View from the peak

Cheap oil is gone, and cities heavily dependent on fossil fuels must start preparing for change

Oil has fuelled the expansion of industrialised societies for 100 years, and it is an excellent source of energy for production, transport, mass tourism and trade. Rising standards of living in many countries over the past 50 years have depended on cheap oil, and it seemed that the supply was nearly endless. But oil was a windfall gift to us from the Earth’s geological history and it is finite, not renewable. We will consume most of the remaining oil within the next few decades.

We are entering, or are close to, the so-called “peak oil” period, when production will level off. Despite intensive exploration, discoveries have been dwindling in most regions of the world since the 1960s, even as demand for oil continues to rise. After worldwide oil production reaches this peak period, probably before 2010 according to many analysts, oil production will eventually begin to decline. There will be some fluctuations, but the longer-term decline is inevitable, and irreversible. It has been estimated that, within 40 or 50 years, we will have a post-oil economy.


We have seen this “peak” and decline already, in US oil production. Geophysicist King Hubbert predicted, in the 1950s, that the peak of oil production for the 48 states of the continental United States would occur around 1970. He was ridiculed for this prediction. But he had studied the history of oil extraction for many years, and done the maths, and he got it nearly right. Production in the US declined, starting in the early 1970s, just as Hubbert predicted. Such analysis has been applied to global oil production: we can see what is coming.

There is currently no good substitute for oil. We will have to turn to coal and natural gas for an increasing portion of our energy supplies, but coal provides much less net energy per unit than oil. In addition, coal will provide electricity but not much net energy for most of our transport. Natural-gas production will also go through a “peak” period, followed by a decline, for the same reasons. According to environmental author Richard Heinberg, industrial societies have had a “party” for most of the last century with this great free gift from the past, but that gift will soon be used up, and the party will be over.

Renewable sources of energy – wind power, solar power and a few other technologies – will help, but it appears that they will be able to supply only a small fraction of the energy that we currently get from oil and natural gas.

South China Morning Post