‘Hydrocarbon resources around the world are abundant and will easily fuel the world through its transition to a sustainable energy future.’ Claude Mandil (2005) Executive director of the International Energy Agency - IEA.
Somewhere between 2007 and 2008, the International Energy Agency changed its mind. Previous assessments of oil supplies were dismissed as unreliable and the Agency undertook the first ever detailed analysis of what the global oil resource looked like. Until very recently ‘it was mainly an assumption - a global assumption about the world’s oil fields.’ (Fatih Birol - IEA, author of the Energy Outlook IEA 2008). It was a country by country, field by field study, both onshore and offshore and in addition it looked at decline rates across the major 800 oil fields in the world. So we begin to move from fiction to fact, and with the first set of publicly available data what are we looking at?
First, the IEA expects conventional oil extraction in the major fields to come to a plateau in three or four years time and then it will begin to decline. In global terms there is an assumption that this can continue - working in the known fields until around 2020 when it will plateau as well.
Second, a new, revised figure has been identified for the decline rate, that is the rate at which oil is declining in the fields globally. Last year (2007) this rate was stated at 3.7%, it has been revised to 6.7%.
This has some startling implications. It is taken as given that oil is running out - the IEA are clear that this is the case. What is not clear is how fast we are running out. But when we add into the equation the IEA revised estimate we could be looking globally at 2020 being the likely point at which we face a crash.
So where are the plans? Where are the contingency strategies? If we are really looking at something that is just over a decade away then we need to begin to weave a post oil mentality into the fabric of society - we don’t seem to be seeing the clock.
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