Bush Advisor Matt Simmons Who Advised
Cheney's Energy Task Force Confirms Peak Oil is Major Concern of Bush
Administration
Peak Oil Symptoms More Apparent
Recoverable Reserves May Be Less Than Hoped
Natural Gas Shortages May Appear in US This
Year
Hydrogen Vastly Overrated and Not Likely to
Offer Solution
Paris Peak Oil Conference Reveals Deepening
Crisis
by Michael
C. Ruppert
© Copyright 2003, From
The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All
Rights Reserved. This story may NOT be posted on any Internet web site without
express written permission. Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]. May be circulated, distributed or
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May 30, 2003, 1800 PDT, (FTW), PARIS Research presented on May 26th and
27th at the French Institute for Petroleum (IFP) by a wide variety of
experts from varying and often competitive perspectives disclosed that, in the
year since the first conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil
(ASPO) supply, constraints have worsened and the realities of energy depletion
are becoming more apparent. A year of violent political history centered on oil
and ever-more unforgiving production results have begun to force reluctant
political and economic acknowledgement of Peak Oi's threat to civilization. Yet
ASPO's founder, Professor Colin Campbell, and his colleagues, retired
TotalFinaElf Exploration Manager, Jean Laherrère, and Physics
Professor, Kjell Aleklett, have good reason to be pleased with the
second-ever ASPO conference. Two hundred people from more than twenty countries
attended this year, doubling attendance for the inaugural event held last May in
Uppsala, Sweden. In an acknowledgement
of Peak Oi's penetration of official consciousness, the event was partially
subsidized by the French Institute for Petroleum, the oil services firm
Schlumberger, and the French oil giant, Total. The fact that it was held at a
government institution was, according to Campbell, evidence of the fact that
Peak Oil can no longer be completely ignored, even by politicians.
Olivier Appert, Chairman of the IFP, bluntly acknowledged that many oil
experts have concluded that world oil depletion is between five and ten per cent
per year and that 60 Million barrels per day (Mbpd) of
new capacity is needed to meet demand. On that basis he concluded in his opening
remarks, "It is timely to reopen the debate." Appert however told the audience
that he was an optimist basically because he predicted that new technologies
would produce new discoveries and better recovery in the future.
But quiet, official support of the conference fell far short of the political
and economic mobilization the organizers believe necessary to respond to a
crisis that might start grinding national economies to a halt and causing
massive dislocations in short order. As one conference organizer told
FTW, "The fact that several governments have asked to be kept
fully informed,' or that the French government allows us to use their
facilities, or that major oil companies and automakers like Daimler-Chrysler
come to make presentations is a way of listening closely to what we are doing
without having to publicly accept what we are saying. The political and economic
ramifications of that are too drastic from their perspectives, but each hour of
delay only assures that the eventual crisis will be worse once it has been
acknowledged."
IFP Chairman Appert's optimism was belied by experts like
Laherrère, whose brutally honest graphs and plots not only mirror
the truth of declining discovery and production but also establish
scientifically that there are no more major significant reserves to be found.
Other experts established definitively that wildly exaggerated hopes for polar
or deep sea discoveries, or tar sands production are both unfounded and
dangerously deceptive because of the excessive production costs and the
investment required to develop what will likely prove
to be disappointing yields.
In the end, the most realistic and integrated analyses were delivered by
political scientist and author Michael Klare and Professor Kenneth Deffeyes of
Princeton, a one-time colleague of the late M. King Hubbert, whose Hubbert Curve
predicted today's events with startling accuracy some six decades ago. These two
conference presenters gave integrated presentations incorporating real-world
current events and showed clearly that Peak Oil is here now.
BBC sets the tone
One of the first presentations of the conference was the screening of a new
BBC documentary which aired on March 26, 2003, titled, "The War For Oil." In stark and irrefutable detail the film verified
every major aspect of Peak Oil including declining production, vanishing
discovery rates, smaller field sizes and increasing demand. It pointed out that
worldwide production capacity was stretched to the limit and that the
US would be importing seventy
