‘Peak oil’ – Are we prepared for it?

Chris Skrebowski, a researcher for the Energy Institute in Britain, told the delegates of the Sub-Saharan Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Conference in Cape Town this past Tuesday that the oil supply will peak in 2011 or 2012 at around 93 million barrels a day.

Robert Hirsch, a senior energy analyst at Management Information Services, Inc., a Washington, D.C., research and consulting firm, is concerned that the U.S. and most of the world has not prepared seriously for a “peak” in world oil output. “If we wait until the problem hits us, we are in for very serious economic problems worldwide for at least 20 years,” he says. “There is no good news. Nobody is really doing anything.”
The GAO (Government Accountability Office) in a March 2007 report said, “While the consequences of a peak would be felt globally, the United States, as the largest consumer of oil and one of the nations most heavily dependent on oil for transportation, may be particularly vulnerable.”

That’s a good conclusion, because we use 95 percent of our 21 million barrels per day for transportation and we import now 75 percent of that. To say our country is vulnerable is gross understatement. Are we prepared for peak oil?

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