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Stranded Assets in Oil and Gas a Reality
Stranded Assets in Oil and Gas a Reality
Just a few short years ago a friend called me to chat about the possibility of stranded assets in oil and gas due to climate change and the expected legislation and new regulations that would entail. This was an interesting idea coming out of the UK at the time. Since then, the idea has gained more and more traction. What is starting to emerge, however, is that stranded assets in oil and gas are not going to happen merely because of climate change. It is happening as we speak because a number of potentially disrupting events are all converging on one point: our use of hydrocarbons. Some of the challenges are due to climate and some are not. What is clear, however, is that they are multiplying. Though climate change will no doubt prove to be one aspect of stranded assets, others will include a simple but powerful realization that there are simply better places to put your investment dollars…or euros…or yuan.
So what are these potentially disrupting events? Let’s start with just one.
We’ve all heard of the compound effect and how it can beneficially impact our investments. What we don’t hear as much is what it can do detrimentally as well. Because the compound effect doesn’t just work on investments. It also works on every aspect of your life. If you choose to add desserts to a couple of meals a week when you never ate dessert before, chances are that you will gain weight. It won’t seem a big deal at first. You won’t even notice it but then one day you will wake up and “somehow” you’ve gained five pounds. Something similar is happening with the alternative energies of wind and solar. While most of us were not paying attention, they were quietly adding capacity to the grid. While we were incessantly fixated on the “shale revolution” they were streamlining manufacturing processes and the costs were plunging.
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2015: Asymmetric Oil Warfare
2015: Asymmetric Oil Warfare
Let’s consider some examples of potential asymmetric-warfare tactics as they relate to the price of oil.
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Abundance Thinking | The carbon pilgrim
Abundance Thinking | The carbon pilgrim.
On a fine August day, I flew to New England in search of abundance.
I was on the road to visit Dorn Cox, a young farmer who lives and works on his family’s 250-acre organic farm, called Tuckaway, near Lee, New Hampshire. Dorn calls himself a “carbon farmer,” meaning he thinks about carbon in everything he does. Confronting agriculture’s addiction to hydrocarbons, for example, Tuckaway produces a significant amount of its energy needs on-farm. Dorn does it with biodiesel – canola specifically – which he and his family grow on only 10 percent of the farm’s land. This was big news, so I thought a visit would be worthwhile.
I met Dorn in a hayfield behind a home belonging to a University of New Hampshire professor, spreading wood ash carefully among a grid of study plots. He gave me a wave as I parked the car, putting the ash can on the ground. Farmer-thin, wearing muddy jeans, a yellow shirt, and a floppy straw hat that shaded intense blue eyes, Dorn extended a hand and gave me an energetic grin.
“What’s going on here?” I asked nodding at the gridded plots, though I knew it was part of his Ph.D research. “Just trying to figure out the best way to turn a hayfield into a farm without tilling it,” he replied. “And create a food and energy system that puts more carbon into the soil than comes out.” Was the professor okay with this? I asked. He’s fine with it, Dorn reassured me. “There are a lot of these little fields behind people’s houses. With some work they could be growing a great deal of produce,” he said. “We just need to figure out a way to do it without using a plow.”
As we walked across his study plots, Dorn explained his thinking.
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