CERA peak oil report – Nov 19

November 19, 2006

Click on the headline (link) for the full text.

Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage

CERA report: Don’t worry, be happy

Jim Puplava, Captain’s Log (Financial Sense)
This week Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) shocked the financial markets with a report that supposedly debunks “peak” oil. Not to worry – we are told – there is plenty of oil out there.

According to the folks at CERA, there is no evidence of a peak before 2030. Global production will follow an undulating plateau for the next two decades. What we will experience is a period of strong production growth as a result of a combination of conventional and unconventional oil.

The report is available at CERA’s website, www.cera.com. The 16 page report will cost you $1,000 and is well worth the read, if you want to hear the other side of the story. I paid the money and read the report and remain unconvinced.
(17 Nov 2006)
Scroll down at the original article to get to Jim’s comments on the CERA report.


What Does an Undulating Plateau Really Mean?

peakguy, The Oil Drum: NYC
Dave did a great job on our editorial consensus statement as our official reaction to the Cambridge Energy Research Associates strange press release but here are some of my thoughts on CERA’s work and how dangerous it is to have out there. My favorite exerpt is this line which claims that peak oil theory is wrong because it won’t happen for another 25 years.

The new report describes CERA’s liquids supply outlook as “not a view of endless abundance.” However, based on a range of potential scenarios and field-by-field analysis, CERA finds that not only will world oil production not peak before 2030, but that the idea of a peak is itself “a dramatic but highly questionable image.”

That’s like saying you don’t believe in Santa Claus because it’s not midnight yet.
(17 Nov 2006)


Peak-oil debate crackles anew

Kirsten Hays, Houston Chronicle
New estimate of what’s left clashes with view of naysayers
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The world’s oil resources won’t last forever, but production should increase for at least another quarter-century thanks to technology and unconventional sources that “peak oil” theorists often discount, analysts with Cambridge Energy Research Associates said Tuesday.

…Their position contrasts with that of Matthew Simmons, chairman and CEO of Simmons & Company International and author of last year’s Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy.

Simmons, who was in Africa and unavailable for comment Tuesday, said in a presentation last month, at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas World Oil Conference in Boston, that estimates of undiscovered oil were not “bankable events.” The association contends that oil production will decline after peaking in 2010.

…U.S. Reps. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., and Tom Udall, D-N.M., co-chairmen of the Congressional Peak Oil Caucus, said in a prepared statement Tuesday that CERA’s report shows that the government should act fast to mitigate effects of a peak and decline in production because such action could take 20 years to materialize. But they criticized CERA’s reliance on reserves data from the U.S. Geological Survey, which they said almost doubles the amount of projected reserves.
(15 Nov 2006)
One of the better articles in the mainstream press. -BA


Tags: Fossil Fuels, Industry, Oil, Tar Sands