Peak oil baloney

An original article by Duggan Flanakin [dflanakin@austin.rr.com].

In mid-November, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Nairobi, Acting OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo made two astounding - and profound -- statements. Neither was reported by the European or American press, perhaps because they did not grasp the significance of Barkindo's pronouncements.

The first was that, "For developing countries, poverty alleviation, economic development and social progress are the overriding priorities. Climate change is adding more challenges and creating additional vulnerabilities for these countries, although they are not responsible for the current state of our planet."

The second was equally stunning: "Energy is fundamental for economic development and social progress. While the use of all forms of energy is welcome, it is clear that fossil fuels will continue to satisfy the lion's share of the world's growing energy needs for decades to come."

Two months earlier, at a conference in Riyadh, Barkindo had chastised first-world nations for failing to provide promised investment capital, capacity building, and technology transfer that are so desperately needed by developing nations as they pursue economic growth, social progress, and environmental protection.

Barkindo further insisted that "technological options that allow the continued use of fossil fuels in a carbon-constrained world must be actively promoted." Carbon capture and storage (CCS), in conjunction with CO2-enhanced oil recovery, he noted, offers a win-win opportunity by not only storing CO2, but also increasing oil reserves in mature fields.

Simply put, Barkindo was telling the world that oil is both abundant and irreplaceable as the world's leading energy source for the next several decades, so we had better get busy finding ways to make oil a cleaner fuel - without slowing down on development of low-polluting renewable sources of energy.

Barkindo is not alone in his sentiments. Claude Mandil, executive director of the Paris-based International Energy Agency, agreed at Nairobi that fossil fuels have such a grip on the world's energy market that renewables will remain minority sources of power for decades. And a brand-new study from the Rand Corporation indicates that renewables will at best provide 25% of U.S. energy needs by 2025 - and a much smaller percentage of world needs.

Without nitpicking about whether all "renewable" energy is "clean," the question to answer is whether energy from oil and other fossil fuels has to be "dirty." Technology has already brought cleaner vehicles and cleaner fuels to the transportation sector; the FutureGen project (if allowed to go forward) promises truly clean energy from coal. Another new technology of interest is the helium-cooled, inherently safe, pebble bed modular (nuclear) reactor being developed in South Africa.

If America is to retain its position as a world leader, it is imperative that we both solve the technological problems that keep oil from being a clean fuel and transfer that technology to the nations of the developing world. China - and India, too - as they develop will soon surpass the United States in pollution output, and even Africa is eager for economic development. The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) predicts that world oil demand will grow from 80 million barrels per day in 2003 to 118 million BOPD by 2030, with most of the increase in China, India, and other developing nations that will not likely develop clean fuels technology.

Many U.S. and European policy makers, however, object to investment in fossil fuel technologies because they believe either that fossil fuels are inherently evil (coal in particular has been demonized) or that we are "running out of oil" and thus that our only hope is renewable energy. This is not so.

Historically, worldwide oil consumption to date has totaled about 1.08 trillion barrels, while as of January 1, 2006, proved world oil reserves totaled 1.293 trillion barrels. Moreover, according to the EIA, "Historically, estimates of world oil reserves have generally trended upward." Indeed, the 2006 number is up 15 billion barrels from 2005.

Brand-new research, however, shows that even this number is minuscule. Cambridge Energy Research Associates on November 14 published a report by Pulitzer Prize winning oil historian Daniel Yergin, who says the remaining global oil resource base is at least 3.74 trillion barrels - three times current proved oil reserves. This number, too, may be conservative, given new oil discoveries and new technologies that lower the cost of exploiting known deposits. World coal reserves are even larger.

The reality is that fossil fuels (and uranium, to a lesser extent) hold the best promise for helping the world's poor to escape pestilence, disease, malnutrition, and even political oppression over the next fifty years. Energy is essential for developing transportation networks, operating schools and hospitals, operating manufacturing and service industry facilities, and providing refrigeration and sanitation and other services that will foster improved public health.

Just as true, rich nations will continue needing fossil fuel energy for decades to come. This means that the best hope for reducing pollution is to find technological solutions that will further reduce or mitigate emissions from fossil fuel use and then to transfer those technologies to developing nations as they build their own energy infrastructure.

Finally, the window of opportunity for the West to influence energy policy worldwide is dwindling. If Western nations continue to insist on a renewables-only approach to future energy needs, the developing world will "just say no" and move ahead without either our help or our standards for clean development. We will not find the answers the developing world needs if we fail to realize that we, too, are in the same boat on energy and pollution.

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Page. Email me (John Ray) here.)