This week our heads were tied around the consequences of oil usage, oil peaks and oil production. These issues have a major impact under the energy and population sector. Humanity has bound itself to oil, as production falls and comsumption increases, the bind will tighten. This is very worrying as our economy is entirely over dependant on this non renewable energy source. Financial advisor Eddie Hobbs another avid peak oiler, has echoed his fears. He said ” the world economy is going through boom and bust cycles based on the price of oils”.
Ireland is completely unprepared for the coming crisis of peak oil. Ireland is one of the highest per capita users of oil in the world. Our energy needs burns about 200, 000 barrels of oil a day. Irelands energy strategy is utterly inadequate our vulnerability to peak oil is exacerbated by the fact that we generate half our electricity from natural gas. An offshore gas field is currently being developed off the west coast of Ireland. Serrica energy announced earlier this year that they had found oil in the Slyne basin, but only the criminally optimistic believe that Ireland will become a net energy producer based on these reserves.
What matters now is securing energy for future needs, but the picture is grim. Peak oilers believe that the price of oil will remain high and that surges in price will occur due to speculation and shortages. Ominously as global oil demand is set to hit a record high this year according to the International Energy Agency. Peak oilers also believe that each surge will trigger a subsequent deeper economic recession. As oils started to go into decline they had to rely on deep water oil and heavy oil from regions such as Canada and so on, which is more expensive and sky high in pricing. This is also a worrying factor relying on a big increase in oil coming from Canadian oil sands and whole economics of Canadian oil sands is highly suspect. This is an extremely expensive opperation, also in order to get the oil out of the sand you have to heat the sand. In order to heat the sand you have to burn gas and gas prices are directly correlated to oil prices. Peak oil was first proposed by Dr M king Hubbert in 1955. He proposed that oil is produced on a curve. Starting at zero, the sum total of oil producing wells would rise until a peak and then irreversibly decline. Dr Hubbert’s theory was left in the academic wilderness for over a decade.
Meanwhile, oil exploration continued apace peaking in the 1960’s. The worlds most accessible oil wells were tapped, drilled and then the draing began. The world was drag racing down the road to peak oil. Hubberts thesis was dusted off again in 1971, then America hit peak oil. Now the curve for predicting the decline in oil production is known as the Hubbert Curve.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow1w33VAPII&feature=fvw World map of peak oil production from 1065 to 2005.
My Blog 