Toward an oil apocalypse
Within a few
years, world oil production by conventional means will decline, while world
demand keeps increasing. The shock that
will result from this structural shortage is inevitable, so large is the
dependency of our economies upon cheap oil, and impossible the rapid decrease
of our needs.
We can at
best hope to alleviate the shock, and this only provided the coming shortage
becomes now the major concern of our societies, and the beginning of drastic
changes in all sectors. Otherwise it will be chaos. This anticipation is based upon the method of
calculation of American geologist King Hubbert, who, in 1956, predicted that
domestic oil production in
Transposing
Hubbert's method to other countries produced similar predictions: today all
giant oil fields - the only ones that matter - see their production decline,
except in the "black triangle" Iraq- Iran-Saudi Arabia.
Hubbert peak
for this
Sectors that
will be hit first by the continuous rise in oil prices are air transports and
intensive agriculture; kerosene prices for the first one, and nitrate
fertilizers prices for the second one are directly linked to oil prices. This
will happen without the political flexibility that, in other sectors, can
stabilize, for a while, economic movements by lowering oil taxes, when prices
rise.
Next, land
transports, tourism, petrochemical and automotive industries will be struck by
the depressive effects of a diminishing quantity of oil (depletion). To which extent this situation will lead to a
general recession? Nobody knows, but the
blind behaviour of our political leaders and the usual panic stricken reactions
of markets let us forecast the worst.
This sure
prophecy is universally ignored, denied or underestimated. Those measuring exactly the imminence and the
scope of its advent are rare. Michael Meacher, former British environment
minister (1997-2003), recently wrote in the Financial Time that unless a
general consciousness arousing takes place, and immediate planetary wide
decisions taken on severe changes in terms of energy "civilization will be
faced with the most acute and probably the most violent mayhem in its recent
history".
If we want
to maintain, nevertheless, some humanity to life on earth in the years 2010 and
after we should, as geologist Colin Campbell suggests, call upon the United
Nations to work today on an agreement to guarantee poor countries the
possibility to keep importing some oil; to forbid profits from the oil
shortage; to encourage energy savings; and to spur renewable energies.
In order to
reach these objectives the universal agreement will have to enforce the
following measures: each state will control imports and exports of oil; no oil
exporting country will produce more oil than a scientifically calculated yearly
depletion rate permits; each state will reduce its imports of oil according to
a worldwide depletion rate agreed-upon.
This
necessary priority given to physical econometrics will displease economists and
political executives, particularly Americans.
The succession of
Western
states then tried to get the lead back, and to erase the looming shortage, not
so much by adopting energy frugality than by activating oil fields in
In the early
1980's the American strategy of reconquest of oil flows and prices lead them to
finance and supply weapons to Saddam Hussein for his war against
This lead to
the 1986 oil counter-shock, when the West once again believed in an unlimited
oil supply, and to the energy hunger up to the Iraq wars (1991,2003), whatever
the number of dead (100 000? 300 000?), whatever the costs (100 billion
dollars? 300 billions?), whatever the
resources required (annual Department of Defence budget: 400 billion dollars).
During these
same last 15 years, the multiple Balkans’ conflicts find their source and their
resolution in the American will to keep
Oil
geopolitics allow all kinds of pacts with the devilish Islamists, from Central Asia
to Bosnia, and any cynical connivance with terrorists, up to the recent trip of
Tony Blair to Libya to enable Shell to raise its reserves, for a price of a few
hundred million dollars.
The American
"Great Middle East" project, dressed up into humanitarian and
democratic considerations, is nothing more than the attempt to grab once for
all the oil taps of the region.
More than
thirty years of concerns about oil did not make American and European leaders
less blind about the energy crisis that is looming up in the short-term.
Despite what René Dumont and the ecologists said as early as the 1974 French
presidential campaign, the governments of industrialized countries kept
believing, and still believe, in a cheap and limitless oil supply - and also
despite the harm to climate and to human health, disturbed by greenhouse gases
- rather than organizing the decarbonisation of their economies.
However, the
oil shock that is likely to happen before the end of the decade does not
resemble the preceding ones. This time
the game is no longer geopolitics, it is geology. In 1973 and 1979 the shortages had a
political origin, decided by OPEC. Then
the supply was brought back to demand level.
Today it is the oil wells that are dwindling. Even if the United States are temporarily
able to maintain their hegemony on all the oil fields of the world (outside
Russia), their army and their technology will be helpless against the
forthcoming depletion of conventional oil.
Anyway, too
little time is left to us to replace such a cheap fluid, so energetic, so easy
to use, to store and to transport, with so many applications (domestic,
industrial, cars, raw materials...) and to reinvest within less than 10 years
100 000 billion dollars into another abundant source that does not exist.
Natural
gas? It doesn't have all the above
mentioned qualities of oil, and anyway it will reach its peak of production 10
years after the first one, around 2020.
The only viable way is oil self-restraint, immediately organized by an
international agreement, as outlined above that would permit a rapid drop off
of our addiction to this "black gold".
Without
waiting for this delicate international agreement, our newly elected regional
leaders and our forthcoming elected European leaders should, with a high
priority, devote their efforts to locally put into practice these objectives,
by organizing on their territories the reduction of oil consumption.
If this is
not done, rationing will be achieved by markets, with the next climb in oil
prices, and then, via inflation, the shock will reach all sectors. At the soon-to-come price of 100 dollars per
barrel, it will not simply be another oil shock, it will be the end of the
world as we know it.
Yves Cochet
Member of Parliament,
ecologist party, former minister of environment,
Le Monde, 31 March 2004
(Translation AC)