PEAK OIL
Earth Day on April 22nd, 2007 is being celebrated early with the victory for the ecological community with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of ecological activists on the issue of Greenhouse Gas; and the Chief Justices proclaiming that the American Environment Protection Agency has the legal power to regulate such matter as the releasing of Carbon Dioxide into the air by automobiles. Peak Oil is another important issue to be think of in this month of the celebration of Earth Day.
Eventhough the term Peak Oil was coiled in 1956, only until 2005 did it begin to be discussed by American mainstream mass media. It first appeared in late 2005 on Time magazine and USA Today. On March 1st, 2006, The New York Times published an editoral piece as follow: "The concept of Peak Oil has not been widely written about. But people are talking about it now. It deserves a careful look--largely because it is almost certainly correct."** Also in a 2006 documentary by Al Gore, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, also helped to break the silence about this immensely important global energy concern.
In 1956, Peak Oil or Hubbert Peak was coiled after Shell geologist Dr. Marion King Hubbert predicted, later accurately, that U.S. domestic oil production would be peaked in 1970, and global oil production in between 1995 and 2000.
Peak Oil is reached when half of the global oil reserve has been consumed. The danger lies in the fact that the first half is of good quality and much easier to find and produce. The second half will be of much worse quality and much harder to find in small fields in inconvenient locations such as in the Arctic and under deep water. In 2003 the global oil industry had already invested $8 billion in exploration with only $4 billion of profit. This affects the funding and willingness to invest in oil exploration.
Moreover, it has been found that the quantity of oil in present reserves has been exagerated overwhelmingly by most global oil industries. In 2004, Royal Dutch/Shell overestimated 22% (4.35 billion barrels) in its oil reserve. In 2005, Matthew Simmons reported that Saudi Arabian oil reserve had already reached its Peak Oil. In March 2005 the Algerian minister for energy and mines admitted that OPEC has reached its oil production limit. In January 2006 the Kuwait Oil Company proclaimed that the Burgan oil field had peaked. One month later, Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) leaked that the world's second-largest oil field Cantarell had peaked.
Also, after the Peak Oil, though supply will be dwindled greatly, the demand will continually increase. Currently, the global oil comsumption is 84 million barrels a day. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that demand will increase to 121 million a day in 2025.
The first disaster following Peak Oil will be in the food production. Such magical program as the "Green Revolution" that depends on cheap oil to produce food to feed the 6 billion people in the world will suffer greatly. Also the myriad products from synthesized crude oil will be tremendously expensive. No telling of the calamities such as famine and wars that will come out of this.
On February 2005, the Hirsh Report entitled "The Mitigation Of The Peaking Of World Oil Production" stated, "The world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous energy transitions are gradual and evolutionary. Oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary."**
**Greg Pahl's THE CITIZEN-POWERED ENERGY HANDBOOK
