Peak Oil - It's a Secret

Commentary By Ron Beasley

A couple of weeks ago I reported that in a few months peak oil has gone from a tin foil hat theory to a widely accepted one.  Today Chris Nelder explains that while both business and government accept peak oil they want to keep you in the dark.  

On March 30-31, the biennial International Energy Forum (IEF) summit took place in Cancun. Attendees at the world's largest energy forum included ministers from 64 countries, members of the IEA and OPEC, and other dignitaries.

In parallel, Cancun also hosted the International Energy Business Forum, attended by some 36 companies including the top executives of China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell.

In short, the twin conferences were a Very Big Deal.

But when I searched Google News for stories containing the exact phrase "International Energy Forum" and published during the conference, it wasn't until the seventh page of results that I found any stories from major American media outlets, and those stories were strictly focused on specific issues like oil and gas prices. They said not a word about peak oil.

A journalist from the oil and gas media organization Platts explained what happened on his blog. All media were barred from the IEF conference room, and exiled to a press room where the presentations were shown on monitors with no sound. When reporters asked for sound, the monitors were turned off. All sessions were then declared to be private, and the reporters that had come from around the globe to cover the conference were simply shut out.[Bold Mine]

So the powers that be are worried about peak oil but they want to keep us in the dark.

By any measure, March was a watershed month for the truth about peak oil.

Estimates on the timing of the peak have narrowed dramatically, and now center on the 2012-2015 time frame. The range of estimates on the peak rate of production remain a bit broader and shrouded in caveats, but they are rapidly drawing closer to 90 mbpd. And the globally averaged, post-peak annual decline rates are settling in around 2%.

In other words, industry and governments appear to be coming around to what my call has been all along: 2012, at 90 mbpd or less, then declining at about 2.5% per year.

Now we know that the oil and gas industry, as well as the world's governments, are not only aware of the peak oil threat... they too are deeply worried about it.

Worried enough to huddle behind closed doors, away from the press. Worried enough to formulate plans to control price volatility. Worried enough to agitate for more transparent data. Worried enough to begin planning for a future of relentlessly declining energy.

But not worried enough to tell the American people the truth... not just yet.

Maybe this is why they don't want you know - Growth is only possible when energy flow is increasing.  Does that mean that capitalism as we know it will be one of the first causalities of peak oil?

Comments

[Earl]

It doesn't look good in any case, does it?

I should have known after the pentagon started rumbling...