End of the Oil Age looms

dublin | environment | news report Thursday April 06, 2006 20:33 by watcher

Humanity is entering a change of historic magnitude without precedence as oil begins to run out, peak oil expert Colin Campbell told a full round room in Dublin’s Mansion House last night.

“It’s doesn’t matter when the oil runs out, the fact is that it is,” said Campbell . “This has been confused and concealed by bad information featuring bland scenarios that are not consistent. The skills of a detective are needed”, he warned. But Campbell has done his sleuthing and his message is clear. Graphs of oil production from Iraq, the US, the North Sea and other places pitched time against quantity. They showed one unmistakable shape: a bell. And we are most definitely on the right-hand downward curve.

Campbell’s scientific background in geology came to the fore during his presentation as he went back to the beginning and explained how oil was made from organic debris that collected and gathered in traps during algal blooms between 90 and 150 million years ago.

Much of the confusion in recent years has arisen from the under reporting of reserves in order to adhere to stock exchange rules. This slow release has given a misleading image of steady growth. Governments have also been slow to rock he boat, according to Campbell. “Technology is sometimes used a solve-all but the advanced technology is already in use”, he noted. He also noted a move by oil companies such as Exxon, Chevron and Shell from denial to acceptance of the facts. He also noted that 14 companies have merged into five. “A sure sign of an industry in decline,” he said.

He memorably concluded by saying that “the Celtic fox thrives but the Celtic tiger belongs in the zoo”.

Chris Skrebowski, Editor of the UK Petroleum Review, then took to the podium and looked at when the oil will run out. The usage of oil is so extravagant that we are in a land without maps. As far as I could make out from his graphs, it looks like it will be between time already the past and in a best-case scenario 2010.

What about the substitutes he asked? “We can cook sausages by burning straw but you’d use more energy gathering the straw than is in the sausgages,” he said. With every challenge there is opportunity, he noted and the vital thing is to recognise the challenge and plan, added Skrebowski.

Sweden then came into focus as Patrik Klintbom of Volvo Technology, spoke about Volvo’s work which aims at finding pathways to energy conservation and new energy-laden fuels. Interestingly, the Swedish government has had great foresight and is aiming to wean the country totally off oil by 2020.

Ireland faces a dire energy future as it is at the end of the pipeline from Siberia, said Gerard O'Neill of Amárach Consulting, quoting from The Long Emergency by Kuntsler. Seventy percent of us travel by car to work. Two-thirds of us disagree that it would be easy to get to work by public transport. We have invested in oil as a way of life, he told the crowd.

Possible ways of cutting consumption he suggested include a compressed working week, free public transport, odd/even car registration days in cities.

O'Neill cited Jevons Paradox, an observation made by William Stanley Jevons who stated that as technological improvements increase the efficiency with which a resource is used, total consumption of that resource may increase, rather than decrease.

He also suggested buying a nuclear power station in the UK as an interim solution but noted that there is no magic bullet and answers lie in a combination of renewables and energy efficiency. There will also be business opportunities, he noted.

The four stages we face:

1. Complain and pay-up.
2. Conserve and become more efficient in how we use energy.
3. Adopt alterative energy sources.
4. Changing our lifestyles (the smoking ban and plastic bag tax - easy)

In 2002, oil accounted for 56 percent of Ireland’s energy consumption, followed by natural gas (23 percent), coal (13 percent), peat (6 percent) and renewable energy (2 percent). Delaying the inevitable will be far more expensive but being an early mover will be an advantage, he concluded.

The panel was chaired in a lively way by David Mc Williams. It was interesting to see that these ideas and realities have now begun to go mainstream. The event was organised by Energy Futures: www.energyfutures.ie. Tickets were expensive at EUR25.

*An indymedia ‘other press’ report on a new report O’Neill co-authored on peak oil is at http://www.indymedia.ie/article/75287

*New grants for greener homes at http://www.sei.ie/index.asp?locID=756&docID=784

*More on peak-oil at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil