The great days of the North Sea as an oil and gas region are behind it. Successive waves of activity have sustained the industry: first the Dutch gas boom of the 1960s, then the oil rush of the 1970s and early 1980s, then the UK and Norwegian gas developments of the late 1980s and 1990s. It does not look likely that another wave will come along.
The Netherlands’ gas production peaked in 1977, although its decline since then has been very slow. The UK’s oil output peaked in 1999, and its gas in 2000. Norway’s gas output has been growing steadily, and the opening of the Ormen Lange field will raise it again this year, but its oil production peaked in 2001. Last year the UK and Norway were the world’s fastest-declining major oil producers.
Yet while the region is clearly past its best, that does not mean it is dying. There is still plenty of oil and gas there left to be extracted. The problem will be persuading the industry to invest enough to make the best use of those resources, FT.com reported.
The International Energy Agency, which represents the rich oil-consuming countries, has highlighted the North Sea’s decline as one of the reasons it is becoming more pessimistic about the potential of countries that are not members of Opec to supply oil in the decades to come.
Fatih Birol, the IEA’s chief economist, told the Financial Times recently he estimated that the “natural“ rate at which North Sea oil output would decline, without any further investment by producers, would be 20 percent a year. With the investment that is going in, it is still declining at an annual rate of about 8 percent.
In the UK sector, there is a whole generation of oil production facilities that are coming towards the end of their useful lives. About 70 UK installations are 30 or more years old.
Some, according to the UK’s Health and Safety Executive, the official safety agency, have suffered from underinvestment during the period of low oil prices during the 1990s. A recent HSE report on inspections of 100 UK facilities--about 40 percent of the total--found that half of them were in a “poor“ state.
The UK industry has invested £3 billion over the past three years in asset integrity in the North Sea, to shore up that ageing infrastructure.
The discoveries of the 1970s included some huge fields. Forties held 3 billion barrels of oil, Brent 2.5 billion. Today companies are looking at fields that could hold as little as 20 million barrels.
Oil & Gas UK argues that there is a “window“ for getting more investment into the North Sea to enable those smaller pockets of reserves to be extracted profitably using existing platforms and pipelines. Once that infrastructure gets decommissioned, getting the remaining oil and gas out will become much more costly.
The latest signs are not encouraging. In spite of the rise in oil to close to $100 a barrel, investment in the UK sector of the North Sea is likely to be less this year than last year.
For the industry, the tax treatment of the North Sea is crucial. The UK government has raised the corporation tax rate paid by oil and gas companies twice in recent years, and it is also creating troubling uncertainty over the tax treatment of the costs of decommissioning old facilities, which will become an increasingly significant issue in the years to come.
Mr Webb says he believes the UK government is “listening“, and he is more optimistic than he was a year ago, but pressure on the public finances may make it difficult to give the industry any significant tax breaks.
The North Sea oil and gas boom has also created clusters in industries such as underwater engineering, which employs 30,000 in the UK and exports its services to the world.
But in calling recently for the establishment of a new “center of excellence“ for research, training and business support for sub-sea engineering, David Pridden, chief executive of the industry association, warned: “Other countries such as Brazil and Norway are investing heavily in programmes between industry, academia and government to deliver the next generation of technologies to unlock remaining reserves. We have to do the same.“
For some experts, the example of Norway shows there could have been another path for the UK. Norway’s oil production grew much less quickly than the UK’s during the 1970s and 1980s, only overtaking it in 1991.
Its gas production similarly grew more slowly in the 1990s and the present decade, exceeding the UK’s only last year.
Norway’s decision in October not to allow the expansion of output at the Troll gas field, a project planned by StatoilHydro, the state-controlled oil company, is symbolic of the way the government continues to husband the country’s resources.
The decision was not popular with some, who saw it as unwelcome government interference.

There is great concern over the greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles that contribute to global warming. Transportation has become a major issue. New fuels, new cars, and new types of communities are being discussed as solutions.
Gasoline-burning cars are a major contributor to global warming. In fact, they are the second largest cause of global warming pollution in the United States. It would be beneficial if the cars could be more efficient. If they could burn cleaner fuels, it would even be better, americanchronicle.com reported.
It is predicted that Americans will continue to put gasoline-burning cars on the road at alarming rates over the next twenty years. The number estimated is around 300 million new cars. With this expectation, it is clear that cars should be made with energy efficiency in mind. Otherwise, they will cause extensive global warming.
Hybrid engines are being touted by many celebrities as a way to prevent global warming. Many celebrities prefer the Prius hybrid car. These hybrid cars do, in fact, double gas mileage. At the same time, they reduce harmful emissions that lead to global warming.
Future technologies for cars, such as fuel cells, may ease global warming even more. Fuel cells change hydrogen fuel and oxygen into electricity. Then, the electricity is used to run the vehicle. This technology has already been used by NASA and is projected to help ease global warming in the future.
Alternate fuels have been in the news for helping with reducing global warming as well. One of the most interesting fuels is bio-diesel. This type of fuel can be made from a variety of sources. Vegetable oils such as soybean and rapeseed oils have been used successfully in regular diesel vehicles.
Animal fats work, but are rarely used because they are too expensive. However, used oil from fast food restaurants can be employed to do the same thing. It is surprising that global warming can be slowed down by the use of fast food by-products.
Ethanol is being used in many countries, now including the US, to decrease pollution and dependence on foreign oil. Global warming is impacted, too. Brazil, which uses ethanol almost exclusively, makes the fuel from sugar cane. In the US, corn is the chief source of ethanol.
Some cars are flex-fuel cars which can be run on different fuel sources. They can use alcohol, gasoline, or a combination. E85 is mostly ethanol with 15 percent of the fuel being gasoline. This fuel performs a little better than pure ethanol, but is more conducive to cutting down on global warming than gasoline.
Another way global warming can be addressed through transportation issues is in community planning. Communities can be built so that people can spend more time walking or cycling than driving. This cuts down dramatically on greenhouse gas emissions, thereby reducing global warming.
The world, especially the US, can make some changes in the way they move about and transport their goods. If people do nothing, greenhouse gasses will surely increase drastically. However, if changes are made, global warming will be cut to a very large degree.

The LA Auto Show has worked hard to focus on environmentally friendly cars, so every exhibitor dutifully trotted out its greenest vehicles and research programs.

You know what a hybrid car looks like--the Toyota Prius, right? At least that was the prevailing wisdom before this year’s Los Angeles Auto Show in mid-November.
Now a “hybrid electric vehicle“ may well be a 2,500-kilogram sport-utility vehicle with a huge V8 engine. General Motors and Chrysler together now have no fewer than five of them. But underscoring the cost of developing hybrid systems, all five--new versions of the Cadillac Escalade, Chevrolet Tahoe, Chrysler Aspen, Dodge Dakota, and GMC Yukon--use the same Two-Mode Hybrid transmission, jointly engineered by GM, Daimler and Chrysler, and BMW, Spectrum.ieee.org reported.
The Chevrolet Tahoe Two-Mode Hybrid even won the widely publicized Green Car of the Year award, presented annually by Green Car Journal. (Its jury included such luminaries as talk-show host Jay Leno.) Weighing in at about 2500 kg, the Tahoe Hybrid is the first of a long string of GM vehicles to be offered with the Two-Mode Hybrid system.
Using the same space as GM’s six-speed automatic transmission, the Two-Mode Hybrid system is made up of four fixed gears, two 40-kilowatt sustained electric motors, and three planetary gear sets. With a nickel-metal-hydride battery pack, it improves the Tahoe’s city fuel economy 50 percent, from 17 liters per 100 kilometers to 11 L/100 km (14 to 21 miles per gallon). As GM has noted frequently, that’s the same city mileage as a nonhybrid 4-cylinder Toyota Camry.
A test-drive in a hybrid Tahoe some weeks earlier showed that GM has achieved its goal for the truck--to improve mileage substantially while offering the same passenger- and load-carrying capacity as a full-size sport utility. Driving the Tahoe Hybrid feels familiar, except that the engine node is disconnected from the accelerator and speed: it decides for itself when to replace or supplement engine power with electric propulsion, so anticipated shift points arrive later, or not at all.
The Tahoe has many subtle changes to offset the added mass of the hybrid transmission and battery. Some body panels are aluminum, the roof rails have been removed for better aerodynamics, and an entirely new front grille and fascia assembly improves airflow, lowering front ground clearance to 15 centimeters (6 inches).
In contrast, said Glenn Denomme, Chrysler’s chief engineer for hybrid power-train systems, the Hemi Hybrid models of the Dodge Dakota and Chrysler Aspen add the Two-Mode system to an otherwise unchanged version of the standard SUV. “Even with hybrid mileage, our customers want the full vehicle with the same capacities as the standard version,“ he said.
Not discussed was the source of battery packs for these vehicles--Panasonic, a company most often associated with Toyota. When asked if he was confident that the Japanese company would and could supply as many battery packs as needed, an executive with one automaker said only, “That’s an interesting question,“ underscoring the complex battles among global carmakers as they ally and compete in a world of evolving motive power sources.
The LA Auto Show has worked hard to focus on environmentally friendly cars, so every exhibitor dutifully trotted out its greenest vehicles and research programs.
After hybrid trucks came cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells. The biggest news was the North American unveiling of Honda’s FCX Clarity, a stylish four-door sedan--with a 100-kW version of the company’s V Flow fuel cell--almost identical to the FCX Concept seen last summer.
The new vertical fuel-cell configuration, 65 percent smaller than the previous generation, is compact enough to fit in the center tunnel of this relatively low car. A lithium-ion battery pack sits under the rear seat; Honda says it is 40 percent lighter and 50 percent smaller than the ultracapacitor that stored regenerated energy in the previous FCX. The Clarity’s range is given as 435 km (270 miles).
Stressing that the car would be a “standard retail product,“ Honda said it would be offered to a limited number of customers next summer through Honda dealers--for a monthly lease payment of US $600. Preference will go to drivers who live near one of the few hydrogen refueling stations, in Southern California. Honda also said it was testing a fourth generation of its Home Energy Station, an electric “garage appliance“ that generates hydrogen from natural gas.

Solar panels like these near Munich could capture heat in areas of the Mediterranean under the plan proposed by JordanÕs Prince Hassan bin Talal.

Europe is considering plans to spend more than £5 billion on a string of giant solar power stations along the desert shores of northern Africa and the Middle East, Guardian.co.uk reported.
More than a hundred of the generators, each fitted with thousands of huge mirrors, would generate electricity to be transmitted by undersea cable to Europe and then distributed across the continent to European Union member nations, including Britain.
Billions of watts of power could be generated this way, enough to provide Europe with a sixth of its electricity needs and to allow it to make significant cuts in its carbon emissions. At the same time, the stations would be used as desalination plants to provide desert countries with desperately needed supplies of fresh water.
Last week Prince Hassan bin Talal of Jordan presented details of the scheme - named Desertec--to the European Parliament. ’Countries with deserts, countries with high energy demand, and countries with technology competence must cooperate,’ he told MEPs.
The project has been developed by the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Corporation and is supported by engineers and politicians in Europe as well as Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Jordan and other nations in the Middle East and Africa.
Europe would provide initial funds for developing the solar technology that will be needed to run plants as well as money for constructing prototype stations. After that, banks and financial institutions, as well as national governments, would take over the construction program, which could cost more than £200 billion over the next 30 years.
’We don’t make enough use of deserts,’ said physicist Gerhard Knies, co-founder of the scheme. ’The sun beats down on them mercilessly during the day and heats the ground to tremendous temperatures. Then at night that heat is radiated back into the atmosphere. In other words, it is completely wasted. We need to stop that waste and exploit the vast amounts of energy that the sun beams down to us.’
Scientists estimate that sunlight could provide 10,000 times the amount of energy needed to fulfill humanity’s current energy needs. Transforming that solar radiation into a form to be exploited by humanity is difficult, however.
One solution proposed by the scheme’s engineers is to use large areas of land on which to construct their solar plants. In Europe, land is costly. But in nations such as Morocco, Algeria, and Libya it is cheap, mainly because they are scorched by the sun. The project aims to exploit that cheap land by use of a technique known as ’concentrating solar power’.
A--CSP (Concentrating Solar Power) station consists of banks of several hundred giant mirrors that cover large areas of land, around a square kilometer. Each mirror’s position can be carefully controlled to focus the sun’s rays onto a central metal pillar that is filled with water. Prototype stations using this technique have already been tested in Spain and Algeria.
Once the sun’s rays are focused on the pillar, temperatures inside start to soar to 800C. The water inside the pillar is vaporized into superhot steam which is channeled off and used to drive turbines which in turn generate electricity. ’It is proven technology,’ added Knies. ’We have shown it works in our test plants.’
Only small stations have been tested, but soon plants capable of generating 100 megawatts of power could be built, enough to provide the needs of a town. The Desertec project envisages a ring of a thousand of these stations being built along the coast of northern Africa and round into the Mediterranean coast of the Middle East. In this way up to 100 billion watts of power could be generated: two thirds of it would be kept for local needs, the rest - around 30 billion watts - would be exported to Europe.
An idea of how much power this represents is revealed through Britain’s electricity generating capacity, which totals 12 billion watts.
But there is an added twist to the system. The superheated steam, after it has driven the plant’s turbines, would then be piped through tanks of sea water which would boil and evaporate. Steam from the sea water would piped away and condensed and stored as fresh water.
There are drawbacks, however. At present electricity generated this way would cost around 15-20 eurocents (11 to 14p) a kilowatt-hour--almost twice the cost of power generated by coal. At such prices, few nations would be tempted to switch to solar.
’Unless it is extremely cheap, it won’t stop people using easy-to-get fossil fuels,’ John Gibbins, an energy engineer at Imperial College London, told Nature magazine last week.