Cohousing-L Mailing List: Peak oil

[dwoodard (dwoodard]

It's real. Among other things, the rate of discovery of new oil reserves
fell below the rate of production and consumption about 1981. It's now
below 40% of consumption most years. It won't take long before production
and consumption follow discovery.

Analysts have noticed that for some reason the oil companies are not
investing much in exploration these days despite high oil prices. It looks
as if they don't think it's profitable, which is borne out by the costs of
recent exploration and its results.

In 1995 Petroconsultants of Geneva published a comprehensive study of
world oil reserves. It's still available from their successor company for
a mere US$32,000; an excellent and essential investment for any oil
company. As for the peasants....

This topic is highly relevant to cohousing.

The URLs below may be of interest to you.

WORLD FUEL SUPPLIES

This is a good succinct introduction to peak oil and gas from a Canadian
point of view by Paul Sears (Ottawa?).

http://web.ncf.ca/ez469/Temp/Ottawa_City_EA_31mar2005_2.ppt


For good review articles on the world oil and gas situation, see

"The Peak and Decline of World Oil and Gas
Production" by K. Aleklett and C. J. Campbell, at

http://www.isv.uu.se/UHDSG/articles/OilpeakMineralsEnergy.doc

and

"Oil depletion in the United States and the world"
by Seppo Korpela, at
http://rclsgi.eng.ohio-state.edu/~korpela/opmatalk.pdf

There are several good links from Seppo Korpela's website at
http://rclsgi.eng.ohio-state.edu/~korpela/oil.html

Jacob Lund Fisker's site is especially informative.

I have an article which overlaps, but covers some slightly
different ground including the role of markets, and U.S.
foreign policy, at
http://www.greenpartyreview.ca/OGN/1-1/article7.php

For a good article on the limits of markets in anticipating resource
shortages, see
http://www.energycrisis.co.uk/reynolds/MineralEconomy.htm

Oil Depletion Analysis Centre
http:www.odac-info.org

Association for the Study of Peak Oil
http://www.peakoil.net
http://www.asponews.org

Douglas Woodard
Green Party of Ontario Energy Issue Advocate
St. Catharines, Ontario
<dwoodard(at)becon.org>
(905) 682-4349