We’re still on the slippery slope to peak oil
To the deniers of peak oil, just ask yourselves, how much sense does it make to assume for one moment that the Earth has an infinite supply of any given resource? -GJK
New Scientist — IN 2007 former US energy secretary James Schlesinger claimed the arguments in favour of peak oil – the key theory that global production must peak and then decline – had been won. With production flat and prices surging towards an all-time high of $147 per barrel, he declared, “we are all peakists now”.
Five years on and production has risen by 2.7 million barrels per day to 93 mb/d, prices have recently slumped to around $100 a barrel and those who dismissed the idea that the rate we extract oil from the ground must inevitably decline jeer in delight.
In June a much-touted report by Leonardo Maugeri - an Italian oil executive now at the Geopolitics of Energy Project, based at Harvard University and part-funded by BP – forecast that far from running out of oil, this decade will see the strongest growth in production capacity since the 1980s and a “significant, stable dip of oil prices”.
You may also enjoy:
Leave a Reply
