There’s a new consensus… yet still our governments and businesses plan wider highways and more enormous airports. WAKE UP AUSTRALIA!
Why the ‘peak oil’ debate is irrelevant
* 17:20 08 October 2009 by Shanta Barley
The debate over exactly when we will reach “peak oil” is irrelevant. No matter what new oil fields we discover, global oil production will start declining in 2030 at the very latest.
That’s the conclusion of the most comprehensive report to date on global oil production, published on 7 October by the UK Energy Research Centre.
The report, which reviewed over 500 research studies, suggests that global oil production could peak any time from right now to as late as 2030.
“Either way, our research shows that the difference between even the most pessimistic and optimistic claims is just 15 to 20 years,” says Steve Sorrell, the report’s lead author, who is based at Sussex University in the UK.
This is a problem, says Sorrell, because 20 years isn’t long enough for governments to prepare well-thought-out policies that would tackle the economic chaos likely to occur when oil production begins to decline. Research in 2005 by the US Department of Energy suggests that policies to reduce the demand for oil while developing large-scale alternatives will take at least two decades to bear fruit, he says.
New for old
Global production of oil is declining at a rate of 4 per cent per year in existing oil fields and we have very little to replace it with, says Sorrell: “If we want to maintain global oil production at today’s level we would need to discover the equivalent of a new Saudi Arabia every 3 years.”
Yet discoveries of new oil fields are in decline. Even the “giant” Tiber field recently found by BP in the Gulf of Mexico “will only serve to delay peak oil by a matter of days”, he says.
“Of the 70,000 oil fields on Earth, just 100 giant fields account for 50 per cent of the oil we use,” says Sorrell. “Most of these giant fields are quite old and past their peak of production, and we’re not going to find many new ones.”
The International Energy Agency’s latest estimate is that that oil production will not peak until after 2030, but that “is conservative to say the least”, Sorrell warns.
Gen3 and Gen4 Nuclear can apparently:
* eat old nuclear waste, reducing it to 10% of the mass and leaving it highly radioactive for only 500-1000 years. I favour renewables against nuclear, but even I think the USA, France, and China should build a few dozen of these each to deal with their waste from the older generation of nukes!
* eat old nuclear warheads
Gen4 rumoured to be built on a production line to bring costs down. They’ll be in a smaller 300 megawatt size. Want to replace a coal power station? Just order 4 please! But do you want to get “fried” with that? :-)
Yeah, I’ve been hearing “buy gold” for about the last 5 years from my peak oil mates. Some how, in between dealing with kid’s cancer, moving house, and the economic crisis affecting our business I never quite had the time and money to buy gold…. d’oh!
Guardian has a shortish piece documenting only fragments of the cover up, but at least there’s some noise about the fudging of the official oil numbers.
Ha! One of the greatest acts of corporate misinformation, the great deception by Saudi Aramco to the west, is now just so boring and mainstream.
However, my guess is many will wake up one day and protest, “But nobody warned us, whine whine whine, poor little me and my stock market investments, this is worse than the GFC!” Diddums. Some of us tried, but got shouted down by those who thought they were more ‘well informed’.
Key oil figures were distorted by US pressure, says whistleblower | Environment | The Guardian.
“Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources,” he added.
A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was “imperative not to anger the Americans” but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. “We have [already] entered the ‘peak oil’ zone. I think that the situation is really bad,” he added.
Hi Ray,
yeah, I have no doubt that the world is such a sick place that temporary super-spikes in the price of oil could be rigged to achieve certain corporate aims. But the concerns in the articles above is not over the past history of certain pricing structures in the marketplace, but with the scientific evidence over the physical shortages about to hit the world in the coming years.
The Australian Federal government held a Senate inquiry into peak oil and found…
Oil production is about to ‘peak’ and then move permanently into decline.
“Australia should be planning for it now”
However, just recently any hope of further discussion was squashed, let alone actually taking action!
The Motion was defeated 31:6 with the five Greens Senators supporting the motion and presumably South Australian independent Senator Nick Xenophon as the sixth supporting vote.
The major parties are not just ignorant of ‘peak oil’. They are, with clarity of purpose, voting against any attempt to respond or even investigate further.
Yet “Better Place” electric cars are arriving in Canberra in 2012, so who knows? It could be that the margin of error in oil calculations (from the poor data on the Middle East block) errs on the generous side, and we have a bit more time than my gut is telling me, and so maybe we’ll have enough time to see how GREAT the Better Place option is and eventually the Australian government will MANDATE that all new domestic personal cars are to be built according to the Better Place standard? We should be so lucky!
US Dollar and oil has a inverse relationship. Eg Dollar up oil price drop
For the last couple month investor, speculator and Central banks around the world diversify their asset classes holding.
US dollar drops at least 15% this year.
They reduce the US dollar and incrase Oil and Gold holding in their portfolios which push oil price higher. When the economic back to normal, I beleive Oil price can hit up to 200 dollar a barrel easily
Interesting. Good to see Gail on TV… but I’d like to have seen more quick oil data and quotes to convince people that the geology of oil extraction is the limiting factor, not some political conspiracy (as so many people think) or corporate conspiracy (“They HAVE all the oil Dave, it’s just they’re trying to bump up the price!”) or greenie conspiracy. (“It’s just you greenies fear-mongering that are driving up the price!”)
Anyway, I don’t know much about this Max fellow but he seems to be a fairly rounded journalist/presenter. Hopefully more people will check out peak oil online and see how mainstream and credible the claims are, and start to DO something about it!
Ken,
it may be too little too late for a ‘seamless’ transition from one into another, especially when the world marketplace and governments have yet to ‘pick a winner’. However I don’t think a single liquid fuel will replace oil… I think we’re heading into the electron economy, whether that is moving most of our stuff around via Trains, Trams, and Trolley Buses, or EV’s. (Battery Electric Vehicles).
THE light at the end of the tunnel as far as ‘saving the car’ (something I kind of hope doesn’t have to happen) is http://australia.betterplace.com/
It’s coming to Canberra in 2012, and once it has a demonstrated foothold in the marketplace will be unstoppable. If you convert the electricity into a fuel price per litre, electric transport is so efficient that it ends up working out about $0.80 cents a litre oil equivalent.
Better place fixes the 2 problems with EV’s…. limited range and having to buy an expensive battery every 3 or 4 years as your car battery dies. It’s business model sells you the car but they maintain ownership of the battery, so that they can use the battery swap program and station to give you a new fully charged battery in under 40 seconds, automated!
Better Place is not just one car company, but are trying to establish THE new international electric car battery standard for all car companies to enable this revolutionary business approach.
This is the only thing I’ve seen that I think could actually work for domestic household driving in cities and maybe even down the Hume Highway, once enough battery swaps have been installed.
It also opens up a lot of interesting possibilities for ‘off the grid’ power stations in the middle of no-where. Oil stations need a constant supply of oil tanker trucks delivering fuel, but these Better Place stations are all electric…. and so solar thermal baseload? Ceto wave power? Or even a mini-nuke!? See this hyperion mini-nuclear plant… http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/product.html
The future’s electric, but how quickly can we get our governments and corporations to AGREE that Better Place have found the technology and market sweet spot that actually WORKS if we build out enough charging points in shops, workplaces, at home, and of course the battery swaps on highways.
They need your help.
So join up for free, and they’ll send you a free bumper sticker: “My next car will run on the wind”. I have it already, and talk about it any chance I get.
All the more reason for society to make the switch. Car batteries don’t care if the electrons come from solar, wind, wave power, geothermal, or nuclear.
Until batteries really CAN ‘quick charge’ the best quick-fill-up idea I’ve seen is this Battery Swap. Even if batteries could ‘quick charge’ the grid would have trouble supplying it in times of peak demand, say, in rush hour on the way home when heaps of cars might need a quick top up, or on the Friday before a long weekend when everyone’s heading up the highway. Imagine charging a few thousand batteries in the same 5 minutes compared to swapping over a few thousand or so to be charged over the next few hours. Different sort of peak demand.
All of which is why I’m still favouring the Better Place model IF we have to live in a society that still has cars. However, once again, my favourite article ever on living with *less* cars is “My other car is a bright green city.”
Hi all,
Professor Barry Brook of Adelaide university asked me to write a piece for his blog. This may be one of the clearest articles I’ve ever written on why the USGS is wrong on oil, who the main protagonists are arguing the USGS is wrong, and why we should trust the lifetime field geologists over the economically driven projections of the pencil-nosed accountants who wrote the USGS 2000 report that has filtered through our government agencies and misled the world on our most important resource!
A good example is the February 2010 report from the United Kingdom Industry Task Force that argued that an oil crunch will happen in the next five years. The task force included six companies — Arup, Foster + Partners, Scottish and Southern Energy, Solarcentury, Stagecoach Group and Richard Branson’s Virgin.
Together they argued that an oil crunch caused by demand exceeding supply would be more devastating for the UK economy than the current credit crunch. They requested that the UK government address peak oil as a priority after the 2010 election but, sadly, this has not yet happened. More unfortunately perhaps, Richard Branson seems to be the only international business leader talking openly on the topic of peak oil.
Hi all,
one more report that has just been leaked. A German military report was leaked before the economists and politicians got to ‘tidy’ it. Below are a few or the peak oil risks that struck me, but there are others.
After writing the article for Dr Barry Brook, this stuff is all so fresh and real again. Why oh why did I do it? It was so nice to drift along in blissful denial for a while. Anyway, over to the Bundeswehr.
# Politics in place of the market: The Bundeswehr Transformation Center expects that a supply crisis would roll back the liberalization of the energy market. “The proportion of oil traded on the global, freely accessible oil market will diminish as more oil is traded through bi-national contracts,” the study states. In the long run, the study goes on, the global oil market, will only be able to follow the laws of the free market in a restricted way. “Bilateral, conditioned supply agreements and privileged partnerships, such as those seen prior to the oil crises of the 1970s, will once again come to the fore.”
# Market failures: The authors paint a bleak picture of the consequences resulting from a shortage of petroleum. As the transportation of goods depends on crude oil, international trade could be subject to colossal tax hikes. “Shortages in the supply of vital goods could arise” as a result, for example in food supplies. Oil is used directly or indirectly in the production of 95 percent of all industrial goods. Price shocks could therefore be seen in almost any industry and throughout all stages of the industrial supply chain. “In the medium term the global economic system and every market-oriented national economy would collapse.”
# Relapse into planned economy: Since virtually all economic sectors rely heavily on oil, peak oil could lead to a “partial or complete failure of markets,” says the study. “A conceivable alternative would be government rationing and the allocation of important goods or the setting of production schedules and other short-term coercive measures to replace market-based mechanisms in times of crisis.”
This is a fairly major announcement by the US military!
“By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day,” says the report, which has a foreword by a senior commander, General James N Mattis.
This is the US military saying world output could have dropped by about an 8th in just 5 years. This is “Greater Depression” language.
Short answer: Yes Lee, since 2004 I’ve been saying the final oil crisis starts somewhere between 2008 and 2015. Very observant! ;-)
BTW — your sceptical tone justifies my not voting CDP! At least the Greens are open minded enough to look at the science involved here mate, unlike some!
My team briefed the NSW Cross-benchers including Fred Nile and Gordon Moyes way back in mid 2005. What policy have they developed in the 5 years since?
Laughable!
Long answer: The fact that oil prices haven’t hit $250 a barrel yet, or rationing hasn’t started (YET), does not disprove that we are on the global peak.
Do you have any evidence to the contrary?
Try answering the following:
Peak oil Top 10
1. In which decade did we discover the most oil?
2. How has the discovery of conventional oil been going since then? Keep in mind that oil is probably only 2nd to the military in terms of the money and technology available to their enterprise. Big oil have BILLIONS at their disposal for the latest discovery and drilling technologies.
3. What is the ratio of discovery to consumption? Are we discovering more than we use, or less? How good or ‘bad’ is the ratio?
4. How long has the trend been in this direction?
5. How many oil producing countries have already peaked and are in irreversible decline? What are their decline rates?
6. Which countries are still able to increase production and have not reached their all time historical peak?
7. Is there an ‘international oil cop’ agency that audits the fields and confirms the books of various oil blocks? Who reports to who? What is the chain of command down which the oil data has to travel in the non-OPEC western world?
8. How do we know whether OPEC reports are legitimate? Who do they report to? Who can audit their books? Does the western world get access to their fields? How do we confirm what they know?
9. If domestic consumption of oil exporting nations rises too fast (because of a booming domestic economy), how quickly can domestic consumption outpace their ability to export oil once they themselves peak? (Hint: there are historical precedents — google “Export Land Model”).
10. If those few exporting nations that are left suddenly DO decide to keep the oil for their own economies, how relevant is a global depletion rate of 5% per annum if the OIL MARKET has collapsed because ‘sellers’ are becoming ‘buyers’?
Lee, as someone who desires to enter politics, you really ought to follow peak oil as one of THE most important factors about to affect Australia’s political and economic life. Please become acquainted with the Senate report below.
This is the Australian Federal Senate enquiry into peak oil estimates. The interesting thing is that all the ‘good old boys’ of oil who are independent geologists now retired (read, don’t have their future careers at stake!) are sounding the alarm.
3.86 Many other commentators predict an earlier peak, apparently based on lower estimates of the ultimately recoverable resource. ASPO predicts a peak of conventional oil around 2010, with significant uncertainty on either side of that time.[69] Other opinions are gathered by Robert Hirsch, author of a 2005 report on peak oil for the US Department of Energy:
2005 - T. Boone Pickens (oil and gas investor)
2005 - K. Deffeyes (retired Princeton professor and Shell geologist)
at hand - E.T. Westervelt et al (US Army Corps of Engineers)
now - S. Bakhtiari (Iranian National Oil Company planner)
close or past - R. Herrera (retired BP Geologist)
very soon - H. Groppe (oil/gas expert and businessman)
by 2010 - S. Wrobel (investment fund manager)
around 2010 - R. Bentley (university energy analyst)
2010 - C. Campbell (retired oil company geologist)
2010+/- a year - C. Skrebowski (editor of Petroleum Review)
around 2012 - R.H.E.M Koppelaar (Dutch oil analyst)
a challenge around 2011 - L.M. Meling (Statoil oil company geologist)
within a decade - Volvo Trucks
within a decade - C. de Margerie (oil company executive)
2015 - S. al Husseini (retired executive vice-president of Saudi Aramco)
around 2015 - Merrill Lynch (brokerage/financial)
2015-2020 - J.R. West, PFC Energy
around 2020 or earlier - C.T. Maxwell, Weeden & Co., brokerage
within 15 years - Wood Mackenzie, energy consulting
Charles Maxwell is senior energy analyst at Weeden & Co. Maxwell discusses where oil’s production peak is and how that affects investments.
Charles Maxwell: The use of petroleum in the world is now up to about 30 billion barrels per year. The rate at which we have found new supplies of petroleum over the last 10 years has fallen to an average, of only about 10 billion barrels per year.
We’re obviously in an unsustainable situation. We are now using up a greater number of barrels that we have found in the recent past and that we have reserved in the ground. We are now beginning to use it up relatively quickly—with scary consequences for the future.
The peak of production usually comes sometime between 30 and 50 years after the peak of finding oil. “The peak of discovery,” as they call it. For instance, in the North Sea, the peak of discovery was in the late 1960s, and the peak of production was in the late 1990s. So it was around 30 years between the peak of finding oil and the peak production of that oil.
Short answer: Yes Lee, since 2004 I’ve been saying the final oil crisis starts somewhere between 2008 and 2015. Very observant! ;-)
BTW — your sceptical tone justifies my not voting CDP! At least the Greens are open minded enough to look at the science involved here mate, unlike some!
My team briefed the NSW Cross-benchers including Fred Nile and Gordon Moyes way back in mid 2005. What policy have they developed in the 5 years since?
....
Lee, as someone who desires to enter politics, you really ought to follow… the Senate report
My team briefed the NSW Cross-benchers including Fred Nile and Gordon Moyes way back in mid 2005. What policy have they developed in the 5 years since?
I don’t know if splitting from one another - and writing and saying horrible things about one another is a policy or not - but they long ago lost any warm and fuzzy feelings I might have held for them- especially when they present as ‘Christian’ parties.
“See how they love one another” - wise words to the perceptive observer !
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