Scientific American notices Peak Oil

[GliderGuider]

Has Petroleum Production Peaked, Ending the Era of Easy Oil?

Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada, fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau—roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day—since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency—an energy cartel for oil consuming nations.

To support our modern lifestyles—from cars to plastics—the world has used more than one trillion barrels of oil to date. Another trillion lie underground, waiting to be tapped. But given the locations of the remaining oil, getting the next trillion is likely to cost a lot more than the previous trillion. The "supply of cheap oil has plateaued," argues chemist David King, director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford and former chief scientific adviser to the U.K. government. "The global economy is severely knocked by oil prices of $100 per barrel or more, creating economic downturn and preventing economic recovery."

Nor do King and his co-author, oceanographer James Murray of the University of Washington in Seattle, hold out much hope for future discoveries. "The geologists know where the source rocks are and where the trap structures are," Murray notes. "If there was a prospect for a new giant oil field, I think it would have been found."

King and Murray based their conclusion on an analysis of oil data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Looking at use and production trends, the two note that since 2005 production has remained essentially unchanged whereas prices (a surrogate for demand) have fluctuated wildly. This suggests to the authors that there is no longer any spare capacity to respond to increases in demand, whether it results from political unrest that cuts supply, as in the case of Libya's political upheaval last year, or economic boom times in growing countries like China. "We are not running out of oil, but we are running out of oil that can be produced easily and cheaply," King and Murray wrote.

[4dsc]

1. While good news denial still reigns

Too bad people will just ignore another warning about peak oil.

[Javaman]

2. There are red flags everywhere yet people still ignore them...

humans are a funny bunch, they only react when there is an emergency.

right now, people aren't reacting to peak oil as a whole because they are lulled into the belief that we are just one massive discovery away from being energy independant.

Dovetail that kind of philosophy with the propaganda that has been soaking our society for the last 30+ years and it becomes very apparent why nothing is being done and why people are willfully ignorant.

People complain abou the price of food going up, the price of heating oi going up, the price of gas going up, and the price of just about everything going up, yet, the majority of people in this nation are at pains to ask the $64,000 dollar question of "Why?"

I just tell people to learn how to garden. Trying to convince them otherwise is like trying to teach a dog to do math. Most people can't wrap their heads around the fact that there isn't enough oil to go around and it's a finite resource.