oilandthecity.org.uk

5 June — “PEAK OIL”

11 June — “AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH”

5 June — “PEAK OIL”

IN DUTCH MILL (7 Queens Road Aberdeen AB15 4NR) AT 6pm for 6.30pm (ending at 8pm). – Douglas Low (Director. The Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (ODAC)) will be speaking about Peak Oil – the forthcoming decline in fossil fuel production and its impact on civilization.

“Peak Oil” is the term used to describe the peaking then decline of global oil production. It is likely to change the way society works in ways that we cannot predict, but for which we can certainly prepare. Forecasts for peak oil range from in the past, crude oil production has fallen since 2005 but could rise again, to never. Most forecasts are in the range between now and 2020. Douglas will give a brief introduction to the various forecasts, discuss Peak Gas and Peak Coal, and how this might change how civilization works. An overview of UK oil and gas depletion will be presented, and why the UK is likely to start suffering periods of gas shortages after 2010, if not before. The talk will end with an overview of initiatives to prepare for Peak Oil.
For information see http://www.odac-info.org/

11 June — “AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH”

Please find below and attached an invitation to attend a cross-sectoral, cross-discipline, cross-cultural, integral event in Aberdeen on Monday 11 June. It is an opportunity to discuss and consider concerns about the environment, as well as to consider how this ‘thinking’ relates to the inter-dependency within complex systems of which we are part – be it in politics, university, health, business, leadership, education or whatever. You are invited from every walk of life, particularly as you are curious about ‘thinking’ in ways which can support and sustain 21st century living and working, with its multiple questions, challenges and issues.

The evening is also an ‘open space’ to explore how we can co-create a culture of societal learning within Scotland, stretching our thinking and ways of operating. It is also an excellent opportunity to meet others thinking along similar lines. Please circulate to anyone you think would be interested, and please RSVP!

Warm wishes
Morag Patterson

An Inconvenient Truth
Rosina and Michael Sinclair
Monday 11th June at 5.30 for 6.00pm
at King’s College Conference Centre, Aberdeen University, Old Aberdeen

Facilitated by Robin Harper MSP – Rector of Aberdeen University

In conjunction with his film “*An Inconvenient Truth*,” Al Gore trained a group of committed environmentalist to communicate world-wide the environmental challenges ahead of us all.
We are delighted that Rosina and Michael Sinclair from Al Gore’s group are visiting us here in Aberdeen, and Robin Harper, MSP and Rector of Aberdeen University, has agreed to facilitate the meeting.

It will be of great interest to those concerned with the environment, and also for those keen to develop an understanding of complex interdependent systems. The film’s topic of the environment is a classic example – change one part of a system and it has surprising effects on parts of the system that we never anticipated. These systems are organic rather than controllable, just as those which touch us independently, within our organisations and our society.

morag@somethingmore.org.uk 07803 04 66 53 01224 494 596

While this site is quietly awaiting a major overhaul we also do read the papers … here is a link to a quite interesting article in the US-focused “EnergyPulse” entitled Lost Generation (an Energy Manifesto).

Variant 28 Spring 2007 – the Oil issue

…the free, independent, arts magazine. In-depth coverage
in the context of broader social, political & cultural issues.

text : full issue
pdf : full issue

Front cover
Texan Oilfield, USA, 1922.
Image courtesy of the Houston Public Library photo archive
pdf

Content

* Over a Barrel — Editorial
The writers for this issue devoted to oil take a multi-layered internationalist approach to the questions that surround the commodity which Juan Pablo Alfonzo, a Venezuelan oil minister, once called the “devil’s excrement.” There are also many anti-war activists and environmentalists who will pinpoint oil as the root of all evil.
However, what was compelling in preparing this issue was how the crisis of faith in the oil economy brings us to diverse questions about hi-finance, the expansion of debt, enfeebled democracy and the possibilities for social change. Moving through the United States, the Middle East and the Niger Delta, this edition of Variant takes us from the southern tip of Latin America all the way to the Western coast of Norway.

* Cold Death by Neoliberalism — John Foster
John Foster’s political economy of fuel poverty in Scotland reveals the impact of privatisation, monopoly tendencies, and speculation in the UK’s energy sector. Despite North Sea oil, energy is more expensive in the UK than elsewhere in Europe. And in 2006, when UK pensioners faced a 30% rise in their energy bills, the companies operating in the North Sea yielded a 42.9% return on capital. Energy policy is being hindered by reliance on transnational companies which, under rising speculative
pressures, have increasingly short-term goals to maximize profits.
Working against any real progress towards developing sustainable and renewable energy big business appears to be set on a course of inaction when reform of the energy sector is urgently required.

* Living on oil under democracy — Owen Logan
In our minds, at least, oil is often linked to power more than energy. However, Owen Logan writes that it’s not so much that oil and democracy don’t mix, but more that the oil economy shows the dubious nature of modern democracy. Drawing on interviews done for the ‘Oil Lives’ oral history project based at the University of Aberdeen his journey from Texas to Venezuela and Argentina is travelogue from the Bush dynasty’s heartland to the politics of Latin American anti-imperialism. He
examines the ‘solidarity economy’, speaks to trade union leaders dissatisfied with conventional trade unionism and meets oil workers whose Piquetero campaigning was defined early on by their stand on environmental protection. He considers the broader implications of these developments.

* Many Sellers. One buyer. — Jake Molloy & Ronnie McDonald
In this article from OILC, the offshore workers trade union, the writers say that it is disconcerting when the man working alongside you is paid a wage only a third of what you regard as the absolute minimum acceptable. In providing the background of Filipino recruitment to the North Sea industry this article exposes the way the Philippine economy was broken apart by national debt bringing about an exodus of labour which serves the interests of the state and employers at the expense of
workers’ abilities to negotiate their wages and conditions of employment. A system of monopsony, which binds Filipino workers, is aided and abetted by partnership agreements with British trade unions. Rather than truly representing these workers big UK unions appear to be managing industrial relations for the employers.
Accompanying drawing by David Shrigley: www.davidshrigley.com

* The Fictitious Commodity — Andy Cumbers
Comparing different experiences of the North Sea oil industry, from the perspectives of so called ‘deviant’ trade unionists in the UK and Norway, Andy Cumbers considers the diminishing returns of larger bureaucratized trade unions who, like the employers, regard labour as a commodity. Focusing on individual cases, this article highlights the Norwegian cases where divers were betrayed by trade unions which colluded with false safety standards. Yet discussions at the SAFE union
in Stavanger, that are reported here, suggest that Scandinavia’s history of militancy, and a more honest trade unionism, is not yet over. Organisations like SAFE, and their sister union OILC in the UK, are rightly proud of their achievements, but their greatest challenges lie ahead in integrating immediate needs of their members with the broader issues facing society.

Also in this issue:

* “To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing” — Phil England
* The Ecological Question: Can Capitalism Prevail? — Daniel Buck
* The Next Gulf — Simon Pirani
* “Anyone can go to Baghdad; real men go toTehran” — Muhammed Idress Ahmed
* The Friendly Atom — NuclearSpin
* The Inverted Coalmine — Terry Brotherstone
The late Bob Ballantyne was a survivor of the Piper Alpha disaster in which 167 oil workers were killed when the platform was consumed by fire. Caused by corporate negligence, this industrial accident in some ways changed the face of North Sea labour politics. The article explores the social and cultural context of a composite photograph, ‘The inverted Coalmine’, made for the Scottish Parliament by Owen Logan in collaboration with Bob Ballantyne. Terry Brotherstone is director of the ‘oil lives’ oral history project at the University of Aberdeen and Bob Ballantyne was one of the first people who recorded their life story in that project.
—————————–
* A fully accessible archive of back issues is freely available at the Variant web site: http://www.variant.org.uk
* Newsprint Magazine Subscription details can be found at: http://www.variant.org.uk/subs.html
* Please contact us if you wish to distribute newspaper copies of Variant magazine.
Variant
1/2, 189b Maryhill Road
Glasgow, G20 7XJ
Scotland, UK
t/f: +44(0)141 3339522
variantmag@btinternet.com

http://www.variant.org.uk

[Please note Variant’s new email address]

We’re well into 2007 — and everywhere interesting projects and initiatives on Oil, the Industry and its impact are well under way, or even completed, not to count the ones on climate change etc. etc. etc.

There are a few I’d like to mention here:

• Over a barrel is the launch of Variant magazine’s special issue devoted to the oil economy, live on Thursday 15th March, 7pm, at Aberdeen Trades Council, 13 Adelphi, Aberdeen. This is an open panel discussion, chaired by Terry Brotherstone, head of the Oil Lives oral history project at Aberdeen University. Guests include trade unionists, Kari Bukve from SAFE in Stavanger, Norway, & Jake Molloy, from OILC in Aberdeen (featured in our own tale of the tiger). Also speaking will be Femi Folorunso, who was closely involved in the democratic struggle in Nigeria; & co-editors & contributors for this issue: Owen Logan, Leigh French & Andy Cumbers. (The website at http://www.overabarrel.info/ not quite ready, but we hope to see it soon.)
• Offshore Culture, the planned contribution to Stavanger 2008, European Capital of Culture, being possibly postponed and realised as a miniature at the Stavanger Oil Museum (more on this soon)
• Ursula Biemann’s Black Sea Files on show at Bristol, Arnolfini, Sept-Nov.07
• Greasemonkeys Oil Standard Browser Plugin that converts any prices on website into their equivalents of barrels of oil
• Last not least, Platform London’s And While London Burns, a soundwalk through the City of London — the place where (some of) the Oil money is … laun..handled?

The full documentation of the Oil and the City (Pilot 2005) is now available online.

Until 26th February 2006, the Black Sea Files by Ursula Biemann are on exhibition at KW Berlin as part of B-Zone. In this project, Ursula explores the new pipeline connecting Baku, the world’s oldest oil capital on the Caspian shore, with the Mediterreanean.

The line connecting the resource fringe with the terminal of the global high-tech oil circulation system, runs throught the video like a central thread. However, the trajectory followed by the narrative is by no means a linear one. Circumventing the main players in the region, the video sheds light on a multitude of secondary sceneries. Oil workers, farmers, refugees and prostitutes who live along the pipeline come into profile and contribute to a wider human geography that displaces the singular and powerful signifying practices of oil corporations and oil politicians. Drawing on investigatory fieldwork as practiced by anthropologists, journalists and secret intelligence agents, the Black Sea Files comment on artistic methods in the fiel and the ways in which information and visual intelligence is detected, circulated or withheld.

Soundtrack Peter Cusack, music Roland Fischer, supported by the German Federal Cultural Foundation.

“A North-east artist is going back to nature in an attempt to show how society has come to rely on oil.” the Press and Journal reports today: “Duncan Hart will leave his Aberdeen flat today and walk to Bridgefoot Organic Farm, near Newmachar, to setup home for the next three or four days.”

And indeed Duncan is on his way on this fine day out to Bridgefoot. The documentation of his experiments will be shown at Aberdeen Maritime Museum during the Oil and the City exhibition (22 Oct – 6 Nov).

The team of artists visited Aberdeen Maritime Museum to study the venue of the upcoming exhibition. The opening of the exhibition is on Friday, 21 Octover 2005, 6:30pm-8pm. Come along!

The 1st ‘Oil and the City Symposium’ took place on 20th August 2005 at Dunbar Street Community Hall, Old Aberdeen. Its main topic will be: ‘Artists’ Encounters with the Oil and Gas Industry’. Detailed programme here.

John Skinner Centre, King Street, Aberdeen

Peter Troxler of urbanNovember said “Oil will not simply disappear from one day to the other. Almost the last twenty years there has been talk that the oil will run out in twenty years time. And still there are reserves waiting to be explored… However, the question remains- what will the future hold for Aberdeen, once the oil industry definitely has disappeared from the North Sea and the city? Whether it is oil or renewables there seems to be a number of industries that have the potential to bring business, money and people to town — and that, in doing so, will shape the face of the city and the walks of city life. So they deserve, or even need, artistic attention, discourse, advice.”

Public Natter Topics

– Multi-national, cosmopolitan Aberdeen, the potential of multicultural activity
– Interesting industry, fascination of remote oilrigs, can-do mentality
– Eating and shopping experience, try other food, colour and variety,
the ‘American Shop’
– The oil industry – a blessing and a curse. Oil as the ‘heroin’ for high-tech societies
– Liberate talent, draw in interesting people, capacity, skill, practical creativity

Public Natter Panellists

Local Observer: Pauline Gerard, Founder of Sensorium
Business Person: Clive Randall, Partner of Facilitators
Oil Worker: Jake Molloy, General Secretary of OILC
Global Observer: Alice of T.R.A.P.E.S.E.
YOU!