It has been said that Peak Oil would start to hit in around 4-5 years but this Australian petroleum outfit ABC RURAL - an Aussie site - click for website is forecasting trouble even earlier. The thing about the peak oil “hump” is that once we are past it, and the decreasing supplies versus increasing demand (don’t forget the still increasing global population) weave their magic economic spell, the price of oil will start to go up rapidly - and never come down again. As our entire global economy and food supply depends utterly upon cheap, unrestricted energy supplies we are very likely to get in increasing trouble from then on.
One of the only rays of sunshine is that renewable energy sources will also get rapidly (relatively) cheaper – the recent comment in the JEP by the JEC’s CEO Chris Ambler that tidal and offshore wind are still twice as expensive as conventional energy looks extremely short sighted – by the time any tidal power generators are commissioned, peak oil is likely to have made the energy they supply (relatively) cheaper than oil! Get started now!
The vain and foolish promises and hopes of our Chief Minister, and his Treasury and finance acolytes, that somehow business-as-usual can survive this energy body-blow, just demonstrates how completely out of touch with reality they are. They are currently trying to "talk up" a recovery they expect within a year, because their ideology tells them so, but frankly this is just as much wishful thinking as the misplaced confidence that leads to what is termed a "bear rally" in the stock-market (which is a system-wide event similar to the colourfully named "dead cat bounce" that individual shares on the way down-and-out can display).
When they use their flawed economic expectations to predict what things will be like here in Jersey in 2035, and beyond and how their ideas and “strategy” will enable us to to fund pensions etc, it becomes crystal clear that they are away with the fairies…
Here’s the article: Taken from ABC RURAL - an Aussie site - click for website
The global financial crisis might have put it back a little, but peak oil is just three years away, according to the chair of Australia's peak body for petroleum.
The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association's Eric Streitberg says peak oil is supply driven and new reserves are not being uncovered that can keep up with future demand..
He says a doubling or tripling of the current oil price is just around the corner.
"I'm expecting 2012, 2013, we'll see the inevitable supply crunch and prices are going to start going up again"
1 comment:
I noticed when I was over in Guernsey from their paper that their Government has invested in a seabed survey which will be given to all companies wanting to develop affordable wave power. Why can't we do the same? By facilitating this "start up" expense, they make it open to all companies rather than one company hoarding the information, and make it more likely that Guernsey not Jersey will get wave power first. And that is a Government initiative! The only environmental initiative I've heard of over here is re-introducing the proposed sewage tax, which is more a stealth tax than environmental measure.
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