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Ray Leonard (Kuwait Energy) at ASPO 6: From behind closed doors
Original: ASPO 6. In Praise of… #3. Ray Leonard.
Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture
Ray Leonard of the Kuwait Energy Company was the speaker who, for me, stole the show. He offered, prefaced with a few caveats, insights from within the oil industry, setting out how what the oil industry tells the public and what it actually thinks are very different. One got a sense from listening to Leonard of the degree of profound unease behind closed oil company doors, as year after year they have to downsize their declared reserves and find themselves less and less able to be optimistic.
A clear and accomplished speaker, he spoke of a conference last year called the Hedberg conference where an invited audience from oil companies and bodies like the USGS and the EIA all, in confidence and with no press presence, exchanged their best data, coming up with far more sobering data than had previously been made public. These kind of “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours” sessions were also key in the early stages of the climate change issue, and led, eventually to the formation of the IPCC. In the early stages though, as now with peak oil, those with the actual data preferred a cautious initial approach behind closed doors.
Leonard’s talk was a chilling assessment of the degree of confusion and worry within the oil industry as the real picture begins to emerge. The Hedberg conference looked at three things, the data on growth from exploration, growth from existing reservoirs and growth from unconventional oil resources. The discussions were frank and open, he told the conference, along the lines of “my company says this, but the data says this…”.
(25 September 2007)
ASPO 6. In Praise of … #2. “We Are All Peakists Now”.
Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture
In theory this should be “In Praise of Dr. James Schlesinger”, but I can’t quite bring myself to praise someone who used to be the head of the CIA and was the former US Energy Secretary who allegedly proposed the invasion of Saudi Arabia in order to protect US oil interests. Rather it was what he had to say that was praiseworthy and rather fascinating. Schlesinger’s message to the conference was summed up in his statement was “we are all peakists now. Conceptually the battle is over, the peakists have won”.
He talked about how the peak oil case is now self-evident, as the large, old oil fields play out, and discoveries continue to fall. To meet the latest EIA forecasts, we will need 4-5 new Saudi Arabias, which, he told the delegates, struck him as being very much against the odds. It is very difficult, he said, for politicians to break this news to the people. “To have real movement the public has to be hit over the head with a 2 by 4”.
He went through possible options, stating that although high oil prices will incentivise new technologies and research, the scale of the change needed is extraordinary. Carbon capture and storage is a long way off, and the enzymes required to break down agricultural wastes to make cellulosic ethanol have still not been reproduced. He said that for him, the nuclear option is a realistic one, and that although at the moment in the US the talk is about climate change, it will prove to be a passing passion, and that the huge growth in emissions in India and China will mean the it will take at least 20 years before anything meaningful starts to happen about climate change.
(25 September 2007)
The ASPO Conference – a comment
Heading Out, The Oil Drum
So! Going to Cork was not a cheap experience, with at least a day of travel each way, not to mention the energy cost – so was it worth it? And to define whether it was worth it, what did I learn? What follows is purely my set of opinions and recollections, and given the number of TOD folk there – do please chip in with your own comments.
Putting together the papers on Supply, there are perhaps two or three significant thoughts that have hardened based on what I have heard. The first is in regard to the actual peak volume of oil and associated liquids that will mark the peak. Numbers at the conference floated up around 100 mbdoe, but I think it is now likely to be closer to 90.
The second is in regard to how much of this will be exported.
…And, finally, as sort of a combination of these, I worry that the post-peak supplies may decline faster than the long plateau that currently keeps us complacent, and which does not reflect the bell-shaped curve that some of us use when talking about the subject. I am significantly more pessimistic.
(25 September 2007)
While I have enjoyed going to conferences, and would like to support organizations like ASPO which support them… perhaps it is time to start developing alternatives which don’t require traveling such long distances. I haven’t taken a vow not to travel by air like Rob Hopkins but I really would like to avoid it. -BA
