Energy crisis as oil production falls, says report from Energy Watch Group who say declining oil reserves will not be met by other resources. World oil production peaked last year and will now begin to decline along with other fossil fuels, precipitating riots, famine and energy wars. This is the bleak assessment of a report published today by the German think tank .
The report claims that production will start to decline at a rate of several percent per year and by 2020 global oil supply will be dramatically lower.
This will create a supply gap that cannot be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame.
This message is in sharp contrast to the International Energy Agency, which denies that a fundamental change of energy supply is likely to happen in the near or medium term future.
"The most alarming finding is the steep decline of the oil supply after peak," said report author and managing director of German consultant Ludwig Bölkow Systemtechnik Jörg Schindler.
"Since crude oil is the most important energy carrier at a global scale and since all kinds of transport rely heavily on oil, the future oil availability is of paramount importance as it entails completely different actions by politics, business and individuals."
Remaining world oil reserves were estimated to be 1,255 Giga barrels (Gb) by the industry database HIS in 2006. However, the report claims these figures should be modified for some regions and key countries as they rely on reserve data, which in the past have frequently turned out to be unreliable.
The report's revision, based primarily on production data, leads to a drastically reduced estimate of 854Gb.
The report also asserts that anticipated supply shortages could easily lead to disturbing scenes of mass unrest as witnessed in Burma this month.
For government, industry and the wider public, the report says that just muddling through is not an option anymore as this situation could spin out of control and turn into a meltdown of society.
"My experience of debating the peak oil issue with the oil industry, and trying to alert Whitehall to it, is that there is a culture of institutionalised denial in government and the energy industry," said former member of the British Government’s Renewables Advisory Board Jeremy Leggett.
"As the evidence of an early peak in production unfolds, this becomes increasingly impossible to understand."
The report claims that production will start to decline at a rate of several percent per year and by 2020 global oil supply will be dramatically lower.
This will create a supply gap that cannot be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame.
This message is in sharp contrast to the International Energy Agency, which denies that a fundamental change of energy supply is likely to happen in the near or medium term future.
"The most alarming finding is the steep decline of the oil supply after peak," said report author and managing director of German consultant Ludwig Bölkow Systemtechnik Jörg Schindler.
"Since crude oil is the most important energy carrier at a global scale and since all kinds of transport rely heavily on oil, the future oil availability is of paramount importance as it entails completely different actions by politics, business and individuals."
Remaining world oil reserves were estimated to be 1,255 Giga barrels (Gb) by the industry database HIS in 2006. However, the report claims these figures should be modified for some regions and key countries as they rely on reserve data, which in the past have frequently turned out to be unreliable.
The report's revision, based primarily on production data, leads to a drastically reduced estimate of 854Gb.
The report also asserts that anticipated supply shortages could easily lead to disturbing scenes of mass unrest as witnessed in Burma this month.
For government, industry and the wider public, the report says that just muddling through is not an option anymore as this situation could spin out of control and turn into a meltdown of society.
"My experience of debating the peak oil issue with the oil industry, and trying to alert Whitehall to it, is that there is a culture of institutionalised denial in government and the energy industry," said former member of the British Government’s Renewables Advisory Board Jeremy Leggett.
"As the evidence of an early peak in production unfolds, this becomes increasingly impossible to understand."
No comments:
Post a Comment