We are running out of oil

Meanwhile, the world creeps closer daily to its peak. Saudi Arabia’s production is down 8 percent in 2006 over 2005 and its Ghawar field, the largest ever discovered, is declining. Mexico’s largest field, Cantarell, is crashing at least at a 15 percent annual decline. According to an employee of PEMEX, Mexico’s national oil company, the production expectations of new fields are a fraction of Cantarell and others in terminal decline. This will cause enormous stresses to PEMEX and the entire economy of Mexico. Russia is nearing peak. The North Sea, Iran, Indonesia (an OPEC member) and Venezuela are all past peak, producing less every year.

The only regions left on Earth still on the upswing of production are the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Basin. Needless to say, not all the folks in these regions are too fond of us and do not consider the fulfillment of our oil addiction necessarily vital to their national interests.
The conclusion that anyone who has studied the international oil situation would reach is that it would be a true-blue miracle if every gallon Americans wish to consume continues to flow into our gas tanks for another decade. The OPEC embargoes were artificial shortages, politically motivated. The next oil shortage will be real, permanent and worse every year. This impending crisis has the potential to cripple our economy and end our reign as the world’s pre-eminent economic power.

Denton concludes that burning less fuel by producing more efficient vehicles is part of the solution. However, we face a fundamentally more challenging situation. Asking how we will run all our cars more efficiently or on other fuels is flawed and counterproductive. We need to be asking how we will feed, employ, educate and re-create ourselves with significantly less mobility, both of ourselves and all the products we consume. Social critic James Howard Kunstler writes, we will soon be forced by nature to “start thinking beyond the car. We have to make other arrangements for virtually all the common activities of daily life.”

Roanoke Times