BP's chief economist, Christof Rühl, recently made a appearence in an interview at EurActive [1]. He was asked about peak oil and commented it in the following way:
Question: But isn't the result the same in terms of economic impact, whether it is peak oil or severely restricted access?
"No, the result is not the same. Because this situation will react to prices and other fuels becoming available, and it will react to low prices and to these barriers coming down again. Physical peak oil, which I have no reason to accept as a valid statement either on theoretical, scientific or ideological grounds, would be insensitive to prices. In fact the whole hypothesis of peak oil - which is that there is a certain amount of oil in the ground, consumed at a certain rate, and then it's finished - does not react to anything.
Whereas we believe that whatever can be turned into oil strongly depends on technology and technology depends on prices as well. Therefore there will never be a moment when the world runs out of oil because there will always be a price at which the last drop of oil can clear the market. And you can turn anything into oil into if you are willing to pay the financial and environmental price It is more likely that demand will peak, which is what we are seeing in Japan and in Europe. And then of course there is another constraint. The human capacity of digging hydrocarbons out of the ground and burning them and turning them into energy seems to be much larger than the atmospheric capacity to absorb the resulting CO2. That is likely to be more of a natural limit than all these peak oil theories combined. Peak oil has been predicted for 150 years. It has never happened, and it will stay this way."
Read the entire interview here: http://www.euractiv.com/en/energy/bp-see-volatility-increase/article-175922 [2]
Colin Campbell replies to the statements of Christof Rühl
BP is one of the world's largest oil companies with a long and glorious history having pioneered the discovery of oil in the Middle East and North Sea, as well as bringing in the largest field in North America. It is therefore surprising to find the company's chief economist make the following statement that appears to deny any knowledge of natural depletion which must be more than evident in many of the company's own fields.
It is hard to accept that even the flattest of flat-earth economists can have failed to observe the depletion of oil in his own country, where the peak of discovery in 1974 delivered a corresponding peak of production in 1999 despite the application of the most advanced technology and an open market environment.
The world is made up many different producing countries, each having its own depletion profile. As many as 52 are now producing less than at same date in the past, which suggests that many have passed their natural peak, as imposed by the limits of Nature and the immutable physics of the reservoir.
It is true that we may never find and produce the last gallon, hidden in some remote corner of the Planet, but it is extremely irresponsible for an oil company spokesman to say that Peak production will never happen. While he may be ignorant of the world situation, he could at least reveal when his own company passed the peak of its discovery, which is probably long ago, and must inevitably deliver a corresponding peak of production, notwithstanding all the remarkable advances in technology.