Transition Sheffield - Discussion Forum

The International Energy Agency is to call today for an energy revolution and a "major de-carbonisation" of global fuel sources as the world confronts tighter oil supplies caused by shrinking investment.

The energy watchdog is warning for the first time that oil output could pass its peak as power shifts from "super-majors" to national companies controlled by producer states. It highlights a potential oil-supply crunch.

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Up to 64m barrels a day of extra gross capacity - the equivalent to almost six times that of Saudi Arabia today - needs to come on stream between 2007 and 2030. Almost half of that is required by 2015, with an extra 7m barrels a day over current plans approved within the next two years "to avoid a fall in spare capacity towards the middle of the next decade".

In stark contrast to bland-to-cornucopian supply commentary in past reports, the initial language in this years Executive Summary is of an urgent nature. This report is a step in the right direction for conveying our rapidly deteriorating energy situation to world policymakers - the IEA should be commended for making the turn and finally acknowledging: costs, investment limitations, new capacity requirements, steep decline rates of existing wells, and externalities (in this case GHGs). In effect, this report shatters the global illusion that oil resources magically turn into cheap flow rates. However, at first glance, the report's details do not support the urgent tone of the beginning paragraphs.

steve wrote:Given that the UK government have previously used the IEA reports to justify denying any oil problem it'll be interesting to see how they react to letter now after this.

On 20 Oct 08, APPGOPO Chairman John Hemming asked PM Brown the following question on Peak Oil.

John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD): The recent high prices and volatility in the price of oil is symptomatic of geological constraints on supply—also known as peak oil and gas. Do the Government have a view as to when peak production will occur globally, and does the Prime Minister believe that it is worth doing that research?

The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the question of supplies of oil for the future. That is concerning all countries. Not only do we need stability of supply, but, even as we move into nuclear and renewables, we will need a constantly rising supply of oil. That means that we must ensure that the demand for oil is met by supply, otherwise the price will go up again. We are, therefore, looking at what supply of oil there is, and we are trying in the North sea to increase the production that is available from some of the smaller marginal fields as well as from some of the fields that have previously been explored and developed but not exhausted.

STEPHANIE KENNEDY: The International Energy Agency's annual report card on the state of the world's energy sources is an ominous warning.

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The organisation's chief economist is Dr Fatih Birol.

FATIH BIROL: The current trend we are in is an unsustainable one. With the current policies we are perfectly in line with the trajectory which would lead us up to six degrees Celsius increase in the Earth's temperature.

If we do not change our policies substantially and as soon as possible, I think it will be too late to make major changes in our greenhouse gas emissions.

The Prime Minister: Not only do we need stability of supply, but, even as we move into nuclear and renewables, we will need a constantly rising supply of oil. That means that we must ensure that the demand for oil is met by supply, otherwise the price will go up again.

George Monbiot wrote:Then I asked him a question for which I didn't expect a straight answer: could he give me a precise date by which he expects conventional oil supplies to stop growing?

"In terms of non-Opec [countries outside the big oil producers' cartel]," he replied, "we are expecting that in three, four years' time the production of conventional oil will come to a plateau, and start to decline. In terms of the global picture, assuming that Opec will invest in a timely manner, global conventional oil can still continue, but we still expect that it will come around 2020 to a plateau as well, which is, of course, not good news from a global-oil-supply point of view."

Around 2020. That casts the issue in quite a different light. Birol's date, if correct, gives us about 11 years to prepare. If the Hirsch report is right, we have already missed the boat. Birol says we need a "global energy revolution" to avoid an oil crunch, including (disastrously for the environment) a massive global drive to exploit unconventional oils, such as the Canadian tar sands. But nothing on this scale has yet happened, and Hirsch suggests that even if it began today, the necessary investments and infrastructure changes could not be made in time. Birol told me: "I think time is not on our side here."

When I pressed him on the shift in the agency's position, he argued that the IEA has been saying something like this all along. "We said in the past that one day we will run out of oil. We never said that we will have hundreds of years of oil ... but what we have said is that this year, compared with past years, we have seen that the decline rates are significantly higher than what we have seen before. But our line that we are on an unsustainable energy path has not changed."

This, of course, is face-saving nonsense. There is a vast difference between a decline rate of 3.7% and 6.7%. There is an even bigger difference between suggesting that the world is following an unsustainable energy path - a statement almost everyone can subscribe to - and revealing that conventional oil supplies are likely to plateau around 2020. If this is what the IEA meant in the past, it wasn't expressing itself very clearly.

So what do we do? We could take to the hills, or we could hope and pray that Hirsch is wrong about the 20-year lead time, and begin a global crash programme today of fuel efficiency and electrification. In either case, the British government had better start drawing up some contingency plans.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008 ... energy-iea