[Peakoil] George Monbiot in Canberra Times 27 Dec

[Antony Barry]

On 28/12/2008, at 4:07 PM, Jenny Goldie wrote:

> Can I recommend George Monbiot's article 'Oil's slippery slope'  
> from Saturday's Canberra Times? Sorry, can't get it electronically  
> but it's well worth a read. I have written to the CT about it.


It looks like it's this article <http://www.monbiot.com/archives/ 
2008/12/15/at-last-a-date/> reprinted from 15 December.

What surprised me about the article is that it did not discuss the  
effects of the global economic situation nor did, I think, the IEA  
report on which he based his article. My guess on this is -

1. Demand will drop. This is obviously happening. I saw one report  
that US demand for petrol was down 9% but their reserves are  
skyrocketing thence the price drop and OPEC decision to cut  
production by 9%, 5% of world production <http://www.forbes.com/ 
markets/2008/12/26/opec-uae-update-markets-commodities- 
cx_po_1226markets10.html>.

2. Countries with oil and prospects for the development of  
significant new fields - mostly OPEC will have a catastrophic drop in  
revenue which will scramble their current plans for increased  
infrastructure and certainly delay plans for new production capacity  
to become available. The cash won't be coming in and banks won't be  
lending.

3. The net effect may be that although the depletion of existing  
fields is delayed the creation of new capacity will be delayed even  
more, meaning that peak production may not be delayed and may even  
occur sooner.

4. My guess is we will have a plateau for the next couple of years  
and as we start to get signs of an economic recovery the decline will  
hit, oil prices will spike and we will stay stuck in a recession/ 
depression.


But I am not an economist so what would I know, but then did many of  
them see this coming?

Tony

phone : 02 6241 7659  | mailto:tony at Tony-Barry.emu.id.au
mobile: 04 3365 2400  | mailto:tony.barry at alianet.alia.org.au
http://tony-barry.emu.id.au



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