In the two years since I first started writing about the issue of peak oil, the price of crude has risen from nearly $66 to $93 per barrel. In the same period, global oil production has effectively plateaued, declining slightly from its peak of 82.9 million barrels per day in May of 2005 to 81.2 in September of 2007. (The peak for “all liquids” which includes things like biofuels and coal to liquids, was in 2006).
Last year, as prices temporarily dropped into the $50 range and a purportedly large deepwater oil field was found in the Gulf of Mexico, the idea of peak oil was ridiculed as “garbage” by energy consultants at Cambridge Energy Resources (CERA), called a conspiracy of oil companies by left-wing populists, dismissed as “not in sight” by Exxon Mobil , and written off as a “fading” theory by a New York Times reporter.
Not mentioned in these flippant dismissals was the fact that Mexico’s Cantarell oil field—the second largest in the world, and the source of most of Mexico’s oil—was crashing, and will possibly be at half its 2003 peak by 2008. Kuwait’s Burgan, the world’s third largest oil field, is also now in decline. Ghawar, the world’s largest field, is likely also in decline, though the Saudi Arabian government does not release oil field data publicly. Oil production from the North Sea has plummeted. Field after field, country after country, province after province is facing depletion.
Even more disturbing is the decline in net exports by oil producing nations. Most people forget or are unaware that oil exporting nations such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuala themselves have rapidly growing populations and economies, and that they subsidize oil consumption in their own countries (Venezuelans pay around 7 cents per gallon for gas) . As oil geologist Jeffrey J. Brown has pointed out, as overall oil exports decline , increases in domestic consumption by producers means that oil importers—the United States, Japan, Europe—will see their available oil decline much faster than the world’s depletion rate. In one model, he shows that a 5% world decline rate, for example, could lead to a 29% oil decline rate for importing nations over an eight years—a chilling figure.
In the last couple of months, as oil hits all-time highs daily, critics of peak oil theory have been largely silent. But so has the media at large. Having quietly surfaced as a topic of legitimate debate in 2005 and 2006, editors seem to think that the issue of peak oil has now passed its news cycle—as if declining energy were just another bit story amidst innumerable other, more interesting dramas, rather than the fundamental component of a functioning modern society.
Meanwhile, few Americans have even heard of the concept; even fewer have any real idea of what it implies. Insofar as high prices are mentioned in the business press, they are blamed on “speculators” or tensions between Turkey and Iraqi Kurds—ignoring, once again, the long-term trend which has seen prices rise nine-fold in 8 years. For their part, politicians—most especially including candidates for president, Republican and Democrat—seem to be as in denial or willfully ignorant as the public and the media. Candidates may pay lip-service to the unattainable ideal of “energy independence” but their means fall so far short of what reality requires as to be worse than meaningless. Not a single candidate is talking about rebuilding the national rail system, or funding public transit.
But even as the media and politicians seem unable to grasp the seriousness of the issue, official report after official report warns us that the situation with energy is indeed very, very bad. This summer the International Energy Agency admitted for the first time the likelihood that there would be oil shortages within a few years. A report by the German Energy Watch Group that came out a few weeks ago was more stark. The group, founded by a coalition of scientists and German parliamentarians, argued that not only had oil peaked in 2006, but that decline rates would be steeper than expected, even by the experts at the Association for the Study of Peak oil and Gas (ASPO).
By 2020, and even more by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can hardly be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame . . .The world is at the beginning of a structural change of its economic system. This change will be triggered by declining fossil fuel supplies and will influence almost all aspects of our daily life . . . The now beginning transition period probably has its own rules which are valid only during this phase. Things might happen which we never experienced before and which we may never experience again once this transition period has ended. Our way of dealing with energy issues probably will have to change fundamentally.
Or as they summed up more tersely in their press release:
Anticipated supply shortages could easily lead to disturbing scenes of mass unrest as witnessed in Burma this month. For government, industry and the wider public just muddling through is not an option anymore as this situation could spin out of control and turn into a meltdown of society.
The report was picked up by The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, British newspapers and the French wire services (and published in Pakistan), but it was all but ignored here. Why?
There is something spooky about peak oil—something unheimlich . Americans love to pretend to frighten themselves—from slasher killers in horror films to child molesters on Law and Order. But when it comes to contemplating something truly horrific, it’s much easier to turn away.
Now if you look at the history of the skyscraper, which is very sat skyscraper city, New York City, was originally basically a coal-based energy economy. And what you had at that time, in the period of let’s say between 1890 and 1920
Posted by: Nike Soccer Cleats | August 23, 2011 at 02:28 AM