Peak Oil is the concept that global Oil supplies have, or are about to, peak. Meaning that all the remaining known reserves of the blackstuff to which our civilisation is addicted are less than what we have already consumed. This at a time when demand is soaring, especially from China and India. Peak Oil is the driving force behind increasingly serious Resource Wars we are seeing in the world today. Soaring Oil prices are only the beginning... what many believe will happen soon is the total collapse of our oil based economies as demand far outwieghs supply and new exploration and refining capacity stagnates.
Michael C. Ruppert and his website www.fromthewilderness.com is probably the best source of information and regular updates on Peak Oil that there is. I will post recent and interesting articles here and recommend a visit to FTW for loads more info, recent updates and to subscribe to the FTW email alerts. To start, here is an article about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and it's implications for us all and part of a good article on The End Of The Age of Oil by a Caltech Professor. I have also included a seminal article on Peak Oil written by Jan Lundburg in 2004.
YOU BET YOUR LIFE
By Michael C. Ruppert
© Copyright 2005, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.
September
2, 2005 0600 PST (FTW) -- Following
these remarks is a brilliant piece of reporting by the
American Progress Action Fund. It makes a clear case for
what we are all now suspecting and seeing: the Bush
administration is horribly mismanaging relief efforts along
the Gulf Coast. Several things are now becoming clear. It
is unlikely that New Orleans will ever be significantly
rebuilt. When we talk about collapse as a result of Peak
Oil, New Orleans is an exemplary – if horrifying – glimpse
of what it will look like for all of us. In the case of New
Orleans, however, it’s happening about two or three times
as fast as we will see it when Peak Oil becomes an
unavoidable, ugly, global reality. How long? Months. If
we’re lucky, a year. As of August 2005 it’s not just a race
to make sure that a particular region is not eaten by
warfare and economic collapse. Mother Nature is obviously
very hungry too. What region will be the next to go? What
sacrifices can be offered before the inevitable comes
knocking at our own personal door? Who can be pushed ahead
of us into the mouth of the hungry beast in the hopes it
will become sated?
How
low can human beings sink? Keep watching the news. It’s not
the first time civilizations have collapsed. This has all
happened many times before. This behavior is not new. What
is new — but is now dying — is our enshrined belief that
there were to be no consequences of our reckless
consumption and destruction of the ecosystem. What is now
dying a horrible death is America’s grotesque global
arrogance, brutality and cupidity.
What is not being discussed rationally by the mainstream
media is Katrina’s impact on energy production. They don’t
dare. By my calculations and those of oil energy expert Jan
Lundberg, the United States has just lost between 20% and
25% of its energy supply. My projection is that it’s not
coming back — at least not most of it.
As a result of Katrina, Saudi Arabia has finally admitted
that it cannot increase production.
Many of us knew they’ve been lying for at
least two years. The Energy Information
Administration has just admitted that global demand has
been outstripping supply for several months before
Katrina. Nice time to start telling the truth. Nature is
finally calling everybody’s bluff. The liars, deniers
and mentally ill will be exposed soon enough and they
will pay their own price. Daniel Yergin will finally get
his comeuppance. FTW’s
race is to reach
as many people as possible who want to prepare and are
willing to prepare for this in local community settings.
You save whom you can.
Gulf energy production has four main components: drilling
and production, pipeline delivery to shore, refinery
capacity, and then delivery to the rest of the nation. We
have heard precious little about the damage to Louisiana’s
Port Fourchon which is the largest point at which energy
passes from sea to land in the region. It is heavily
damaged and mostly inoperable for now, despite optimistic
financial reports, intended to calm the markets, stating
that “damage is minimal.” I am quite sure that I speak for
the maybe 250,000 New Orleans residents who couldn’t or
wouldn’t get out when I say, “Screw the markets!”
Production, if and when it starts trickling again, will
most likely shift to Port Murphy or to Lake Charles. Sounds
easy in the abstract, but the corporate headquarters at
which to make and implement those decisions were mostly
located in New Orleans. Shifting energy flows will never
replace what was lost because those two facilities already
face the daunting task of restoring their own output. They
can’t handle the additional burden of compensation for what
has been lost. As one astute and great researcher put it,
“How will the oil companies even find their workers or tell
them where to report for work?” Where will the workers
live? Where will they buy groceries? How will they get to
and from work if the gasoline they’re supposed to produce
isn’t there? The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) is also
much more seriously damaged than press accounts disclose.
It’s here that supertankers from overseas (used to)
offload. They have no place else to do it. They’re too big.
I have seen video of LOOP damage which doesn’t look
anything like the minimal damage that’s been reported. OK,
so when the port is fixed what about the damaged pipelines
running to shore? How many boat anchors have been dragged
over them? In how many places are they ruptured, crushed or
broken?
As many as twenty offshore rigs have now been confirmed as
adrift, capsized, listing or sunk. Each rig may have as
many as eight wells. Where’s the money coming from to
replace them? How long will that take?
Bottom line: my assessment is that New Orleans is never
going to be rebuilt and that US domestic oil production
will never again reach pre-Katrina levels. The
infrastructure is gone, the people are gone, and the US
economy will be on life support very, very quickly. If
people are griping at $5.00 gasoline what will they do when
it’s $8.00? $10.00? Start shooting (the wrong people)? How
difficult is it to rebuild in that kind of social climate?
And if US oil production does not soon exceed pre-Katrina
levels then the US economy is doomed anyway. It’s a
catch-up game now. I think it’s quite likely that the Bush
administration is responding so ineptly in part because it
is in a complete crisis mode realizing that the entire
United States is on the brink of collapse and there’s very
little they can do about it. The Bush administration
doesn’t know how to build things up, only blow them up.
They aren’t worrying about New Orleans because they’re
frantically triaging the rest of the nation and deciding
what can be saved elsewhere.
What lingers for all of us is the inexplicably bovine
behavior of the Bush administration. And how in the name of
a loving God could Louisiana’s Attorney General Charles
Foti say on national television that he will prosecute
those who loot for survival with the same vigor as those
who have looted for profit and greed? Even New Orleans
police are smarter and better than this. They’re letting
people go who have taken food, water, shoes that fit their
feet and clothing that fits their bodies. Those who
understand the situation condemn Mr. Foti’s callous and
unreasoned position in the strongest possible terms.
And may God have mercy on the Democratic Party if it
approaches the 2008 campaign with a platform saying that
oil will flow, the prices will fall, and unbridled
consumption will return if only we elect Hillary.
I was on ABC network satellite radio yesterday and after
the show I repeated an observation that has been clear to
me for some time. “Demand destruction” has become a
priority not only to mitigate Peak Oil but also to mitigate
global warming. The United States, with 5% of the
world’s people, consumes (wastes) 25% of the world’s
energy. How do you destroy demand? You collapse the
economy. Homeless, unemployed “refugees” (what a cold,
depersonalizing term) don’t buy gas, take trips, fly on
airplanes or buy consumer goods (made with energy and
requiring energy to operate). They don’t use air
conditioning because they can’t afford it. They are the
embodiment of Henry Kissinger’s infamous term “useless
eaters,” a phrase from the Nazi vocabulary. If energy
demand destruction, as acknowledged by the Bilderbergers
and the CFR, is a priority, then the only – I repeat only –
beast that must be tamed is the United States.
What happens when we run out of the poor and “minority”
people whom our country has historically regarded as
expendable – and the beast is still not satisfied?
The people in New Orleans and Mississippi are being
sacrificed just as surely as the World Trade Center,
Pentagon and airline victims were sacrificed on 9/11.
The most chilling thing I have heard is that hurricane
Katrina fell on the thirteenth anniversary of Hurricane
Andrew which devastated Florida in 1992. Hurricanes are
named alphabetically. Andrew was the first tropical storm
of 1992. Katrina was the eleventh of 2005 and the hurricane
season is just beginning. There are more storms forming
now. Some of them will most likely become very large
hurricanes because water temperatures are so high in our
dying oceans.
Go ahead. Tell me we’ve all been wrong about Peak Oil,
about climate collapse, and the metastatic corruption of
our government and economic system. Now it’s an easy bet
and one that we will not have to wait long to settle. I’ll
take your wager.
As New Orleans is showing us, and as Groucho Marx once
said, “You bet your life!”
In accordance with Title
17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without
profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and
educational purposes.
and From:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/111704_end_oil.shtml
THE
END OF THE AGE OF OIL
By David
Goodstein
Published
by CalTech News, California Institute of
Technology
Vol.
38, No.2, 2004
This
article is adapted from a talk that Caltech vice provost
and professor of physics and applied physics David
Goodstein presented at an April 29 program of the Institute
support group, the Caltech Associates. Goodstein’s new
book, Out of Gas: The End of the Age of
Oil, was
published in February by W. W.
Norton.
In
the 1950s, it was not Saudi Arabia but the United States
that was the world’s greatest producer of oil. Much of our
military and industrial might grew out of our giant oil
industry, and most people in the oil business thought that
this bonanza would go on forever. But there was one
gentleman who knew better. He was an oil exploration
geologist named Marion King Hubbert.
In
about 1950, Hubbert realized that the trajectory of oil
discovery in the continental United States was going to be
a classic bell-shaped curve, for the decades from 1910 to
1970, in billions of barrels per year (see figure 1,
below). He also saw that there would be a second
bell-shaped curve that would represent production, or
consumption, or extraction. The oil industry likes to call
it “production,” but the industry doesn’t really produce
any oil at all. It does, however, reflect the rate at which
we use the oil up. Perhaps you could call it
supply.
Hubbert realized that
using what he knew in 1950 about the history of
discoveries, along with what was already known about
consumption, and a little mathematics, he should be
able to predict that second bell-shaped curve. And so
he did (see figure 2, below). The red, bell-shaped
curve is the kind of curve he predicted. The black
points are the actual historical data, and the
uppermost point represents what has come to be known
as Hubbert’s Peak. Obviously, he was doing something
right.
© BP
The situation
worldwide is a little less well-determined. A third
graphic provided by the energy conglomerate BP, shows
what the world’s known crude oil reserves are (see
figure 3, left-hand graph, below). The amount that we
have now is a trillion barrels of oil. So people in
the industry might say, we have a trillion barrels
just sitting there waiting to be pumped out of the
ground; we’re using it up at a rate of about 25
billion barrels a year, and so we have 40 more years
to go—there’s nothing to worry about. But as Hubbert
has shown us, that’s the wrong way of looking at it
.
© BP
Before we leave
that curve, though, I want to point out that a sudden
jump of 300–400 billion barrels of oil in OPEC (the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries)
reserves occurs in the late 1980s (see figure 3,
left-hand graph, above). But there were no significant
discoveries of oil in OPEC countries during that
period. What happened instead is that OPEC changed its
quota for how much each country could pump on the
basis of what it claimed in reserves, and politicians
discovered 400 billion barrels of oil without ever
drilling a hole in the ground! This helps us to
understand how undependable these numbers are for
worldwide proven oil reserves.
As
you can see, the curve that traces the historic record of
oil discovery peaks around 1960. In other words, Hubbert’s
peak for oil discovery came and went 40 years
ago.
The
curve for oil usage, as you can see, is a rising curve and
will become a bell-shaped curve eventually. Note that for
the last quarter century, we’ve been using oil faster than
we have been discovering it. World reserves should have
decreased during that time by about 200 billion barrels.
Instead, as we’ve seen, they’ve increased by 400 billion
barrels. In any case, it should be possible, given this
much information, to make a prediction similar to the one
that Hubbert made for the continental United States for
worldwide oil production.
One
such estimate was published in 1998 in Scientific American.
It predicts that we will have a worldwide maximum in oil
production just about now—around the middle of the decade
2000–2010. What will happen when we reach that peak we
don’t really know. But we had a foretaste in 1973 and ’79
when the OPEC countries took advantage of the supply
shortage in the United States and shut down the valve a
bit. What happened, as you may recall, is that we had
instant panic and despair for the future of our way of
life, and mile-long lines at gas
stations.
We
don’t know what’s going to happen at the next peak, but we
do know that those past peaks were artificial and
temporary. The next one will not be artificial and it will
not be temporary.
Read more of this article at:http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/111704_end_oil.shtml
Here comes the nutcracker: Peak oil in a nutshell
by
Jan Lundberg
The end of abundant, affordable oil is in sight, and the
implications are colossal. About now in our hydrocarbon
phase of human history, we have pulled out of the Earth
approximately half of the available petroleum (crude oil
and natural gas). The other half still in the ground is
harder to extract and may not - as assumed - fuel the
global economy or even provide a transition to another
phase.
To hope for an increase in discoveries is to turn a
blind eye to the world trend in declining oil extraction
which has been relentless for the past four decades. The
approximate bell curve of petroleum extraction cannot be
changed by any one big new discovery. Yet, the idea of "the
Caspian" or any other mega-field du jour is an example of
the constant hope for perpetual energy for high living in
contradiction with nature.
The same can be said of the
dominant assumption that petroleum will be replaced by
other "technologies." This ignores the overwhelming
petroleum-based infrastructure we have, and neglects to
account for the lesser return on energy from non-petroleum
sources of energy. But, "they" (scientists, leaders,
corporations) will "think of something." Another common
assumption popular among "radicals" is that "the ruling
elite will refuse" to allow the global economy or the
lucrative capitalist system to collapse.
If peak oil means
we are at a half-way point, does this mean we now have
years to either plan energy use or get used to recession,
as claimed by many a writer on peak oil? Before the reader
makes assumptions on how society may utilize the remaining
store of petroleum, let me repeat what I told The Institute
of Petroleum in London two years ago (on February 17,
2003):
"What
the world went through in 1979’s oil crisis, which my
former company warned of in the U.S., based on our
projection of a 9% shortfall in gasoline deliveries, can
happen again. The difference will be that global production
of oil will be falling instead of
increasing."
This
means that the next tough oil shortage, even if it is not
acknowledged as a post-peak oil extraction phenomenon of
diminishing supply, will cripple the globalized economy.
Understanding of both the economics and social dynamics of
collapse is rare, and even when it is present there is an
absence of taking into account the "market factor" in
ushering in collapse.
Despite the need to be prepared for
imminent, final energy shortage - which could happen now or
in several years at the latest - people persist in focusing
too much on the likely date of the passing of the peak. It
is already clear that the oil industry and OPEC numbers on
oil reserves are suspect. So we can simply offer a range of
oft-quoted peak-oil arrival times: 2005-2012. Some more
distant figures such as 2020 are based on infinite
technological improvements on extraction and removing the
problematic sulfur, for example. Factoring in the
"irregular" petroleum sources, the peak year of world oil
extraction is to be 2007, according to the Association for
the Study of Peak Oil and Gas.
A flurry of peak oil
stories hit last fall. But in general, the price of oil is
deliberately about where the main players want it, as it is
so profitable. So let us not look at the $50 price
neighborhood as proof of peak oil being here now - although
it may be a factor.
Taking
peak oil doctrine further
The
bell curve of oil "production" was devised by Marion King
Hubbert, a Shell Oil and U.S. government geologist.
Although Hubbert has on the whole been borne out except in
the minds of fundamentalist-classical economists, what he
did not factor in was collapse. Therefore, the curve will
be truncated to a cliff just as the gap between supply and
demand is felt and hits.
The scenario I foresee is that
market-based panic will, within a few days, drive prices up
skyward. And as supplies can no longer slake daily world
demand of over 80 million barrels a day, the market will
become paralyzed at prices too high for the wheels of
commerce and even daily living in "advanced" societies.
There may be an event that appears to trigger this final
energy crash, but the overall cause will be the huge
consumption on a finite planet.
The trucks will no longer
pull into Wal-Mart. Or Safeway or other food stores. The
freighters bringing packaged techno-toys and whatnot from
China will have no fuel. There will be fuel in many places,
but hoarding and uncertainty will trigger outages, violence
and chaos. For only a short time will the police and
military be able to maintain order, if at all. The damage
that several days' oil shortage and outage will do will
soon wreak permanent damage that starts with companies and
consumers not paying their bills and not going to
work.
After an almost instant depression seizes the modern
industrialized world, and nation-states break down, the
frantic attempts of people to feed themselves, stay warm
and obtain fresh water (pumped presently via petroleum to a
great extent), there will be no rescue. Die-off begins. The
least petroleum-dependent communities will survive best.
These "backward" nations will be emulated by the scrounging
survivors of the U.S. and the rest of the "developed"
world, as far as local food production will be tried - in a
paved-over, toxic landscape by people who have lost touch
with the land.
What about renewable energy and other
alternatives? They are not ready, and will never be as long
as oil is king. This is something not acknowledged by the
boosters of the technofix. When oil abdicates, no one can
fill the shoes. (See Culture Change Letters on the
Technofixsuch as
#77)
However,
there will be replacement societies, starting with bands,
tribes and rural communities that will start cooperating
with each other as never before. The age of the bioregional
country, based on cooperation and mutual aid will begin. A
main job-category will be restoration of the land so as to
provide a semblance of the diversity of food that Earth
provided prior to petroleum farming. Social structures will
no longer lend themselves to overcrowded workforces
dependent on the dollar to buy goods and services from
huge, distant and unaccountable corporations. Argentina may
be a guide to post collapse society, with its egalitarian
and worker/citizen controlled systems.
Awareness of the
expected peak in global oil extraction is on the rise, but
a debate on when the peak will hit has drowned out larger
questions: How hard will the loss of abundant oil hit the
economy? Can the consumer culture continue if the collapse
includes die-off?
The reasons for not asking those
questions in polite corporate company - on the mainstream
news or in foundation-funded reports - include the blind
faith in renewable energy as a cure-all, and the lack of
understanding of petroleum's hold on daily lifestyles. Even
if these factors are recognized, a news organization does
not want to appear alarmist, and at the same time wants to
cling to society's myths of progress and order
forever.
The prospects of mitigating peak oil or avoiding
collapse are almost nil. U.S. petroleum demand in 2004 grew
at its strongest rate in five years. In December the daily
consumption of refined oil was 21 million barrels in the
U.S, a quarter of world use. The U.S. leads the
industrialized world in population growth, part of a
domestic policy to assure more car and oil sales.
More
evidence of insanity by the world's biggest consumer, the
U.S., is that the breaking point is flaunted: refinery
utilization rate last year was the highest annual rate in
six years at 92.8 percent of capacity. Lower 48 output of
crude oil extraction declined the most ever in 2004 since
1999, and Alaskan production experienced its largest drop
since 2000, declining 5.5 percent - peak oil "production"
happened in the U.S. over three decades ago.
With the
worldwide oil industry emulating these trends of maxing
out, the still surging demand - China is the leader -
strains production and hastens the day when the system can
no longer accommodate growth. The Earth cannot, as of the
world oil peak in extraction, give up ever greater
quantities of black gold. Most of the world exporting
companies are now reducing extraction rates due to fewer
discoveries and depleted fields. Oil production in 18
producer countries has passed its peak and is declining
faster than previously thought: at about 1.14 million
barrels a day.
"International
Energy Agency figures put the total spare capacity of all
11 countries in OPEC at just 330,000 bpd (down from 6
million bpd in 2002). Conventional Saudi spare capacity is
zero... An IEA report from August 2004 indicates Saudi
Arabia needs up to 800,000 bpd of newly discovered oil each
year just to offset declining fields and maintain its
current production level."
[Al-jazeera] - this can't happen, so watch for the ensuing
energy crisis.
More evidence that demand is out of control
and pushing up the day of peak oil:
"There is no spare refinery capacity, demand has
outstripped all expectations."
- Deborah White, Societe Generale bank, Paris
The world
needs to produce another 2,723,530.2 barrels per day by the
end of 2005 just in order to stand still, even by the IEA
demand figures considered low by
analysts.
Conclusion
We
live in strange times: global warming from petroleum and
other fuels is acknowledged as a certain and extremely
grave threat, but we allow "policy" to continue holding
above all else the maximum burning of petroleum. More roads
are built for the guzzling coffins on wheels, even though
road-repair funds (and library funds) go lacking as a
result. The viciousness of the invasion of Iraq and the
attempt to foil the designs of the great powers should
serve to wake people up to wean themselves off petroleum.
Nothing may finally tip public sentiment over to abandoning
the oil life. People have already forgotten the huge oil
spill off Unalaska Island, Alaska. But neither genocide,
climate distortion, nor loss of wildlife habitat and
fisheries - or that more nebulous concept of peak oil -
have people thinking far ahead in the dominant culture,
except in terms of self-aggrandizement. Fortunately, the
loss of petroleum will probably mean the loss of the global
culture of plastic materialism.
Petroleum is the Great
Leveler, in the sense of "leveling" or flattening oil
civilization. But petroleum will also be the Great Leveler
in terms of equalizing everyone: People will go through a
final, grasping petroleum grab with whatever funds and
connections they have, before the attempt fails for good.
Then all people will have no choice but to work together or
perish. Until then, we have skewed values: for example,
when a kindly old lady drives to a shop and has her
charitable concerns, the use of oil makes her a killer of
the planet and she is not pursuing a sustainable form of
transportation. Meanwhile, a mean old man who scowls at
little children who walks to the shop might be a much more
valuable citizen in a practical fashion that matters to the
world.
– Jan Lundberg - December 9-20, 2004,
Berkeley/Oakland, California
Sources:
Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas "ASPO"
Newsletter No 50 - Feb. 2005
Energy Information Administration (U.S. Dept. of Energy)
American Petroleum Institute
Adam Porter, Aljazeera
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help me promote Culture Change's activities such as the
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Jan Lundberg
P.O. Box 4347
Arcata
CA 95518 USA
Tel. 1-215-243-3144
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Editorial Notes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jan Lundberg has been a voice crying in the wilderness of
Northern California for many years.
-BA