And people have argued that the Invasion wasn’t about the oil…
A leading academic institute has urged European governments to review global oil <http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/oil> supplies for themselves because of the “politicisation” of the International Energy
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/energy> Agency’s figures.
Uppsala University in Sweden <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/sweden> today published a scathing assessment of the IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook, saying some assumptions drastically underplayed the scale of future oil shortages.
Kjell Aleklett, professor of physics at Uppsala and co-author of a new report “The Peak of the Oil Age”, claims oil production is more likely to be 75m barrels a day by 2030 than the “unrealistic” 105m used by the
IEA in its recently published World Energy Outlook 2009. The academic, who runs a Global Energy unit at Uppsala, described the IEA’s report as a “political document” developed for consuming countries with a vested
interest in low prices.
The report from Aleklett and others, including Simon Snowden from the University of Liverpool, says: “We find the production outlook made by the IEA to be problematic in the light of historical experience and production patterns. The IEA is expecting the oil to be extracted at a pace never previously seen without any justification for this assumption.”
There is particular concern about high future production rates from “unconventional” sources such as tar sands, with the Uppsala report saying there is a lack of information about the figures in the 2008 Outlook and largely repeated in the latest one. “We must therefore regard the IEA production figure as somewhat dubious until it is explained more fully,” added the Swedish report, which is to be published in the journal Energy Policy.
After the Recession, an Energy Crisis Could Loom
By Vivienne Walt / Paris Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009
Here’s the bad news about the global recession’s potentially coming to an end: the recovery could spark a massive energy crisis with increased demand for fossil fuels from China and other developing countries, tighter oil supplies and skyrocketing oil prices. And this is just in the near future. The longer-term picture looks even more daunting. If the world continues to guzzle oil and gas at its present pace, global temperatures will rise by an average of 6°C by 2030, causing “irreparable damage to the planet.”
The warning from the International Energy Agency (IEA), an intergovernmental energy watchdog based in Paris, could add extra weight to the negotiations leading up to the climate-change summit in Copenhagen next month, when leaders will attempt to come to an agreement on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol’s limits on greenhouse-gas emissions. “Saving the planet cannot wait,” reads the agency’s annual World Energy Outlook report, which was released on Tuesday. “The time to act has arrived.” (See pictures of new ways to boost energy efficiency.)
But the energy crisis may be even more critical than what the IEA is saying. According to a report in the Guardian on Tuesday, the agency, under pressure from the U.S., has in past reports deliberately underestimated just how fast the world is running out of oil. The newspaper quoted an unnamed senior IEA official as saying that the U.S. encouraged the agency to “underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chance of finding new reserves.”
The official questioned the prediction in last year’s World Energy Outlook that oil production could be raised from the current level of 83 million bbl. a day to 106 million bbl. a day, saying the estimate was higher than is feasible. This year’s report lowers that prediction to 105 million bbl. a day. But critics of the IEA have long said the world has passed its peak in oil production and that such levels are unrealistic. (See how to plan for retirement at any age.)
A chief economist for the IEA, Fatih Birol, disputed the Guardian's report. “I don’t see any particular encouragement from the U.S. or any other of our governments,” he told TIME on Tuesday. He said the accusations about the IEA’s downplaying of the world’s tightening oil supplies surprised him, since “we have said that oil production is declining in existing fields sharply,” he said.
The IEA, which operates under the auspices of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, crunches numbers on energy supplies and demand on behalf of the world’s richest countries, including the U.S., the European Union and Japan, which also finance the agency. Birol said the organization’s annual report is discussed with all member governments and reviewed by 200 energy experts before being released. (Read “The Real Impact of America’s Oil Crisis.”)
The dire predictions about the world’s depleting fossil fuels are in fact known to those closest to the oil wells: oil executives. Yves-Louis Darricarrère, global chief of exploration and production for the French energy giant Total, told TIME last week that the world has “oil reserves of about 40 years at current demands.” “It is not so easy to supply the world,” Darricarrère said in an interview in south Yemen, where the company just opened a liquefied natural-gas plant. “We will reach a plateau and start to decline.” He said that expanding access to alternative-energy options like electric cars and solar panels will only “add some years to the end” of the world’s oil reserves.
The IEA report doesn’t sugarcoat the future when it comes to climate change, saying the world faces a looming disaster if its leaders drag their feet in Copenhagen. Among the predictions likely to alarm the big energy consumers:
• Unless there is an “energy revolution,” the planet will heat up by about 6°C by 2030 — about three times the rate of global warming that is considered manageable by most scientists. That, says the normally sober IEA, “would lead almost certainly to massive climatic change and irreparable damage to the planet.”
• The global recession has brought the first significant yearly drop in energy demand since 1981, giving the planet a rare breather from carbon emissions. But this is a “unique” moment, the report says, whose gains will be quickly obliterated without a significant move toward alternative energies. The impending energy crisis is “far greater than many people realize,” it says. (Read “Russia and China: An Old Alliance Hinges on Energy.”)
• Energy demand will rebound sharply once the recession ends and rise about 40% by 2030. Fossil fuels — oil, coal and gas — will make up about three-quarters of the global increase in energy consumption.
• Coal usage will grow annually about 2.5% from now to 2030, which could lead to massive increases in air pollution.
• Without the energy revolution that the IEA says is necessary, oil prices will rise by 2020 to about $100 a bbl. in pre-2008 dollar values and by 2030 to about $115 a bbl.
To avoid all this, the IEA says the world needs to spend about $10.5 trillion in extra money from 2010 to 2030 to foster new low-carbon energy sources. Expensive, yes. But if the IEA is right, the alternative is far worse.
This is a film politicians should see – MADE FOR POLICYMAKERS.
Peak Oil for Policymakers, by the Post Carbon Institute
<http://www.alternet.org/story/143879/did_big_oil_win_the_war_in_iraq>
Did Big Oil Win the War in Iraq?
As U.S. and British oil companies sign contracts with the Iraqi government, is it time to declare Big Oil the “victor” in the bloody venture?
Last week, ExxonMobil became the first U.S. oil company in 35 years to sign an oil-production contract with the government of Iraq.
As I write, several other contracts with the world’s largest oil companies are being finalized, and more are expected when a new negotiating round kicks off in Baghdad on Dec. 11.
Do these contracts represent a “victory” for Big Oil in Iraq? Yes, but not one as big as the companies had hoped for (at least, not yet).
Before the United States and Britain invaded Iraq in March 2003, their oil companies were shut out of oil-production contracts being negotiated by the government of Saddam Hussein. Today, more than six years of war later, Saddam is gone, and the U.S. and British oil companies are not only in on the oil contracts, they have managed to sweeten the terms.
However, organized resistance by Iraqis and people around the world has thus far succeeded in denying Big Oil its Big Prize: passage of the Iraq Oil Law, alternatively called Iraq Hydrocarbons Law, which would grant far greater control over Iraqi oil to foreign companies on terms much less favorable to Iraq than the current contracts provide.
If the negotiations proceed on their current path, foreign companies will produce the vast majority of Iraq’s oil. How much control they will exert, and who will reap the greatest benefits (and endure the steepest costs) is yet to be determined.
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So DTM , if you had stock in BP would you hang on to them a while ? The supply and demand has been doing quite well so far . I know Dr. CM does not give financial advice but I am open to opinions here .
I have NEVER owned stocks, it’s a matter of principle for me… buying stock only encourages the bastards!
What you have to realise about Peak Oil is that it makes production of ANY new sources difficult. Signing a contract with Iraq is a bit like doing a deal with the devil! Just because you have “a contract” doesn’t mean it will be upheld. ANYTHING is possible. China could invade Iraq. Unlike we who have to send fleets of warships out there, the Chinese, who outnumber us many times over, can just WALK IN! Terrorists could easily stop the flow of any oil (as Kunstler says, all you need is a camel and five pounds of simtex!). Anything.
Don’t hold your breath about loads of oil coming out of Iraq, post PO, all bets are off.
Mike
[quote=In an earlier reply, I myself]
This is certainly important, but IMHO, it hardly qualifies as “news”. Ok, the comments from ex-IEA officials are newsworthy, but it’s been common knowledge for years that governments have a strong financial incentive to overstate their petroleum reserves. The notion that they might actually have been responding to that incentive should surprise nobody.[/quote]
Well I am humbled to say the least! Looks like I was way off base in dismissing this as barely newsworthy.
I stand by my opinion that all of this has been plainly obvious for a long time now to anyone who is really paying attention, and that nothing new has been reported. The only change is that someone from IEA restated the obvious.
But needless to say, I’ve been dumbfounded by the amount of publicity and press attention this has attracted. I guess stating the obvious as an IEA official is really significant in a world where the masses refuse to see the obvious on their own, and need an “official” to say it before they take it seriously.
Erik