A
new century has brought new challenges to the Circum Pacific Council
for Energy and Mineral Resources, which is taking steps to expand
and enhance its role in the region's energy future.
Recognizing
the need for a comprehensive energy plan for the Circum Pacific
region, the council recently embarked on an ambitious project to
compile data on all facets of the energy issue for its part of the
world.
The initiative,
called "Powering the Rim: The Future of Energy Security in the Circum
Pacific Region," is designed to help understand the energy flow
within the Pacific region and make scenario-studies for future energy
demands out to the year 2025.
The AAPG-affiliated
council seeks to understand potential impacts that various energy
sources will have on national and international security, the environment
and industrial development. It is, according to Council officials,
a topic that demands attention.
"In the
late 1990s there was a huge economic downturn in Asia that reduced
demand for energy, but we knew that wouldn't last," said David Howell,
council president and a research geologist with the U.S. Geological
Survey in Menlo Park, Calif.
"Sure enough,
here we are today with Asia rebounding, China booming and energy
demand soaring," he said.
"The Circum
Pacific Council (CPC) always has been an excellent avenue for the
exchange of information and knowledge among scientists -- but we
have felt for some time that the ultimate customer for the CPC should
not be just other scientists, but the world community at large,"
added Nahum Schneidermann, CPC executive committee chairman and
manager-international technical relations with ChevronTexaco Overseas
Petroleum, San Ramon, Calif.
"Powering
the Rim is an effort to use our scientific background, knowledge
and contacts to develop programs that will allow us to share with
and educate the public and governments so they can employ science
as part of policy and decision making."
The initiative
will be completed in stages, all based on partnerships and integration
of various databases, with cooperation between government and public-based
energy councils in the United States and Pacific Rim countries.
The CPC already has established cooperation with the coordinating
committee for Geoscience Programmes in East and Southeast Asia,
the U.S. Geological Survey, Stanford University, Asia Pacific Energy
Research Centre, East West Center and a host of industrial, public
and private energy institutes.
The project's
first initiative, an undergraduate energy seminar called "The Pacific
Rim: Understanding Energy Flow and Policy Issues," was offered last
year at Stanford. The Circum-Pacific Council released a DVD series
earlier this year that includes all 11 of the presentations made
during the seminar.
(The two-disk
set, titled "Perspectives for Energy," gives an overview of the
energy challenges facing the Pacific region. It is available through
the AAPG Bookstore -- $50, catalog #716-03.)
The second
initiative is the Pacific Rim Energy Database, which is currently
being compiled. The CPC-led project proposes to develop, compile
and present the fundamental energy resource data necessary to make
sound, strategic energy policy decisions for the Pacific Rim. The
data will include:
- Estimates
of reserves and resources of fossil fuels.
- Sources
of renewable energy production and potential.
- Strategic
minerals such as uranium.
The initiative
will not stop simply with energy resource data.
"I am a
geologist, so I always felt that resource issues were the most important,"Howell
said, "but this process has helped me realize that resources alone
are not the main driver.
"What we
are trying to do is get our arms around energy from all perspectives,"
he continued, "the role of economics, environmental considerations,
the consequence of new technologies, the vulnerability of transportation
corridors for the Circum Pacific region, to name a few."