According to Professor Peter Newman of Curtin University in Australia peak oil has already occurred. The professor thinks that demand now outstrips supply, or would do so if the global recession had not curtailed the demand for oil significantly. He thinks that oil reached its peak (in terms of supply) when its price peaked at $140 a barrel in 2008, and its price then significantly contributed to the recession. Certainly more oil was produced in 2008 that in 2009 and probably there will be less oil produced in 2010.
Eventually economies come out of recession and when they do so the demand for oil will increase as will the demand for all forms of energy and fossil fuel associated with it. As prices rise so shortages will occur and if this happens we shall have to rethink our attitudes towards genuinely clean renewable energy, motor cars and aviation as well as the more frivolous industries.
The fascinating concept, which has not been well explored, is that the global recession was caused not by the greed of the bankers or the foolishness of their speculation, but by peak oil. That is indeed an interesting theory.
Filed under: climate change, energy, oil, renewables, Travel Tagged: | global recession, peak oil
Our going to the moon was easily the all-time most stupid stunt ever done as is the entire “Man in Space” program. The Space Shuttle is not a “space ship.” On the scale of a one foot diameter home globe it never rises higher than one-quarter inch! It is little more that an amusement park ride for phony national hero jock straps. You would never get me into that thing without a quart of Scotch.
We know less about the bottoms of our seas that we do about the moon and there is unlimited energy there. We can build robot submersibles to search it, drill it and put the crude in big plastic balloons that we can tow to an offshore refinery to avoid enviromentalist freakazoids, politicians and taxes. Then sell the oil and give the elected ruling class the finger.
By the way, Professor Peter Newman has it right and the amount of petroleum we have left has little significance to our future. The price of this petroleum – however that is derived – is what is important.
Replace the largest traded commodity in the world with a regional, drop-in solution and the supply/demand problem can be balanced and the world GDP is stabilized based on a renewable, sustainable fuel.
etcgreen.com Article: OPEC’s 50th Anniversary
The controversy stems from the fact that we know all oil pools are in areas that were once seas. This suggests that petroleum comes from marine algae that dies, falls to the bottom and forms sediments that become oil. If you grow algae in a CO2 rich environment that which dies will fall to the bottom and form a black sludge petroleum precursor.
Some paleogeologists believe that oil exists under all marine sediments. If this is true we have used between 1% and 2% of the potential in the last 150 years. And, we then have 7500 to 15,000 years of supply left. We only need to develop robot drillers that will recover the oil. If we can go to the moon and return we should be able to three miles straight down and return with a full tank.
An excellent point. We (or rather you Americans) went to the moon and back several times with a few kilos of moon dust. The cost was tremendous and the cost of drilling and exploiting oil safely three miles down will also be tremendous requiring the same careful planning and developed technology as the moon landings.
Robert
Great blog – radically different perspectives. It amazes me that we believe we live in an advanced information age, yet for such a basic and important question – How much petroleum do we have? – there continues to be so much discussion and disagreement.
We have a different perspective on this issue. The amount of petroleum really does not matter. What matters is the price of that petroleum and if there is an alternative to petroleum that will provide the same amount of energy at a lower cost and is more environmentally friendly.
There is…
etcgreen.com Article: OPEC’s 50th Anniversary