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The End of Oil As We Know It
ASPO-USA
ASPO-USA Foresees Dramatic Decline in Oil Production, Calls for Strong Measures to Mitigate Impending Energy Crisis
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO-USA) asserted today that the world is facing a significant energy crisis, as the rate of oil production cannot keep pace with demand. The world is consuming four barrels of oil for every one discovered, more than 80 million barrels of oil per day. After 150 years of oil extraction, most major oil exporting nations are well past their supply peaks, defined by scientists as "Peak Oil."
"We are at the point of no return," stated Jim Baldauf, President of ASPO-USA. "While global demand is accelerating, worldwide oil supplies have reached a plateau and are now in decline. The era of low-cost, easy-to-get oil has come to an end, a moment of historic significance and one fraught with danger. The Gulf of Mexico disaster occurred because the quest for new supplies requires that we drill miles beneath the ocean surface. Without affordable energy to drive our economy, we can expect price spikes and economic crisis to be the new normal. The debate about Peak Oil is over; it is time for bold action. If we do not change our current approach, we will see tremendous global repercussions."
Today, representatives from across the political spectrum came together to discuss the severity of this issue and potential solutions. Speakers included:
* Mr. Jim Baldauf, ASPO-USA Co-founder and President
* Ms. Bianca Jagger, Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador, Founder and Chair of the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation
* Mr. Jeff Rubin, Former CIBC Chief Economist
* Dr. Roger Bezdek, President, Management Information Services
(7 October 2010)
Press release.
Jeff Rubin: Canada’s two new solitudes
Jeff Rubin, CTV (Canada)
Fortunately for Canada, our first encounter with peak oil did not exact the same toll as it did in the U.S. or elsewhere. We can thank our oil resources, not our chartered banks, for that. Even so, unemployment jumped to over 9 per cent and in the process dramatically changed the fiscal landscape in the country.
But that oil blessing may soon become a double-edged sword. The very oil reserves that will soon make Canada an energy superpower are making the loonie a petro-currency. Already around parity with the greenback, the Canadian dollar will soar to unprecedented heights against the U.S. dollar as triple-digit oil prices pull more and more daily oil production from the tar sands. And a strong dollar means one thing to hockey fans: NHL franchises leaving Dixie and the desert, and moving to Canada.
Sounds great, until you start to do the math and realize that the more oil Canada produces, and the higher the loonie goes, the less steel, machinery and even cars the rest of the economy will produce. We’ll see how Canadians come to like their economy being at the other end of Americans’ gas nozzle.
Or maybe we shouldn’t be speculating how “Canadians” will feel about the experience, since we will be thinking about it more as, say, Albertans and Ontarians, or Newfoundlanders and Quebeckers. Soaring oil prices and a muscular loonie won’t be a problem for Alberta, since the U.S. will soon have to buy most of its oil imports from Canada no matter what the exchange rate. However, it could prove to be a tad more problematic for the manufacturing sector in the industrial heartland of Ontario and Quebec.
(6 October 2010)
Crafting A Peak Oil "Narrative"
Molly Davis, Casaubon’s Book (Sharon Astyk’s blog)
Can a movement with the truth on its side abandon dry numbers for truthiness?
by guest blogger
Today’s ASPO-USA conference in Washington, DC, is by far populated with people who support the idea that oil and gas supplies (or at least our ability to access them without serious environmental impacts) are peaking and that the results will prove both economically and socially disruptive.
But among this group, almost all of the messaging experts say the movement’s narrative has failed to influence policymakers — or even the major environmental groups. One panel focused specifically on finding an alternative way to get the word out.
David Room, a co-founder of the California-based environmental group Bay Localize and a board member of ASPO-USA, said at the panel on messaging that the Peak Oil narrative is just one of many that he sees breaking down, at least on a personal leve, in the face of today’s harsh and complicated realities.
"I see there being a problem in terms of the narrative space," Room said. "And I actually think of it as a narrative dissonance, as there’s multiple stories in our head that we’ve been sold."
He cited the American Dream as an example of one narrative that has failed the public. He blamed that failure for the rise of strong bipartisan anger in national politics, for example among the Tea Party.
"Is it possible to have a viable, inspiring [Peak Oil] narrative that people can see themselves in and can see their role, and therefore kind of step into the kind of preparations and mitigations that we need to be moving into?" Room asked. "I don’t know, but we haven’t tried."
He said that such a transformative narrative must include a realistic appraisal of current conditions, an understanding of collective values, and an evaluation of the choices — followed by a decision.
"We need to be exploring what the possibilities are and finally saying ‘yes’ to some things," Room said, adding that the narrative must be more inclusive than the mainstream environmental movement. In particular, he said the Peak Oil movement must reach out to those groups — such as low-income communities and communities of color — who are likely to feel the most immediate impacts of a Peak Oil crisis.
Tyson Slocum, the director of advocacy group Public Citizen’s energy program, said that his group has zeroed into the most successful narrative arc: The fossil fuel industry is the enemy.
"You have to create an enemy," Slocum said. "And I know this might be controversial. There might be people who work for the oil and gas industry in this room, but there’s no other way."
Slocum reached this conclusion because, as he puts it, relying on facts alone is failing.
"To me, when the issue of peak oil comes up, the facts are indisputable," Slocum said. "We know that the easy way to get at oil is disappearing and that we’re in a new age of extraordinarily expensive unconventional oil and gas, that global consumption led by emerging countries like China and India are driving global competition and costs up." He said the cost of oil and gas is slowing the economic recovery and exaggerating the trade deficit.
"These are all facts that are well known, but yet what was one of the dominant energy narratives of the 2008 presidential campaign? Drill, baby, drill," he said, pointing out that this successful narrative forced then-candidate Barack Obama to support expansion of offshore drilling, and subsequently President Obama to announce in March 2010 — roughly two weeks before the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig sank — to announce his policy carrying out this expansion.
Slocum acknowledged that his own group has succeeded with the "demonizing" strategy when the facts themselves weren’t enough of a game changer. He pointed to financial services reform as an example, where Public Citizen carried out a campaign that demonized key Wall Street entities and made the case for more stringent regulation.
"It is a tactic that we have used with enormous success time and time again," Slocum said.
Sharon Astyk, an author and ASPO-USA board member, said that fear can be a valuable tool to reach people with the Peak Oil message, but warns messagers to avoid using dystopian fantasies.
"Fear is an integral part of the story," she said, pointing out that much of the work to lower the cigarette-smoking rate was accomplished with "lots of pictures of diseased lungs, lots of pictures of dying people."
She said that writers, such as herself, are important to the movement because they can help to craft a narrative that emphasizes meaning rather than data.
"We don’t have to be truthy," she said, referencing comedian Stephen Colbert’s term to describe speaking with a conviction that, in the mind of the listener, is often tantamount to truth regardless of what is being said. "But we do have to recognize that as a society we’re accustomed to equating truthiness with truth."
She said that creating a narrative middle ground between utopia and dystopia is "going to be one of our central projects" as members of the Peak Oil movement. She adds that although creating an "agitprop" campaign to spread the movement’s message will often require oversimplifying it, there are more narratives at hand than just the simple "Oil and gas are the enemy" story.
But Richard Abraham, author of the book The Dirty Truth, warned against adopting too shallow of a message. Abraham, who is originally from Mississippi, compares the Peak Oil movement in this sense to the Civil Rights movement.
"Those battles weren’t won by oversimplifying issues," he said. "We educated people. We didn’t just play to people’s fears. And I think we want to be careful about oversimplifying issues because one of the problems right now is we have an electorate that is not well informed."
(7 October 2010)
Bianca Jagger: Now Is the Time to Move Beyond Petroleum
Bianca Jagger, Huggington Post
Bianca Jagger delivered this speech at the ASPO-USA Peak Oil Conference on 8 October 2010:
… Our addiction to oil is dangerous and unsustainable. Our oil supply is finite, and the dwindling reserves simply cannot cope with our ever increasing demand. To compensate for the diminishing supply, oil companies have been attempting to reach reserves in deeper and more dangerous waters – often with environmentally catastrophic consequences.
… Peak Oil
Scientists have been predicting Peak Oil since 1956. Until recently, these prognostications have been perceived as distant threats or some sort of myth, rather than an immediate risk. The latest warning has come from the Joint Operating Environment report from the US Joint Forces command, released in April 2010, which warns, "By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels (mb) per day." Some individual countries have already reached their peak oil moments – among them, the USA in 1970 if you exclude Alaska, the UK in 1999. But the issue is now a global one.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) has observed a decline rate of 5.1% per annum for 580 of the world’s largest oilfields. On present trends, just to replace oil reserves that will be exhausted and to meet the growth in demand, we will need 64 mb/day of new capacity between now and 2030 – that is 6 Saudi Arabias, or roughly 1 Saudi Arabia coming on-stream every 3 years.
There are some less pessimistic voices on Peak Oil. The UK Energy Research Centre found that a peak in conventional oil production before 2030 appeared likely, but with a significant risk that it would occur in the current decade. The pessimists operate on the thesis that the peak has already occurred – Kenneth Deffreys, author of Beyond Oil, claims that oil production peaked in December 2005. The CEO of Brazilian oil giant Petrobras, Mr. Gabrielli, gave a gloomy forecast in December 2009 saying oil production would peak this year (2010) and that a new Saudi Arabia was needed every 2 years.
In order to maintain our current consumption rates, it will take vast amounts of oilfield discovery, investment and drilling. The Peak Oil debate often suggests a steep production decline will set in past the peak, but it may actually be more about how long the oil production ‘plateau’ will last. Regardless of the exact timing of the peak – past, present or future – the critical issue is growing demand. Chinese oil demand could double by 2030. Chinese car growth at 28% per annum over the last decade would, if it carried on, mean that their vehicle fleet will overtake the USA’s by 2017. John Mitchell, Associate Fellow at Chatham House, notes an interesting ‘tipping point’ in 2015 when Asian oil import demand will exceed the Middle East’s exportable oil surplus.
In a rather perverse way, Peak Oil may be good news. It may be good news because we are sleep-walking our way to climate disaster. Small annual increases in atmospheric CO² concentration do not give us enough of a wake-up call. Peak Oil will. Prices will spike and become volatile, supply chains may be disrupted and our entire lifestyle based upon cheap and abundant fossil fuels will come under intense pressure. We have grown used to just-in-time global production, foodstuffs being flown all around the world and car-led suburbanisation. We need to get ready for a more localised world.
However in our desperate scramble for new oil supplies, we are making dangerous moves – to ever deeper offshore drilling and to oil exploration in the Arctic. These activities contain not only immediate risks, but their long term consequences may threaten our survival and the survival of future generations.
… Conclusion
It is an intellectual illusion to believe that the crises that besieged our world today can be compartmentalised. Climate change will affect everyone, everywhere, in every nation and from every socio-economic group, in hundreds of ways: from the pollution of cities to erosion in rural areas; from contamination of the oceans and rivers to desertification; from mass migration to overcrowded cities and the security of individuals and states.
The time for further excuses, for procrastination and prevarication, has long passed. Now is the time for decision-makers in politics and economics to take concrete steps to avert climate catastrophe; the time for courage and leadership, and for positive and immediate action. The only long-term viable basis for economic activity is to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. For that we need considerable investment and a stable policy framework. And it starts at home: many of you may recall President Carter spending $30 000 to install 32 solar panels on the White House roof in 1979. President Reagan terminated the national tax credits and removed the panels in 1986. Next spring, President Obama will once again be making his morning toast at the White House using electricity from solar panels.
I hope that leaders, the business community, policy makers, NGOs and people throughout the world, will have the vision to embrace a new Copernican revolution in renewable energy. The delays in investment and adoption of renewable energies have been environmentally and economically inexcusable. Tackling climate change is the overriding moral imperative of the century. Our future and the fate of future generations depend on how decisively, courageously and responsibly we act now.
(7 October 2010)
