A View From The Peak
Jamais Cascio
March 21, 2005
View from the Peak
Plausibly Surreal – Scenarios and Anticipations
Peak Oil -- Hubbard's Peak -- Peak Energy -- no matter what you call it, the notion that we will be at maximum oil production far sooner than anyone thought has caught fire of late, with a series of reports popping up in the industrial, environmental, and mainstream press. Some of these have been triggered by crude oil prices once again popping up above $55/barrel, flirting with an absolute record price (although still nowhere close to 1980's dollar-adjusted price of above $80/barrel). But the biggest peak oil news has to be the report coming from the analysts at John S. Herold, Inc., a respected independent energy industry research group, which made predictions of when various oil companies would see peak production.
Salon has a good story on Herold's report (subscription or advertisement views required), and it's sobering reading.
Since last fall, Herold has done peak estimates on about two dozen oil companies. Herold believes that the French oil company, Total S.A., will reach its peak production in 2007. Herold expects 2008 to be critical, with Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips Co., BP, Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and the Italian producer, Eni S.p.A., all hitting their peaks. In 2009, Herold expects ChevronTexaco Corp. to peak. In Herold's view, each of the world's seven largest publicly traded oil companies will begin seeing production declines within the next 48 months or so.Executive vice president Richard Gordon, who heads Herold's global strategies team, says the firm's goal in doing peak-production estimates for individual oil companies is simple: "If the dinosaurs are going extinct, we are trying to figure out which ones are going to go extinct the soonest."
Add increased demand for petroleum from rapidly-developing China and India to the possibility of imminent limits on production and you have, to put it mildly, a sticky situation.
Treehugger wrote an excellent introduction to the complexities of the peak oil concept. Energy Bulletin, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas, and the Peak Energy Blog are good daily resources for energy and oil industry news, with a focus on the question of peak production. The current flurry of attention will undoubtedly fade, but this is an issue definitely worth keeping an eye on.