Have We Reached Peak Oil?

Recommend (2) Comments (3)

Of the few who understand the consequences of Peak Oil, most go to extremes. Either Peak Oil won't happen at all because "technology" will rise to the challenge, or Peak Oil will cause the world to end in chaos, starvation, war, and a small fraction of its present population. The optimists forget that the investment required to undo 100 years of growing dependence on oil is staggering, and a replacement technology will require a vast quantity of the very energy that will be in short supply. The pessimists forget that the world does not have to implode instantaneously. But each extreme might become true, and the crucial variable is, the rate at which the quantity of oil, available for import each day, will decrease. To prove that point, I present best and worst cases that are actually feasible.

• Best case: Oil production hovers around its present rate for about 10 years (of which 3 are already past), and only then declines. This will give us about half as much time as we need to rebuild the electric grid, build lots of power plants of various types, and go thoroughly electric. While our electric supply is not yet large enough to substitute for our oil supply, we will endure a national emergency. We will have to quickly learn to make pesticides from something other than oil, before insects decimate our food crops.
• Worst case: Oil available for importing drops each year, beginning now, due to some combination of natural oil field declines / hurricanes taking down oil wells / terrorists destroying pipelines or refineries / the Straits of Hormuz becoming impassable during a war with Iran / Venezuela and Russia exporting oil to China instead of the US / other exporting countries saving more of their production for their own people. In only 3 years, our oil imports could shrink to 2/3 of their present level. Thanks to our food production depending on oil, there will be food shortages, riots, some starvation. After this sharp decline (see the graph below), we'll get a several-year terrace, with continuing shortages, soaring prices, and high unemployment, so never mind paying for any new infrastructure... until the next drop makes our predicament quite dire. This spiral is fatal from its beginning.

So it is indeed not exaggerating to say that everything, really everything, depends on when, and how fast, the oil supply available for import (in barrels per day) will decline, and also on when, and how fast, we get to work, to fend off the consequences.

We in the U.S. may or may not have a few more years of the best case before our experience becomes likely to resemble the worst case - simply because we are the world's "worst" oil-importer in (what will soon be) a time of oil shortages. Our dependence on imported oil is a strangle-hold on our future. To escape this fate:

1. We have to do whatever it takes to terminate our dependence on imported oil. Since vehicles consume 45% of the oil we use, they are the major culprit; and since 65% of our consumption is imported, cars have to stop running on gasoline completely (and other uses have to shrink as well to eliminate the other imported 20%). To accomplish this as quickly and cheaply as possible, despite cars having life-times near 20 years, we have to convert existing cars to natural gas, bio-diesel, or and/or electricity. People resisting this necessity will force us all to choose between gasoline and food. Let's not risk that, let's just start the conversions ASAP.
2. When we are no longer in national danger from an oil shortage, we have to stop using oil-for-energy altogether (including our own production), because oil supplies will continue to shrink relentlessly. What oil we can get (or make from coal) should be used where there is no ready alternative, e.g. as a chemical, and for aviation. Nearly all of our energy will have to come from renewable sources, the more the better.
3. Eventually we will even have to use less oil as a chemical.