Global production of conventional oil will fall
3 april 2005. Bijdrage geleverd door Siem Vaessen.
In a few years, the global production of conventional oil will fall,
while the global demand continues to rise. The resulting shock of this
structural oil famine is inevitable, so great are the dependency of
our economies on cheap oil and. related to the first, our inability to
wean ourselves from this dependency in a short period of time.
We can hope to soften the shock, but only if its imminence immediately
becomes the unique reference point for a general mobilization of our
societies, with, as a consequence, drastic consequences in every
sector. The alternative is chaos. This prospect is based on the work
of the American geologist King Hubbert, who predicted in 1956 the peak
in US domestic production of oil in 1970. This occurred exactly as
predicted.
Transposing Hubbert’s approach today to other countries has given
similar predictive results: at present, the production of every giant
oilfield — and only the giant ones matter — is in decline, except in
the “black triangle” of Iraq-Iran-Saudi Arabia.
The Hubbert’s peak of the oil-producing Middle East should be reached
around 2010, depending on the more or less rapid recovery of full
Iraqi production and the growth rate of demand in China.
The sectors most affected by the steady rise in the price of crude oil
will be, first, aviation and intensive agriculture, since the price of
jet fuel for one and of nitrogenous fertilizer as well as diesel fuel
for the other are directly linked to the price of crude oil.
This will occur unless stabilizing policies are used — for a time and
in some other sectors — to lower taxes on oil as prices rise. But
afterwards ground transport, tourism, the petrochemical industry, and
the automotive industry will feel the depressive effects of a
reduction in the quantity of oil (depletion). To what extent will this
situation lead to a general recession? No one knows, but the blindness
of politicians and the usual panicked overreaction of markets allows
us to fear the worst.
This unavoidable prophecy is being universally ignored, denied, or
underestimated. Rare are those who realize exactly how close and how
great is its advent. Michael Meacher, formerly UK minister of the
environment (1997-2003), wrote recently in the Financial Times that
unless there is a general awakening and decisions at the planetary
scale to bring radical change in the domain of energy, “civilization
will confront the most acute and no doubt most violent upheaval in
recent history.”
If, in spite of everything, we want to maintain a bit of humanity in
life on Earth in the 2010s, we ought, as the geologist Colin Campbell
has suggested, to call on the United Nations to agree immediately on
the following: to guarantee that poor countries will still be able to
import a little oil; to forbid oil profiteering; to encourage saving
energy; to promote renewable sources of energy. In order to attain
these objectives, this universal agreement should impose the following
measures: every State must regulate oil imports and exports; no oil-
exporting country may produce more oil than its annual depletion,
scientifically calculated, allows; every State must reduce its oil
imports to an agreed-upon global depletion rate.
This necessary priority granted to physical econometrics will not suit
economists and politicians, especially in America. No government of
the United States has ever accepted questioning the American way of
life. Since the first oil shock of 1973-1974, every American military
intervention can be analyzed in the light of the fear of running short
of cheap oil. It was, moreover, the American production peak in 1970
that enabled OPEC to seize the occasion and cause the first shock,
which coincided with the Yom Kippur War. Countries in the West then
attempted to regain control and conjure away the specter of shortage,
less through energy sobriety than by means of opening oilfields in
Alaska and the North Sea. In 1979, the Iranian revolution and the
second oil shock once again allowed OPEC to regain preeminence, as
Western economies paid dearly for their thirst for oil through the
recession of subsequent years.
At the beginning of the 1980s, the financing and arming of Saddam
Hussein to fight Iran was part of the American reconquest of the price
and flow of oil, as was the cooperation obtained from King Fahd of
Saudi Arabia to increase crude oil exports to the West. That allowed
the oil price crash of 1986, a return of Western growth through
unlimited oil abundance, the extension of the thirst for energy up to
the Iraq wars (1991, 2003) no matter how many died from them (100,000?
300,000?), no matter how much they cost ($100 billion? $300 billion?),
by no matter what means (annual Dept. of Defense budget: $400 billion)
.
During these same last fifteen years, the multiple conflicts in the
Balkans had their source and their resolution in the American desire
to keep Russia away from the oil transport routes from the Black Sea
and the Caspian to the ports on the Adriatic, by way of Bulgaria,
Macedonia, and Albania. Oil geopolitics authorizes any pact with
Islamist devils, from central Asia to Bosnia, and all the cynical
connivances with terrorists, right up to Tony Blair’s recent trip to
Libya to allow Shell to bring its volume of reserves in return for
several hundred million dollars.
The present American Greater Middle East Initiative is dressed up in
humanitarian and democratic considerations, but it is nothing but an
attempt to get control once and for all of every source of oil in the
region.
More than thirty years of worrying about oil has not opened the eyes
of American and European leaders concerning the energy crisis that is
looming just before us. Despite what René Dumont and the ecologists
were saying from the 1974 presidential campaign on, the governments of
industrialized countries have continued and continue to believe in
almost inexhaustible cheap oil — to the detriment of the climate and
human health, both perturbed by greenhouse gas emissions — instead of
organizing a reduction in their economies’ reliance on hydrocarbons.
However, the oil shock that promises to strike before the end of the
decade is not like the ones that preceded it. What is at stake this
time is not geopolitical, but geological. In 1973 and 1979, the
shortage had a political origin in OPEC’s decision. Then the supply
was restored.
Today, it is the wells themselves that are declining. Even if the
United States succeeded in imposing its hegemony on all the oilfields
in the world (outside of Russia), their army and their technology will
not be able to prevail against the coming depletion of conventional
oil. In any case, there is not enough time to replace a fluid so cheap
to produce, so rich in energy, so easy to use, store, and transport,
with so many uses (domestic, industrial, fuel, raw material…), in
order to reinvest $100 billion in another source of abundance that
doesn’t exist.
Natural gas? It does not have the just-named qualities of oil and will
reach its global production peak in around 2020 — about ten years
after the other peak. The only viable path is immediate oil sobriety
organized through an international agreement along the lines I have
sketched out above, authorizing a prompt weaning from our addiction to
black gold.
Without waiting for this delicate international agreement, our new
regional elected officials and our soon-to-be-elected European
representatives should set for themselves as a top priority the local
realization of these objectives by organizing, on their own territory,
an oil shrinkage. Otherwise, rationing will come from the market
through the coming rise in oil prices, and then be propagated by
inflation, with the shock reaching every sector. Since the price will
soon reach $100 a barrel, this will no longer be a simple oil shock –
it will be the end of the world as we know it.
–Yves Cochet (Green) represents Paris in the National Assembly, and
is former land and environment minister (ministre du territoire et de
l’environnement).
Translated by Mark K. Jensen , Associate Professor of French, Chair,
Department of Languages and Literatures, Pacific Lutheran University,
Tacoma, WA. Webpage: http://www.plu.edu/~jensenmk/
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0404/S00259.htm?mode=print
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