Peak oil: what does the data say?
Terry Macalister, Guardian, November 13, 2009
The controversy over the International Energy Agency (IEA) figures has highlighted the peak oil debate. What do the numbers say?
The question is not if the world is running out of oil, it's when. There are finite quantities of crude even if the oil companies get the chance to dig up the Arctic as they are desperate to do.
The Peak Oil debate is about how soon we will find resources depleted with the pessimists believing that time has pretty much arrived while the optimists insist that point will not be reached for decades. The International Energy Agency is now saying it could be 2020 but clearly much depends on how much production and demand there is.
One figure that neatly points up the difference between the two sides is the rate of output by 2030. The IEA says the world will be producing 105million barrels a day - up from today's 85m barrels. Senior insiders from the organisation say they believe the figure will be closer to 90m-95m.
But academics from Uppsala University in Sweden and Liverpool University in Britain believe the figure is more likely to be 75m.
While you can argue that these are just different "scenarios" with no certainty to any of them, Uppsala and others firmly believe the IEA numbers are massaged upwards purposefully to avoid any "panic" and extreme escalation in oil prices. The IEA says claims of "politicising" the numbers are groundless, pointing out its figures are checked by 200 independent experts.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2009/nov/13/peak-oil-iea-uppsala
