WITH oil prices soaring, western leaders exhorting producers and the industry to release more supply and consumers like fishermen and lorry drivers staging protests, the one thing people want to know is when will things get back to normal?
However, the most likely answer is that they will not. Or, if they do, that will merely be the calm before another storm. Just as the massive cracks found this month in the Arctic ice shelf are further evidence of climate change, so the rising cost of petroleum products are the first telltale of peak oil, the watershed moment when production irreversibly declines and fails to meet demand.
American geophysicist M. King Hubbert first predicted it back in the 1950s but, because of improving technology and higher prices making previously marginal fields profitable, no one knows with certainty when it will occur.
What most experts agree on, however, is that the peak will not be detected until it has passed. Which, chillingly, means that it might already have done so. In reality, it probably has not but as official EIA energy statistics from the US government stated earlier this month, ‘the oil supply system continues to operate at near capacity and remains vulnerable to both actual and perceived supply disruptions’.
Some indication of the tightness of the situation can also be gained from UK prime minister Gordon Brown. Under intense domestic pressure over fuel costs and associated protests, his government announced moves to increase North Sea oil production, but this will have no effect on prices and will not come on stream until next year.
In addition, the extra volume will be up to 50,000 barrels a day - yet the EIA says that global demand this year alone is expected to rise by 1.2m barrels per day, so the North Sea contribution is actually meaningless in the demand context.
Beyond that, many of the oil exporting countries are no friends of the west or of America and those in control of energy supplies now also control unbelievable wealth and immense political and economic power.
Tiny communities like the Bailiwick will be bystanders - and sufferers - in the future battle for energy supplies.
Fuel crisis is harbinger of peak oil
WITH oil prices soaring, western leaders exhorting producers and the industry to release more supply and consumers like fishermen and lorry drivers staging protests, the one thing people want to know is when will things get back to normal?
However, the most likely answer is that they will not. Or, if they do, that will merely be the calm before another storm. Just as the massive cracks found this month in the Arctic ice shelf are further evidence of climate change, so the rising cost of petroleum products are the first telltale of peak oil, the watershed moment when production irreversibly declines and fails to meet demand.
American geophysicist M. King Hubbert first predicted it back in the 1950s but, because of improving technology and higher prices making previously marginal fields profitable, no one knows with certainty when it will occur.
What most experts agree on, however, is that the peak will not be detected until it has passed. Which, chillingly, means that it might already have done so. In reality, it probably has not but as official EIA energy statistics from the US government stated earlier this month, ‘the oil supply system continues to operate at near capacity and remains vulnerable to both actual and perceived supply disruptions’.
Some indication of the tightness of the situation can also be gained from UK prime minister Gordon Brown. Under intense domestic pressure over fuel costs and associated protests, his government announced moves to increase North Sea oil production, but this will have no effect on prices and will not come on stream until next year.
In addition, the extra volume will be up to 50,000 barrels a day - yet the EIA says that global demand this year alone is expected to rise by 1.2m barrels per day, so the North Sea contribution is actually meaningless in the demand context.
Beyond that, many of the oil exporting countries are no friends of the west or of America and those in control of energy supplies now also control unbelievable wealth and immense political and economic power.
Tiny communities like the Bailiwick will be bystanders - and sufferers - in the future battle for energy supplies.
Article posted on 29th May, 2008 - 2.30pm