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Bewildered by peak oil economics
W. Jackson Davis, Denver Post
A stunning aspect of the current economic crisis is that most economists didn’t see it coming and remain bewildered by its causes. Treasury Secretary Paulson said just over a year ago that the business environment was the best of his career.
Paul Greenstein wrote recently that the crisis struck with little forewarning, as if unleashed by a “secret signal” sent out in 2007 that slammed the economy with soaring energy and food costs, and the free-fall of housing prices.
The current economic crisis was indeed unanticipated by most economists, but the trigger may be hiding in plain sight – peak oil. Oil engineer M. King Hubbert predicted in 1956 that U. S. oil production would peak in 1970 and then decline.
… I interviewed Hubbert in his Virginia home in the early 1980s, shortly before his death. An oil painting of Don Quixote graced his dining room wall.
But Hubbert was no Don Quixote; his prediction of peak oil is confirmed in 33 of the 48 largest oil producing countries, and is predicted in the remaining 15 countries within six years.
Global production is a simple sum of national production; peak oil has probably already occurred.
… Senator Obama calls for renewable energy and acknowledges the need to transform the American economy, but there is little evidence that he or any other politician appreciates the full dimensions of this transformation.
Its features are as clear now as they were three decades ago when I described them in The Seventh Year.
… The mission for the next U. S. administration: imagine and design the transition from abundant to scarce oil and natural resources, and take the first steps.
The mission for economists: stop resorting to secret signals to explain the current economic crisis, evaluate the implications of peak oil, and help navigate the transition. The mission for the rest of us: gird for the long haul as we begin the most exhilarating transition in recent human history.
W. Jackson Davis is a professor emeritus, University of California at Santa Cruz (Biology and Environmental Science); Professor Emeritus, Monterey Institute of International Studies (International Environmental Policy); and author of The Seventh Year: Industrial Civilization in Transition (New York: Norton, 1979).
(16 October 2008)
Selected slides from the 2008 ASPO-USA Conference
Martin Payne, Peak Opportunities
The 2008 ASPO-USA Conference held September 21-23, 2008, in Sacramento, California, featured excellent speakers and significant content. Several nice versions of notes from the Conference have now been published. Further, essentially all of the presentations from the Conference are available in PDF form on the ASPO-USA site at:
http://www.aspo-usa.org/aspousa4/proceedings/
However, if you are like many of us, you may feel as though you don’t have the time to download and view all of these presentations, as good as they may be. So, in an effort demonstrate the quality of the content in these presentations, and also as a convenient reference, a selection of slides from a number of the presentations is posted below. The captions shown above each slide indicate this author’s comments; the author of the presentation is shown in parentheses, if not on the slide.
Specifically, below you’ll find a map showing the locations of that offshore oil which we all keep talking about; the location of ANWR and the relative size of the portion they wish to develop in comparison to the wilderness area; a neat graphic which makes each country’s geography proportional to its oil endowment; interesting insights into China’s oil and coal consumption; coal reserve info; coal plant efficiency, clean coal and sequestration efficiencies; carbon emissions of coal v. natural gas and much more.
(15 October 2008)
EB contributor Martin Payne writes:
Here is something a little bit different – a collection of interesting slides from various speakers, in one blog. I worry that a lot of folks don’t have time to open all the individual presentations, and don’t realize what they are missing. I chose these particular slides because the information was either new to me, or was very well represented in graphical or textual format.
Fireside Chat with Julian Darley (video)
Global Public Media
In this Sustainable Business Alliance speaker series, Julian Darley talks with Bay Area business owners about the impact Peak Oil is having on their business and community.
(9 October 2008)
Capability is issue – not lack of oil and gas, says BP boss
Ian Forsyth, Press and Journal (UK)
An energy industry leader has stressed there are more than enough oil and gas resources in the world to meet future demand.
Andy Inglis, chief executive of BP Exploration and Production, said in a speech in Texas that there were about 40 years of proven oil reserves and 60 years of natural gas.
He added that the task facing the industry was making sure that supply would rise adequately to meet demand.
Mr Inglis, speaking at Rice University in Houston this week, said: “The really big strategic issue for all oil and gas companies is matching the Earth’s resource endowment on the one hand, with the capability – technology, skills and know-how – required to bring those resources to market on the other. I think it is true to say that we may have reached a period of ‘peak capability’, at least in the short term.
“As far as I am concerned, peak capability bears a far closer relation to the facts than so-called ‘peak oil’.”
(18 October 2008)
Full speech at the BP website.
Matt Simmons presentations (PDFs)
Matt Simmons, Simmons & Company
Two new presentations, including the one he recently gave at ASPO:
● How To Survive And Thrive In A Post-Peak Oil World
● Grappling With Energy “RISK”
(October 2008)
