About

The Oil Drum - ANZ was a discussion forum hosted and controlled by the main TOD website with the intention of providing a venue for Australian and New Zealand voices. Since December 2010, the board of TOD has adopted a policy focusing the posting and discussions more specifically on energy and removing the regional forums - full details can be found here.
A cursory examination of the present English language forums (for examples see left panel here) shows that the current discussion is dominated by US and European voices.

This blog is intended as a space for Southern Hemisphere and (hopefully) Asian based contributors covering the topics:



  • energy

  • oil

  • gas

  • coal

  • nuclear

  • climate change

  • renewable energy

  • solar

  • wind

  • tidal

  • geothermal

  • biomass/biofuels

  • environment

  • sustainability

  • politics

  • appropriate science & technology

  • etc... within reason.

  • We are not omniscient. If you can spare some time to either write a post (or two, or three...) or help by contributing a collection of news articles or links on a common theme specifically from countries in these regions that would be a great help.

    Contact Gav by replacing the appropriate characters: biggav*AT*gmail*DOT*com
    A name change is being considered but for the immediate future the title will remain as TOD - ANZ.

    The initial group of contributors are :

    SP - SP has been a long time reader and part time contributor or commentator to Energy Bulletin and TOD-ANZ.  SP is an environmental scientist (of sorts) who recently completed his PhD: his ignorance now comes with qualifications. After a brief flirtation with doomer nihilism, he now tries to entertain a more hopeful and optimistic outlook.

    Big Gav - Gav studied Engineering at the University of Western Australia in Perth. Since then he has travelled widely and worked in the oil and gas, power generation, defence, technology and banking industries. He has been blogging about peak oil since 2004 at Peak Energy (Australia) and is probably the most prolific example of a techno-optimist in the peak oil world.

    Phil Hart - Phil studied Materials Engineering at Monash University in Melbourne before spending five years with Shell UK Exploration and Production. He worked on two new North Sea oil and gas field development projects before joining the Brent field maintenance team as a corrosion engineer. In late 2006, Phil returned to Melbourne and is an active member of the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil. He has provided briefings to local government, fund managers and other businesses and presented on the issue at community events and local oil industry forums.

    aeldric - David Clarke has worked as a consultant analyst for almost 30 years, spending the last 15 years consulting mainly in IT. David has owned and sold an IT startup, but now prefers the pampered life of a manager in the corporate world. He has close friends in the energy industry and blames them for introducing him to Peak Oil, and bursting his happy bubble.