[Peakoil] The Australia Institute on Peak Oil

[Keith Thomas]

Alex and others. I was disappointed with this piece from the Australia Institute. They usually do much better than this.
Here's a quotation from the article:

"... While this is no doubt true, the potential disruption to the broader economy of people not being able to afford to drive to work are significant, to say the least. World economies are built on oil. As occurred in response to the OPEC oil shock of the 1970s, skyrocketing oil prices are likely to result in severe disruption to those economies, with central banks raising interest rates to slow inflation, people out of work, and famine and civil disorder in the third world, as much agricultural production depends on oil."

The author refers to peak oil as an issue for economies and of personal transport difficulties and he looks to economists for explanations and predictions. Yet this complacency and narrow-mindedness skips over his reference to "famine and civil disorder in the third world" as if the "third world" were on another planet and as if famine in other countries will not affect Australia. He says "world economies are built on oil". No! World societies depend for their daily existence and survival on cheap energy and particularly on cheap petroleum products which provide not just energy but also the raw materials for plastics, fertilizers, road surfaces, adhesives, pharmaceuticals etc. (You all know the list).

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Keith Thomas
www.evfit.com
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On 02/09/2010, at 2:21 PM, Alex Pollard wrote:

Good to see the Australia Institute raising Peak Oil awarenes.

There is a lot of cross-over between addressing Climate Change and Peak Oil however a carbon price per se would not sufficiently price the scarcity oil nor would it price the risk of oil supply disruption eg deep-sea drilling, oil supply lanes through volatile regions.

Alex
13. The dirty topic of peak oil: get ready to reduce your reliance
Dr David Ingles, author of Running on empty? The peak oil debate, writes:
CLIMATE CHANGE, GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS, INTERNATIONAL ENERGY AGENCY, OIL
Wouldn't it be funny if we spent so long arguing about what to do about climate change that we ran out of cheap oil first? No, it wouldn't really, it would be catastrophic.

But given the government's delay in producing an Energy White Paper and the steady backsliding on the need to actually reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in Australia, it is not beyond the realms of possibility. Even the usually optimistic International Energy Agency (IEA) is starting to sound a little nervous.

No one can say with certainty how much oil is left in the ground nor how much it will cost to take it out. As with climate change, the search for certainty in relation to oil supply is a fool's errand. But while no-one can say with certainty how much is left, virtually no economists or oil industry analysts disagree with the statement that oil production cannot keep growing forever. The notion that oil production must one day peak is now referred to as 'peak oil'.

While there is virtually no debate that oil production must one day peak, there is much debate about the timing and significance of such a peak. For those who have become accustomed to talking about emission reduction targets for 2020 and 2050 it may come as some surprise to learn that the mid-range forecasts for the peak in global oil production are 10-15 years. This does not mean that there will be no oil in 10 or 15 years time, but it means oil is going to get a LOT more expensive. Put simply, if demand continues to rise and supply starts to fall the days of the average Australian driving their Landcruiser to work will be over.

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