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Why the oil crunch may grow worse
Elizabeth Douglass, Los Angeles Times
… behind today’s oil mania lies a deeper dread: that the world has found all the easy-to-reach oil, and the daily supply of the essential black goo will fall further and further behind escalating global demand.
“As much as you’re uncomfortable with today’s oil prices, these are going to be the good old days,” oil expert Robert L. Hirsch told a recent Santa Barbara gathering of policymakers and environmentalists. “We’re talking about pain here that is unimaginable.”
… Adding to the angst, several industry heavyweights caution that above-ground issues — including instability among oil-producing nations and shortages of drilling rigs and engineers — threaten to impose a “practical peak” on oil output that could be just as wrenching as the geologic peak envisioned by Hirsch and others.
“There are more and more people who believe that oil supply prospects are not very optimistic,” said Fatih Birol, chief economist at the Paris-based International Energy Agency, a watchdog for industrialized nations.
… Birol counts himself among those who believe the world has reached at least “a peak of easily accessible oil.” That alone is cause for worry, because many economies are built around the assumption that oil would continue to be cheap and plentiful.
Birol is leading a groundbreaking reassessment of the worldwide outlook for oil supplies, investment and production that many believe will deliver bad news when it is released in November.
… When he spoke at last month’s energy summit, Hirsch said that large oil fields were emptying faster than expected, remaining reserves were overestimated and new finds and technology would offer only incremental additions.
“There’s no question in my mind that we’re likely to see oil production go into decline somewhere between 2010 and 2012,” said Hirsch
… The boiling debate, in which peakists and their critics flay one another’s conclusions and intelligence, is fed by imprecise terminology and oil-field data that are questionable or incomplete
(22 July 2008)
A wecome sign: Los Angeles Times is starting to give peak oil serious coverage.
The bad news: the coverage is still in the immature stage of saying, “There are so many opinions – it’s so uncertain – just impossible to come to any conclusions.” In fact, if you dig deep enough, you can find which sources are reliable and which are just repeating the same old line (e.g., CERA). Peak oil really shouldn’t be characterized as a debate, but rather as the growing realization that cheap oil is at an end. The real debate now is in determining exactly how it will come about, and what the implication will be.
Related at Los Angeles Times:
Oil opinions
Key terms in oil-supply debate
-BA
Australian oil production has peaked: report
AAP, Sydney Morning Herald
Oil production in Australia has already peaked and the alternative fuels industry needs to be dramatically ramped up in response, an expert research group says.
After years of a stop-start approach to ethanol production, Australia is fast running out of time to end its love affair with crude oil, much of which is imported, the NRMA Motoring funded Jamison Group says.
“Oil production in Australia has already peaked,” the group’s report, A Roadmap for Alternative Fuels in Australia, warns.
(22 July 2008)
The Jamison Report is available online:
The motorists association, NRMA, has commissioned a report that outlines a 12-step roadmap for reducing oil dependence of the transport sector in Australia. It calls for Australia to reduce oil dependence by 20% by 2020; by 30% by 2030; and by 50% by 2050.
Petition to UK government to reassess energy supplies, in light of peak oil
Chris Jones, UK e-petitions
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Undertake a reassessment of UK Energy Supplies, in particular evaluate the risk of an imminent peak or plateau in global oil production. More details
Submitted by Chris Jones – Deadline to sign up by: 29 July 2008 – Signatures: 489
[Need to be a UK citizen to sign]
The Government considers that the world’s oil and gas resources are sufficient to sustain economic growth for the foreseeable future. One question is how long is the forseeable future, but many experts now agree that global oil production is likely to plateau and peak within the next 5 years. Furthermore, a significant number of senior figures in the oil industry anticipate an imminent ceiling on oil production and the International Energy Agency expects a Supply Crunch before 2012. Despite this and unlike several other countries, the UK has published no study into the availability of future oil and gas supplies. Indeed the Energy White Paper still expects UK oil consumption to rise in the medium term. This petition highlights the need for a major reappraisal by UKG given increasing concerns about the reliability of world reserve data and declining production from 64 of the 98 oil-producing countries.
(July 2008)
Suggested by Alexandra Deegan who writes:
Few folk in Britain seem to know of it…. and at (current) sub 500 signatures… we need to get many more peeps onboard before this current Govt will take notice!
Peak oil awareness… every little helps!
