Total boss on why oil production will never top 100 mb/d

By David Strahan, originally published by Last Oil Shock

November 2, 2007

[Excerpt]: Christophe de Margerie has a reputation for forthright views and blunt speaking, but this week the chief executive of Total excelled himself by dismissing the IEA’s oil production forecasts as unrealistic, while coining an aphorism worthy of Donald Rumsfeld.

In his keynote speech to the Oil and Money conference on Wednesday, de Margerie suggested that the International Energy Agency’s ‘alternative scenario’, in which oil production grows to 103 million barrels per day in 2030, was in fact an “optimistic” scenario – meaning output was unlikely to reach that level. By implication the IEA’s ‘reference’ or business-as-usual scenario, in which output is forecast to soar to 116 mb/d in 2030, is even more far-fetched…

David Strahan

Tags: Fossil Fuels, Industry, Oil

Robert Jensen argues that ‘fewer and less’ is unavoidable. But the future is not fixed

By Matthew R. Sanderson, Resilience.org

It is true that no high-energy society has ever halved its material throughput and existed at that level across generations. But an absent precedent for an unprecedented situation merely tells us the situation is new, not what people will do.

October 1, 2026

A future of ‘fewer and less’ may be unavoidable. But how do we get there humanely?

By Robert Jensen, Savage Minds

With age, I’ve become more aware of the world’s complexity but also better equipped to come to simple, albeit painful, conclusions: We need to replace fantasies of endless growth with ideas about managing the contraction.

September 16, 2026

Affordability, not scarcity, is the real energy crisis

By Gail Tverberg, Our Finite World

In this post, I examine differences in economic behaviour by comparing two types of periods: those with low energy affordability and those with high energy affordability.

August 26, 2026

Comments

We changed commenting systems on September 10, 2026 as part of a site-wide functionality and security upgrade. Your past comments have not disappeared, and you can still log in with your old Disqus account credentials if you wish. Contact us with any questions.

Subscribe
Notify of
0 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted