Guns, butter and petroleum

Prices may have fallen but black gold retains its unique ability to fuel international conflicts

…The reality remains that oil is a finite resource, a precious one-time inheritance we’ve used up recklessly over the past century. As a result, we’ve already consumed most of the Earth’s easily accessible oil. Much of what’s left can be produced only with great difficulty, at enormous environmental and financial cost


But in a surprising development, the International Energy Agency, the developed world’s oil watchdog, has revised its previously reassuring estimates and reported that the world’s major oil fields are declining faster than previously thought.

Last year, for the first time, the agency actually conducted a comprehensive study of the world’s 800 largest oil fields and concluded that the natural annual rate of output decline is a disturbingly high 9.1 per cent, about double previous estimates.

Toronto Star