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Peak oil before 2020 a ‘significant risk’, say experts
David Strahan, The Ecologist
A new report highlights how woefully unprepared the Government is for a looming peak in oil production
There is a ‘significant risk’ that conventional oil production will peak before 2020, and forecasts that delay the event beyond 2030 are based on assumptions that are ‘at best optimistic and at worst implausible’.
So says a major new report that puts the excitement over recent ‘giant’ oil discoveries into perspective and directly contradicts the British government’s position. It also warns that failure to recognise the threat of peak oil could undermine efforts to combat climate change.
The report, entitled ‘Global Oil Depletion: An assessment of the evidence for a near-term peak in global oil production’, comes from the UK Energy Research Centre, an independent group funded by the Research Councils, whose mission is to resolve contentious technical issues and deliver clear guidance for policymakers.
This report is significant because it is the first dispassionate academic attempt to reconcile the highly polarised debate over whether and when oil supplies will start to decline, yet its conclusions chime with a growing number of recent forecasts that warn of an early peak in production…
(8 Oct 2009)
EB reader Damian B comments:
I wonder if there’ll be any seriously considered response to this by the government or indeed the opposition parties, now we are in the run up to an election? Don’t hold your breath!
Era of cheap, easy oil is over, warns study
Louise Gray, The Telegraph
The exact date of “peak oil” – when the amount of oil being pumped out of the ground every day reaches its highest point before beginning an inexorable decline – has been hotly debated for decades. Environmentalists have tended to warn oil could run out at any moment, while oil companies insist there are plently more oil fields yet to be discovered.
The most recent estimation from the International Energy Agency, that advises Governments around the world, said conventional oil would not peak until after 2030.
However an authoriative new study from the Government-funded UK Energy Research Council called this prediction “at best optimistic and at worst implausible”. The peer-reviewed research looked at 500 studies from around the world and took into account the difficulty of accessing new oil fields as well as growing demand. It predicted oil will begin running out before 2030 and there is a “significant risk” peak oil will be reached before 2020…
(8 Oct 2009)
UKERC Report Exposes Bankruptcy of Government’s Position on Peak Oil
ODAC press release
ODAC welcomes the UKERC’s report Global Oil Depletion: An assessment of the evidence for a near-term peak in global oil production, published today (8th October), as a thorough and dispassionate assessment of the evidence that reaches compelling conclusions. The report also exposes the bankruptcy of the British government’s position on peak oil.
The government insists peak oil will not occur before 2030 [1], and has refused to conduct a risk assessment that it might occur before 2020 [2]. But after an 18-month inquiry by a team of 8 academics and industry consultants, the UKERC report concludes the peak of conventional oil production is “likely” to occur before 2030, and there is a “significant risk” that it will come before 2020.
Christopher Patey, chairman of the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, and a former executive with Mobil, said “this excellent report exposes the British government’s position on peak oil for what it really is – obstinate denial in the face of the growing evidence, and a reckless gamble on all our futures”.
The government bases its view on the work of the International Energy Agency, which forecasts conventional oil will peak in 2020, but which argues that rising output from non-conventional sources such as the Canadian tar sands will push the overall production peak out to “around 2030”[3] The UKERC report does not address this question directly, but the numbers in the report show how unlikely it is that non-conventional oil will defer the peak for long, because of the sheer size of the hole left by conventional depletion…
(8 Oct 2009)
The link to the report is here.
Peak Oil: The End Of the Oil Age is Near, Deutsche Bank Says
Keith Johnson, Wall Street Journal blogs
Here’s an intriguing thought: Global oil supplies are indeed set to peak within a few years, and no, that is not bullish for oil. Quite the contrary—it will spell the end of the “oil age.”
That’s the take from Deutsche Bank’s new report, “The Peak Oil Market.” In a nutshell: The oil industry chronically under invests in finding new supplies, exemplified both by Big Oil’s recent love of share buybacks and under-investment by big oil-producing nations. That spells a looming supply crunch.
That will send oil to $175 a barrel by 2016—and will simultaneously put the final nail in oil’s coffin and send prices plummeting back to $70 by 2030. That’s because there’s an even more important “peak” moment on the horizon: A global peak in oil demand. That has already begun in the world’s biggest oil-consuming nation, Deutsche Bank notes:…
(5 Oct 2009)
The Deutsche Bank report can be accessed on the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre’s Reports and Resources page here.
