oil peak

[Guest guest]

Steep decline in oil production brings risk of war and unrest, says

new study

· Output peaked in 2006 and will fall 7% a year

· Decline in gas, coal and uranium also predicted

 

Ashley Seager

Monday October 22, 2007

 

Guardian

 

World oil production has already peaked and will fall by half as soon

as 2030, according to a report which also warns that extreme shortages

of fossil fuels will lead to wars and social breakdown.

The German-based Energy Watch Group will release its study in London

today saying that global oil production peaked in 2006 - much earlier

than most experts had expected. The report, which predicts that

production will now fall by 7% a year, comes after oil prices set new

records almost every day last week, on Friday hitting more than $90

(£44) a barrel.

 

" The world soon will not be able to produce all the oil it needs as

demand is rising while supply is falling. This is a huge problem for

the world economy, " said Hans-Josef Fell, EWG's founder and the German

MP behind the country's successful support system for renewable

energy.

 

The report's author, Joerg Schindler, said its most alarming finding

was the steep decline in oil production after its peak, which he says

is now behind us.

 

The results are in contrast to projections from the International

Energy Agency, which says there is little reason to worry about oil

supplies at the moment.

 

However, the EWG study relies more on actual oil production data

which, it says, are more reliable than estimates of reserves still in

the ground. The group says official industry estimates put global

reserves at about 1.255 gigabarrels - equivalent to 42 years' supply

at current consumption rates. But it thinks the figure is only about

two thirds of that.

 

Global oil production is currently about 81m barrels a day - EWG

expects that to fall to 39m by 2030. It also predicts significant

falls in gas, coal and uranium production as those energy sources are

used up.

 

Britain's oil production peaked in 1999 and has already dropped by

half to about 1.6 million barrels a day.

 

The report presents a bleak view of the future unless a radically

different approach is adopted. It quotes the British energy economist

David Fleming as saying: " Anticipated supply shortages could lead

easily 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 any more as this situation could spin out of

control and turn into a complete meltdown of society. "

 

Mr Schindler comes to a similar conclusion. " 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. "

 

Jeremy Leggett, one of Britain's leading environmentalists and the

author of Half Gone, a book about " peak oil " - defined as the moment

when maximum production is reached, said that both the UK government

and the energy industry were in " institutionalised denial " and that

action should have been taken sooner.

 

" When I was an adviser to government, I proposed that we set up a

taskforce to look at how fast the UK could mobilise alternative energy

technologies in extremis, come the peak, " he said. " Other industry

advisers supported that. But the government prefers to sleep on

without even doing a contingency study. For those of us who know that

premature peak oil is a clear and present danger, it is impossible to

understand such complacency. "

 

Mr Fell said that the world had to move quickly towards the massive

deployment of renewable energy and to a dramatic increase in energy

efficiency, both as a way to combat climate change and to ensure that

the lights stayed on. " If we did all this we may not have an energy

crisis. "

 

He accused the British government of hypocrisy. " Tony Blair and Gordon

Brown have talked a lot about climate change but have not brought in

proper policies to drive up the use of renewables, " he said. " This is

why they are left talking about nuclear and carbon capture and

storage. "

 

Yesterday, a spokesman for the Department of Business and Enterprise

said: " Over the next few years global oil production and refining

capacity is expected to increase faster than demand. The world's oil

resources are sufficient to sustain economic growth for the

foreseeable future. The challenge will be to bring these resources to

market in a way that ensures sustainable, timely, reliable and

affordable supplies of energy. "

 

The German policy, which guarantees above-market payments to producers

of renewable power, is being adopted in many countries - but not

Britain, where renewables generate about 4% of the country's

electricity and 2% of its overall energy needs.

 

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

 

 

Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance.

Confucius