years on a voluntary basis.

In the course of 2013, a decision was made to archive The Oil Drum and the main purpose of this Last Post is to provide some directionto new and future readers of the vast content it contains. The main contributors are listed below along with links to where their writingscan be now be found. If you are looking for content there are two main options. The first is to look for author specific content whereclicking on the live hyper linked name of the contributor will take you to a page giving access to all the content produced by that author.The second option is to use the Advanced Search facility at the top left of this page. Simply enter a few key words and this will return apage of the most relevant articles.

Editorial board

Arthur Berman (aeberman) Arthur E. Berman is a petroleum geologist with 35 years of oil and gas industry experience. He worked 20years for Amoco (now BP) and 15 years as consulting geologist. He gives keynote addresses for energy conferences, boards of directorsand professional societies. He has been interviewed about oil and gas topics on CBS, CNBC, CNN, Platts Energy Week, BNN,Bloomberg, Platts, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone and The New York Times.

He was a managing editor and frequent contributor of theoildrum.com, and an associate editor of the AAPG Bulletin. He is a Director of

The Oil Drum | Discussions about Energy and Our Future http://www.theoildrum.com/

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the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, and has served on the boards of directors of The Houston Geological Society and The Societyof Independent Professional Earth Scientists. He has published more than 100 articles on petroleum geology. He has done expertwitness and research work on several oil and gas trial and utility commission hearings.

He has an M.S. (Geology) from the Colorado School of Mines and a B.A. (History) from Amherst College.

Nate Hagens is a well-known speaker on the big picture related to the global macroeconomy. Nate'spresentations address opportunities and constraints we face in the transition away from growth basedeconomies as fossil fuels become more costly. On the supply side, Nate focuses on biophysical economics (netenergy) and the interrelationship between money and natural resources. On the demand side, Nate addressesthe behavioral underpinnings to conspicuous consumption and offers suggestions on how individuals andsociety might better adapt to the end of growth. He will be writing at themonkeytrap.us.

Nate has appeared on PBS, BBC, ABC, NPR, and has lectured around the world. He holds a Masters Degree inFinance from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont.Previously Nate was President of Sanctuary Asset Management and a Vice President at the investment firmsSalomon Brothers and Lehman Brothers. Nate is the former President of the Institute for the Study of Energyand Our Future (non-profit publisher of The Oil Drum), is current US Director of the Institute for Integrated

Economic Research, and serves on the Board of the Post Carbon Institute. Nate also served as the lead editor of the Oil Drum for severalyears.

Rembrandt Koppelaar has since 2010 been a Research Associate at the Swiss Institute for IntegratedEconomic Research (IIER), where he works on modelling of costs of resource and energy flows. Since June2012 he combines this with a PhD research position at Imperial College London, to contribute to a spatialsimulation of the resource flows of an economy at a micro-level using agent-based approaches. He joined theOil Drum in 2006 first as a contributor and later as an editor, triggering by his concern in oil depletion. Aninterest that also led him to establish and become President of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & GasNetherlands from 2006 to 2010. He is author of the book De Permanente Oliecrisis discussing the end ofcheap oil and its consequences (Dutch language, Nieuw Amsterdam publishers, 2008). Rembrandt holds aBSc and MSc in economics from Wageningen University, the Netherlands.

Brian Maschhoff (JoulesBurn) earned a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of New Mexico and a Ph.D inChemistry from the University of Arizona. He has worked at several academic institutions and governmentlaboratories, and currently engages in a wide variety of scientific and technical pursuits including web-basededucation, data visualization, and research on salmon recovery. His research on the oil fields of Saudi Arabiais also posted at Satellite o'er the Desert. He also blogs at Picojoule, and he might eventually be found@joulesburn on Twitter.

Euan Mearns has B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in geology from The University of Aberdeen. Following anacademic career in Norway and a business career in Scotland I took time off work in 2005 to help care for twosons and two dogs and to allow my wife's career to blossom. In 2006, wondering why the oil price and thevalue of my oil stocks kept going up I stumbled upon the The Oil Drum that provided unique insight, at thattime, into The Earth energy system. Feeling the need to put something back I submitted a couple of articlesand have since written roughly 100 posts and hosted many guest posts from worthy authors.

In 2009 I was appointed as Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Aberdeen and teach occasionalcourses there. For the last 7 years, writing and editing articles for The Oil Drum has consumed a fair portion ofmy time, but I have in return learned a huge amount. I also continue to work as a consultant for the oil

industry. The focus of my interest is the importance of energy to society, society's response to the infrastructure and secondary impactsof energy provision and the political response. I plan to continue writing about Energy, Environment and Policy at Energy Matters.

New post, 8th October: UK North Sea Oil Production DeclineNew post 18th November: Marcellus shale gas Bradford Co Pennsylvania: production history and declinesNew post, 28th November: What is the real cost of shale gas?New post, 9th December: OPEC oil production update July 2013New post, 18th December: OECD oil production update July 2013New post, 3rd January: Global Oil Supply Update July 2013New post, 6th January: The Primary Energy Tale of Two Continents

Paul Sears was born in the UK, and did a Ph.D. in chemistry at Cambridge. Since first coming to Canada on a post-doctoral fellowshipat the University of Western Ontario in 1973, he has worked at the University of Toronto and in the Canadian Federal Government inOttawa. Most of his work since the mid 1970s has been on the supply and use of energy in one form or another. His interest in thelimitations to oil supply dates back to about 1962, when he was at school watching a promotional film from an oil company. The subjectof the film was oil exploration, and this caused him to wonder about the dependence of our society on oil and the limits to supply. Otherinterests are canoeing, kayaking, skiing, hiking, camping, keeping planted aquaria and learning Mandarin Chinese. Sadly, Paul Searspassed away on September 13, 2012. You can read an obituary here.

Dave Summers who writes under the pen name, "Heading Out", comes from a family that for at least ninegenerations has been coal miners, and he started his working life, as an Indentured Apprentice, in 1961shoveling coal on one of the last hand-won coal faces in the UK at Seghill, after a few weeks supplying that facewith the help of a pit pony. With bachelors and doctoral degrees from Leeds University in the UK he moved toRolla, Missouri and Missouri University of Science and Technology (then UMR) in 1968. He was namedCurators Professor of Mining Engineering in 1980 and for many years directed the Rock Mechanics andExplosives Research Center at MS&T. His main work has been in the developing use of high-pressure water


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for cutting, cleaning and demilitarization. As one of the quiet revolutions that has crept into industry duringhis career, his research group worked in nuclear cleanup, rocket motors, and surgical applications as well as developing tools to cut, drilland mine more mundane rock, coal and metals. The team carved the half-scale Stonehenge out of Georgia granite, using only water, andlater cut Edwina Sandys Millennium Arch from Missouri granite, both of which are on the MS&T campus. They also used the techniquein a demonstration excavation that resulted in creating the OmniMax theater under the Gateway Arch in St Louis.

He retired from the University, and was named Emeritus in 2010, and lives quietly with his wife Barbara, with occasional commutes tovisit their children, located on the two coasts very far from rural America.

In 2004 he began to write a blog, and in 2005 teamed with Kyle Saunders to jointly found The Oil Drum, a site for discussions onenergy and our future. He now writes on energy, the applications of waterjets, a little on the use of the 3D modeling program Poser, andoccasionally on climate matters. His blog, where the Tech Talks continue, can be found at Bit Tooth Energy. He again thanks all thosewho have contributed to The Oil Drum over the years and wishes them joy and prosperity in their futures!

Dr. David Archibold Summers has written numerous articles, a textbook, Waterjetting Technology, and jointly holds several patents,the last two of which have been licensed and deal a) with the use of waterjets to remove skin cancer and b) for high speed drilling ofsmall holes through the earth.

Gail Tverberg (Gail the Actuary) became interested in resource limits and how these affect insurancecompanies and the economy more generally in 2005. She began writing about this issue while working as aproperty-casualty actuarial consultant at Towers Watson. In 2007, she took early retirement to workspecifically on the issue of oil limits.

Between 2007 and its suspension in 2013, Gail worked as a contributor and editor at TheOilDrum.com. Shealso started her own blog, OurFiniteWorld.com, where she continues to write on a regular basis. Her writingsinclude Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis, published in the peer-reviewed journal Energyin January 2012. She has spoken at at many conferences on subjects related to oil limits, including both

academic and actuarial conferences. She now plans to write a book, tentatively called "Discontinuity Ahead: How Oil Limits Affect theEconomy."

Gail worked for CNA Insurance prior to joining Tillinghast (which eventually became part of Towers Watson) in 1981. She has a BA inMathematics from St. Olaf College and an MS in Mathematics from the University of Illinois, Chicago. She is a fellow of the CasualtyActuarial Society and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries.

Her Twitter feed is @gailtheactuary.

Chris Vernon originally graduated with a masters degree in computational physics before working for tenyears in the field of mobile telecoms specialising in radio network architecture and off-grid power systems inemerging markets. He subsequently returned to university to take an MSc in Earth system science and a PhDin glaciology focusing on the mass balance of the Greenland ice sheet. Chris is a trustee at the Centre forSustainable Energy, works for the UK Met Office and maintains a personal web page.

Selected contributors

Big Gav studied Engineering at the University of Western Australia in Perth. Since then he has travelled widely and worked in the oiland gas, power generation, defence, technology and banking industries. He has been blogging about peak oil for almost 3 years at PeakEnergy (Australia) and is probably the most prolific example of a techno-optimist in the peak oil world. He may be alone in thinking thatpeak oil represents a great opportunity to switch to a clean energy based world economy, rather than the trigger for the end of industrialcivilisation.

Jason Bradford is currently a Farm Manager in Corvallis, OR and a Managing Partner for a sustainablefarmland fund, Farmland LP. Most of his writing for The Oil Drum occurred while he lived in Willits, CA,where he was instrumental in the founding of Willits Economic Localization, hosted a radio program called"The Reality Report," and was a board member of the local Renewable Energy Development Institute. He alsofounded and ran a small farm at a local elementary school with a lot of community support and the backing ofThe Post Carbon Institute, where he is currently a board member. His brief but enjoyable academic careerbegan at Washington University in St. Louis and the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG), where he taughtcourses in Ecology and from which he received a doctorate in Evolution and Population Biology in 2000. Aftergraduation he was hired by the Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development at MBG, and between

2001 and 2004 secured grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society for multi-disciplinaryresearch on issues related to species extinction and ecosystem function. His "aha moment" came during this research period where theconnections between environmental decline, resource consumption, economic growth, belief systems and institutional inertia led to adramatic change in the course of his life's work.

He continues to blog at Farmland LP.

David Murphy is an Assistant Professor in the Geography Department and an Associate of the Institute for the Study of theEnvironment, Sustainability, and Energy, both at Northern Illinois University. He serves also as an Environmental Policy Analyst for theEnvironmental Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory. Dr. Murphys research focuses on the intersection of energy,economics, and the environment. Recently, his work has focused on estimating how the extraction of natural gas in the Marcellus Shalehas impacted the provision of ecosystem services from the local environment. In addition, he researches how the energy return on


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investment from oil is related to oil price and economic growth. Dr. Murphy's work for Argonne National Laboratory addresses theenvironmental impacts associated with energy development.

He tweets: @djmurphy04

Robert Rapier works in the energy industry and writes and speaks about issues involving energy and theenvironment. He is Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President at Merica International, a forestryand renewable energy company involved in a variety of projects around the world. Robert has 20 years ofinternational engineering experience in the chemicals, oil and gas, and renewable energy industries, and holdsseveral patents related to his work. He has worked in the areas of oil refining, natural gas production,synthetic fuels, ethanol production, butanol production, and various biomass to energy projects. Robert is theauthor of Power Plays: Energy Options in the Age of Peak Oil. He is also the author of the R-Squared Energy

Column at Energy Trends Insider. His articles on energy and sustainability have appeared in numerous media outlets, including theWall Street Journal, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, The Economist, and Forbes.

Jeff Vail (jeffvail) is an energy intelligence analyst and former US Air Force intelligence officer. He has a B.S. in engineering and historyfrom the US Air Force Academy and a Juris Doctor from the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. His interests are in globalenergy geopolitics and the the "rhizome" theory of social and economic organization. He is the author of the political anthropology bookA Theory of Power and maintains a blog at http://www.jeffvail.net.

Jrme Paris is an investment banker in Paris, specialised in structured finance for energy projects, in particular in the wind powersector. After graduating from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, he wrote his Ph.D. in economics in 1995 on the independence of Ukraine,with a strong focus on the gas relationship between Ukraine and Russia, and he worked on financings for the Russian oil & gas industryfor several years after that. He is the editor of the European Tribune, a community website on European politics and energy issues. Hehas written extensively about energy issues, usually from an economic or geopolitical angle for the European Tribune and for DailyKoswhere he led a collective effort to draft an energy policy for the USA, Energize America.

Rune Likvern After Rune's first time seeing The Oil Drum (TOD and Institute for the Study of Energy andOur Future; ISEOF), in 2005 he created an account as nrgyman2000 and later got an invitation to becomepart of the staff of volunteer writers at what was then TOD Europe. In 2008 he started to post under his realname.

He is a Norwegian presently living in Norway and holding a masters degree from what is now the NorwegianUniversity of Science and Technology. For more than two decades he was employed in various positions bymajor international oil companies, primarily Statoil, working with operations, field/area developments (in theNorwegian sector of the North Sea) and implementation (primarily logistics) of Troll Gas Sales Agreement

(TGSA) which is about natural gas deliveries to European customers. This was followed by a period as an independent energy (oil/gasfields assessments, cash flow analysis, portfolio analysis etc.) consultant and as VP for an energy hedge fund in New York. In recentyears he had a sabbatical to do more in depth research, reading and participating in discussions about energy, biology (what makeshuman {brains} what they are and why), and not least financial and economic subjects in several global forums as well as some advisorywork.

Presently he is looking for gainful employment/engagements.

He also posts on his blog Fractional Flow(primarily in Norwegian, but some future posts are planned for in English).

Phil Hart studied Materials Engineering at Monash University in Melbourne before spending five years withShell UK Exploration and Production, based in Aberdeen, Scotland. He worked on two new North Sea oil andgas field development projects followed by a stint with the Brent field maintenance team as a corrosionengineer. In late 2006, Phil returned to Melbourne and was for a while an active member of the AustralianAssociation for the Study of Peak Oil. He provided many briefings to government, business and communityaudiences and is still available for presentations around Melbourne and Victoria. Phil now works primarily inthe water industry but consults as required for The Institute for Sensible Transport as well. He is also a keenastronomer and night sky photographer: www.philhart.com.

Lus Alexandre Duque Moreira de Sousa (Lus de Sousa) is a researcher at the Public Research InstituteHenri Tudor in Luxembourg and a Ph.D. student in Informatics Engineering at the Technical University ofLisbon. Lus created the first Portuguese language website dedicated to Peak Oil in 2005(PicoDoPetroleo.net); in 2006 he would be one of the founders of ASPO-Portugal and later that year

integrated the team that started the European branch of The Oil Drum. Since then he has continuously written about Energy and itsinterplay with Politics and Economics, both in English and Portuguese. Lus is a regular presence at the collective blog European Tribuneand writes on the broader issues of life on his personal blog AtTheEdgeOfTime.


The House That Randy BuiltPosted by Euan Mearns on September 21, 2013 - 5:34pmTopic: MiscellaneousTags: passive house, randy udall, sustainable living [list all tags]

One of the nice aspects of the 7+ years I have been involved with The Oil Drum has been attending conferences and meeting with someof my cyber friends, who by and large figure among the nicest bunch of folks I ever met. In 2007 I attended the ASPO meeting inHouston and it was then that I met Randy Udall for the first time. Well you know what some Americans are like - you meet, you chat awhile, discover you get along, down a couple of beers and before you know it you are invited to go visit. And so it was with Randy Udall....


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The house that Randy built, sunk low in the Colorado terrain, provides shelter from winter storms and from exposure to summer sun.Photovoltaics, solar hot water (on the roof) and a single wood burner (chimney) provides all the energy needs.

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Twenty (Important) Concepts I Wasn't Taught in Business School -Part IPosted by nate hagens on September 20, 2013 - 12:27amTopic: Economics/Finance

Twenty-one years ago I received an MBA with Honors from the University of Chicago. Theworld became my oyster. Or so it seemed. For many years I achieved status in the metricspopular in our day ~ large paychecks, nice cars, travel to exotic places, girlfriend(s), novelty,and perhaps most importantly, respect for being a 'successful' member of society. But it turnsout my financial career, shortlived as it was, occurred at the tail end of an era ~ where financialmarkers would increasingly decouple from the reality they were created to represent. My skillof being able to create more digits out of some digits, (or at least being able to sell thatlikelihood), allowed me to succeed in a "turbo" financial system that would moonshot over thenext 20 years. For a short time I was in the 1% (and still am relative to 'all humans who haveever lived'). Being in the 1% afforded me an opportunity to dig a little deeper in what was reallygoing on (because I quit, and had time to read and think about things for 10 years). It turns outthe logic underpinning the financial system, and therefore my career, was based on some coreflawed assumptions that had 'worked' in the short run but have since become outdated, putting societies at significant risks.

Around 30% of matriculating undergraduate college students today choose a business major, yet 'doing business' without knowledge ofbiology, ecology, and physics entirely circumvents first principles of how our world really works ~ my too long but also too shortsummary of the important things I wasn't taught in business school is below.


So, What Are You Doing?Posted by nate hagens on September 19, 2013 - 12:17amTopic: Site news

It's September and we still have 7 more 'final' posts in the queue (myself, Joules, Jerome, Jason, Art, Dave Murphy, and Euan...) and willrun them every 2 days until finished. Leanan will post a final Drumbeat later this week where people can leave website links contactdetails, etc.

For 8 years we read about what people think about energy related themes. I thought it would be a good idea to use this thread tohighlight what people are actually doing in their lives given the knowledge they've gleaned from studying this topic, which really is moreof a study of the future of society.

What do TOD members plan to do in the future? Herding goats, fixing potholes, creating web sites, switching careers, etc? I'll go first.Feel free to use my template or just inform others what you're doing. This might be interesting thread to check back on in a few/many


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years.....(Please no posting of energy charts etc. and let's not respond to others in this thread, just a long list of what people are doing w/their time).

Ere we scatter to the ether, please share, anonymously or otherwise : what are people doing?


The Exponential Legacy of Al BartlettPosted by JoulesBurn on September 12, 2013 - 2:32pmTopic: MiscellaneousTags: albert bartlett, limits to growth [list all tags]

Dr. Albert Allen Bartlett, emeritus professor of physics at the University of Colorado, died September 7, 2013 at the age of 90. It iscoincidental that, in the year that he "officially" retired from teaching (1988), I first heard his famous lecture Arithmetic, Population, andEnergy (although I don't recall if that was the title at the time). I was in my last year in graduate school, and his talk was one of thekeynote presentations (or perhaps during dinner) for a scientific conference. It was seemingly out of place given that the subject of themeeting was surface chemistry and physics, but it most certainly became stuck somewhere in my mind for reasons other than itsnovelty.

Most scientists are transfixed on interesting scientific details, some with relevance to technological problems, and perhaps buzz-worthyenough to attract funding. There has never been much money in solving problems with no real technological solution. I becamereacquainted with this talk in 2006, probably via a link on The Oil Drum. TOD was by its nature dealing with limits to growth (of oil, ifnothing else), and over the last few years, we have discussed the various ways in which we could perhaps keep the oil flowing or replaceit with something else. Perhaps the implications of exponential growth was kept in the back room somewhere, like an embarrassingrelative, while the latest "game changing" solution was bandied about. But we need to continually remind ourselves that, whileimportant, finding the next energy source or improving efficiencies the keep the economy growing are not long-term solutions for afinite planet.

Below are some more reflections on Prof. Bartlett's legacy, from ASPO-USA (where he had long been on the advisory board) and fromthe University of Colorado.


Of Milk Cows and Saudi ArabiaPosted by JoulesBurn on September 10, 2013 - 9:59amTopic: Supply/ProductionTags: aramco, ghawar, saudi arabia [list all tags]

Under the desert in eastern Saudi Arabia lies Ghawar, the largest oil field in the world.It has been famously productive, with a per-well flow rate of thousands of barrels perday, owing to a combination of efficient water injection, good rock permeability, andother factors. At its best, it set the standard for easy oil. The first wells were drilledwith rather rudimentary equipment hauled across the desert sands, and the oil wouldflow out at ten thousand barrels per day. It was, in a sense, a giant udder. And theworld milked it hard for awhile.

However, this article isn't just about a metaphor; it is also about cows, the Holsteinsof Haradh. But in the end, I will circle back to the present and future of Saudi oilproduction.


IEA Sankey DiagramsPosted by JoulesBurn on September 7, 2013 - 11:05pmTopic: Supply/ProductionTags: iea [list all tags]

The International Energy Agency has taken its share of abuse from The Oil Drum over the years for its rather optimistic forecasts. But itdeserves a hearty shout-out for an invaluable resource it has on its web site: Interactive Sankey Diagrams for the World.


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Sankey Diagram showing world energy flows (Click for larger view)


My Last Campfire PostPosted by Jason Bradford on September 7, 2013 - 12:13amTopic: Demand/ConsumptionTags: agriculture energy use, sustainable agriculture [list all tags]

I checked my user profile for this site and discovered that as of today I have been a member for 7 years and 37 weeks. Wow! So much hashappened to me and my family over those years and a lot of it was shared on The Oil Drum. For reasons Ill explain, I havent beenaround much lately. My most recent article was over three years ago.

My first writings for The Oil Drum were over six years ago as guest posts through Nate Hagens, and then as a staff contributor for theCampfire section of the site. I am not an energy expert so my role wasnt about modeling depletion or providing context to the energynews of the week. What I did was consider the broader relationships between energy, resources and society, and explore theimplications of more expensive and less energy to our consumer-oriented economy and culture. The most complete and succinctexample of this role is probably my Beware the Hungry Ghosts piece, which includes this passage:

Several religious traditions describe what are termed hungry ghosts. These sad beings have insatiable appetites, with tinymouths and huge stomachs. Modern society creates hungry ghosts among the living. We have more than ever, but areconstantly bombarded with messages that it is never enough. The poor go to dollar stores, the middle class spend hours at BedBath and Beyond, the rich buy ever larger yachts, and city planners are always looking for more land and water in which toexpand their urban sphere. Wants have become indistinguishable from needs. I anxiously walk among our nation of hungryghosts, asking myself what these addicts will do when they can't get their fix?

What many of us found at The Oil Drum was a place to share our anxieties with those who share our anxieties. I am not being dismissiveof this at all! Many here have points of view that place us outside of conventional wisdom, and this can be socially difficult. Where elsecan we go to have conversations that may be impolite, misunderstood and dismissed by the hungry ghosts we live among?

A fine example of thinking profoundly differently is in Kurt Cobbs essay Upside Down Economics in which he gives a visualrepresentation of U.S. GDP from the perspective of an Ecological Economist:


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Figure 1


The Economic and Political Consequences of the Last 10 Years ofRenewable Energy DevelopmentPosted by Jerome a Paris on September 5, 2013 - 9:22amTopic: Alternative energyTags: energiewende, germany, natural gas, power, renewable energy, wind [list all tags]

I've been privileged to be an editor of TOD over the past several years, and am glad to have been invited to do a final post as the sitemoves to an archive status.

When I started writing about energy on the blogs in 2003/2004, I was writing mostly about Russia, gas pipelines and gas geopolitics.There were so many conspiracy theories abounding on topics like the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan pipeline or (a bit later) Russiavs Ukraine pipeline conflicts that I felt the need to put out a different version, given that I knew the inside story on many of these issues- and that got me invited to contribute these to TOD as well. In the meantime, my job (which was, and - full disclosure - remains, tofinance energy projects) slowed moved from oil&gas work to power sector transactions and, increasingly, to renewable sector deals, andI started writing about the wind business, in my mind from the perspective of a banker wanting to make sure that these projects couldbe paid back over periods of 15 or 20 years.

While my work is now almost exclusively focused on offshore wind in Northern Europe, I still do not consider myself a 'wind shill'... butit does give me a different perspective on the debates currently going on about energy policy in various places, and on the changes to thepower sector caused (among others, by renewables) that are underpinning such debates, and I thought it would be a useful complement,together with Big Gav's overview of the clean energy sector, to the other articles more traditionally focused on the oil&gas side ofthings.

I'll focus on Germany, where the transformation has been most advanced (and even has brought a new word to us: the Energiewende),and where the consequences of high renewable penetration are most visible.


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