Bye Bye Petroleum

Corporate Watch – With demand for oil soaring yet supply stable at best, the idea that oil stocks have ‘peaked’ is increasingly influential. So what are the latest theories around peak oil? B Leamy reports.

Around two hundred scientists, economists, analysts and academics attended the 5th International Workshop on Oil and Gas Depletion in Italy this month. Organized by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO), this event moved on from their previous conferences, which concentrated mostly on providing evidence and attempting to forecast an actual date. This year, most of the invited speakers considered that the argument had now been won and were instead focusing more on possibilities for mitigating the consequences of the coming end of cheap oil.

Colin Campbell, honorary chairman of ASPO international, began the conference with a prediction that peak oil would bring a succession of price spikes followed by global recession. He warned that current financial structures would be threatened, as the power to control money shifts, and suggested that a new era of geopolitics would emerge, with energy rich Russia ascending while energy depleted US and Europe compete with China for finite resources.

Corporate Watch