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Oil industry ‘sleepwalking into crisis’
David Strahan and Andrew Murray-Watson, The Independent
Former Shell chairman says that diminishing resources could push price of crude to $150 a barrel
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Lord Oxburgh, the former chairman of Shell, has issued a stark warning that the price of oil could hit $150 per barrel, with oil production peaking within the next 20 years.
He accused the industry of having its head “in the sand” about the depletion of supplies, and warned: “We may be sleepwalking into a problem which is actually going to be very serious and it may be too late to do anything about it by the time we are fully aware.”
In an interview with The Independent on Sunday ahead of his address to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil in Ireland this week, Lord Oxburgh, one of the most respected names in the energy industry, said a rapid increase in the price of oil was inevitable as demand continued to outstrip supply. He said: “We can probably go on extracting oil from the ground for a very long time, but it is going to get very expensive indeed.
“And once you see oil prices in excess of $100 or $150 a barrel, the alternatives simply become more attractive on price grounds if on no others.”
(16 September 2007)
Also posted on David Strahan’s website.
Full interview transcript (see next item)
Interview with Lord Oxburgh
David Strahan, The Last Oil Shock (blog)
The former chairman of Shell will issue a stark warning about the world’s oil supply at a conference in Ireland later this week. Lord Oxburgh expects that global oil demand will outstrip supply within twenty years as production hits plateau, and that the oil price may well hit $150 in the long term. He accuses some in the industry of having their heads “almost in the sand” about oil depletion, and concludes “we may be sleepwalking into a problem which is actually going to be very serious and it may be too late to do anything about it by the time we are fully aware”.
Lord Oxburgh joins a growing chorus of senior oilmen who predict trouble ahead in the oil supply. A long standing non-executive at Shell, he was parachuted into the chairman’s seat in the midst of the reserves scandal to try to restore the company’s battered reputation. He is now the chairman of D1 Oils, a British company developing biofuels that can be produced in the tropics on sub-agricultural land. He also sits as a crossbencher (independent) in the House of Lords. On Tuesday he will deliver a speech at the Cork conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) entitled Out of Oil, Into Hot Water. Lastoilshock.com secured an exclusive preview.
Q: Your talk at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil conference in Cork this week is called ‘Out of Oil, Into Hot Water’. What exactly do you mean by that?
A: Hot water basically refers to the fact that world energy demand is continuing to rise. It’s rising because of increases in population, and that population is not only becoming more numerous but more wealthy as well. As it becomes more wealthy per capita energy use increases too. So the world energy demand is just rising relentlessly. In parallel, we have clearly got tightening supplies of fossil fuels.
(16 September 2007)
Malthus and Mein Kampf come to Cork
Sean Corrigan, Mises-dot-Org Weblog
For those who like their environmental gloom’n’doom spread with a thick dollop of Utopian totalitarianism and garnished with a slice of Galtonian pseudo-science, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas holds its sixth annual conference in Ireland this coming week.
Present will be the usual motley of silk-suited Carbohypocrites – each avidly promoting their tax-eating, alternative-energy start-ups – a gang of anti-capitalist activists, a squawk of sensescent members of the poitical elite, and a whole Bronze Age roundhouse of associated Gaia worshippers.
A flavour of what will be on offer can be had from this excerpt from one Nate Hagens of the Vermont-based Gund Institute of Ecological Economics (sic):- …
(16 September 2007)
Look’s like we’ve won! According to the Wikipedia entry on Godwin’s Law:
There is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once [a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler] is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically “lost” whatever debate was in progress.
In this short blog entry, I count at least 12 instances of name-calling, with no rational arguments that I can find. Not an example of Reason and Libertarianism at its finest. The rhetoric reminds me of former Vice President Spiro Agnew: “nattering nabobs of negativism” (written by Safire), “pusillanimous pussyfoots”, and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”
To be fair, there are Libertarians in the peak oil movement, as well as some (like Ronald Bailey) who are creditable skeptics. -BA
ASPO’s Stuart McCarthy on peak oil hitting the Australian mainstream
Andi Hazelwood, Global Public Media
Stuart McCarthy of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas talks to GPM’s Andi Hazelwood about Queensland’s new leadership, Andrew McNamara’s recent appointment to Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation, McNamara’s “Queensland’s Vulnerability to Rising Oil Prices” report three years in the making and today’s coverage of this landmark report in Brisbane’s Courier-Mail newspaper. Also on the table for discussion are McNamara’s views on Queensland council amalgamations and nuclear, the recent response to a petition for the state to adopt the Oil Depletion Protocol, and the latest activities of ASPO international and in Australia.
Read today’s two Courier-Mail articles here:
Govt warns of ‘peak oil’ chaos
(15 September 2007)
The new Queensland Minister for Sustainability, Andrew McNamara, was interviewed several times for Global Public Media. Energy Bulletin has some remarks by McNamara as well as a transcript. -BA
