[Excerpt]: As the price of crude oil sets new records almost daily, the British government remains stunningly complacent. With the $100 barrel looming, the prime minister’s website blithely proclaims “the world’s oil and gas resources are sufficient to sustain economic growth for the foreseeable future.” Officials refuse to define what is meant by “foreseeable”, but it is clear they suffer from extreme myopia or worse.
All the evidence now suggests the world is rapidly approaching “peak oil”, the point when global oil production goes into terminal decline for fundamental geological reasons. Oil output is already shrinking in 60 of the world’s 98 oil producing countries, and fourteen more are predicted to peak in the next decade. The industry consensus is that aggregate output for the whole world except OPEC will peak in 2010 or thereabouts. It is also widely agreed that the cartel’s members have grossly exaggerated the size of their reserves, meaning that by any reasonable assessment global output must also peak soon. Since oil provides 95% of all transport energy, as well as vital inputs to modern agriculture, it is likely to provoke an existential crisis…
