There is a stirring in the body politic. Articles appearing in Time, Fortune, American Conservative, Eugene Register-Guard etc. talking about peak oil. Ask Google about peak oil and it offers thirteen and half million places to go.. Looking at the first few offerings and you will be assured sky is falling. What’s to believe? Are these guys for real?

You’d like to know the truth of it. The U.S. Dept. Of Energy felt the same way. They commissioned the Science Applications International Corp (SAIC) to evaluate the present situation and recommend responses. SAIC chose Robert L. Hirsch to lead the team. I’ll not trouble to give you background on the corporation or Bob Hirsch – Google will happily provide that material to you. Trust me, Hirsch is a man who is quite likely to have a handle on this stuff.

The Hirsch Report was delivered to DOE in February, 2005. It is in the public domain. Your right of access to the report cannot be denied, but don’t go to DOE for a copy. They will not give it to you. Go to www.mnforsustain.net, and ask their search option for the document. I’d suggest downloading it – it’s a lengthy report and I took several days to read it. Dense material, well documented. If you read judiciously you will find it interesting.

Peak oil is a subject for each of us because it impacts everyone.. The implications are enormous and no one can expect to be spared the consequences – unless they take pains to be in a protected environment – a not impossible dream. I’m an old guy. National and international crises are nothing new to me. Trust me, this one is a whopper. Sounds like exaggeration? Try thehe first two sentences in the Executive Summary of the Hirsch Report: “The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices, and price volatility will increase dramatically, and without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented.” My life span has encompassed the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, Viet Nam War, Cold War, and a couple wars in Iraq. Something bigger than any of that?

When will peak oil happen? I do not know. Nobody knows. See the Hirsch Report. It says the data which is the foundation of all estimates is unreliable. Peak oil is like recession, you have to be in it for a while to determine its existence. There are those who say it has already happened. The bulk of estimates from those qualified to estimate are grouped around 2010. That’s only a few months away. The Hirsch Report says that for mitigation to be effective, it must be applied ten to twenty years in advance of peak oil. We get caught unawares, those unprecedented risks are going to fall on our necks.

What are those risks? We have experienced oil shortages three times in the recent past. In 1973 OPEC shut down the spigots to force more equity for producers. In 1979 Iran blockaded the Straits of Hormuz, In 2005 Katrina struck. In none of those instances did supply decrease by more than 5% In 1973 the quadrupling of oil prices sent a wave of inflation washing over the U.S., to be reinforced by the doubling of oil prices in 1979. Only the most severe Recession since the Great Depression reduced inflation to more acceptable levels. We have not yet experienced that kind of inflation from Katrina, but Ford and GM are in a world of hurt. When anticipated increases in world demand are coupled with decreasing production from exhausted oil fields, a 5% gap each and every year forever can be anticipated. Economics says that high demand and low supply will most certainly fuel inflationary pressures, and that level of unrelenting pressure is what is unprecedented. Those inflationary pressures will effect what you can find to eat, how to get to work, should you still happen to have a job, how you will keep your home warm – virtually nothing can be left untouched.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 23rd, 2006 at 4:24 pm and is filed under Energy Future, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.