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Peak oil is coming, and we’re unready
Rod Dreher, Dallas Morning News
Has the world already reached peak oil, a time of permanently high oil prices and shortages that will profoundly change our way of life? The answer, I think, is likely yes, but the proximity of this catastrophe is not the most important question to ask.
Oil is a finite natural resource; sooner or later, the supply will peak. Jeroen van der Veer, chief of Royal Dutch Shell, earlier this year predicted 2015 as the year the world reaches peak production. John Hess of Hess Corp. said: “An oil crisis is coming in the next 10 years. It’s not a matter of demand. It’s not a matter of supplies. It’s both.”
Whether peak oil is already here or on its way, we’ll have to deal with it.
The more important question, then, is this: Are we ready for the inevitable? The answer, I’m convinced, is no. And our unreadiness is not for lack of information; it’s moral and philosophical. Put plainly, it’s because we Americans do not recognize limits. We live in a fantasyland whose borders go far beyond the oilfields, whose psychological geography is critical to map out a future our nation is blindly headed for.
Rod Dreher is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist.
(17 August 2008)
Geoscientist: Peak Oil Now? If so, Oil Prices Not Likely to Decline–Ever
Becky Gillette, Mississippi Business Journal via Red Orbit
There has been a lot of talk in recent years about “peak oil” – defined as the point where the maximum amount of oil that can be recovered is being pumped. After that, oil becomes increasingly scarce and expensive.
If sticker shock at the gas pumps hasn’t convinced you, talk to Dr. Darrel Schmitz, head of the Department of Geosciences, Mississippi State University.
“World oil reserves have probably peaked yesterday, today or tomorrow – literally right about now,” Schmitz said. “Production worldwide will start declining relatively soon. We are right at that point.”
As an oil industry expert told Schmitz a few years ago, unless some other super giant oil fields are discovered, most everything else currently in production or planned isn’t enough and can’t be put online soon enough to prevent increasingly world demand from eclipsing supplies.
“Rest assured that for nearly 100 years people have been looking for super large oil finds, so it is not too likely there will be more of those,” Schmitz said. “We have had booms and busts in the oil industry for almost a century, with each one getting a little bigger. The last bust was in 1980.”
(21 July 2008)
Waking up to the threat of ‘peak oil’
Ron Way, MinnPost
The recent dip in the world oil market has given consumers relief from surging pump prices, and has investors and commentators waxing with hope that the dip will become a trend.
But don’t bet on it, says energy expert Matthew Simmons. Along with the likes of oilman T. Boone Pickens whose celebrated national campaign calls for a radical shift away from oil dependence, Simmons says that all fundamentals remain in place for energy prices to resume their skyward climb to levels quite beyond records of a month ago.
… He has a growing band of believers, including state Rep. Bill Hilty, DFL-Finlayson, who chairs the House Energy Policy and Finance Division and is openly concerned about the future picture of energy and its implications for Minnesota.
“We have a global economy that’s based on cheap oil,” said Hilty, adding that sharply rising energy costs would be economically damaging and could, if not checked, become dangerous.
A key witness at St. Paul hearing, Simmons, of Houston, Texas, was a key witness at a St. Paul hearing last spring chaired by Hilty. Listening intently and nodding agreement in the packed hearing room were Eagan energy investor Jim Johnson and a retired IBM scientist, Norm Erickson of Rochester, Minn.
Simmons explains that the supply-demand fundamentals that drive oil prices “have actually gotten worse”:
… Another adherent is Jim Johnson of Eagan, who spent over a decade in the oil business and is now an energy investment adviser.
Johnson said that energy-industry insiders quietly acknowledge “peak oil” and the dire economic and social consequences that are implied by doing nothing about it.
“Energy prices will go through the roof,” Johnson said, “and people don’t see it coming. Worst, we deny that the cause is us and our profligate style of consumption.”
When asked about the prospect of resource wars, Johnson says flatly that it already has started.
(18 August 2008)
Oilwatch Monthly – August 2008
Rembrandt, The Oil Drum: Europe
The August 2008 edition of Oilwatch Monthly can be downloaded at this weblink (PDF, 1.34 MB, 26 pp). In this edition I have added more demand, oil stock and production revision data. A summary and latest graphics below the fold.
Latest Developments:
1) Conventional crude production – Latest available figures from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that crude oil production including lease condensates increased by 580,000 b/d from April to May. Due to the recent downwards revision of historical crude oil production statistics and the 580,000 b/d increase, the long held May 2005 record of all time high crude oil production has been broken in May. The new record is 74.48 million b/d.
2) Total liquids production – In July world production of total liquids increased by 890,000 barrels per day from June according to the latest figures of the International Energy Agency (IEA). …
(18 August 2008)
