It’s interesting to watch the lengths that the mainstream media will go to in order to avoid reporting about Peak Oil. It would seem that giving credence to those who have long been talking about the severe economic consequences of ignoring geological fact is not politically correct.
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal published this article in which they’ve coined a new phrase, “Plateauing Oil.”
As expected, according to the WSJ, “Plateauing Oil” is not “Peak Oil.” Oh no, those Peak Oil people are crackpots and don’t know what they’re talking about.
The current debate represents a significant twist on an older, often-derided notion known as the peak-oil theory. Traditional peak-oil theorists, many of whom are industry outsiders or retired geologists, have argued that global oil production will soon peak and enter an irreversible decline because nearly half the available oil in the world has been pumped. They’ve been proved wrong so often that their theory has become debased.
Debased? When? Where? Can someone please point me to a credible article or authority where the Peak Oil theory has been “debased”?
While details may be argued, the theory of Peak Oil is logically irrefutable. I’ll summarize it this way:
- Every resource such as oil, or any other mineral for that matter, which is not being replenished, or at least not at anywhere near the pace that it’s being used, is by definition finite.
- Once you begin to use a finite resource, you are inexorably working toward the day when it has all been used up. Use started at zero and must logically end at zero when it’s gone.
- It is a mathematical certainty that between start-zero and end-zero there will be a point at which the use of the resource reaches a maximum rate.
Beyond that there are just the details. Crude oil production cannot logically increase until it’s all gone and then one day just suddenly drop to zero. It’s not contained in some underground pool like the gas tank in your car. It’s contained in thousands upon thousands of rock formations, each of which have a beginning, middle and end of their production life. This is known to every geologist and oil & gas engineer who has ever stopped to think about it.
Each oil deposit, large and small, produces oil according to a bell shaped curve. And adding them together produces a larger bell shaped curve. This has been proven time and again based on single oil fields, regional production, and continental production. Oil production in the U.S., North America, the North Sea and others are all following this curve and proving the point.
Since all of the evidence over the past 50 years since M. King Hubbert first theorized about a North American peak and then a World Peak fits the theory, the naysayers have seized on the one item within the theory for which there can be no proof, which truly will remain a hypothesis until well after the peak has been passed. And that is the idea that peak happens when the oil is half gone. Sure, if you really apply new technologies or focus your entire economic effort to finding and drilling for more oil, you might be able to slide the peak toward what, 60%? 70? I suppose you could have a bell that leans a little. But of course, even if you managed that, the down side of the curve would be that much steeper and more of an economic shock.
Many Oil Execs and Wall Street analysts say, “Sure, Peak Oil is logically correct and inevitable, but we’re nowhere near peak. That’s decades away! Don’t worry your little heads about it! Get out there and start spending for Christmas!! Daddy wants a new SUV!!!”
But now they are stuck with the inconvenient geological fact that a plateau is being reached (a plateau consistent with the Peak Oil theory, I might add) so they have to come up with other reasons:
- China and India are demanding too much. (Never mind that they still use 5% per capita of the western worlds consumption. Fair Play has nothing to do with this! And pay not attention to the fact that all that stuff we want you to buy is being made in China!)
- Those pesky environmentalists won’t let us at all those huge deposits in so-called “fragile ecosystems”. (I mean, really, who cares about useless Caribou when we have SUV’s to drive and plastic McDonald’s toys to make, buy and throw away! How can we convince our young ‘ens to join up and
fight our future oil warsprotect our country if you don’t get out there and buy them a new GI Joe doll complete with plastic M-16?!) - Nationalism. Defined here as “tightening state control of oil fields to achieve political aims, often by restricting outsiders’ ability to develop the oil for world markets.” (Let’s not talk about the definition of nationalism that stems from the concept that the resources of a country should actually accrue to that country rather than foreign corporations.) [Note: I'm not saying there is no corruption or dictatorships in nationalist countries, but I don't yet place Hugo Chavez in this category.]
There are, of course, many news outlets in the U.S. picking up on the WSJ story. Here’s an article from the Houston Chronicle that basically agrees with them. And then there’s the Falls Church News take on it.
The saddest part of all this is that the world has had the Hirsch Report available for most of three years, which essentially outlines that we need to start transitioning the economy off of oil at least 20 years in advance of peak.
And yet we are doing nothing. And those of use who are even talking about it are still considered fringe, and crackpots, just as we were when we talked about climate change 15-20 years ago.
I, for one, consider effective leadership as being out ahead of an issue before it’s a crisis, making plans and forming policy to keep future generations safe.
Where’s your so-called leadership now, Mr. Harper?
