B Leamy, Corporate Watch
With demand for oil soaring yet supply stable at best, the idea that oil stocks have 'peaked' is increasingly influential. So what are the latest theories around peak oil?
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Around two hundred scientists, economists, analysts and academics attended the 5th International Workshop on Oil and Gas Depletion in Italy this month. Organized by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO), this event moved on from their previous conferences, which concentrated mostly on providing evidence and attempting to forecast an actual date. This year, most of the invited speakers considered that the argument had now been won and were instead focusing more on possibilities for mitigating the consequences of the coming end of cheap oil.

Colin Campbell, honorary chairman of ASPO international, began the conference with a prediction that peak oil would bring a succession of price spikes followed by global recession. He warned that current financial structures would be threatened, as the power to control money shifts, and suggested that a new era of geopolitics would emerge, with energy rich Russia ascending while energy depleted US and Europe compete with China for finite resources.

Charles Hall, a professor at the State University of New York, told those gathered that oil production is beginning to experience diminishing energy returns as crude becomes harder and more expensive to find. A yield of 100 barrels for every barrel invested was typical in 1930; the ratio had dropped to 30 to 1 by the 1970s and has now plummeted to 15 to 1 or less. 'It doesn’t matter how much you find if it costs you a barrel to get that barrel', he said.

Commenting on the conference, Chris Skrebowski, editor of Petroleum Review, said, 'What is becoming ever clearer is that Peak Oil is just one component of a range of challenges confronting our societies and our way of life - climate change, food supply, water resources and energy resources.'

Dennis Meadows, author of Limits to Growth, told ASPO-5 that almost all of his 35 year old predictions of ecological collapse are coming true. 'We're facing a lot of peaks and oil is just one of them....'

Richard Heinberg, author of The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies and Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World was on hand to promote his new book, or more importantly, to promote what he hopes is a plan for a sensible energy future in the form of the 'Oil Depletion Protocol'. This protocol was originally put forward in 2002 by the prominent petroleum geologist Dr Colin Campbell and aims to obtain agreements from countries to reduce oil imports and exports by a specified amount each year, about 2.6 percent. By doing so signatory nations would help mitigate the negative consequences of an over-reliance on cheap oil and help prepare for a global decline in the world’s oil supply....

Chris Skrebowski, the editor of Petroleum Review, said, 'collectively, we're still in denial.' Based on projections focusing on oil flows instead of reserves, he boldly stated that, 'We have 1,500 days until peak and tomorrow we'll have one day less.'
(17 Aug 2006)

Bye Bye Petroleum