Running on empty

>> Peak Oil theorists discuss what
happens when the wells go dry

GET READY FOR MORE WALKING: Shane Mulligan

by SAMER ELATRASH

Montreal’s Advocates for Oil Awareness is one of many groups across North America that say modern society is in for a rude awakening: petroleum and conventional fuels are ending, and there is no alternative, thus far, that could replace it. “Everything is predicated on the availability of a cheap oil supply,” says Shane Mulligan, a professor of political science at Concordia and an organizer with peak oil Awareness. “What we’ve become accustomed to as quality of life is likely to suffer.”

Difficult is an understatement, according to scenarios envisioned by the peak oil theory, first proposed by Shell geologist Dr. Marion King Hubbert in 1956. Hubbert said that oil production follows a curve, rising as more fields are discovered and new technologies are developed, and then declining when new fields become scarce and costs of recovery increase.

“A tremendous amount of what has been made possible has been because of oil,” says Mulligan. “Grain is transported 1,000 miles before it can be turned into bread.” As oil prices skyrocket, and demand for energy continues to rise, national and global economies will crumble, and there may be no way to avoid it, says Mulligan.

Thirst for consumption

Peak oil groups received an unexpected boost after the U.S. Department of Energy released a report in 2005 saying global oil production peaked in the 1920s, and that the government should take immediate measures to begin a 20-year crash program to develop transportation, energy and urbanization alternatives

“The world has never faced a problem like oil peaking,” says Roger Bezdek, a former U.S. government advisor who co-authored the report. “There are many undiscovered oil fields, but there is more consumption, and new oil fields would just compensate for depleting oil fields.”

Peak oil has many detractors, who say predictions were often wrong (the date for oil peak has been pushed up several times by peak oil analysts) and that advances in technology would recover more oil. Peter Foster, author of several books on Canadian oil and a columnist for the Financial Post, has been among the most vocal of the critics in Canada. Oil will run out someday, he says, but, “The history of interventionist government energy policy is a trail of disaster.”

Foster adds that most subscribers to peak oil are not economists, and they ignore how markets work. A transition to alternative fuels “will be guided by market signals and innovation,” he says. “Governments’ attempts to ‘see the future’ will just screw things up, as they always have.”

Alternatives lacking

It is impossible to predict when oil production will peak because oil companies are notoriously tight on information about their reserves, especially national companies in the Middle East, which sit on roughly 70 per cent of conventional oil reserves. The International Energy Agency estimates that international oil demand will increase by 70 per cent by 2030, and that the world will increasingly rely on the Middle East fields to supply the demand. The report denies there is a shortage of oil. But a 2005 Bank of Montreal report concluded that Ghawar, the largest field in Saudi Arabia, had already peaked, and that the country was producing “heavy oil,” the lesser quality oil that remains in a depleting field.

Peak oil proponents say existing alternatives to conventional fuel would not meet the growing demand. Biofuels, for example, would only meet four per cent of world demand in the next decade, even if methods were found to better process them, according to a study by consultancy group Woods Mackenzie. Other types of oil, such as bitumen in Venezuelan and Canadian tar sands, which theoretically are the largest reserves, are costly to produce, and even at their highest production, would not meet soaring international demands.

Mulligan’s group is still young, but it hopes to persuade the municipality to adopt similar policies recommended in Portland, Oregon by a municipal task force on peak oil, which said the city should adopt a policy of urban management that reduces fuel use and encourages local food production.

“Presenting it as a doomsday scenario is discouraging,” says Mulligan, “but we’re just heading that way. We could at least try to mitigate some of the consequences.”

Advocates for Oil Awareness is screening The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream,
on Friday, June 15, at 1257 Guy, Room 245, 6 p.m.
See oilawareness.meetup. com/268/?gj=sj6 for more info.