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Lester Brown: Ringing alarm of peak oil
Vivian Song, Toronto Sun
World oil production may have reached its peak and will affect everything from cheap airfares, grocery lists and the auto industry, according to a new report released yesterday.
Momentum in global oil production is slowing with aging oil fields and fewer discoveries, since the world has been “seismically searched and picked over,” the report from the Earth Policy Institute, an environmental think tank, claims.
“Whenever peak oil comes, it’s going to be a seismic event,” president Lester R. Brown said from Washington, D.C.
“I think future historians looking back will probably use the terms BPO, Before Peak Oil, and APO, After Peak Oil, because this could be one of the great fault lines in economic history.”
… “(Peak oil) will also introduce a new era,” said Brown, a recipient of the United Nations Environment Prize. “No country can get more oil unless another country gets less.”
Ten-dollar airfares between European cities will be remembered as the heyday of air travel, while the 4,000 km Caesar salad — in which Romaine lettuce comes from California — will be scarce, he said.
“We’re going to see changes in long distance travelling. It may not end abruptly, but it will certainly be squeezed.”
(16 November 2007)
Is world oil production peaking?
Lester R. Brown, Earth Policy Institute
Is world oil production peaking? Quite possibly. Data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) show a pronounced loss of momentum in the growth of oil production during the last few years. After climbing from 82.90 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2004 to 84.15 mb/d in 2005, output only increased to 84.80 mb/d in 2006 and then declined to 84.62 mb/d during the first 10 months of 2007.
The combination of world production slowing down or starting to decline while demand continues to rise rapidly is putting strong upward pressure on prices. Over the past two years, oil prices have climbed from $50 to nearly $100 a barrel. (See data.) If production growth continues to lag behind the increase in demand, how high will prices go?
There are many ways of assessing the oil production prospect. One is to look at the relationship between oil discoveries and production, a technique pioneered by the legendary U.S. geologist M. King Hubbert. Given the nature of oil production, Hubbert theorized that the time lag between the peaking of new discoveries and that of production was predictable. Noting that the discovery of new reserves in the United States peaked around 1930, he predicted in 1956 that U.S. oil output would peak in 1970. He hit it right on the head.
… The peaking of world oil production will be a seismic event, marking one of the great fault lines in world economic history. When oil output is no longer expanding, no country can get more oil unless another gets less.
Oil-intensive industries will be hit hard. Cheap airfares will become history, for instance. The airline industry’s projected growth of 5 percent a year over the next decade will evaporate. The food industry will be severely affected by rising oil prices, since both modern agriculture and food transport are oil-intensive. The automobile industry will suffer as well when demand for cars plummets. Pressures will intensify on the three or more major auto companies that are developing plug-in hybrid cars that run largely on electricity to bring them to market quickly.
Higher oil prices have long been needed both to more accurately reflect the indirect costs of burning oil, such as climate change, and to encourage more-efficient use of a resource that is fast being depleted. While higher prices are desirable, the rise should not be so abrupt that it leads to severe economic disruptions.
Some countries are much more vulnerable to an oil decline than others. For example, the United States-which has long neglected public transportation-is particularly vulnerable because 88 percent of the U.S. workforce travels to work by car.
Since options for expanding supply are limited, efforts to prevent oil prices from rising well beyond $100 per barrel in the years ahead depend on reducing demand, largely within the transportation sector. And since the United States consumes more gasoline than the next 20 countries combined, it must play a lead role in cutting oil use.
A campaign to reduce oil use rapidly might best be launched at an emergency meeting of the G-8, since its members dominate world oil consumption. If governments fail to act quickly and decisively to reduce oil use, oil prices could soar as demand outruns supply, leading to a global recession or-in a worst-case scenario-a 1930s-type global depression.
(15 November 2007)
Implications of “peak oil” for atmospheric CO2 and climate
Kharecha, P.A., and J.E. Hansen, Goddard Institute for Space Studies
P.A. Kharecha, J.E. Hansen (NASA GISS and Columbia Univ. Earth Institute)
Kharecha, P.A., and J.E. Hansen, 2007: Implications of “peak oil” for atmospheric CO2 and climate. Global Biogeochem. Cycles, submitted.
The amounts of fossil fuel “proven” and potential reserves are uncertain and debated. Regardless of the true values, society has flexibility in the degree to which it chooses to exploit these reserves, especially unconventional fossil fuels and those located in extreme or pristine environments.
If conventional oil production peaks within the next few decades, it may have a large effect on future atmospheric CO2 and climate change, depending upon subsequent energy choices. Assuming that proven oil and gas reserves do not greatly exceed estimates of the Energy Information Administration, and recent trends are toward lower estimates, we show that it is feasible to keep atmospheric CO2 from exceeding about 450 ppm by 2100, provided that emissions from coal and unconventional fossil fuels are constrained.
Coal-fired power plants without sequestration must be phased out before mid-century to achieve this CO2 limit. It is also important to “stretch” conventional oil reserves via energy conservation and efficiency, thus averting strong pressures to extract liquid fuels from coal or unconventional fossil fuels while clean technologies are being developed for the era “beyond fossil fuels”.
We argue that a rising price on carbon emissions is needed to discourage conversion of the vast fossil resources into usable reserves, and to keep CO2 beneath the 450 ppm ceiling.
(November 2007)
Full papers is available in PDF (295 KB). Alos posted at arXiv.org.
Revision of a paper first submitted in April 2007.
Energy crisis is on horizon, Mattthew Simmons says
Art Jester, Lexington Herald-Leader (Kentucky)
…Matthew Simmons, an energy investment banker in Houston … delivered a lecture at the University of Kentucky last night and spoke with the news media beforehand.
…”Prepare yourself for the fact that oil prices are cheap” at the moment, he said. “They just sound expensive. “It’s not a conspiracy,” he said. “There isn’t anything cheap left.
“We could have shortages this winter. They’re so imminent we should have a plan B. Conservation is the only thing we can do.”
Simply put, the world needs 88 million barrels of oil a day to carry on as usual, he said. But the production of global crude oil is 73 million barrels a day, with natural-gas liquids meeting the remaining needs.
But the supply of oil will keep dropping until it reaches 40 million barrels a day by 2030, he said.
“I worry a lot more about global war” as nations become desperate for fuel, Simmons said.
The United States must develop an effective national energy strategy, he said. But there’s little evidence a solution will come from either President Bush or one of the current Democratic or Republican presidential candidates. Simmons said there was no discussion of the energy problem in the 2004 presidential campaign, and only one mention going into the 2008 primaries, when it was raised in a GOP debate in New Hampshire.
Here are some telling facts: There are 800 vehicles for every 1,000 people in the United States, Simmons said.
In China, the world’s booming economic behemoth, there are only 18 vehicles per 1,000 people, he said. “The Chinese are concerned about the peaking of oil,” he said.
(16 November 2007)
Kunstler in Bakersfield
Stacey Shepard, Bakersfield Californian
Ready for an oil-less future?
Author says shortage will undo much of our economy
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For a town with lots of oil, agriculture, houses and cars, Bakersfield got a bleak message from James Howard Kunstler on Wednesday night.
In a 90-minute slide show presentation at Cal State Bakersfield, the nationally known author and urban planning guru laid out what he calls The Long Emergency — a future where oil is scarce and the American lifestyle collapses.
…Kunstler’s views ranged from far-fetched to hilarious for some but the underlying theme was that American have to start thinking and planning for a future without oil. And, according to the 59-year-old writer, that doesn’t mean pretending that alternative fuels will save us.
“No combination of alternative fuels will allow us to continue running Disney, Wal-Mart and the interstate freeway system,” he said.
The idea that technology will create an answer to the pending energy crisis is also ludicrous he said, showing a slide of an airplane that said: “Fill’er up with, uh … technology!”
The oil issues are especially pressing in California, he said, where development has been entirely based around car dependency.
Development in the state has been 50 years of the song “Fun, fun, fun until Daddy takes the T-bird away,” he said.
…Bakersfield’s saving grace, he said, is the abundant farmland surrounding it. When large-scale farming is crippled by the lack of petroleum-based pesticides and fertilizers and fuel for farm equipment becomes too expensive, he predicts the surviving communities will be those that can return to traditional small-scale farming.
“Your city has become a maimed and mutilated organism but it does have that,” he said.
In terms of future growth here, he suggested the city be built up, not out, and that it fill in the city center by removing the numerous downtown parking areas.
(14 November 2007)
