Welcome to the ODAC Newsletter, a weekly roundup from the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, the UK registered charity dedicated to raising awareness of peak oil.
Given the gravity of the news this week you would expect that the front page of every newspaper would be screaming EMERGENCY!
On Wednesday the Financial Times revealed the leaked findings of the upcoming International Energy Agency IEA World Energy Outlook – see our Guest Commentary from Mark Griffiths for a deeper exploration of the findings of the article. The news that output from existing fields is now decreasing by at least 6.4% per year (the IEA has not confirmed the figures that were leaked) surely demands that the peak oil debate urgently moves from the discussion of ‘whether’ to ‘what to do and how quickly can we get there?’.
With precipitous timing Wednesday also saw the release of a report The Oil Crunch:Securing the UK’s energy future from the new UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security. The release of this report demonstrates the concern that is growing in the mainstream about oil supply, something that surely the government can no longer ignore.
Yet another report in the news this week, the WWFs Living Planet report, compared global resource depletion with the credit crunch and predicted an ecological crunch if urgent steps are not taken.
While these stories were picked up in many of the UK papers front pages were mostly wasted on celebrity phone pranksters. In the meantime the government’s outrage was spent on oil companies with misguided demands by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor for petrol prices to come down in the light of the latest bloated profit figures from Shell and BP. See David Strahan’s article You’re wrong, PM. We need higher oil prices.
Since to date the UK government’s denial of peak oil has been built on the platform of previous IEA reports, one can only hope that the official release of the World Energy Outlook 2008 in November, will lead to an urgent revision of this position and a coordinated energy and climate policy based on the increasingly harsh realities.
We are hitting resource peaks and have no choice but to live through changes. Managing those changes rather than waiting for them to hit is the choice we have left.
Oil
World will struggle to meet oil demand
Guest Commentary: Mark Griffiths
Investment key to meeting oil demand
You’re wrong, PM. We need higher oil prices
Energy agency denies oil output falling at faster rate than previously thought
UK will face peak oil crisis within five years, report warns
Time for an energy bail-out
Russia strikes lucrative oil deal with China
Shell reports profit of £3m every hour
Crude Oil Rises as Interest Rate Cuts May Spur Economic Rebound
London oil summit is abandoned after Opec boycott threat
Renewables
Renewable energy – ‘Massive shake-up needed to meet targets’
World can halt fossil fuel use by 2090: study
Climate
Earth on course for eco ‘crunch’
China Urges Rich Nations to Spend 0.7% of GDP Curbing Emissions
Minister bows to calls on climate change bill
Economy
Output cuts spark fears over China economy
Brown appeals for billions from China and Gulf to inject billions into IMF
Transport
Global car sales fall 6% in third quarter
Green motoring schemes announced
Biofuel flying will take off in three years, says Boeing
