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This report argues that unless there is a collapse in oil demand within the next five to ten years, there will be a serious oil ‘supply crunch’ – not because of below-ground resource constraints but because of inadequate investment by international oil companies (IOCs) and national oil companies (NOCs). An oil supply crunch is where excess crude producing capacity falls to low levels and is followed by a crude ‘outage’ leading to a price spike. If this happens then the resulting price spike will carry serious policy implications with long-lasting effects on the global energy picture.

Published in: Chatham House report, August 2008
Available from: Chatham House

Oil is the largest contributor to the world’s energy production and seen as fundamental for powering the modern society. Oil is also a finite natural resource and produced barrel less oil remains. As the society is dependent on oil the point where production no longer can increase, peak oil, is of great importance. Peak oil will affect transportation, economy, industry, trade and all parts of the modern society, as oil is an enormously integrated factor for virtually everything. The use of oil also has other aspects, for instance as a cause of environmental problems and hazards. Among them a medical condition known as mesothelioma, a fatal form of cancer that can affect oil refinery workers...

Read more about mesothelioma and oil refineries here

Published by: The Mesothelioma & Asbestos Awareness Center
Available from: See attachment

The Oil Depletion Protocol is a proposal from Colin Campbell and Kjell Aleklett regarding how the handle the future oil shortage and the onset of decline. The protocol in full can be viewed below:

THE UPPSALA PROTOCOL

WHEREAS the passage of history has recorded an increasing pace of change, such that the demand for energy has grown rapidly over the past 200 years since the Industrial Revolution;

WHEREAS the required energy supply has come mainly from coal and petroleum formed but rarely in the geological past, such resources being inevitably subject to depletion;

WHEREAS oil provides 90 percent of transport fuel, essential to trade, and plays a critical role in agriculture, needed to feed an expanding population;

WHEREAS oil is unevenly distributed on the Planet for well-understood geological reasons, with much being concentrated in five countries bordering the Persian Gulf;

WHEREAS all the major productive provinces had been identified with the help of advanced technology and growing geological knowledge, it being now evident that discovery reached a peak in the 1960s;

WHEREAS the past peak of discovery inevitably leads to a corresponding peak in production during the first decade of the 21st Century, assuming the extrapolation of past production trends and no radical decline in demand;

WHEREAS the onset of the decline of this critical resource affects all aspects of modern life, such having political and geopolitical implications;

WHEREAS it is expedient to plan an orderly transition to the new environment, making early provisions to reduce the waste of energy, stimulate the entry of substitute energies, and extend the life of the remaining oil;

WHEREAS it is desirable to meet the challenges so arising in a co-operative manner, such to address related climate change concerns, economic and financial stability and the threats of conflicts for access to critical resources.

NOW IT IS PROPOSED THAT

1. A convention of nations shall be called to consider the issue with a view to agreeing an Accord with the following objectives:
a. to avoid profiteering from shortage, such that oil prices may remain in reasonable relationship with production cost;
b. to allow poor countries to afford their imports;
c. to avoid destabilising financial flows arising from excessive oil prices;
d. to encourage consumers to avoid waste;
e. to stimulate the development of alternative energies.
2. Such an Accord shall having the following outline provisions:
a. No country shall produce oil at above its current Depletion Rate, such being defined as annual production as a percentage of the estimated amount left to produce;
b. Each importing country shall reduce its imports to match the current World Depletion Rate.
3. Detailed provisions shall be agreed with respect to the definition of categories of oil, exemptions and qualifications, and scientific procedures for the estimation of future discovery and production.
4. The signatory countries shall cooperate in providing information on their reserves, allowing full technical audit, such that the Depletion Rate shall be accurately determined.

5. Countries shall have the right to appeal their assessed Depletion Rate in the event of changed circumstances.

Available in full from: Peakoil.net
See also: The Rimini protocol

The western world lives in a culture of belief in growth and everyone hopes to see their children
having better lives than they had, but for the first time we are not sure. Everyone would like to see the growth continue and hates to speak about decline.

Politicians promise that growth will solve the present problems on welfare, retirement and they
would dearly love to see the reserves of oil, which fuels the economy, grow.
As the French writer Antoine de Saint Exupery wrote: “we do no inherit from our parents, we
borrow from our children”

There are two schools on reserves but also much the confusion between reserves and resources. The views of so-called “Pessimists” (mainly retired geologists or retired CEO (Bernabe 1998, Bowlin 1999) are compared with those of so-called ”Optimists” (mainly economists Aldeman, Lynch, or governmental agencies DOE, IEA, EU). The Pessimists have access to technical data when the Optimists have access to political or financial data.

Reporting data on oil production or oil reserves is a political act. The SEC, to satisfy bankers and shareholders, obliges the oil companies listed on the US stock market to report only Proved Reserves and to omit Probable Reserves that are reported in the rest of the world. This poor practice of reporting only Proved Reserves led to a strong reserve growth, as 90% of the annual reserves oil addition come from revisions of old fields, showing that the assessment of the fields was poorly reported. This reserve growth of conventional oil reserves is wrongly attributed to technological progress. Technical data, on which development decisions are taken, exist but they are confidential.

There are database companies (or “scout” data as a scout is someone sent to get information without revealing his source), selling technical data, but these databases are very expensive. Reporting of reserves is poor, but reporting on production is not much better as the 10$/b of early 1999 seems to be mainly due to the « missing barrels » of IEA overestimating the supply and underestimating the demand (end of Asiatic crisis), giving a false impression of oil abundance (Simmons 2000). Recovery factor is assumed to depend mainly upon oil price, when it depends mainly on the geology and physics of the reservoir.

The Optimists believe that technology (as Santa Claus) will solve all the problems, but they do not
want to listen to technicians who say that technology has limits.

Published in: Paper presented at the EMF/IEA/IEW meeting IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria - June 19, 2001
Plenary Session I: Resources
Available from: IIASA

My little publication “Saudi Arabian Oilproduction field by field Analysis” has several aims: to show you the contribution of Saudi-Arabian Oilproduction over time / past and future / to the world and give you some more statistical information then was ever published over this wonderful great treasure of nature in the desert.

This documentation is written with my best knowledge and intended to give you the most accurate picture possible of Saudi Arabia over time since the beginnings of the oilproduction. No official statistic available worldwide gives single field by field data. It is kept like state’s secret, so I had to put together every single part of a great puzzle of data from different provenance and precision over many years. I collected them, but only the latest presentation of Saudi Officials made it possible to draw that picture clearly and conclusively. The appearance of Mr. Saleri and Mr. Baqi at the CSIS in Washington in 2004 and of Mr. Nawad Obaid in November 2006 was not “par hasard”; it was well planned, giving the public in the world and especially in the oilguzzling and very oildependent industrialised west a insight over the future prospects of Saudi oilproduction, without “loosing their face” as reliable supplier of oil to the world.

Without loosing their face… the italian says: “far’ bella figura”; this argument is strong and well present in the whole world: everyone likes to be integer, serious in the face of others. Does war contribute to that fundamental human wish? Or does “knowledge over facts” more to that and help mankind to be in peace among the nations. This is my little 2006-Christmas-gift to you: some fact over a really delicate issue, hoping to be a small contribution to preserve our friendship, among us as human beings, and among nations, based on better understanding of rather unpleasant facts, underlined by high energy prices. In the same intention, a better understanding, this documentation is written in english and has a complete german translation at the end for those among you, who give preference to their own mother tongue.

Please apologize my imperfectness in english.
Thank you.

This documentation is also my Christmas-gift 2006 to our Federal Council (Bundesrat) together with the poster “the oil age” (world oil production 1859 – 2050) I got from my ASPO-friends. I am sure, that “energy” will be one of the most important issues being discussed in the next few years in the parliaments worldwide… so, what could be more helpful than facts?

Available from: ASPO Portugal or from below

An early settler in the valley of Parachute Creek in western Colorado built a log cabin, and
made the fireplace and chimney out of the easily cut, locally abundant black rock. The pioneer invited 4a few neighbors to a house warming. As the celebration began, he lit a fire. The fireplace, chimney, and ultimately the whole cabin caught fire, and burned to the ground. The rock was oil shale. It was a sensational house warming!

Oil shales are reported to have been set afire by lightning strikes. The Ute Indians of northwestern Colorado told stories of "mountains that burned." Cowboys and ranchers of the region
burned the dark rock in their fires, like coal. The flammable nature of the richer oil shales is basis for the title of a fascinating book by H. K. Savage (1967), The Rock That Burns. During oil shale enthusiasms in the early part of this century, stock promoters brought pieces of oil shale to Chicago street corners and set them afire. Clouds of smoke attracted crowds, and the promoters sold stock in oil shale companies...

Published in: Hubbert Center Newsletter # 98/4
Available from: M. King Hubbert Center

The recent development of Chinese economy is very striking, it also has caused a great increase in the demand for oil and gas. It is hard to meet this demand for resources. It is a great challenge to handle with the conflict between oil and gas shortage and fast growth of economy. Many scholars have put forward various solutions for this matter. Some recommend the way of overseas exploration, i.e, meeting the shortage through exploiting the overseas resources, but there are great risks in doing so. And some propose mass importation of oil and gas resources, but if this happens, we will be vulnerable to the worldwide petroleum shortage and high oil prices. Dependence on imports may also imperil the national strategic security since high dependency of oil importation is dangerous to a nation. In the long run, fastening the exploration and development in demostic oil and gas resources, advocating oil saving and looking for substitute energy is the best ways.

Published in: ASPO 2005 conference
Available from: ASPO conference 2005

Hubberts original paper from 1956 that predicted the US peak in early 1970s

Published in: Publication 95, Shell Development Company, Exploration and Production Research Division
Available from: Hubbertpeak.com

There is no longer any serious dispute that the World approaches the end of the First Half of the
Age of Oil. It lasted 150 years and saw the rapid expansion of industry, transport, trade, agriculture and financial capital, which in turn led to the development of classical economic theory built around the power of the market place. Much debate is focused on the date of peak production but this misses the point when what really matters is the vision of the long remorseless decline that comes into view on the other side of it.

Oil and gas were formed in the geological past under well understood processes. It follows that
they are finite resources subject to depletion. It is axiomatic to state that they have to be found before they can be produced, meaning that discovery has to be mirrored after a time lapse by a corresponding pattern of production. The fact that the discovery of oil has been in relentless decline since it reached a peak in the 1960s means that the corresponding peak of production is now imminent.

Available from: ODAC

Getting to the heart of the matter is not an easy task but we can at least try. It may help to open the attempt by defining some of the subjects to be covered. The Oxford Dictionary reveals that:

• Economics is a branch of knowledge concerned with the production, consumption and transfer of wealth;
• Geology is the science which deals with the physical structure and substance ofthe Earth, their history and the processes which act on them;
• Politics are the activities associated with the governance of a country or area, especially the debate or conflict between individuals or parties having, or hoping to achieve, power.
• History is the study of past events, particularly in human affairs.

We will touch on all four subjects, as so admirably defined. How might we try to get to the heart of the matter? We could study learned tomes, speak to experts, observe Nature. We could do all these things but let us imagine that it were possible to hold an objective judicial inquiry run by the highest judges in the land, to be flanked by the most penetrating of advocates to probe deeply into the evidence and assess the honesty, reliability and bias of the witnesses. In the real world, such an Inquiry would find itself under political pressure to deliver a comforting verdict. So, perhaps it is better just to imagine the agenda and outcome of such an Inquiry in the following way...

Available from: Hubbertpeak.com