Oil rigs could become coral farms

Decommissioned oil rigs off Australia's coastline could become hubs for marine-based businesses such as coral harvesting for aquariums, a fish expert says.Professor David Booth, of the Sydney Institute of Marine Science and University of Technology, Sydney, says there are up to 60 oil rigs in Australian waters that are due to be decommissioned in the next decade.Most are in the Bass Strait between Tasmania and mainland Australia.Booth was last year involved in Federal Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources (DITR) talks on the decommissioning of oil rigs.The future of Australia's ageing oil rigs is due to be on the agenda again with the DITR to release a discussion paper in the next two months.Booth says the options for decommissioning oil rigs include: leaving them intact and in place; towing them away for dismantling; removing the platform and using explosives to topple the remaining shell; and removing the platform and leaving the remaining shell in place.In the last two cases, the shell of the oil rig forms an artificial reef.Booth says in some cases keeping part of the rig in place could benefit the marine environment.

Read full story: http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/2007/1979748.htm?enviro

ECONOMIC GROWTH TO END SOON, FOREVER!!

Peak Oil is the idea that the world’s oil production will soon reach a peak and then begin to decline. This will have epoch-changing effects on a growing globalised world economy where over 60 per cent of energy demand is met by burning oil and gas, and where 95 per cent of transport is driven by oil. Over the last couple of years the status of the peak oil idea has been transformed from that of a Chicken Little conspiracy theory to one commanding the public attention of national governments. The weeks before Easter 2007 were a truly momentous period for the peak oil debate. Highly respected figures in the oil industry, such a energy investment banker Matt Simmons and legendary Texas oilman T.Boone Pickens, abandoned their usually restrained commentary to declare that world oil production was now at its peak and would henceforth fail to meet future demand increases.

Read full story