Bodies of miners found

[Refineries that must work forgoing routine maintenance… Coal mines that must produce at beyond maximum safe limits to keep the nation warm… The deaths of “expendable” coal miners...

Do not blame a West Virginia Scrooge-like billionaire. Do not blame greedy, evil corporations. Blame over-consumption. Blame yourselves. There are more of these tragedies coming. Many more. And they will get bigger.

My mother’s family was four generations deep in West Virginia. These miners have only themselves and well-worn family bibles to look to for comfort; that, and the bittersweet knowledge that they have always been expendable for all of us. Nothing has changed much for them in a long time. – MCR]

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MELVILLE, West Virginia -- The bodies of two miners who were trapped after an underground fire broke out at Aracoma Alma Mine No. 1 were found Saturday, mine officials said.

Jesse Cole of the Mine Safety and Health Administration said that the bodies were found in an area where "there would've been heavy smoke and high (carbon monoxide)."

The families of the miners identified them as Don Israel Bragg, 33, and Ellery "Elvis" Hatfield, 47.

Bragg, from Accoville, is survived by his wife, Delorice, and his two children. Hatfield, of Simon, leaves his wife, Freda, and four children.

Bragg began mining at the age of 18, but started at the Aracoma Mine five years ago with Hatfield, who has 12 years of mining experience.

After the announcement that the two miners were dead, Gov. Joe Manchin said he was planning to introduce mine-safety bills in the state Legislature and to lobby the U.S. Congress to enact more mine-safety laws.

Among the issues he said he intends to address are ensuring that there are ample oxygen stations within mines and making sure rescuers have the means to respond as rapidly as possible.

Manchin promised earlier Saturday that he would announce "bold steps and bold actions" to prevent another mining tragedy in his state.

"We're going to do everything we can never to put another family in this situation," he said.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, said that today's technology should provide rescuers with better tools to save miners.

"You can talk to a man on the face of the moon and you can't talk to a miner 1,000 feet underground," Rockefeller said.

He said he was "very angry" about the state of mine safety in West Virginia and encouraged others to get angry because only a "sustained rage" will effect change.

The deaths in Melville followed a tragedy in Tallmansville, West Virginia, in which 12 miners died of carbon monoxide poisoning following an explosion at Sago Mine, about 180 miles away. The lone survivor, Randy McCloy, is hospitalized in serious condition.

A widow of one of Sago Mine victims is at the Aracoma site, offering comfort to the families, the governor said.

Rescuers on Saturday contained the underground fire that trapped the miners and were moving down a mile-long shaft. Cole said the heat and smoke from the fire prevented rescuers from going too deep into the mine.

Complicating rescue efforts was the collapse of the mine's roof because of the fire and the blockage of several entryways.

Officials said the fire probably started on a conveyor belt that moves coal out of the mine.

The missing men were apparently separated from their 10 other crew members when the fire broke out. Their colleagues, as well as a second crew, managed to exit the mine about two hours later.

CNNRadio's Ninette Sosa and Barbara Hall and CNN's Ronni Berke contributed to this report.

TEHRAN, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Firebrand Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has assured Iran that his Shi'ite Muslim militiamen will support the Islamic Republic if it comes under attack, the official IRNA news agency reported on Sunday.

Although the United States and Israel have said they prefer diplomacy as a means to solve a dispute over Iran's atomic programme, they have not ruled out military options.

"If neighbouring Islamic countries, including Iran, should come under attack, then the Mehdi Army will support them," Sadr said on a visit to Tehran.

Sadr's Mehdi Army militia rose up against U.S. occupying forces in Iraq in 2004.

In Iran, Sadr has met Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, and Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.

MOSCOW -- The U.S. dollar nose-dived against the ruble on the Moscow Inter-Bank Currency Exchange Tuesday to the level registered in late 2000.

The dollar's swift fall to 27.9898 rubles to the dollar in Tuesday's trading pushed the U.S. currency back to the level registered in December 2000 when the dollar/ruble rate was about 27.93-27.97. Since the start of 2006, the greenback has lost almost 50 kopecks, Russian forex experts said.

Experts say the dollar is largely under the influence of external factors but proportionally the dollar has weakened more considerably against the ruble than against the euro.

"The dollar's fall versus the ruble was extraordinary," Yelena Khrupova from BrokerCreditServis brokerage said. She added that the dollar's depreciation was facilitated by the active sale of the U.S. currency on the Russian forex market.

According to Khrupova, the dollar's plunge against the ruble showed that the Central Bank of Russia was in no hurry to give a helping hand to the U.S. currency. The analyst said the country's chief bank was more concerned about maintaining ruble stability against the dollar-euro currency basket and curbing inflation, which went out of control in the first ten days of January.

On international forex markets, the dollar suffered a setback versus the euro last Monday, losing 1.41% against the single European currency and closing at $1.23 to the euro, the level registered in September 2005, Vladimir Abramov, an expert with Globexbank said.

Abramov said the complex situation around Iran, the unprecedented growth of gold prices and the narrowing spread between U.S. and EU interest rates were the main reasons for the dollar's fall against the euro. He added that investors' fears about the U.S. balance of payments deficit also precipitated the greenback's decline against the single European currency.

At the same time, Dmitry Baibikov from Moscow Industrial Bank said the dollar would likely rise above the level of 28 rubles by the end of this week and "only geopolitical events" can strongly influence its dynamics.

GENEVA -- The price of crude oil could reach $131 a barrel if Iran stopped production amid the standoff over Tehran's decision to resume uranium enrichment, a global market study predicts.

Oil prices topped $69 a barrel yesterday on supply fears over the nuclear standoff.

Iran supplies about 4 million barrels a day, or 5 percent of the world's oil supply, said William F. Browder, chief executive officer of Moscow-based Hermitage Capital Management.

The former Wall Street investment banker said the market-scenario study -- based on an analysis that factored in seven supply shocks in the past 35 years -- had an 81 percent accuracy in predicting the price.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Iran relies heavily on oil exports for foreign-exchange revenue and government budget. Oil exports account for 80 percent to 90 percent of export revenue and 40 percent to 50 percent of the nation's budget.

The agency estimates that Iranian oil export revenues last year increased by 45 percent to $46.6 billion and are projected to edge to $50.1 billion this year.

However, oil market analysts and international security specialists tracking the escalation in the crisis between Iran and Western powers downplayed the prospects of the United Nations slapping sanctions on the country or of Iran opting to cut off oil exports in retaliation anytime soon.

An official with the Paris-based International Energy Agency, which includes the United States, stressed that its member countries are holding "well above" the average amount of 90 days' supply of oil import demand.

The agency released stocks after Hurricane Katrina temporarily crippled U.S. oil refinery production capacity and supply flow.

The analysts said that the tensions in Iran and in other volatile geopolitical spots such as Venezuela, Iraq and Nigeria already are factored in the market and that the price is unlikely to hit new highs but would oscillate by about $10.

Some Western security analysts see the buildup in tensions as "more a war of words" and expect it to stay at that level until the meeting of the governing board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the global nuclear watchdog, in Vienna, Austria, on Feb. 2.

Yesterday, in a setback for efforts by the U.S. and the European Union, the IAEA chief ruled out advancing a wide-ranging report on the issue in time for the Feb. 2 meeting.

Replying to U.S., EU and Australian letters, Mohamed ElBaradei said he had given Iran until the regularly scheduled March 6 session to answer questions in IAEA inquiries into the country's nuclear project.

Iran upped the ante in the standoff yesterday, when its senior envoy to IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltaniyeh, warned that Tehran will begin developing a full-scale uranium enrichment program immediately if it is referred to the U.N. Security Council.

"The world cannot be put in a position where we can be blackmailed by a nuclear weapon," he said at Kansas State University.

*This article is based in part on wire service reports.

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria (AP) -- Camouflage-clad attackers raided an Italian oil company's riverside offices in Nigeria on Tuesday, sparking a gunfight that left nine people dead before assailants fled by speedboat into the oil-rich delta's waterways.

The attack on Agip's offices in the southern oil center of Port Harcourt is the latest in a recent rash of violence across the restive Niger Delta that has killed nearly two dozen people, cut petroleum production in Africa's largest oil exporter and helped push up prices of crude worldwide.

The attackers, wearing army-style uniforms, cruised up behind Agip's riverbank facility in their boat, forced their way into the compound and stole about $28,000 (euro23,000) in cash before the shoot-out with security forces, said Samuel Adetuyi, the head of the police in the city.

Seven uniformed police, a plainclothed security official and one company employee died in the gunfight that ended when the attackers fled in their speedboat back into the region's labyrinth of creeks and swamps, he said.

Agip's parent company Eni SpA said in Italy that it "has temporarily evacuated staff and contractors from the area of the base affected by the incident and the situation is currently under control."

The company said there were others injured, but it was unclear how many. Italy said none of its citizens were among the dead.

A rash of attacks and kidnappings in recent weeks by militia groups demanding the release from prison of local leaders have cut Nigeria's daily exports of 2.5 million by nearly 10 percent and claimed at least 23 lives.

But Adetuyi said there was no immediate evidence that Tuesday's attack on Agip was linked to that.

Despite the massive amounts of crude pumped from southern Nigeria, much of the region remains in abject poverty and activist groups have been agitating for President Olusegun Obasanjo's federal government to provide them with a greater share of state oil revenues.

At least 14 other people have been killed in oil-platform attacks and other violence since earlier this year.

Meanwhile, militants claiming to hold four foreign hostages elsewhere in the Niger Delta said the oil workers are in decent health but had been moved deeper into the region of swamps and creeks after the government failed to meet the captors' demands.

In a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press, purported representatives of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta -- the group that says it is holding the oil workers from the United States, Bulgaria, Britain and Honduras -- said Nigeria had not yet met demands for authorities to release two of the region's leaders from jail.

"Be assured therefore that the hostages in return, will remain our guests," said the statement, whose authors could not be verified. Demands and news of the hostages' conditions have repeatedly been sent from the same e-mail address.

The statement said the hostages, who were taken 13 days ago, had been moved further into the Niger Delta, a swampy region of 70,000 square kilometers (27,000 square miles) where much of the petroleum is pumped in Africa's largest oil exporter.

The hostages "are in good health and have adapted fairly well to the conditions under which the people of the Niger Delta have been kept for the last 48 years," the statement said.

The militants are demanding the release of Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, a militia leader from the region facing treason charges, and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, the one-time regional governor detained for corruption.

They allege the two ethnic Ijaw leaders were facing persecution by Obasanjo's government for advocating more local control of oil resources, a cause they have now vowed to pursue by armed struggle.

While they have threatened more attacks in the south, it was not known if the gunfight at the Agip offices were part of their campaign.

Inhabitants of the impoverished and restive southern region accuse a succession of Nigerian governments and oil companies of cheating them out of the oil wealth produced on their land. The oil companies say they are living up to their end of contracts signed with the government.

GENEVA -- The price of crude oil could reach $131 a barrel if Iran stopped production amid the standoff over Tehran's decision to resume uranium enrichment, a global market study predicts.

Oil prices topped $69 a barrel yesterday on supply fears over the nuclear standoff.

Iran supplies about 4 million barrels a day, or 5 percent of the world's oil supply, said William F. Browder, chief executive officer of Moscow-based Hermitage Capital Management.

The agency estimates that Iranian oil export revenues last year increased by 45 percent to $46.6 billion and are projected to edge to $50.1 billion this year.

The agency released stocks after Hurricane Katrina temporarily crippled U.S. oil refinery production capacity and supply flow.

Yesterday, in a setback for efforts by the U.S. and the European Union, the IAEA chief ruled out advancing a wide-ranging report on the issue in time for the Feb. 2 meeting.

"The world cannot be put in a position where we can be blackmailed by a nuclear weapon," he said at Kansas State University.

*This article is based in part on wire service reports.

“I asked them to put up their hands if they thought that we had reached peak oil. Fifty percent of the people in the audience put up their hand saying that they believe we’re at peak oil and these are practicing petroleum industry professionals.”

[Many of us feel intense frustration at people still being somehow surprised that hydrogen is not a magic bullet but rather a cruel hoax designed to keep people spending and protecting the markets. We groan when the media treats oil like a glass full of water that just pours out until it is suddenly empty. We grit teeth as we explain over and over that the crisis begins not when oil runs out but when demand exceeds supply. The patience the Peak Oil movement has shown in gently repeating – over and over – basic science fundamentals is in my opinion almost saintly. But the panic discussed here that will trigger public awareness appears very, very close. Economies are collapsing. People are freezing. Oil and gas prices continue their inexorable climb. Perhaps it’s time we Peak Oilists start thinking about what our position will be when the panic hits.

Powerdown now. Powerdown now. Powerdown now. There are no other available options short of nuclear war and a collapse hastened by knee-jerk, band-aid, wishful-thinking solutions. – MCR]

What would happen if the world were to start running out of oil? Conventional wisdom says we’ve got 30 years, but there’s a growing fear amongst petroleum experts it’s happening much sooner than we thought – that we are hitting the beginning of the end of oil now. So how soon will the oil run out, and can we stop our economy collapsing when it does? How prepared are we for the real oil crisis?

Jeremy Leggett: It’s going to be very difficult to get gasoline for transport. Food is not going to be getting through in enough quantities to the shops,

So why does a growing group of petroleum experts believe it’s coming within three?

Peter Newman: It gives me nightmares when I think about what we’re headed for.

Narration: Are they just scaremongerers or have the rest of us been asleep at the wheel. Are we about to hit the real oil crisis?

Jeremy Leggett: Really when the crisis dawns I think people are going to be looking back in anger. How have we allowed ourselves to get into this mess?

Narration: In just a century, we’ve allowed our lives to become entirely dependent on cheap oil.

Jonica Newby, Reporter: And it’s not just that 90% of our transportation is fuelled by oil. This shopping centre is literally full of petroleum products.

Look: the fabric in these clothes – petroleum based. These plastics, petroleum based. It takes on average 6 barrels of oil just to bring one cow to market.

Narration: Yet who of us stops to think oil is a finite resource - the lifeblood of our modern world is steadily pouring away.

Jeremy Leggett: We just take it so much for granted that cars drive around, the pumps are always full. I talk to people in financial institutions who are investing on the assumption that oil supplies are going to grow and grow into the 2030’s. I hardly ever meet anyone who knows about this problem outside a relatively elite group of whistleblowers inside and around the oil industry.

Narration: Dr Jeremy Leggett is part of an international splinter group of petroleum geologists convinced a tipping point on oil is imminent.

This former oil industry insider, now alternative energy advocate, has written a new book outlining the case.

Since 1965, the amount of oil discovered each year has inexorably plunged - despite all our advances in technology.

Jeremy Leggett: The last time we discovered a whole new province was the North Sea in the early 1970’s and really you know these days the average size of an oil field that gets discovered is about 50 million barrels. It’s nothing, it’s a drop in the ocean. We’re using 84 million barrels a day.

The last year we discovered more oil than we consumed was 1981.
We use 2 barrels of oil for every barrel discovered.

Jeremy Leggett: I’ve been talking to people who I know because of my past in these big oil companies and they tell me there are no more big oil fields left to find.

Narration: So if we’ve found nearly all the world’s oil, how long before it runs out?

Surprisingly, that’s not so important. The real question is when will we reach half way – it’s known as 'peak oil'.

Jonica Newby, Reporter: So what exactly is peak oil, and why is it so serious? That’s what I’m heading to the west Australian oil fields to find out.

Narration: My guide is a geologist from deep within the oil industry. Eric Streitberg is managing director of Australian oil company, ARK energy.

Eric Streitberg: The reason I feel strongly about this is that people don’t understand the underlying causes of why petrol prices are going up and what the effect that could have on our lives.

Narration: Eric is about to show me what happens when an oil field reaches peak oil.

Eric Streitberg: The oil field was discovered in 2001 and its now on full production doing about 6000 barrels of oil a day which is about 10% of Western Australia’s consumption.

Narration: When oil is first pumped, it’s under pressure and comes out easily – production rises.

But over time, oil pressure drops. Water is pumped in to maintain pressure. At the half way point, it reaches peak oil, and then-

Eric Streitberg: We’re holding on to peak production at the moment but we’ll be going into the inexorable decline of all oil fields very shortly.

Narration: To ram home the point, Eric takes me to an oil field which passed peak oil in 1992.

Eric Streitberg: Jonica this is what we are getting out of this old oil well. It’s 99% water and 1% oil.

Narration: All oil fields follow the same pattern of rise, peak, then fall – even if they encompass an entire nation.

The US hit peak oil in 1971. The UK with its North Sea oil peaked in 1999. Australia peaked in 2000.

That depends on what’s really happening here. The place that provides a quarter of the world's oil - the Middle East.

Jeremy Leggett: These governments have not let anyone in to verify how much oil they have for getting on for a quarter of a century and in the 1980’s there were some really suspicious treatment of oil reserves data. Most of the Gulf countries increased their national proved reserves supposedly by in some cases up to double, and then ever since the quoted figures have not gone down very much at all. I don’t believe that for a minute.

Narration: The dissident geologists went back to original surveys to estimate total Middle East oil. They added world known reserves, and projections of all future oil to be discovered.

That’s how they calculated the world will reach peak oil in the next 3 years – if we’re not there already.

Jeremy Leggett: 2008 maybe 2009, certainly no later than 2010. That’s the point at which we will no longer be living in a world with growing supplies of generally cheap oil but instead living in a world of rapidly shrinking supplies of ever vastly more expensive oil and that point of realisation is going to come as a real shock.

The world's largest petroleum company is ExxonMobil – Esso. It employs 20,000 scientists to generate their own exhaustive data sets.

In their Melbourne 3D seismography room, I meet head of exploration, geologist Dr Doug Schwebel.

Doug Schwebel: OK this is a 3 dimensional image of the geology offshore Bass Strait in Victoria.

Narration: Doug acknowledges oil will run down eventually, he just vigorously disputes when.

Doug Schwebel: Well people have been predicting for over a hundred years that we’re going to run out of oil. It hasn’t happened. We don’t think it’s going to happen in the near term.

Narration: Exxon calculates twice as much oil left in the world as the so called 'early peakers' - placing peak oil decades away.

Doug Schwebel: I mean we’re talking at least out to 2030 with what we know today. And then potentially another 20 – 30 years beyond that with technologies that we can envisage might exist. You know if we can improve technology by only 10% then we can recover an additional 600 – 800 billion barrels of oil.

Narration: If this majority view is correct, we have plenty of time for a smooth, market driven transition to alternatives via hybrid cars.

Cruising in the balm of this reassuring future, it's tempting to dismiss the 'early peak' camp entirely, as a small bunch of vested interest doomsdayers.

And here in Australia, some surprising people have come out in the early peak camp.

Earlier this year, Eric Streitberg asked an extraordinary question at the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association conference.

Eric Streitberg: I asked them to put up their hands if they thought that we had reached peak oil. Fifty percent of the people in the audience put up their hand saying that they believe we’re at peak oil and these are practicing petroleum industry professionals.

This is what the early peak camp are terrified of – an apocalyptic gulf between dwindling supply and rising demand from the voracious east.

Jeremy Leggett: It’s panic that causes collapses in markets. People start selling their shares. That’s what happened in October 1929 and it just snowballs.

Eric Streitberg: Rationing - people having to queue for three days to get a tank full of petrol, people not being able to afford to heat their houses.

Peter Newman: Getting to 2 to 3 to 4 dollars a litre you really are grinding to a halt.

Narration: But couldn’t we just switch to alternatives – like solar cars or hydrogen?

Professor Peter Newman should know. He’s been trying to prepare his home town of Perth with a post-petroleum transport system - which includes Australia’s first hydrogen buses.

Peter Newman: This is a transition that can’t be done overnight. Hydrogen technology is being developed but it’s a 20 year program.

Peter Newman: Yeah, the next 20 years are an absolute critical point where I don’t know that we can make it. I just feel we haven’t started soon enough.

Narration: The trouble is, if peak oil is imminent, other mooted oil substitutes, like biofuels, tar sands, shale oil, could only yield a fraction of the world's needs.

Jeremy Leggett: So I’ve looked at it all and I don’t see a way of closing the gap quickly enough. That’s the honest and depressing answer. It’s all about renaissance. It’s all about how quickly we can repair the problems and get an alternative infrastructure after the crisis breaks.

Narration: Whether we reach the end of cheap oil in 3 years or 30, it will be a defining moment for human society.

Even if there’s only a one in ten chance the early peakers are right, with the lifeblood of our economy at stake, shouldn’t we listen, just in case.

Eric Streitberg: If people like myself are taking the view that they need to speak out, I think it’s time to start taking it seriously.

Peter Newman: We have lots of preparedness for terrorist attacks; but where’s the plan for peak oil? We don’t have one.

Jeremy Leggett: I think the interesting thing about the problem is that we’ll find out. We’ll find out who’s right really soon, within a few years it will happen and play out on our watch.

Barry Jones (the late)
Former Executive Director
Australian Petroleum Produciton Exploration Association (APPEA)