Kuwait’s Burgan oil field, the second largest oil field in the world has entered its depletion phase. I wonder when Ghawar will start to decline…

oil, peakoil, energy, petroleum, kuwait

M. King Hubbert was born Oct 5th, 1903.
Ron Schuler’s Parlour Tricks: M. King Hubbert

I really hope they can get this to scale and produce at a fast enough rate as it does look a lot more promising than other oil shale recovery methods.

Also, here’s some testimony that Terry O’Connor of Shell gave before Congress a few months ago regarding In-situ Conversion Process: Committee on Resources-Index

Nanotubes continue to be a promising nanotech building block. Researchers from the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) found a relatively simple way to manufacture tall, dense, vertically-aligned stands of pure nanotubes. Nanotubes produced using the method are orderly and pure enough for use in medical implants as well as electronics. “

The Energy stories are really intriguing and I hadn’t heard of half of these.

Energy research ranges from finding ways to power microscopic machines to developing renewable energy sources for global consumption. Many research teams are working on solar and hydrogen energy systems, and there have been several significant developments this year.
Scientists from Toin University of Yokohama in Japan built a single, compact device that converts solar energy to electricity and also stores the electricity. This is an improvement from today’s combination of solar energy devices that harvest the energy from light and batteries that store the energy. The device is also relatively efficient at harvesting ambient light; it could eventually allow people to recharge cell phones, for instance, using indoor light.
Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers found a way to double a solar cell’s potential energy production by using the energy of a single photon to move two electrons rather than just one, and researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of California, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineered a single material that is capable of capturing more than 50 percent of the sun’s energy from across the solar spectrum.
On the fuel cell front, University of Wisconsin at Madison researchers found a way to use carbon monoxide, a fuel cell waste product that ordinarily degrades cells, to produce more energy. Researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of Patras in Greece devised a way to extract hydrogen directly from ethanol, which is produced by converting biomass like cornstarch to sugar, then fermenting the sugar.

There’s also an article in this month’s issue about Tranforming the Electric Infrastructure, but I haven’t had a chance to check it out yet.