[Peakoil] A Crikey reader comments on the Alan Kohler piece (1 March 2012)

[Keith Thomas]

From Crikey today
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Keith Thomas
keith at evfit.com
www.evfit.com
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Begin forwarded message:

Peak oil:

David Worth writes: Re. "Kohler: the death of peak oil" (yesterday, item 20). Alan Kohler should know better that "peak oil" doesn’t mean that the world is running out of oil and gas, but when the world’s production level has peaked while demand increases.

Throughout the 20th century world oil production doubled every 10 years, but has only grown 10% since 2000, and not grown at all since July 2005 when it reached 74.5 million barrels per day. Since 2000 WTC price has increased from $US20 per barrel to more than $100. This means the cost of any shale oil operations also increases as all of their machinery operates on diesel.

The only way the recent growth in gas production from shale will help the US if it transforms its existing car fleet to gas operation. The US used to produce 10 mbpd of oil-equivalent products in 1970 from its own operations, and went down to 5 mbpd in 2007. After massive investments in shale oil and gas drilling, it has only bounced back to only 6 mbpd in 2011 and the US will never be independent from oil imports. Meanwhile, WTC and Brent prices (for oil, not gas) will increase and strangle any economic recovery in US and other Western economies dependent on liquid transport fuels.

Global peak oil production was in 2005, in the US it was 1970.