Peak Oil News

The need for such a protocol is becoming increasingly plain. Petroleum is a non-renewable, polluting, and depleting resource on which the world has become dangerously dependent. This in itself should be cause for nations to find ways to reduce their consumption and thus their dependency.

However, there is also the problem of uncertain future supply. Long before the last drop of petroleum has been recovered from any given reservoir the possible rate of extraction tends to peak and then fall off for purely physical, geological reasons. Today, most oil-producing countries have already reached and passed their national production peaks and are in steady decline. There is universal agreement that the world as a whole will reach its peak rate of production at some point in the next few decades-but there is controversy as to when, exactly, the peak will come. While some analysts forecast the maximum flow rate as occurring later than 2030, others say it will be achieved within the next four or five years.

» Source: Energy Bulletin

Once the peak has passed, global rates of oil extraction will gradually wane, even if demand for oil continues to grow. Unless societies prepare for the event by substantially reducing demand ahead of the event, this will be an oil crisis like no previous one, because it will continue inexorably for decades until rates of extraction have become trivially small. The problem will arise not at the point when oil actually runs out (that moment, everyone agrees, is in the distant future), but at the point when the rate of delivery can no longer match the expectations of consumers.

The technical literature on the subject of Peak Oil is robust; for more information please see the “Get Informed” section at www.oildepletionprotocol.org .

There is growing evidence that the rate of world oil production has already entered a plateau, indicating the approaching peak. Yet even if the forecasts that place the peak two decades ahead are correct, there is still cause for immediate concern, as analysis undertaken on behalf of the US Department of Energy indicates that twenty years at a “crash program” scale of effort will be needed prior to the peak to prepare societies adequately. This is because most of the mitigation strategies that are possible (developing supplies of alternative fuels or changing transport infrastructure to use fuel more efficiently) will require enormous amounts of investment and many years of hard effort.

The world is currently unprepared for a sustained decline in oil availability. Indeed, in nearly every recent year the world has increased its demand for oil by over a million barrels per day.

An extended and gradually worsening supply shortfall would lead to economic turmoil. Transportation of people, food, and other goods would be impacted, as would agriculture and the chemicals and plastics industries. Because each of these economic sectors is basic to modern societies, all industries and all segments of the population would feel the effects. High transportation costs would fuel inflation and reduce demand for products while undermining tourism, the automobile industry, and the airline industry. High fuel costs would bankrupt millions of farmers worldwide, leading to an agricultural crisis, while high food transport costs would also conspire to drive up food prices for consumers.

While high oil prices would be challenge enough, volatile prices would make matters much worse. Huge levels of investment in new transportation and energy-efficient manufacturing infrastructure will be required over the next few decades, but unpredictable swings in the price of petroleum would discourage both government and the private sector from taking the necessary investment risks.

At the same time, oil supply problems are likely to lead to political instability and international conflict. Oil has been a primary strategic resource for decades-the object of wars, coups, and intrigues. As petroleum becomes more scarce and expensive, competition for supplies will grow and economic turmoil could create conditions for armed struggles, perhaps on a massive scale. Civil or international conflict could in turn exacerbate shortages and undermine investment in new energy sources and technologies and the accompanying processes of transition and adaptation.

On top of all this there is the fact that burning oil or releasing it into the environment in the form of petrochemicals produces a range of pollutants. Carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides from oil combustion contribute to lung cancer, asthma, and cardiovascular problems. Sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides contribute to acid rain, damaging the plant life that would otherwise help to clean pollutants from the air.

Pesticides, plastics, and chemical components of plastics also make their way into many parts of the natural and built landscapes, causing damage as they go. Some of best-known pollutants, DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), are endocrine-disrupting petrochemicals that affect reproduction and development. Other petrochemicals in common use today also display endocrine disruption effects; for example, bisphenol A (BPA), used to make polycarbonate plastics, is an estrogen imitator and can disrupt the balance of sex hormones in living things that come in contact with it, including humans. Some scientists have linked amphibian population crashes to the presence of BPA.

However, of all chemical pollutants issuing from the use of oil and other fossil fuels, perhaps none has more worrisome potential consequences than the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2). Burning fossil fuels releases CO2, which traps heat from the Sun, gradually warming the oceans, the atmosphere, and the Earth’s surface. The consequences of this warming effect are likely to be a less stable climate, worse storms, the disruption of agriculture, rising sea levels, and pressure on species to adapt to changing habitats. Carbon dioxide is naturally present in the atmosphere in such small quantities (0.036%) that the massive amounts released through the burning of fossil fuels have already measurably altered the Earth’s climate.

Recent studies have shown that global climate impacts are appearing more quickly and severely than was predicted only a few years ago. A five-year European study of Antarctic ice cores found that current CO2 levels are 30 percent higher than at any time in the past 650,000 years. Moreover, the rates of increase are also extremely high-200 times faster than anything seen in the ancient past. The study, released in November 2005, also found a “very tight” correlation between CO2 levels and global temperatures.

Meanwhile Greenland’s glaciers, once stable, are now retreating rapidly. Ohio State University’s Byrd Polar Research Center has found that the Jakobshavn glacier, one of the major drainage outlets of Greenland’s interior ice sheet, is thinning over four times faster than was the case during most of the 20th Century; at the same time, the rate at which the ice moves is accelerating. When the Greenland ice sheet melts entirely, as it is projected to do perhaps before the end of the century, the world’s oceans will rise by 20 feet, drowning coastal cities such as London and New York.

In short, our current reliance on oil is unhealthy and unsustainable. It is imperative, for a variety of compelling reasons, that societies find ways to wean themselves from petroleum dependency as quickly as possible.