Peak Oil: Meet Peter Jackson

Peak Oil theory predicts an abrupt fall in oil production, with devastating effects on the oil-dependent world economy. Peter Jackson has studied the issue for CERA Oil Supply, and suggests that the theory is faulty.

There is no evidence that a peak will occur in the next ten to 15 years, nor if we look out to approximately 2030. CERA believes that we will see an undulating plateau of global production starting sometime after 2030, which is likely to last for a number of decades. Towards the end of the plateau period, we envisage that global production will decline more gently compared to the very rapid production decline predicted by the peak oil lobby. Very importantly, CERA believes that the duration of the undulating plateau will be determined by above ground factors – such as levels of investment, economics and geopolitics - rather than the scale of below ground resources.

....I believe we still do not know the scale of the global resource base very accurately. However, including both conventional and unconventional sources such as oil sands and shale oil, I believe that well over 4 trillion barrels of resource remain – that’s about four times as much as has been produced thus far in the history of the world.

....Global oil supply has been relatively tight in recent years, but CERA predicts that productive capacity will grow very quickly in the next few years. Unconventional oils such as ultra heavy oils in Canada and Venezuela are the focus of considerable investment at present. We also see gas-to-liquids projects springing up, in the Middle East for example, and coal-to-liquids projects being planned in quite large numbers in South East Asia and Australia. Interestingly, there’s a lot of biofuel being produced in the US and Brazil at the moment,and the proportion of biofuel is likely to expand quite considerably, over the coming decades.

Source.

It is highly likely that huge undiscovered oil and gas reserves exist in difficult to explore undersea deposits. As the more cheaply extracted reserves are depleted over the next few decades, technology will inevitably make accessible these reserves which are almost impossible to access today, economically.

Peak oil will not happen the way that many radical environmentalists are predicting. But then, a lot of people believed in the inevitability of a Y2K crisis as well. There is something in the human mind that loves to contemplate disasters and catastrophes of apocalyptic proportion. CAGW falls into the same category, and appeals to much the same ideological groupings as Peak Oil--paradoxically enough.