Peak oil, prices, and supplies – Dec 3 (updated Dec 4)

December 3, 2009

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

Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage


Acknowledging the Reality of Peak Oil
(video)
ASPO.TV News
The reality of oil depletion is undeniable. Volumes of publicly available data, collected over many decades, demonstrate that the world may have reached the point of maximum oil production. Despite the clarity of the facts and data, leaders in government, industry, and business are reluctant to articulate and address the enormous challenges that a declining oil supply will have on the world economy – and the urgent steps that should be taken to mitigate shortages of our most valuable energy source. This video features industry veterans Sadad al-Husseini, Jeremy Gilbert, Jeremy Leggett, and Chris Skrebowski, who discuss why governments and business are reluctant to face up to the realities of peak oil.
(22 Nov 2009)
This video and the one below comes highly recommended by EB reader William Tamblyn.


Peak Oil Reality – Production & Depletion Issues
(video)
ASPO.TV News
Four leading petroleum industry experts discuss the major production challenges posed by peak oil. While new fields are being discovered, the steady pace of depletion, a growing world population, and diminished investment in new exploration and production point to a constrained world oil supply in the next few years. This video features Sadad al-Husseini, Jeremy Gilbert, Jeremy Leggett, and Chris Skrebowski.
(22 Nov 2009)


World Energy Outlook 2009 (Video)

Council on Foreign Relations
Watch Fatih Birol, chief economist and director of the office of the chief economist at the International Energy Agency, report on the world energy market and the ways to combat climate change.
(25 Nov 2009)


Can non-conventional oil fill the gap?

David Strahan, davidstrahan.com
A version of this article was published in New Scientist on 3 December 2009.

The oil crisis is not dead, only sleeping, according to an emerging consensus. The price may have collapsed from last year’s all-time high of $147 per barrel to around $75 today, as the recession grinds away at demand for crude, but nobody expects that to last when the economy recovers. Analysts Goldman Sachs predict oil will cost $95 by the end of next year, while Deutsche Bank reckons $175 by 2016. The International Energy Agency (IEA), the OECD’s energy watchdog, forecasts a potential “supply crunch” around the middle of the decade.

Yet there is no shortage of oil – at least not underground. Many commentators attribute the $147 spike to the approach of peak oil – the moment when global oil production goes into decline because of geological limits – which should happen, so the theory goes, when we have consumed about half the oil that will ever be produced. And it’s true that by 2008 the world had consumed just under 1.2 trillion barrels of oil, against estimated original reserves of about 2.4 trillion barrels. But that’s just the conventional oil, which is only a fraction of the total.

Conventional reserves are dwarfed by a whole range of non-conventional oil resources, such as the Canadian tar sands, oil shale, and synthetic liquid fuels made from gas or coal, which according to the IEA expand the total oil resource to 9 trillion barrels (see graph). And so far the non-conventionals are almost entirely untouched. So how could there possibly be an oil supply crunch, let alone peak oil, any time soon?…
(4 Dec 2009)


Tags: Consumption & Demand, Education, Energy Policy, Fossil Fuels, Industry, Media & Communications, Oil