What is Peak Oil?
Peak Oil is the simplest label for the problem of energy resource depletion, or more specifically, the peak in global oil production. Oil is a finite, non-renewable resource, one that has powered phenomenal economic and population growth over the last century and a half. The rate of oil 'production,' meaning extraction and refining (currently about 84 million barrels/day), has grown in most years over the last century, but once we go through the halfway point of all reserves, production becomes ever more likely to decline, hence 'peak'. Peak Oil means not 'running out of oil', but 'running out of cheap oil'. For societies leveraged on ever increasing amounts of cheap oil, the consequences may be dire. Without significant successful cultural reform, economic and social decline seems inevitable.
Of the 65 largest oil producing countries in the world, up to 54 have past their peak of production and are now in decline, including the USA (in 1970/71) and the North Sea (in 2001). Hubbert's methods, and variations on them, have been used to make various projections about the global oil peak, with results ranging from 'already peaked', to the very optimistic 2035.
Combined oil and gas, are expected to also peak around 2010. Other researchers such as Kenneth Deffeyes and A. M. Samsam Bakhtiari have produced models with similar or even earlier projected dates for oil peak. Other quite different types of analysis have provided supporting evidence to these 'early peak' scenarios, most notably UK Petroleum Review editor Chris Skrebowski's Oilfields Megaproject reports, and energy banker Matthew Simmons' analysis of Saudi Arabian oil fields.
But it's just oil - there are other fossil fuels, other energy sources, right?
To evaluate other energy sources it helps to understand the concepts of Net Energy, or the Energy Returned on Energy Invested ratio (ERoEI). One of the reasons our economies have grown so abundant so quickly over the last few generations is precisely because oil has had an unprecedently high ERoEI ratio. In the early days of oil, for every barrel of oil used for exploration and drilling, up to 100 barrels of oil were found. More recently, as oil recovery becomes more difficult, the ratio has become significantly lower. Certain alternative energy 'sources' may actually have ERoEI ratios of less than one, such most methods of industrially producing biodiesel and ethanol. That is, when all factors are considered, you probably need to invest more energy into the process than you get back. Hydrogen, touted by many as a seamless solution, is actually an energy carrier, but not an energy source. Hydrogen must be produced using an energy source such as natural gas or nuclear power. Because of energy losses in transformation, the hydrogen will always contain less energy than was invested in it.
To evaluate other energy sources it helps to understand the concepts of Net Energy, or the Energy Returned on Energy Invested ratio (ERoEI). One of the reasons our economies have grown so abundant so quickly over the last few generations is precisely because oil has had an unprecedently high ERoEI ratio. In the early days of oil, for every barrel of oil used for exploration and drilling, up to 100 barrels of oil were found. More recently, as oil recovery becomes more difficult, the ratio has become significantly lower. Certain alternative energy 'sources' may actually have ERoEI ratios of less than one, such most methods of industrially producing biodiesel and ethanol. That is, when all factors are considered, you probably need to invest more energy into the process than you get back. Hydrogen, touted by many as a seamless solution, is actually an energy carrier, but not an energy source. Hydrogen must be produced using an energy source such as natural gas or nuclear power. Because of energy losses in transformation, the hydrogen will always contain less energy than was invested in it.
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