Peak Oil: County needs to wake up

I continue to be disturbed by the Government's failure to grasp Peak Oil - the point when oil extraction reaches its highest point and then starts to decline.

Photo: Randwick woods at weekend - just beautiful

A newly published global oil supply report by the Energy Watch Group (download here) considers that peak oil was reached last year and that production will now start to decline at a rate of several percent per year despite massive increasing demand for oil. They also predict possible mass unrest. The national press gave it some coverage but nothing like the attention it requires (see Guardian report here) - and local press are still to cover either our Green party news release or letter on this matter.

Anyhow I was able to raise this point re Peak Oil at the recent Scrutiny meeting which was looking at risks to the Council. As oil prices will have a significant impact on many of Councils' services and indeed the whole economy of the District. It is, of course, not just a matter of oil prices, but also one of food security (see Caroline Lucas' excellent report here). Since over 90 per cent of all our food products require oil, the imminent fall in production and consequent hike in prices will have a profound impact on food availability in the developed and the developing world. The report warns that anticipated supply shortages could lead to 'disturbing scenes of mass unrest.'

Peak Oil Think Tank for Stroud

Stroud District Council has already taken a bit of a lead on this issue with Professor Heinberg's visit (see previous blogs) and targets to cut CO2 emissions. The other good news is that through the Transition Stroud Business and Government group, of which I am a member, work has continued and tomorrow there will be a meeting with one of the senior officers at the District re the setting up of a Think Tank re Peak Oil.

I will sadly miss the meeting as I am off to Cardiff that day for work but the plan is to put together a Think Tank that will report to the Local Strategic Partnership(LSP) - now this body is important and has key influences over policy in the area so this is a good way to develop awareness and strategies to deal with the issue. More news on this soon I hope...

More re Peak Oil and films

Interestingly back in 2001 the Peak of oil supplies was calculated as 2009 by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Exxon. Then Shell was caught exaggerating its oil reserves by over 25%. Then it was noted that Saudi Arabia had been claiming the same level of oil reserves for 15 years. Finally, very recently, the International Energy Agency has reported that
key oil fields in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have oil reserves at levels which are roughly half of what was recently claimed. Kuwait's largest field has 48 billion barrels not 100; Saudi Arabia's largest field has 78 billion barrels not 150 billion.

Rationing activities in Iran - taking place at present - do not suggest an abundance of oil there
either. The IEA consequently predicts that by 2012 only 75% of oil demand will be met, meaning oil price rises from now on to levels not previously seen. There is no good reason to have confidence in the claimed oil reserves figures of authoritarian states nor any reason to
imagine that all of the actual reserves are economically recoverable.

The national press while noting prices are at their highest ever are talking about lower prices in the spring - we will see - most worrying is an article I got sent from Stroud Town councillor Dave Cockcroft re Alberta tar sands... it makes interesting reading. Brief extract below and full article at:
www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/30/energy.oilandpetrol

The extraction of the oil requires heat, and thus the burning of vast amounts of natural gas - effectively one barrel of gas to extract two of crude - and some estimate that Fort McMurray and the Athabasca oil sands will soon be Canada's biggest contributor to global warming; nearly as much as the whole of Denmark. This in an area that has already seen, according to David Schindler, professor of ecology at the University of Alberta, two degrees of warming in the past 40 years. The oil sands excavations are changing the surface of the planet. The black mines can now be seen from space. In 10 years, estimates Schindler, they are "going to look like one huge open pit" the size of Florida.

One place for those interested in more on Peak Oil is Professor Heinberg's musings - see recent one here that has views on three options for the future:
www.richardheinberg.com/museletter/186

And those films...

The new film, "A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash" has opened in UK cinemas this week (although not Stroud). It sounds like it is worth a look - see Guardian review here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/nov/04/energy.fossilfuels

I was also sent a link to a documentary online by a Whiteshill Green party member - he comments re the film: "it nicely combines the history of oil and how it’s made with peak oil and global warming. One thing I found particularly interesting was the explanation on how the earth deals with runaway global warming and how it led to mass extinction in the past."
See it here:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/crude/

See also previous posts on this blog re Peak Oil...