Goodbye To All That Oil
By Stan Cox, AlterNet. Posted April 4, 2005.
The peak oil idea - which says that world oil production will go into
irreversible decline sometime in the next decade or two - is quickly
morphing into conventional wisdom.
Until recently, peak-oil analysts got about as much respect from the
energy establishment as do perpetual-motion enthusiasts. But now,
with oil prices headed for uncharted territory and even Saudi Arabia
seemingly unable to boost production to higher levels, the peak oil
idea - which says that world oil production will go into irreversible
decline sometime in the the next decade or two - is quickly morphing
into conventional wisdom.
Fifty years ago, geologist M. King Hubbert showed that the output of
an oilfield, or indeed the oil production of an entire country,
increases year by year up to the point (a peak) at which
approximately half the oil is exhausted. From there, he said, annual
output drops inexorably toward zero.
Hubbert hit the bullseye with his prediction that U.S. production
would peak in 1970. And over the past half century, country after
country has seen its oil production hit a peak and start dropping.
Yet for decades, economists, petroleum executives and government
officials refused to follow Hubbert's analysis to its logical
conclusion - that in the easily foreseeable future, humanity will
pass over a global peak of oil production, where there awaits a very
grim, slippery slope.
The Hubbert Curve, designed by geophysicist M. King Hubbert,
illustrates that over time, the rate of oil production rises and then
falls in a bell-shape pattern.
But gradually, in the past couple of years, the main issue in the oil
debate has shifted from whether a world peak will occur to when. And
when it comes to peak-oil predictions these days, there is no
shortage.
Please place your bets
Colin Campbell of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas
(ASPO) predicts that production will begin its decline between now
and 2010.
British Petroleum exploration consultant Francis Harper believes it
will happen between 2010 and 2020. Consulting firm PFC Energy puts it
at around 2010 to 2015. The publication Petroleum Review predicts
that demand will outstrip supply in 2007. Richard Heinberg, author of
the 2003 book, The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial
Societies, expects a peak in 2007 or 2008.
Retired Princeton professor Kenneth Deffeyes, author of the
just-published, Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak is more
pessimistic, and more specific, about when the peak will happen:
Thanksgiving Day, 2005. (His tongue appears to be in his cheek
regarding the day, but not the year).
If all that is too gloomy for you, energy consultant Michael Lynch
maintains that there's no peak in sight for the next 20 or 30
years. Peter Odell of Erasmus University in the Netherlands has
tacked a full 30 years onto Deffeyes' grim prediction, setting a date
of Thanksgiving 2035. And Uncle Sam has the cheeriest news of all: a
peak year of 2037 forecast by the Department of Energy.
Now how many times has someone told you, Oh, yeah, all my life
they've been saying the oil's about to run out, and it hasn't done it
yet? In fact, the record of oil forecasting has not been an exercise
in Chicken-Littlism.
Asking, When will oil peak and begin its decline? (not, When will
it run out?), the prognosticators of the past came up with dates
only five to 10 years ahead of many of today's predictions. Roger
Bentley of the University of Reading found that in the 1970s - during
the last outbreak of peak-oil fever - analysts from reputable
organizations (including Esso, Shell, the UK Department of Energy,
and the U.N., as well as Hubbert himself) were nearly unanimous in
predicting a world oil peak somewhere around the year 2000.
Does the peak year even matter?
With oil prices soaring, economic logic says the sooner the peak's
date can be nailed down, the better. Financial web sites are buzzing
about it, but in a somewhat merrier key than the peak-oil sites. One
research firm is even forecasting production peaks for individual oil
companies, with obvious implications for stock values.
On the other hand, if we're more concerned about improving humanity's
prospects in 2010 or 2037 than Wall Street's prospects at the close
of trading tomorrow, then one prediction is probably as good as
another. In designing an energy policy that can be sustained far into
the post-petroleum future, the precise timing of the peak is of about
as much practical importance as the date of the next total eclipse of
the sun (on that forecast, astronomers agree: March 29, 2006).
A recent report prepared for the U.S. government by Science
Applications International Corporation suggests that whatever the
peak year turns out to be, 2005 is the time to get moving on energy
policy. The report's lead author, Robert L. Hirsch,
