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Errenzhuan

Errenzhuan (, lit. "two-people rotation") is a genre of musical theater and folk dance from Northeast China, usually involving two performers (one male and one female). The dance uses folding fans or square-shaped red handkerchiefs, which are twirled as the songs are performed. It is popular due to its comedic dialogue and sketches, which have obfuscated the old dances and songs.

Errenzhuan was previously called a "double play". It may consist of half-class opera, small yangko, fengliu, Spring Song, double side songs, bouncing, or Northeastern local opera written by the people of Northeast China. This form of performance emerged at the beginning of the 21st century as a folk art of Northeast China. Errenzhuan means ‘two people’ (erren) ‘telling stories through performing different roles’ (zhuan).

Errenzhuan is one of the particular forms of Chinese walking-singing, which was famous in many northern Chinese provinces, such as Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Inner Mongolia, and northeast Hebei. It is also referred to by the locals as the "Northeast-featured Errenzhuan", and has more than 300 years of history since its creation. Years of development have cultivated a variety of performances, divided into four factions: Eastern School, Western School, Southern School, and Northern School. Each faction has its own unique characteristics. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, the four major factions emerged separately from the countryside and spread to the rest of China.

Popular routines include "Fowling", "Selling Thread", "Reward for Detective Dee's Deeds", "Ancient City", "Blue Bridge Tryst", "Romance of the West Chamber", "At Ba Bridge", "Shuangsuo Mountain", "Huarong Pass", "Palace", "Baohao", "Panda", "Chanyu Temple", and "Spring Trip of Miss Yang the Eighth."

The performance of the duo is different from most Chinese dramas (such as those done by the Peking Opera). Errenzhuan is closely related to the common people (a "grassroots" style), and the content of the performance is closely related to the lives of the people in the northeastern region of the country. Errenzhuan started as a performance used by farmers during the off-season. As it became gradually accepted by the public, it developed into a professional form of entertainment.

Development history
Errenzhuan originates in the three provinces of Northeast China: Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang. It is a form of quyi ("melodious art") storytelling by performers through singing and dancing. Bengbeng has been around for over 200 years. The script is written in language that is easy to understand by every day people, humorous, rich in local lifestyle, flavorful, and includes vocal music based on the northeastern folk songs. Errenzhuan formed in the Northeast is influenced by rural characteristics of the region's inhabitants, often including some inappropriate and bitter content. The main content of performances is generally very orthodox, such as "comment on the northeast drum", "comment on opera conten", or "lotus flower". Before the Jilin Folk Art Troupe (the former Jilin Provincial Opera Second Troupe) was established in 1980, the two performers used these kinds of performance.

After the establishment of the art troupe, it reorganized and regulated the content of the errenzhuan, and many areas became popular, in a type called errendou. Some of the better-known works include "Horse Before Water", "Roast Duck", "Eight Arches of Pigs", "Drunken Sky", "Monkey Wukong three-tone Banana Leaf Fan", "Blessing of Love Downhill", "Western View Painting", "Two Mothers", "Visit the sick", "Bao Gong Breaks the Empress Dowager", and "Blue Bridge.

The earliest record of the name Erren Zhuan comes from the Taidong Daily (published in Kangde, Manchuria) on April 27, 1934. According to the article, people are often invited to perform a duet in a teahouse in the city. These actors were called "lotuses" and they performed in various roles in different operas.

At the First National Folk Music and Dance Congress (held in Beijing in April 1953), errenzhuan was officially recognized in Chinese literary and art circles as the "signboard of the Northeast delegation".

Modern errenzhuan
To increase popularity and attract audiences, some troupes began to use earthier humor and language. Zhao Benshan, a well-known comedian and performer in China, started a movement called Green Errenzhuan, which avoids controversial language and sexual innuendo. Some critics have suggested this is due to pressure from the Chinese government.

In 2004, a performance of He and She in Beijing had a traditional errenzhuan story (Widow Ma's Inn) as the first act and a French one-act play (Heart for Two, by French playwright Guy Foissy) as the second act.

title: Errenzhuan


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De (Cyrillic)

De (Д д; italic: Д д) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. It commonly represents the voiced dental stop, like the pronunciation of $⟨d⟩$ in "door", except closer to the teeth. De is usually romanised using the Latin letter D.

History
The Cyrillic letter De was derived from the Greek letter Delta (Δ δ).

In the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was (dobro), meaning "good".

In the Cyrillic numeral system, De had a value of 4.

Form
The major graphic difference between De and its modern Greek equivalent lies in the two descenders ("feet") below the lower corners of the Cyrillic letter. The descenders were borrowed from a Byzantine uncial shape of uppercase Delta.

De, like the Cyrillic letter El, has two typographical variants: an older variant where its top is pointed (like Delta), and a modern one (first used in mid-19th-century fonts) where it is square. Nowadays, almost all books and magazines are printed with fonts with the second variant of the letter; the first one is rather stylish and only a few popular text fonts use it (the best known example is "Baltika" designed in 1951-52 by V. G. Chiminova and others).

In italic (Russian) type, the lowercase form looks more like the lowercase Latin $⟨d⟩$, a mirrored numeral 6 or a partial derivative symbol $⟨∂⟩$. Southern (Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian) typography may prefer a variant that looks like a single-storey lowercase Latin $⟨g⟩$. Cursive lowercase De has the same two shapes, but with a different distribution: for example, the g-shaped variant is a standard for Russian schools.

The (Russian-Ukrainian-Belarusian-Bulgarian) cursive form of capital De looks like Latin D as the printed version is not comfortable enough to be written quickly. The Serbian cursive form is closer to the shape of a numeral "2" (identical to the form sometimes used for uppercase cursive Latin Q); this form is unknown in Russia.

Usage
It most often represents the voiced dental plosive. However, word-finally and before voiceless consonants, it represents a voiceless. Before a palatalizing vowel, it represents.

Related letters and other similar characters

 * Δ δ : Greek letter Delta
 * D d : D|Latin letter D
 * Л л : Cyrillic letter El
 * Ԁ ԁ : Cyrillic letter Komi De
 * G g : G|Latin letter G
 * ∂ : ∂|Partial derivative symbol

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: De (Cyrillic)


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SIRS

SIRS may refer to:
 * Systemic inflammatory response syndrome
 * Scout International Relief Service

title: SIRS


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KMP

KMP may refer to:

 * Hungarian Communist Party (Kommunisták Magyarországi Pártja)
 * KMP Expressways Ltd, constructing the Kundli–Manesar–Palwal Expressway, Haryana, India
 * Kempton Park railway station, Surrey, National Rail station code
 * Kent M. Pitman, known as KMP
 * Knuth–Morris–Pratt algorithm, a search algorithm
 * K-Multimedia Player
 * KM Produce, a Japanese adult video company

title: KMP


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Peak oil

Peak oil is the theorized point in time when the maximum rate of global oil production will occur, after which oil production will begin an irreversible decline. The primary concern of peak oil is that global transportation heavily relies upon the use of gasoline and diesel fuel. Switching transportation to electric vehicles, biofuels, or more fuel-efficient forms of travel (trains, waterways) may help reduce oil demand.

Peak oil is very closely related to the concept of oil depletion; while global petroleum reserves are finite, the limiting factor is not whether the oil exists but whether it can be extracted economically at a given price. Historically, it was theorized that a secular decline in oil production would be caused by eventual depletion of known reserves, though more recently a new competing theory has emerged – that reductions in oil demand may reduce the price of oil relative to the cost of extraction, as might be induced to reduce carbon emissions. Or, demand may be reduced from demand destruction triggered by persistently high oil prices.

Numerous predictions of the timing of peak oil have been made over the past century before being falsified by subsequent growth in the rate of petroleum extraction. M. King Hubbert is often credited with introducing the notion in a 1956 paper which presented a formal theory and predicted U.S. extraction to peak between 1965 and 1971. Hubbert's original predictions for world peak oil production proved premature. , forecasts of the year of peak oil range from 2028 to 2050. These predictions are dependent on future economic trends, technological developments, and efforts by societies and governments to mitigate climate change.

Defining oil
Oil, or petroleum, is a mixture of hydrocarbon substances. By its very nature, what "oil" is may vary. The geology of a region affects the type of oil underground. The types of hydrocarbons produced from an oilfield may also vary depending on the geology.

Crude oil generally comes in various different 'grades,' commonly classified as "light," "medium," 'heavy," and "extra heavy." The exact definitions of these grades vary depending on the region from which the oil came. Grades of oil are also assessed by API gravity. Light oil flows naturally to the surface or can be extracted by simply pumping it out of the ground. Heavy refers to oil that has higher density and lower API gravity. It does not flow as easily, and its consistency can be similar to that of molasses. While some of it can be produced using conventional techniques, recovery rates are better using unconventional methods.

Generally, especially with regards to peak oil, the primary concern regards what is called "crude oil" production (which may also be referred to as "crude and condensate" production in US EIA statistics), which is what is actually refined into the common fuels most people know such as gasoline and diesel fuel, in addition to other common fuels. Other oil production statistics may be named "total liquids production," or "petroleum and other liquids" in EIA statistics. This includes crude oil production in addition to other hydrocarbon liquids such as natural-gas liquids (NGLs). These two production numbers are distinct, and shouldn't be thought of as the same thing. Using "total liquids" production to refer to "crude oil" production is misleading, the extra liquids included in "total liquids" production do not refine into the same products. It can be misleading as it could be used to inflate the actual amount of crude oil being produced globally.

Where oil may come from is commonly divided into two categories, "conventional" oil sources and "unconventional" oil sources. The terms are not strictly defined, and may vary within literature. As a result of the wide range of potential definitions, different oil production forecasts may vary based on which classes of liquids they choose to include or exclude. Some common definitions for "conventional" oil and "unconventional" oil are detailed below.

Conventional sources
Conventional oil is oil that is extracted using "traditional" techniques (i.e., in common use before 2000) techniques. Conventional oil commonly refers to onshore oilfields and shallow offshore oilfields that are "easy" to extract.

It has been recognized that conventional oil production has peaked around 2005–2006. What has prevented peak oil from then on is US tight oil production, which rapidly increased since the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. Additionally, but to a lesser extent, Canadian oil-sands production has helped increase oil supply since 2008.

In the same way, sources of natural gas production are usually divided into "conventional" and "unconventional".

Unconventional sources

Unlike conventional oil, unconventional oil refers to oil that is "difficult" to extract. As in, the amount of steps required translates into extremely high production costs. Common unconventional oil sources include:

Other less common unconventional oil sources include oil shale (see article).
 * Tight oil refers to oil extracted from deposits of low-permeability rock using hydraulic fracturing techniques (commonly referred to as "fracking"). Hydraulic fracturing is a process where a well is first drilled and then fluid containing water, chemicals, and sand is injected at very high pressures to create fractures in the rock. This process has generated controversy as fluid injections may trigger seismic activity, in addition to concerns regarding the chemicals used. Additionally, tight oil is also commonly referred to as "shale oil" due to the oil often being in shale deposits. Due to this nickname, tight oil is often confused with oil shale, which is a completely different process of oil extraction. This process involves manufacturing oil from the kerogen contained in an oil shale.
 * Oil sands are unconsolidated sandstone deposits containing large amounts of very viscous crude bitumen or extra-heavy crude oil that can be recovered by surface mining or by in-situ oil wells using steam injection or other techniques. It can be liquefied by upgrading, blending with diluent, or by heating; and then processed by a conventional oil refinery. The material found in oil sands is an extra-heavy and viscous form of oil known as bitumen.

It is worth mentioning that production of tight oil is mainly concentrated in the United States due to world-class geology and ease of borrowing (tight oil production is extremely expensive). Oil sands production is also concentrated in Canada for the same exact reasons (but different type of oil). There are also economic tight oil deposits in Argentina known as the Vaca Muerta Formation, but are less developed than tight oil in the US due to a lack of infrastructure and less capacity to borrow money.

In recent history, production of tight oil led to a resurgence of US production in the 2010s. US tight oil production initially peaked in March 2015 and fell by 12 per cent over the next 18 months; but then production rose again, and by September 2017 production had exceeded the old peak. As of 2024, US oil production, especially tight oil production, is higher than ever thanks to the Permian Basin.

Venezuela has oil sands deposits similar in size to those of Canada, and approximately equal to the world's reserves of conventional oil. Venezuela's Orinoco Belt tar sands are less viscous than Canada's Athabasca oil sands – meaning they can be produced by more conventional means – but they are buried too deep to be extracted by surface mining. Estimates of the recoverable reserves of the Orinoco Belt range from 100 Goilbbl to 270 Goilbbl. In 2009, USGS updated this value to 513 Goilbbl.

While not an actual source of unconventional oil, processes which convert other hydrocarbons into liquid fuels deserve an honorable mention, as similar to unconventional oil they are 'unconventional' and very costly to produce. They include coal liquefaction or gas to liquids which produce synthetic fuels from coal or natural gas via the Fischer–Tropsch process, Bergius process, or Karrick process.

Discoveries
"All the easy oil and gas in the world has pretty much been found. Now comes the harder work in finding and producing oil from more challenging environments and work areas."

"It is pretty clear that there is not much chance of finding any significant quantity of new cheap oil. Any new or unconventional oil is going to be expensive."

Global discoveries of oilfields peaked in the 1960s at around 55 Goilbbl per year. More recently, 2021 was the worst year for oil and gas discoveries dating back to 1946. This is to be expected of a finite resource. But despite the fall-off in new field discoveries, the reported proved reserves of crude oil remaining in the ground in 2014, which totaled 1,490 billion barrels, were more than quadruple the 1965 proved reserves of 354 billion barrels. A researcher for the U.S. Energy Information Administration has pointed out that after the first wave of discoveries in an area, most oil and natural gas reserve growth comes not from discoveries of new fields, but from extensions and additional gas found within existing fields.

A report by the UK Energy Research Centre noted that "discovery" is often used ambiguously, and explained the seeming contradiction between falling discovery rates since the 1960s and increasing reserves by the phenomenon of reserve growth. The report noted that increased reserves within a field may be discovered or developed by new technology years or decades after the original discovery. But because of the practice of "backdating", any new reserves within a field, even those to be discovered decades after the field discovery, are attributed to the year of initial field discovery, creating an illusion that discovery is not keeping pace with production.

As of 2010, finding new oil had reportedly become much more difficult and expensive, as oil producers had to search through more remote and inhospitable parts of the planet.

Oil reserves

Total possible conventional crude oil reserves include crude oil with 90% certainty of being technically able to be produced from reservoirs (through a wellbore using primary, secondary, improved, enhanced, or tertiary methods); all crude with a 50% probability of being produced in the future (probable); and discovered reserves that have a 10% possibility of being produced in the future (possible). Reserve estimates based on these are referred to as 1P, proven (at least 90% probability); 2P, proven and probable (at least 50% probability); and 3P, proven, probable and possible (at least 10% probability), respectively.

As stated previously, oil is divided up into different types, therefore those counting up reserves should keep that in mind. Conventional oil reserves are different than unconventional reserves.

Concerns over stated oil reserves
"[World] reserves are confused and in fact inflated. Many of the so-called reserves are in fact resources. They're not delineated, they're not accessible, they're not available for production."

Sadad Al Husseini estimated that 300 Goilbbl of the world's 1200 Goilbbl of proven reserves should be recategorized as speculative resources.

One difficulty in forecasting the date of peak oil is the opacity surrounding the oil reserves classified as "proven". In many major producing countries, the majority of reserves claims have not been subject to outside audit or examination.

For the most part, proven reserves are stated by the oil companies, the producer states and the consumer states. All three have reasons to overstate their proven reserves: oil companies may look to increase their potential worth; producer countries gain a stronger international stature; and governments of consumer countries may seek a means to foster sentiments of security and stability within their economies and among consumers.

Major discrepancies arise from accuracy issues with the self-reported numbers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Besides the possibility that these nations have overstated their reserves for political reasons (during periods of no substantial discoveries), over 70 nations also follow a practice of not reducing their reserves to account for yearly production. Analysts have suggested that OPEC member nations have economic incentives to exaggerate their reserves, as the OPEC quota system allows greater output for countries with greater reserves.

Reserves of unconventional oil

As conventional oil becomes less available, it can be replaced with production of liquids from unconventional sources such as tight oil, oil sands, ultra-heavy oils, gas-to-liquid technologies, coal-to-liquid technologies, biofuel technologies, and shale oil. In the 2007 and subsequent International Energy Outlook editions, the word "Oil" was replaced with "Liquids" in the chart of world energy consumption. In 2009 biofuels was included in "Liquids" instead of in "Renewables". The inclusion of natural gas liquids, a bi-product of natural gas extraction, in "Liquids" has been criticized as it is mostly a chemical feedstock which is generally not used as transport fuel.

Reserve estimates are based on profitability, which depends on both oil price and cost of production. Hence, unconventional sources such as heavy crude oil, oil sands, and oil shale may be included as new techniques reduce the cost of extraction. With rule changes by the SEC, oil companies can now book them as proven reserves after opening a strip mine or thermal facility for extraction. These unconventional sources are more labor and resource intensive to produce, however, requiring extra energy to refine, resulting in higher production costs and up to three times more greenhouse gas emissions per barrel (or barrel equivalent) on a "well to tank" basis or 10 to 45% more on a "well to wheels" basis, which includes the carbon emitted from combustion of the final product.

While the energy used, resources needed, and environmental effects of extracting unconventional sources have traditionally been prohibitively high, major unconventional oil sources being considered for large-scale production are the extra heavy oil in the Orinoco Belt of Venezuela, the Athabasca Oil Sands in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, and the oil shale of the Green River Formation in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming in the United States. Energy companies such as Syncrude and Suncor have been extracting bitumen for decades but production has increased greatly in recent years with the development of steam-assisted gravity drainage and other extraction technologies.

Chuck Masters of the USGS estimates that, "Taken together, these resource occurrences, in the Western Hemisphere, are approximately equal to the Identified Reserves of conventional crude oil accredited to the Middle East." Authorities familiar with the resources believe that the world's ultimate reserves of unconventional oil are several times as large as those of conventional oil and will be highly profitable for companies as a result of higher prices in the 21st century. In October 2009, the USGS updated the Orinoco tar sands (Venezuela) recoverable "mean value" to 513 Goilbbl, with a 90% chance of being within the range of 380-652 Goilbbl, making this area "one of the world's largest recoverable oil accumulations".

Moreover, oil extracted from these sources typically contains contaminants such as sulfur and heavy metals that are energy-intensive to extract and can leave tailings, ponds containing hydrocarbon sludge, in some cases. The same applies to much of the Middle East's undeveloped conventional oil reserves, much of which is heavy, viscous, and contaminated with sulfur and metals to the point of being unusable. However, high oil prices make these sources more financially appealing. A study by Wood Mackenzie suggests that by the early 2020s all the world's extra oil supply is likely to come from unconventional sources.

Production
Globally, oil production is very concentrated. Not just geographically depending on the country, but depending on the oilfields themselves. As of 2014, it was recognized that 25 oilfields account for 25% of global oil production, and a few hundred 'giant' oilfields (reserves greater than 500 million barrels) account for 50% of global oil production. Globally, the amount of oilfields is estimated to be between 50,000-70,000. Additionally, it has now been recognized that worldwide oil discoveries have been less than worldwide annual oil production since about 1980.

More recently, there has been some research about the net energy of oil production. Regarding energy production, what also matters is the "Energy Return on Investment" (EROI). To put it simply, in order to produce energy one must also invest some energy, and the EROI is the return on investment in energy terms. With regards to conventional and unconventional oil, it is recognized that conventional oil offers a much higher EROI than unconventional sources of oil. In reality, the EROI is felt through the cost of production. A higher EROI generally translates to a lower cost of production and higher (monetary) profits for the oil company, and a lower EROI generally translates to a higher cost of production and lower (monetary) profits for the oil company. A higher energy investment means physically using more materials (which require energy to produce) in order to produce energy. Oil sources with a lower EROI are theoretically more environmentally damaging than those with higher EROIs, due to the larger amount of resources required to extract the oil. For instance, building a gigantic oil rig produces a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, but is a requirement to access "difficult" deep water offshore oil reserves.

Oil field decline

As a finite resource, naturally every oilfield eventually declines. Generally, the production profile of a typical oil well is that first production increases, then it plateaus, and then it declines. This is the underlying assumption of the Hubbert peak theory. The chart to the right shows the decline of Alaskan oil production since after the 1980s, which is reflective of a typical pattern of decline among most oilfields.

Meanwhile, unconventional oil production follows a different production profile depending on the type. For tight oil, production begins at its maximum, or near its maximum, and then quickly peaks afterwards permanently.

As mentioned previously in the production section, oil production is very concentrated in a few fields, therefore these few fields (out of every field) can dictate where oil production would be headed. If these few fields were to decline, then all oil production would decline. In 2019 when Saudi Aramco went public, the Ghawar oilfield, which is the largest oil field in the world, was revealed to be producing much lower than what conventional wisdom at the time had assumed its production was. Although while no official data exists, certain analysts believe that the Ghawar field has entered into decline, corroborated by the aforementioned news from 2019.

According to the US EIA in 2006, Saudi Aramco Senior Vice President Abdullah Saif estimated that its existing fields were declining at a rate of 5% to 12% per year. According to a study of large oilfields (reserves greater than 500 million barrels) published in 2009, the average decline rate of onshore fields was about 5%, and offshore fields were about 9.5%. An annual rate of decline of 5.1% in 800 of the world's largest oil fields was reported by the International Energy Agency in their World Energy Outlook 2008. In 2013 an informal study of 733 giant oil fields concluded that only 32% of the ultimately recoverable oil remained.

Peak oil demand
More recently, "peak oil demand" has become a more popular interpretation of peak oil. The International International Energy Agency (IEA) argues that the world will first intentionally reduce oil demand before supply issues actually become a problem, as to address climate change and greenhouse gas emissions.

Unlike peak oil demand, peak oil generally is concerned with the global supply of oil, due to the importance of oil to the global economy.

The central idea revolves around technological advancements such as the development of electric vehicles and potentially biofuels in order to phase out gasoline or diesel powered vehicles. Then, in theory, oil demand would fall over time.

In the past 4 decades, oil demand has secularly increased. Generally, oil demand increases unless there is a recession. Recently, in 2020 oil demand sharply fell from 2019 levels due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but recovered swiftly by 2022.

In 2020, British Petroleum (BP) claimed that the world had hit peak oil demand, predicting that oil demand would never recover to pre-pandemic levels due to increased proliferation of electric vehicles and stronger action on climate change.

As of 2023, new projections from Enverus Intelligence Research and the U.S. Energy Information Administration suggest that peak oil demand will not occur before 2030. Enverus forecasts global oil demand to reach 108 million barrels per day by 2030, driven by slower improvements in fuel economy and electric vehicle adoption in the U.S. Similarly, the EIA has updated its estimates, predicting global liquid fuels consumption will be 102.91 million barrels per day in 2024 and 104.26 million barrels per day in 2025, due to higher-than-expected non-OECD consumption. These updates indicate a continued increase in oil demand, potentially exceeding pre-pandemic levels.

In 2024 OPEC suggested that global demand for oil will not decline.

Oil as a component of energy demand
Energy demand is distributed amongst four broad sectors: transportation, residential, commercial, and industrial. Oil demand primarily concerns the transportation sector, as 50% of oil use in OECD countries are for road transportation. This is a result of the proliferation of vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. Transportation is therefore of particular interest to those seeking to mitigate the effects of peak oil.

As of 2023, it is forecasted by the IEA that 90% of global oil demand growth will come from the Asia-Pacific region. As of 2022, China and India are the second and third largest oil consumers globally. The United States is still the largest consumer of oil globally (as of 2022).

Generally, when countries economically develop, they use more energy, which includes using more oil. In recent years, China surpassed the United States as the world's largest crude oil importer in 2015. This was a result of China developing in addition to US oil exports decreasing due to increased US tight oil production.

Economic growth
Some analysts argue that the cost of oil has a profound effect on economic growth due to its pivotal role in the extraction of resources and the processing, manufacturing, and transportation of goods. Comparing GDP and energy consumption, there is a clearly defined correlation between having a higher GDP, and having a higher energy consumption. To some degree, this is an intuitive observation as those in very undeveloped countries use a small amount of energy (no electricity), meanwhile those in developed countries use a high amount of energy (electricity consumption, gasoline consumption), and this use of energy translates into economic activity.

There is a concern by more pessimistic analysts that assuming there was a dramatic spike in the price of oil, the world economy may be unable to pay for it, leading to a disconnect between the price of oil that oil producers need to maintain supply, and the price of oil consumers need to be able to afford things. This has partially occurred in recent years with the dramatic run-up in oil prices during 2022 and then the release of the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 2022 in order to cool down oil prices.

Possible consequences
The wide use of fossil fuels has been one of the most important stimuli of economic growth and prosperity since the industrial revolution, allowing humans to participate in takedown, or the consumption of energy at a greater rate than it is being replaced. Some theorize that when oil production significantly decreases, human culture and modern technological society will be forced to change drastically. A rise in oil prices as a result of peak oil could severely impact the cost of transport, food, heating, and electricity globally. A recent example of this has been seen since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022; a global spike in oil and energy prices exacerbated the global energy crisis (2021–present).

The impact of oil supply limitations, assuming they occur, will depend heavily on how severe the limitations are and the development and adoption of effective alternatives.

Possible long term effects on human lifestyle
Commodity production is heavily globalized in 2024, with almost all major supply chains relying upon diesel fuel or heavy fuel oil to power almost all global shipping and aviation fuel to power all aircraft. A study from the Geologic Survey of Finland found that 90% of the supply chain of all industrially manufactured products depend on oil derived services or oil derived products, and World Bank data shows over 30% of global GDP accounted for by exports of goods and services. Many countries with highly developed economies are dependent on food imports (for example, the United Kingdom produced just under half of domestic food consumption as of 2021 ), meaning a disruption in trade due to peak oil would exacerbate food insecurity.

Since aviation relies mainly on jet fuels derived from crude oil, commercial aviation has been predicted to go into decline alongside global oil production as it would then become unaffordable for most people. Alternatives such as electric aircraft show promise, but are yet to prove commercially viable as of 2024, while hybrids approaches such as a 50% blend of aviation biofuel or utilising metal sails on cargo ships still rely on oil.

Possible effects on agriculture
Supplies of oil are absolutely critical to modern agriculture. Diesel fuel and agrichemicals such as pesticides and fertilizers are directly derived from hydrocarbons. According to Our World in Data, artificial fertilizers feed over 3.5 billion people as of 2015.

The largest consumer of fossil fuels in modern agriculture is ammonia production for fertilizer via the Haber process, which is essential to high-yielding intensive agriculture. The specific fossil fuel input to fertilizer production is primarily natural gas, to provide hydrogen via steam reforming.

More recently, some theorize that hydrogen could be generated without the use of fossil fuels by using renewable electricity for electrolysis. But as of 2024, this remains commercially unviable.

Possible mitigation
In 2005, the United States Department of Energy published a report titled Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management. Known as the Hirsch report, it stated, "The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem." To avoid the serious social and economic implications a global decline in oil production could entail, the Hirsch report emphasized the need to find alternatives, at least ten to twenty years before the peak, and to phase out the use of oil over that time. This was similar to a plan proposed for Sweden that same year. Such mitigation could include energy conservation and fuel substitution. The timing of mitigation responses is critical. Premature initiation would be undesirable, but if initiated too late could be more costly and have more negative economic consequences.

The two major oil consumers, China (second globally) and India (third globally), are taking many steps not to increase their crude oil consumption by encouraging the renewable energy options.

Methods that have been suggested for mitigating these urban and suburban issues include the use of non-petroleum vehicles such as electric vehicles, transit-oriented development, carfree cities, bicycles, light trains, smart growth, shared space, urban consolidation, urban villages, and New Urbanism.

An economic theory that has been proposed as a remedy is the introduction of a steady state economy. Such a system could include a tax shifting from income to depleting natural resources (and pollution), as well as the limitation of advertising that stimulates demand and population growth. It could also include the institution of policies that move away from globalization and toward localization to conserve energy resources, provide local jobs, and maintain local decision-making authority. Zoning policies could be adjusted to promote resource conservation and eliminate sprawl.

Potential positive aspects
It is known that the combustion of fossil fuels emits greenhouse gas emissions which cause climate change. Therefore, a reduction in oil use would be a net positive for the environment.

Permaculture sees peak oil as holding tremendous potential for positive change, assuming countries act with foresight. The rebuilding of local food networks, green energy production, and the general implementation of "energy descent culture" are argued to be ethical responses to the acknowledgment of finite fossil resources.

The Transition Towns movement, started in Totnes, Devon and spread internationally by "The Transition Handbook" (Rob Hopkins) and Transition Network, sees the restructuring of society for more local resilience and ecological stewardship as a natural response to the combination of peak oil and climate change.

Predictions
The idea that the rate of oil production would peak and irreversibly decline is an old one. In 1919, David White, chief geologist of the United States Geological Survey, wrote of US petroleum: "... the peak of production will soon be passed, possibly within 3 years." In 1953, Eugene Ayers, a researcher for Gulf Oil, projected that if US ultimate recoverable oil reserves were 100 billion barrels, then production in the US would peak no later than 1960. If ultimate recoverable were to be as high as 200 billion barrels, which he warned was wishful thinking, US peak production would come no later than 1970. Likewise for the world, he projected a peak somewhere between 1985 (one trillion barrels ultimate recoverable) and 2000 (two trillion barrels recoverable). Ayers made his projections without a mathematical model. He wrote: "But if the curve is made to look reasonable, it is quite possible to adapt mathematical expressions to it and to determine, in this way, the peak dates corresponding to various ultimate recoverable reserve numbers"

By observing past discoveries and production levels, and predicting future discovery trends, the geoscientist M. King Hubbert used statistical modelling in 1956 to predict that United States oil production would peak between 1965 and 1971. While this prediction held for many decades, more recently as of 2018 daily oil production in the United States had finally exceeded its previous peak in 1970. Hubbert used a semi-logistical curved model (sometimes incorrectly compared to a normal distribution). He assumed the production rate of a limited resource would follow a roughly symmetrical distribution. Depending on the limits of exploitability and market pressures, the rise or decline of resource production over time might be sharper or more stable, appear more linear or curved. That model and its variants are now called Hubbert peak theory; they have been used to describe and predict the peak and decline of production from regions, countries, and multinational areas. The same theory has also been applied to other limited-resource production.

A comprehensive 2009 study of oil depletion by the UK Energy Research Centre noted:

"Few analysts now adhere to a symmetrical bell-shaped production curve. This is correct, as there is no natural physical reason why the production of a resource should follow such a curve and little empirical evidence that it does."

The report noted that Hubbert had used the logistic curve because it was mathematically convenient, not because he believed it to be literally correct. The study observed that in most cases the asymmetric exponential model provided a better fit (as in the case of Seneca cliff model ), and that peaks tended to occur well before half the oil had been produced, with the result that in nearly all cases, the post-peak decline was more gradual than the increase leading up to the peak.

List of past predictions of peak oil
In the 21st century, predictions of future oil production made in 2007 and 2009 stated either that the peak had already occurred,  that oil production was on the cusp of the peak, or that it would occur soon. A decade later, world oil production would rise to a new all time high in 2018, as developments in extraction technology enabled a massive expansion of U.S. tight oil production. Though world oil production faltered in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic causing significant disruptions in the oil markets, production in 2023 reached a new high of 101.73 million barrels per day in 2023.

General arguments
The theory of peak oil is controversial and became an issue of political debate in the US and Europe in the mid-2000s. Critics argued that newly found oil reserves forestalled a peak oil event. Some argued that oil production from new oil reserves and existing fields will continue to increase at a rate that outpaces demand, until alternative energy sources for current fossil fuel dependence are found. In 2015, analysts in the petroleum and financial industries claimed that the "age of oil" had already reached a new stage where the excess supply that appeared in late 2014 may continue. A consensus was emerging that parties to an international agreement would introduce measures to constrain the combustion of hydrocarbons in an effort to limit global temperature rise to the nominal 2 °C that scientists predicted would limit environmental harm to tolerable levels.

Another argument against the peak oil theory is reduced demand from various options and technologies substituting oil. US federal funding to develop algae fuels increased since 2000 due to rising fuel prices. Many other projects are being funded in Australia, New Zealand, Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere and private companies are entering the field.

Oil industry representatives
John Hofmeister, president of Royal Dutch Shell's US operations, while agreeing that conventional oil production would soon start to decline, criticized the analysis of peak oil theory by Matthew Simmons for being "overly focused on a single country: Saudi Arabia, the world's largest exporter and OPEC swing producer." Hofmeister pointed to the large reserves at the US outer continental shelf, which held an estimated 100 Goilbbl of oil and natural gas. However, only 15% of those reserves were currently exploitable, a good part of that off the coasts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

Hofmeister also pointed to unconventional sources of oil such as the oil sands of Canada, where Shell was active. The Canadian oil sands—a natural combination of sand, water, and oil found largely in Alberta and Saskatchewan—are believed to contain one trillion barrels of oil. Another trillion barrels are also said to be trapped in rocks in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, in the form of oil shale. Environmentalists argue that major environmental, social, and economic obstacles would make extracting oil from these areas excessively difficult. Hofmeister argued that if oil companies were allowed to drill more in the United States enough to produce another 2 Moilbbl/d, oil and gas prices would not be as high as they were in the late 2000s. He thought in 2008 that high energy prices would cause social unrest similar to the 1992 Rodney King riots.

In 2009, Dr. Christof Rühl, chief economist of BP, argued against the peak oil hypothesis: "Physical peak oil, which I have no reason to accept as a valid statement either on theoretical, scientific or ideological grounds, would be insensitive to prices. ... In fact the whole hypothesis of peak oil – which is that there is a certain amount of oil in the ground, consumed at a certain rate, and then it's finished – does not react to anything ... Therefore there will never be a moment when the world runs out of oil because there will always be a price at which the last drop of oil can clear the market. And you can turn anything into oil if you are willing to pay the financial and environmental price ... (Global Warming) is likely to be more of a natural limit than all these peak oil theories combined. ... Peak oil has been predicted for 150 years. It has never happened, and it will stay this way."

Rühl argued that the main limitations for oil availability are "above ground" factors such as the availability of staff, expertise, technology, investment security, funds, and global warming, and that the oil question was about price and not the physical availability.

In 2008, Daniel Yergin of CERA suggest that a recent high price phase might add to a future demise of the oil industry, not of complete exhaustion of resources or an apocalyptic shock but the timely and smooth setup of alternatives. Yergin went on to say, "This is the fifth time that the world is said to be running out of oil. Each time-whether it was the 'gasoline famine' at the end of WWI or the 'permanent shortage' of the 1970s-technology and the opening of new frontier areas have banished the spectre of decline. There's no reason to think that technology is finished this time."

In 2006, Clive Mather, CEO of Shell Canada, said the Earth's supply of bitumen hydrocarbons was "almost infinite", referring to hydrocarbons in oil sands.

Others
In 2006 attorney and mechanical engineer Peter W. Huber asserted that the world was just running out of "cheap oil", explaining that as oil prices rise, unconventional sources become economically viable. He predicted that, "[t]he tar sands of Alberta alone contain enough hydrocarbon to fuel the entire planet for over 100 years."

Environmental journalist George Monbiot responded to a 2012 report by Leonardo Maugeri by suggesting that there is more than enough oil (from unconventional sources) to "deep-fry" the world with climate change. Stephen Sorrell, senior lecturer Science and Technology Policy Research, Sussex Energy Group, and lead author of the UKERC Global Oil Depletion report, and Christophe McGlade, doctoral researcher at the UCL Energy Institute have criticized Maugeri's assumptions about decline rates.

Books

 * Campbell, Colin J. (2005). Oil Crisis Multi-Science Publishing.
 * Campbell, Colin J. (2013). Campbell's Atlas of Oil and Gas Depletion ISBN 978-1-4614-3576-1
 * Herberg, Mikkal (2014). Energy Security and the Asia-Pacific: Course Reader. United States: The National Bureau of Asian Research.
 * Campbell, Colin J. (2013). Campbell's Atlas of Oil and Gas Depletion ISBN 978-1-4614-3576-1
 * Herberg, Mikkal (2014). Energy Security and the Asia-Pacific: Course Reader. United States: The National Bureau of Asian Research.
 * Herberg, Mikkal (2014). Energy Security and the Asia-Pacific: Course Reader. United States: The National Bureau of Asian Research.
 * Herberg, Mikkal (2014). Energy Security and the Asia-Pacific: Course Reader. United States: The National Bureau of Asian Research.
 * Herberg, Mikkal (2014). Energy Security and the Asia-Pacific: Course Reader. United States: The National Bureau of Asian Research.
 * Herberg, Mikkal (2014). Energy Security and the Asia-Pacific: Course Reader. United States: The National Bureau of Asian Research.
 * Herberg, Mikkal (2014). Energy Security and the Asia-Pacific: Course Reader. United States: The National Bureau of Asian Research.
 * Herberg, Mikkal (2014). Energy Security and the Asia-Pacific: Course Reader. United States: The National Bureau of Asian Research.
 * Herberg, Mikkal (2014). Energy Security and the Asia-Pacific: Course Reader. United States: The National Bureau of Asian Research.
 * Herberg, Mikkal (2014). Energy Security and the Asia-Pacific: Course Reader. United States: The National Bureau of Asian Research.
 * Herberg, Mikkal (2014). Energy Security and the Asia-Pacific: Course Reader. United States: The National Bureau of Asian Research.
 * Herberg, Mikkal (2014). Energy Security and the Asia-Pacific: Course Reader. United States: The National Bureau of Asian Research.

Articles

 * De Young, R. (2014). "Some behavioral aspects of energy descent." Frontiers in Psychology, 5(1255).
 * De Young, R. (2014). "Some behavioral aspects of energy descent." Frontiers in Psychology, 5(1255).
 * De Young, R. (2014). "Some behavioral aspects of energy descent." Frontiers in Psychology, 5(1255).
 * De Young, R. (2014). "Some behavioral aspects of energy descent." Frontiers in Psychology, 5(1255).

Documentary films

 * The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream (2004)
 * A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (2006)
 * The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil (2006)
 * Crude Impact (2006)
 * What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire (2007)
 * Crude (2007) Australian Broadcasting Corporation documentary [3 x 30 minutes] about the formation of oil, and humanity's use of it
 * PetroApocalypse Now? (2008)
 * Blind Spot (2008)
 * GasHole (2008)
 * Collapse (2009)
 * Peak Oil: A Staggering Challenge to "Business As Usual"

Podcasts

 * Saudi America? – The U.S. Oil Boom in Perspective
 * KunstlerCast 275 — Art Berman Clarifies Whatever Happened to Peak Oil

title: Peak oil


text:
Dundee, KwaZulu-Natal

The coal mining town of Dundee is situated in a valley of the Biggarsberg mountains in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (-28.16667°N, 30.23333°W). It is part of the Endumeni Municipality, Umzinyathi District. It is very rich in coal deposits. More populous than the town of Dundee is its adjacent township named Sibongile. This township is now being extended with many residing zones, e.g. Lindelani.

Dundee was established by Peter Smith, with land contributed by his son in-law, in 1882 after the realisation that the valley was a natural way for travellers into the interior of Africa. Traders, hunters explorers, missionaries and soldiers all made their way through here. A large fort, Fort Jones, housed British troops in the area during the Anglo Zulu War of 1879. The discovery of coal in the area dates from early Voortrekker records of 1838 and later geological surveys in the 1860s. It is named after the hometown of a pioneering Scottish settler, Peter Smith. At first, Dundee was a farm (Dundee farm), the property of Peter Smith, which he had bought from a Voortrekker settler, Mr Dekker. Three other men are also credited with the founding of Dundee; his son William Craighead Smith, son-in-law Dugald McPhail, and close family friend Charles Wilson.

Geography
The town lies nestled in a valley of the picturesque Biggarsberg and is surrounded by historical remarkable mountains of “Indumeni” (where the thunder rolls), “Mpati” (The place of good waters), and “Talana” (The shelf where precious items are kept). Dundee has trails of the San people that lived here 4 000 – 5 000 years ago. Evidence of this is to be found in lifestyle and rock paintings in several caves and shelters.

Climate
Dundee has a subtropical highland climate (Cwb, according to the Köppen climate classification), with pleasant summers and cool, dry winters. The average annual precipitation is 684 mm, with rainfall occurring mainly during summer.

History

 * The Boers reported surface coal here and named one of the streams Steenkoolspruit (Afrikaans for Coal Stream).
 * Peter Smith, a Scottish settler started sending wagonloads of coal, which was discovered close to the surface, to be sold in Pietermaritzburg. This started the coal mining industry in Natal.
 * The first geological survey of the Natal coalfields was made in the 1860s and proved that there were workable coal deposits.
 * In 1882 a town was laid out and named after Smith’s Scottish hometown Dundee.
 * Smith, with partners Dougald McPhail and Charles Willson, floated the Dundee Coal and Estate Company on the London Stock Exchange in 1899.
 * Second Boer War: The British started massing troops at Dundee and were given an ultimatum by the Boers to retreat with the troops. On 20 October 1899, the first shots of the war were fired. The news of this battle hit the headlines in Britain as the "Battle of Glencoe", which was corrected the following day to the "Battle of Dundee" and on the third day to the "Battle of Talana." It was on the slopes of Talana Hill that the British army troops officially wore khaki uniforms for the first time in battle; it is also notable as the first indisputable use of indirect fire in modern warfare, and the tactic as applied by Boer field artillery had a devastating effect. After the battle, the British troops retreated to Ladysmith and Boer forces occupied the town, renaming it Meyersdorp. This occupation lasted seven months. Dundee was relieved after the battle of Helpmekaar in May 1900.
 * The town's folk who had left before or shortly after the battle returned and the town began to flourish again. Dundee soon emerged as a boomtown graced with stately homes and the first theatre north of Durban.
 * Pioneer traders from the Indian sub-continent settled here during the following decade, when Dundee became the meeting place of seven roads into the hinterland and coast of Africa.
 * Mahatma Gandhi was tried in the Dundee courthouse for civil disobedience and imprisoned in the Dundee jail.

Popular culture

 * The poem "The Battle of Dundee" aka "How President Kruger's Irish Took in Her Majestys Hiberians" by Rev I. Dempsey about the battle was widely circulated in print media of the time.
 * In the Disney Channel Movie The Color of Friendship, one of the main characters, Mahree Bok, is from Dundee.

Sport
The Northern-Natal Rhinos (Noord-Natal Renosters) Wrestling Club in Dundee is one of the top wrestling clubs in the province of Kwa-Zulu Natal.

Sentraal Rugby Club is one of the top sides in Northern-Natal. Titans Rugby club is a youth rugby team that builds future rugby players (Grassroots). Rhino Women's Rugby Club has constantly produced Sharks Craven week players and have represented Umzinyathi District in the annual Salga games

Coat of arms
Dundee was a borough in its own right from 1902 to 1996. In October 1951, the council obtained a grant of arms from the Lord Lyon King of Arms in Scotland. It registered the arms at the Bureau of Heraldry in July 1995.

The arms, which were based on those of the Scottish burgh of Dundee, were : Azure, a  pot  with  three  lilies issuant Argent, charged  with  a miner's lamp proper and on a chief Or two wildebeest courant  in fess, Sable; the shield ensigned of a mural crown Argent. In layman's terms : a blue shield displaying two black wildebeest on a golden strip above three lilies in a silver pot decorated with a miner's lamp. The motto was Per victoriam laboremque.

title: Dundee, KwaZulu-Natal


text:
User talk:Kms007

Hello and welcome to Wikipedia! Hope you like it here, and stick around.

Here are some tips to help you get started:

 * To sign your posts (on talk pages, for example) use the '~' symbol. To insert just your name, type ~~~ (3 tildes), or, to insert your name and timestamp, use ~~~~ (4 tildes).
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 * If you need help, post a question at the Help Desk
 * Follow the Simplified Ruleset
 * Eventually, you might want to read the Manual of Style and Policies and Guidelines.
 * Remember Neutral point of view
 * Explore, be bold in editing pages, and, most importantly, have fun!

Good luck!

title: User talk:Kms007


text:
Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here

Now and Then is Joseph Heller's 1998 memoir. The first half of the memoir focuses on Heller's childhood in Coney Island and is, in fact, as much about the place as it is about the man. Heller describes growing up, his mother and half-siblings in a fundamentally safe and fun neighborhood of punch ball, football, amusement park, and Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Stand.

Synopsis
Heller describes his early passion for writing and some of the primary school papers that preview his adult fiction. Picking up late in high school, Heller reviews the various jobs he held before enlisting in the Air Force: telegram messenger boy, clerk at an insurance company, and blacksmith's helper in a shipyard.

With World War II looming, Heller enlisted in the US Army Air Corps, where he served as a bombardier. Heller describes several of his fellow soldiers and the events that would later become part of Catch-22.

Heller completed his required number of missions, was discharged, and was married to his first wife within five months. She accompanied him to college, which Heller attended on the GI Bill, but we learn very little about her. Heller describes his early attempts at writing fiction, which occurred while he worked as an English professor and ad copywriter, and reminds the reader of the many prominent American writers who have been unable to support themselves on their words alone.

Heller provides interesting details from his life's story, but doesn't rehash any of his works. Catch-22 and Something Happened receive the most attention, while Picture This, God Knows, and Good as Gold receive brief mentions. The most insight Heller provides into his body of his work is a discussion in the penultimate chapter of his experience with psychoanalysis. Heller revisits his father's death in the chapter, and notes how so many of his works have a prominent, but not central, character's death described in the penultimate chapter (e.g., Snowden in Catch-22). Heller also discusses why the only emotional closeness that appears in his works is between father and son. (e.g., David and Absalom in God Knows) Heller provides an in-depth reason to the insanity that often lurks in people's minds.

title: Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here


text:
Geronthres

Geronthres (Γερόνθρες), named after ancient Geronthrae, is a former municipality in Laconia, Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Evrotas, of which it is a municipal unit. The municipal unit has an area of 236.780 km2. The seat of administration was the village Geraki Laconias. The municipal population is approx. 1,700.

Dutch excavations (University of Amsterdam) point to first settlement of the acropolis hill in the (Final) Neolithic period. In the Early Helladic period the site must have contained an administrative centre of some kind, judged by the sealing fragments that can be compared by those found in Lerna. Habitation continued towards the end of the Middle Helladic period, but no Mycenaean finds have been found yet. First signs of renewed habitation date from the Iron Age. The site is left again in the Roman period.

Close to Geraki is the medieval fortress after which the village is named, and which formed the seat of the Barony of Geraki in the Frankish Principality of Achaea. In the village itself are several Byzantine-era churches.

title: Geronthres


text:
TCP offload engine

TCP offload engine (TOE) is a technology used in some network interface cards (NIC) to offload processing of the entire TCP/IP stack to the network controller. It is primarily used with high-speed network interfaces, such as gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet, where processing overhead of the network stack becomes significant. TOEs are often used as a way to reduce the overhead associated with Internet Protocol (IP) storage protocols such as iSCSI and Network File System (NFS).

Purpose
Originally TCP was designed for unreliable low speed networks (such as early dial-up modems) but with the growth of the Internet in terms of backbone transmission speeds (using Optical Carrier, Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet links) and faster and more reliable access mechanisms (such as DSL and cable modems) it is frequently used in data centers and desktop PC environments at speeds of over 1 Gigabit per second. At these speeds the TCP software implementations on host systems require significant computing power. In the early 2000s, full-duplex gigabit TCP communication could consume more than 80% of a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 processor, resulting in small or no processing resources left for the applications to run on the system.

TCP is a connection-oriented protocol which adds complexity and processing overhead. These aspects include:
 * Connection establishment using the "3-way handshake" (SYNchronize; SYNchronize-ACKnowledge; ACKnowledge).
 * Acknowledgment of packets as they are received by the far end, adding to the message flow between the endpoints and thus the protocol load.
 * Checksum and sequence number calculations - again a burden on a general purpose CPU to perform.
 * Sliding window calculations for packet acknowledgement and congestion control.
 * Connection termination.

Moving some or all of these functions to dedicated hardware, a TCP offload engine, frees the system's main CPU for other tasks.

Freed-up CPU cycles
A generally accepted rule of thumb is that 1 Hertz of CPU processing is required to send or receive $1 bit/s$ of TCP/IP. For example, 5 Gbit/s (625 MB/s) of network traffic requires 5 GHz of CPU processing. This implies that 2 entire cores of a 2.5 GHz multi-core processor will be required to handle the TCP/IP processing associated with 5 Gbit/s of TCP/IP traffic. Since Ethernet (10GE in this example) is bidirectional, it is possible to send and receive 10 Gbit/s (for an aggregate throughput of 20 Gbit/s). Using the 1 Hz/(bit/s) rule this equates to eight 2.5 GHz cores.

Many of the CPU cycles used for TCP/IP processing are freed-up by TCP/IP offload and may be used by the CPU (usually a server CPU) to perform other tasks such as file system processing (in a file server) or indexing (in a backup media server). In other words, a server with TCP/IP offload can do more server work than a server without TCP/IP offload NICs.

Reduction of PCI traffic
In addition to the protocol overhead that TOE can address, it can also address some architectural issues that affect a large percentage of host based (server and PC) endpoints. Many older end point hosts are PCI bus based, which provides a standard interface for the addition of certain peripherals such as Network Interfaces to Servers and PCs. PCI is inefficient for transferring small bursts of data from main memory, across the PCI bus to the network interface ICs, but its efficiency improves as the data burst size increases. Within the TCP protocol, a large number of small packets are created (e.g. acknowledgements) and as these are typically generated on the host CPU and transmitted across the PCI bus and out the network physical interface, this impacts the host computer IO throughput.

A TOE solution, located on the network interface, is located on the other side of the PCI bus from the CPU host so it can address this I/O efficiency issue, as the data to be sent across the TCP connection can be sent to the TOE from the CPU across the PCI bus using large data burst sizes with none of the smaller TCP packets having to traverse the PCI bus.

History
One of the first patents in this technology, for UDP offload, was issued to Auspex Systems in early 1990. Auspex founder Larry Boucher and a number of Auspex engineers went on to found Alacritech in 1997 with the idea of extending the concept of network stack offload to TCP and implementing it in custom silicon. They introduced the first parallel-stack full offload network card in early 1999; the company's SLIC (Session Layer Interface Card) was the predecessor to its current TOE offerings. Alacritech holds a number of patents in the area of TCP/IP offload.

By 2002, as the emergence of TCP-based storage such as iSCSI spurred interest, it was said that "At least a dozen newcomers, most founded toward the end of the dot-com bubble, are chasing the opportunity for merchant semiconductor accelerators for storage protocols and applications, vying with half a dozen entrenched vendors and in-house ASIC designs."

In 2005 Microsoft licensed Alacritech's patent base and along with Alacritech created the partial TCP offload architecture that has become known as TCP chimney offload. TCP chimney offload centers on the Alacritech "Communication Block Passing Patent". At the same time, Broadcom also obtained a license to build TCP chimney offload chips.

Types
Instead of replacing the TCP stack with a TOE entirely, there are alternative techniques to offload some operations in co-operation with the operating system's TCP stack. TCP checksum offload and large segment offload are supported by the majority of today's Ethernet NICs. Newer techniques like large receive offload and TCP acknowledgment offload are already implemented in some high-end Ethernet hardware, but are effective even when implemented purely in software.

Parallel-stack full offload
Parallel-stack full offload gets its name from the concept of two parallel TCP/IP Stacks. The first is the main host stack which is included with the host OS. The second or "parallel stack" is connected between the Application Layer and the Transport Layer (TCP) using a "vampire tap". The vampire tap intercepts TCP connection requests by applications and is responsible for TCP connection management as well as TCP data transfer. Many of the criticisms in the following section relate to this type of TCP offload.

HBA full offload
HBA (Host Bus Adapter) full offload is found in iSCSI host adapters which present themselves as disk controllers to the host system while connecting (via TCP/IP) to an iSCSI storage device. This type of TCP offload not only offloads TCP/IP processing but it also offloads the iSCSI initiator function. Because the HBA appears to the host as a disk controller, it can only be used with iSCSI devices and is not appropriate for general TCP/IP offload.

TCP chimney partial offload
TCP chimney offload addresses the major security criticism of parallel-stack full offload. In partial offload, the main system stack controls all connections to the host. After a connection has been established between the local host (usually a server) and a foreign host (usually a client) the connection and its state are passed to the TCP offload engine. The heavy lifting of data transmit and receive is handled by the offload device. Almost all TCP offload engines use some type of TCP/IP hardware implementation to perform the data transfer without host CPU intervention. When the connection is closed, the connection state is returned from the offload engine to the main system stack. Maintaining control of TCP connections allows the main system stack to implement and control connection security.

Large receive offload
Large receive offload (LRO) is a technique for increasing inbound throughput of high-bandwidth network connections by reducing central processing unit (CPU) overhead. It works by aggregating multiple incoming packets from a single stream into a larger buffer before they are passed higher up the networking stack, thus reducing the number of packets that have to be processed. Linux implementations generally use LRO in conjunction with the New API (NAPI) to also reduce the number of interrupts.

According to benchmarks, even implementing this technique entirely in software can increase network performance significantly. , the Linux kernel supports LRO for TCP in software only. FreeBSD 8 supports LRO in hardware on adapters that support it.

LRO should not operate on machines acting as routers, as it breaks the end-to-end principle and can significantly impact performance.

Generic receive offload
Generic receive offload (GRO) implements a generalised LRO in software that isn't restricted to TCP/IPv4 or have the issues created by LRO.

Large send offload
In computer networking, large send offload (LSO) is a technique for increasing egress throughput of high-bandwidth network connections by reducing CPU overhead. It works by passing a multipacket buffer to the network interface card (NIC). The NIC then splits this buffer into separate packets. The technique is also called TCP segmentation offload (TSO) or generic segmentation offload (GSO) when applied to TCP. LSO and LRO are independent and use of one does not require the use of the other.

When a system needs to send large chunks of data out over a computer network, the chunks first need breaking down into smaller segments that can pass through all the network elements like routers and switches between the source and destination computers. This process is referred to as segmentation. Often the TCP protocol in the host computer performs this segmentation. Offloading this work to the NIC is called TCP segmentation offload (TSO).

For example, a unit of 64 KiB (65,536 bytes) of data is usually segmented to 45 segments of 1460 bytes each before it is sent through the NIC and over the network. With some intelligence in the NIC, the host CPU can hand over the 64 KB of data to the NIC in a single transmit-request, the NIC can break that data down into smaller segments of 1460 bytes, add the TCP, IP, and data link layer protocol headers — according to a template provided by the host's TCP/IP stack — to each segment, and send the resulting frames over the network. This significantly reduces the work done by the CPU. many new NICs on the market support TSO.

Some network cards implement TSO generically enough that it can be used for offloading fragmentation of other transport layer protocols, or for doing IP fragmentation for protocols that don't support fragmentation by themselves, such as UDP.

Support in Linux
Unlike other operating systems, such as FreeBSD, the Linux kernel does not include support for TOE (not to be confused with other types of network offload). While there are patches from the hardware manufacturers such as Chelsio or Qlogic that add TOE support, the Linux kernel developers are opposed to this technology for several reasons:
 * Security – because TOE is implemented in hardware, patches must be applied to the TOE firmware, instead of just software, to address any security vulnerabilities found in a particular TOE implementation. This is further compounded by the newness and vendor-specificity of this hardware, as compared to a well tested TCP/IP stack as is found in an operating system that does not use TOE.
 * Limitations of hardware – because connections are buffered and processed on the TOE chip, resource starvation can more easily occur as compared to the generous CPU and memory available to the operating system.
 * Complexity – TOE breaks the assumption that kernels make about having access to all resources at all times – details such as memory used by open connections are not available with TOE. TOE also requires very large changes to a networking stack in order to be supported properly, and even when that is done, features like quality of service and packet filtering might not work.
 * Proprietary – TOE is implemented differently by each hardware vendor. This means more code must be rewritten to deal with the various TOE implementations, at a cost of the aforementioned complexity and, possibly, security. Furthermore, TOE firmware cannot be easily modified since it is closed-source.
 * Obsolescence – Each TOE NIC has a limited lifetime of usefulness, because system hardware rapidly catches up to TOE performance levels, and eventually exceeds TOE performance levels.

Suppliers
Much of the current work on TOE technology is by manufacturers of 10 Gigabit Ethernet interface cards, such as Broadcom, Chelsio Communications, Emulex, Mellanox Technologies, QLogic.

title: TCP offload engine


text:
Yellowfin tuna

The yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) is a species of tuna found in pelagic waters of tropical and subtropical oceans worldwide.

Yellowfin is often marketed as ahi, from the Hawaiian ahi, a name also used there for the closely related bigeye tuna. The species name, albacares ("white meat") can also lead to confusion: in English, the albacore (Thunnus alalunga) is a different species, while yellowfin is officially designated albacore in French and referred to as albacora by Portuguese fishermen.

Description
The yellowfin tuna is among the larger tuna species, reaching weights over 180 kg, but is significantly smaller than the Atlantic and Pacific bluefin tunas, which can reach over 450 kg, and slightly smaller than the bigeye tuna and the southern bluefin tuna.

The second dorsal fin and the anal fin, as well as the finlets between those fins and the tail, are bright yellow, giving this fish its common name. The second dorsal and anal fins can be very long in mature specimens, reaching almost as far back as the tail and giving the appearance of sickles or scimitars. The pectoral fins are also longer than the related bluefin tuna, but not as long as those of the albacore. The main body is a very dark metallic blue, changing to silver on the belly, which has about 20 vertical lines.

Reported sizes in the literature have ranged as high as 2.4 m in length and 200 kg in weight. The all-tackle International Game Fish Association (IGFA) record for this species stands at 193.68 kg for a yellowfin caught in 2012 off Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The fisherman received a prize of $1 million once the catch was confirmed by the IGFA.

Habitat
Yellowfin tuna are epipelagic fish that inhabit the mixed surface layer of the ocean above the thermocline. Sonic tracking has found that although yellowfin tuna, unlike the related bigeye tuna, mostly range in the top 100 m of the water column, another study reported that depth tends to vary with time of day: 90% of their recorded depth values were shallower than 88 m during the night, and shallower than 190 m during the day.

Although yellowfin tuna penetrate the thermocline relatively infrequently, they are capable of diving to considerable depths. An individual tagged in the Indian Ocean with an archival tag spent 85% of its time in depths shallower than 75 m, but was recorded as having made three dives to 578, 982, and 1160 m. The maximum dive depth measured in a second study was 1592 m.

Behavior
Although mainly found in deep offshore waters, yellowfin tuna may approach shore when suitable conditions exist. Mid-ocean islands such as the Hawaiian archipelago, other island groups in the Western Pacific, Caribbean, and Maldives islands in the Indian Ocean, as well as the volcanic islands of the Atlantic such as Ascension Island and Saint Helena, often harbor yellowfin feeding on the baitfish these spots concentrate close to the shoreline. Yellowfin may venture well inshore of the continental shelf when water temperature and clarity are suitable and food is abundant.

Yellowfin tuna often travel in schools with similarly sized companions. They sometimes school with other tuna species and mixed schools of small yellowfin, and skipjack tuna, in particular, are commonplace. They are often associated with various species of dolphins or porpoises, as well as with larger marine creatures such as whales and whale sharks. They also associate with drifting flotsam such as logs and pallets, and sonic tagging indicates some follow moving vessels. Hawaiian yellowfins associate with anchored fish aggregation devices and with certain sections of the 50-fathom curve.

Diet and predation

Yellowfin tuna prey include other fish, pelagic crustaceans, and squid. Like all tunas, their body shape is particularly adapted for speed, enabling them to pursue and capture fast-moving baitfish such as flying fish, sauries, and mackerel. Schooling species such as myctophids or lanternfish and similar pelagic driftfish, anchovies, and sardines are frequently taken. Large yellowfins prey on smaller members of the tuna family such as frigate mackerel and skipjack tuna.

In turn, yellowfin are preyed upon when young by other pelagic hunters, including larger tuna, seabirds, and predatory fishes such as wahoo, shark, and billfish. Adults are threatened only by the largest and fastest hunters, such as toothed whales, particularly the false killer whale, pelagic sharks such as the mako and great white, large Atlantic blue marlin and Pacific blue marlin, and black marlin. The main source of mortality, however, is industrial tuna fisheries.

Yellowfins are able to escape most predators because of their speed, swimming at up to 20.8 m/s. Unlike most fish, tuna are warm-blooded. Their unique cardiovascular system, warm body temperature, elevated metabolism, and well-developed lymphatic system are all involved in their ability to engage in both rapid bursts and long periods of swimming. When swimming rapidly, a tuna's fins retract into grooves to form a smooth aerodynamic surface and increase its speed, due to a biological hydraulic system involving the lymphatic system.

The behavior of abruptly diving to deeper levels may be a tactic to escape predators. Evidence from trackers even includes a case in which a diving yellowfin tuna may have been swallowed at a depth of 326 m.

Commercial fishery
Modern commercial fisheries catch yellowfin tuna with encircling nets (purse seines), and by industrial longlines. In 2010, 558,761 metric tons of yellowfin tuna were caught in the western and central Pacific Ocean.

Pole and line
Formerly, much of the commercial catch was made by pole-and-line fishing, using live bait such as anchovy to attract schools of tuna close to the fishing vessel that were then taken with baited jigs on sturdy bamboo or fiberglass poles or on handlines. This fishery, which targeted skipjack and occasionally albacore, as well as yellowfin, for canning, reached its heyday between World War I and the 1950s before declining. The most well-known fleet of pole-and-line boats sailed from San Diego in California and exploited abundant stocks in Mexican waters, as well as further south to Panama, Costa Rica, and the Galapagos Islands.

Pole-and-line fishing is still carried out today in the Maldives, Ghana, the Canary Islands, Madeira, and the Azores. Few pole-and-line boats now specifically target yellowfin, an incidental take compared to the total commercial catch. In the Maldives, the catch is a mix of skipjack tuna and small yellowfins that often associate with them.

Purse seining
Purse seining largely took over commercial tuna fisheries in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, purse seines account for more of the commercial catch than any other method. The purse-seine fishery primarily operates in the Pacific Ocean, in the historic tuna grounds of the San Diego tuna fleet in the eastern Pacific, and in the islands of the western Pacific, where many U.S. tuna canneries relocated in the 1980s, but significant purse-seine catches are also made in the Indian Ocean and in the tropical Atlantic Ocean, especially in the Gulf of Guinea by French and Spanish vessels.

Purse-seine vessels locate tuna using onboard lookouts, as was done in the pole-and-line fishery, but they also employ sophisticated onboard electronics, sea-surface temperature and other satellite data, and helicopters overhead. Once a school is located, the net is set around it. A single set may yield 100 t. Modern tuna seiners have a capacity up to 2000 MT, reach speeds of over 17 knot, and carry multiple spotting helicopters.

Purse seining for yellowfin tuna became highly controversial in the late 1970s when it became apparent that the eastern Pacific fishery was killing many spinner dolphins, pantropical spotted dolphins, and other cetaceans (often called "porpoises" by the tuna fleet) that accompany the fish. This association has been long-recognized by commercial tuna fishermen.

Dolphin-friendly labeling
Since the introduction of "dolphin-friendly" labeling, an increasing number of purse seine sets are now made on "free schools" unassociated with dolphins, as well as schools that associate with floating objects—another long-understood association that has grown in importance in tuna fisheries. The latter practice in particular has a major ecological impact because of the high proportion of bycatch, including manta rays, sea turtles, pelagic sharks, billfish, and other threatened marine species taken by setting nets around logs and other floating objects. Such tuna are often significantly smaller than the larger adult tuna associated with dolphins. The removal of huge numbers of juvenile yellowfin and bigeye tuna that have yet to reach breeding age has major potential consequences for tuna stocks worldwide.

Longline
Most of the commercial catch is canned, but the sashimi marketplace adds significant demand for high-quality fish. This market is primarily supplied by industrial tuna longline vessels.

Industrial longlining was primarily perfected by Japanese fishermen who expanded into new grounds in the Western Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Longlining has since been adopted by other fishermen, most notably South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States.

Tuna longlining targets larger sashimi-grade fish around 25 kg and up that swim deeper in the water column. In tropical and warm temperate areas, the more valuable bigeyes are often the main target, but significant effort is also directed towards larger yellowfins. Longlining seeks areas of higher ocean productivity indicated by temperature and chlorophyll fronts formed by upwellings, ocean current eddies, and major bathymetric features. Satellite imaging technology is the primary tool for locating these dynamic and constantly changing ocean areas.

Bycatch is a major environmental issue in the longline fishery, especially impacting billfish, sea turtles, pelagic sharks, and seabirds.

Artisanal fisheries
Besides the large-scale industrial purse seine and longline fisheries, yellowfin tuna also support smaller-scale artisanal fisheries that have often supplied local domestic markets for generations. Artisanal fisheries now also often fish for the lucrative sashimi market in many locations where international air shipment is possible.

Artisanal fishermen tend to employ assorted hook-and-line gear such as trolling lines, surface and deep handlines, and longlines.

By far, the largest fishery using artisanal methods exists in Philippine and Indonesian waters where thousands of fishermen target yellowfin tuna around fish aggregation devices or payaos, although this fishery far exceeds the artisanal scale in terms of tonnage caught and the numbers of participants involved, and should more properly be considered a commercial handline fishery. General Santos is the most important Philippine port for the landing and transhipment of catches. Catches that qualify as sashimi-grade are mostly shipped to the Japanese market; those that do not meet the grade are sold locally or canned. Elsewhere in the Pacific, small-boat fishers in Hawaii, Tahiti, and other Pacific islands supply local and in some cases foreign markets with fresh yellowfins.

Handline-caught yellowfin tuna is one of the few exports of the economy of St. Helena.

Sport fishing
Yellowfin tuna probably first came to the attention of sport fishermen when they appeared on the tuna grounds of Catalina Island, California, only a few years after pioneering fishermen invented the sport, targeting the Pacific bluefin tuna. These tuna were of the same species caught by commercial fishermen in Japan and the western Pacific, but the reason for their appearance was not known at the time. Later, warmer water species such as yellowfin tuna, dorado and striped marlin were found to enter southern California waters in seasons having favorable ocean conditions, particularly during the El Niño phenomenon, which brings warmer water up North America's western coast.

Yellowfin tuna were subsequently discovered by sport fishermen in Bermuda, the Bahamas, Hawai'i, and many other parts of their range. Larger adult fish which had developed distinctively long sickle fins were initially thought to be a different species and were known as Allison tuna (a name first given by the then curator of the Bermuda Aquarium, Louis Mowbray, in 1920). Such destinations as Hawai'i and Bermuda became famed for their catches of these beautiful fish. In Hawai'i, various styles of feather lures served as bait, but in Bermuda, chumming techniques from boats anchored on productive banks were evolved to target not only Allison tuna, but also wahoo and the smaller blackfin tuna. Bermudian experts developed techniques to take all these fish on light tackle, and for many years the International Game Fish Association records for yellowfin tuna were dominated by entries from Bermuda in the lighter line classes, with fish in the 200 lb and larger class from Hawai'i taking most of the heavier line-class records.

Today, yellowfin tuna are a major sport fish pursued by sport fishermen in many parts of the world. Thousands of anglers fish for yellowfin tuna along the eastern seaboard of the United States, particularly in North Carolina and New England. Yellowfin are also a popular gamefish among anglers fishing from US Gulf Coast ports, San Diego, and other ports of southern California. Larger "long-range" boats in the San Diego fleet also fish in Mexican waters, searching for yellowfin tuna in many of the grounds that the San Diego pole-and-line tuna clippers used to fish. The yellowfin tuna is also a highly prized catch in the offshore sport fisheries of South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. Sport fishing for yellowfin tuna exists on a smaller scale in many other parts of the world.

Gulf of Mexico
Recreational fishing for Yellowfin Tuna in the Gulf of Mexico is a significant contributor to the region's economy, with an estimated economic impact of $7 billion annually. This type of fishing has led to the development of a thriving tourism industry, with many fishing charters and resorts offering guided trips and equipment rental services to visitors.

Yellowfin Tuna are highly sought after for their impressive size and excellent taste, making them a popular target for recreational anglers. The thrill of reeling in a massive Yellowfin Tuna has attracted many fishing enthusiasts to the Gulf of Mexico, creating a significant source of revenue for local businesses and communities. To ensure the sustainability of Yellowfin Tuna populations in the Gulf of Mexico, many fishing organizations have implemented catch limits and other measures to protect these fish for future generations of recreational fishermen to enjoy.

Clubs
During the early 1900's many yellowfin tuna fishing clubs were formed around the world. In 1917, the Yokohama Fishing Club was founded, becoming the first fishing club in Japan to cater to foreigners. The Tuna Club of Avalon, which was founded in 1898 in Avalon, California played an instrumental role in the development of the sport in North America. While in Europe The Club Nautico de San Remo in Italy and the Club Nautique de Cannes in France are two of the earliest known clubs to organize yellowfin tuna fishing tournaments in these countries, with the first tournaments held in the late 1960s.

Cuisine
According to the Hawaii Seafood Buyers Guide, yellowfin tuna is widely used in raw fish dishes, especially sashimi. This fish is also excellent for grilling. Yellowfin is often served seared rare.

Yellowfin buyers recognize two grades, "sashimi grade" and "other", although variation in the quality of "other" grades occurs.

Different seafood sustainability guides come to different conclusions about whether yellowfin fishing is sustainable. The Audubon's Seafood Guide (a guide for what types of marine food products are not ecofriendly) lists troll-caught tuna as "OK", but labels long-line caught as "Be Careful".

Yellowfin is becoming a popular replacement for the severely depleted supplies of southern bluefin tuna.

In 2010, Greenpeace International added the yellowfin tuna to its seafood red list. The Greenpeace International seafood red list is a "list of fish that are commonly sold in supermarkets around the world, and which have a very high risk of being sourced from unsustainable fisheries".

title: Yellowfin tuna


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Shell V-Power

Shell V-Power is the brand name given to Shell's enhanced high specification fuels for road motor vehicles including "Shell V-Power Nitro+" and "Shell V-Power Diesel". Introduced in Italy in 2001, Shell relaunched the fuel in March 2008, under the name Nitrogen-Enriched Shell V-Power, with nitrogen-containing detergents.

Initially used for higher octane Super Unleaded petrol/gasoline (formerly known as Optimax in some regions), it is now additionally used for high specification diesel fuel.

V-Power petrol
Petrol or gasoline is assessed, categorised and sold by an octane rating. Generally, in most areas of the world, the Research Octane Number (RON) is used, but in North America, the Anti-Knock Index (AKI) is used. Conventional 'standard' "Super Unleaded" petrol in Europe, South Asia and Australia has an octane rating of 95 RON, and in North America "Premium Unleaded" is AKI/RdON/PON 91–93 (RON 96–98). However, higher octane "Super Plus Unleaded" – often formulated with higher quality additives, is usually set at around 98 RON in mainland Europe; but this can vary by market. Most oil and petroleum companies now market their own Super Plus Unleaded petrols under a unique name – and the current name for Shell Super Unleaded fuel is "V-Power". Like most Super Plus Unleaded petrols, V-Power also contains higher concentrations of detergents and other additives to help clean the engine and smooth its operation.

In the United Kingdom and Denmark (where Super Plus Unleaded must be a minimum of 97 RON), V-Power has a rating of 99 RON (whereas V-Power's predecessor Shell Optimax was rated at 98 RON). There are two other 99 RON fuels available in the UK, namely Tesco Momentum99 and more recently Esso Synergy Supreme+ 99.

In the Netherlands, V-Power used to have a 95 RON rating, although officials from Shell stated it effectively had a 97 RON rating. Due to the limited categories of 92 RON, 95 RON, 98 RON and 100 RON, it was officially rated at 95. These days, the RON rating of the V-power petrol in the Netherlands is rated at 98.

In Germany, all Shell stations offer V-Power Racing 100, rated at 100 RON. In Greece, all Shell stations offer V-Power rated at 97 RON. Most Shell stations also offer V-Power Racing (100 RON).

In Australia, from October 2006, Shell and Coles Express re-branded Optimax to V-Power (98 RON). V-Power Racing, the ultra-high performance variant has a rating of 100 RON although Shell decided to phase out V-Power Racing from 21 July to mid August 2008, instead recommending V-Power. The previously obtainable higher grade V-Power Racing which contained 5% ethanol to boost V-Power's octane rating to 100 RON has now been phased out by Shell due to a "changing market".

In the United States, in around 2004, all Shell "Premium" gas was rebranded as "V-Power". In 2015, Shell re-branded V-Power to the newly launched V-Power Nitro+.

In Canada, from June 2005, Shell Canada re-branded Optimax Gold to V-Power. In 2015, Shell Canada re-branded V-Power to V-Power Nitro+.

In Hong Kong, as there is no oil refinery plant, gasoline was imported from Singapore, which is 98 RON. However, V-Power sold in gas stations was rumoured to reach 167 RON (the highest native RON for consumer grade commercial petrol worldwide). Such a figure was not supported by any actual test, nor was it confirmed by Shell and was contradicted by a report of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong.

In New Zealand, from 2007, Shell rebranded 95 Premium Unleaded as V-Power. It was still rated at 95 RON. Shell sold its New Zealand retail operations in 2010, to a consortium which later became Z Energy, and upon re-branding Shell V-Power was replaced with ZX Premium Unleaded.

In Sweden, Shell V-Power was previously 99 RON, but is now been re-branded under the new owner St1 from June 2011, to "Shell V-Power E5" making it 98 RON with a mix of 5% ethanol.

In Argentina, from 2009, Shell rebranded 95 Super fuel as V-Power and also the Diesel premium for V-Power diesel. In the Philippines, Pilipinas Shell launches the new Shell V-Power (replacing Shell Velocity) in 2006. On June 1, 2012, Shell Philippines launches the premium fuel grade, Shell V-Power Nitro+ Gasoline (formerly Shell Super Premium) and Shell V-Power Nitro+ Racing (formerly Shell V-Power). In Indonesia, from April 2013, Shell rebranded 95 Super Extra as V-Power with additional additives. While it is still rated at 95 RON.

In Malaysia & Singapore, it is RON98, the octane is higher for V-Power Racing. In Philippines, on June 8, 2017, V-Power Nitro+ was replaced with V-Power with Dynaflex technology. In Russia, all Shell stations offer V-Power rated 95 RON, some stations also offer V-Power Racing (98 RON).

V-Power Diesel
V-Power Diesel is Shell's version of an enhanced diesel fuel, similar to BP's 'Ultimate Diesel'. Like BP Ultimate Diesel, Shell V-Power Diesel is designed for modern compression-ignition diesel engines, to facilitate enhanced engine performance along with increased engine protection, for more consistent operation and engine longevity.

One characteristic of V-Power diesel is that it is a lot clearer and odourless than normal diesel, mainly due to the synthetic gas to liquid (GTL) component.

The fuel is slightly less dense than regular diesel so, per volume, the unit energy is actually lower than regular diesel. This is offset, as the fuel tends to ignite more readily (and thus has a higher cetane rating) than regular diesel, and a side benefit of this is that it tends to produce less soot during combustion.

Shell also markets a different "premium" diesel in Canada labeled V-Power, which they state "Is specially formulated for year-round Canadian weather conditions, with a cetane improver, a de-icer and a corrosion inhibitor.". This Canadian V-Power diesel is dispensed from a dedicated pump that injects a measured amount of NEMO 2061 additive into the diesel supply shared with the other diesel pumps at the service station., which would typically be reflected by an increase in cetane rating of 1-2 points, but it is worth noting that unlike European V-Power diesel, it contains no GTL components beyond those that may already exist in the shared diesel supply.

Effective June 1, 2012, Pilipinas Shell launches the new premium diesel fuel grade, Shell V-Power Nitro+ Diesel (formerly Shell V-Power Diesel). On June 8, 2017, Shell V-Power Nitro+ Diesel was renamed back as Shell V-Power Diesel.

Development in motorsports
Since 2004, Shell V-Power has been sponsoring Scuderia Ferrari that participates in Formula One. Shell V-Power also sponsored Audi Sport Team Joest factory team until 2009. Since 2016 Shell V-Power has been sponsoring Dick Johnson Racing in the Supercars Championship.

Part of the campaign, especially targeted to sell "V-Power Nitro+" brand of the fuels (higher priced than usual and similar to blend used on the track) is organizing Formula One events in cities without a track. For example, on the streets of Warsaw, Poland, where Scuderia Ferrari driver Felipe Massa drove the race car used in 2013 Formula One Championship.

In popular culture
All Shell V-Power fuels are featured in Need for Speed: The Run.

title: Shell V-Power