When will we hit peak oil? Try 2009 – Macquarie

Peak oil supply will be hit this year after the economic crisis and low prices in the first quarter of 2009 slashed much needed investment, a senior executive at Australian investment bank Macquarie said.

“This is our view — capacity has pretty much peaked in the sense that declines equal new resources,” Iain Reid, head of European oil and gas research at Macquarie, told Reuters.
Reid, who spent 16 years with oil firms Shell and Amerada Hess, saw the current spare capacity cushion of around 5.2 million barrels wiped out by 2012. “With the reduction in spending on mature fields, that’s the major driver. Then really it’s about, ‘where do the new sources come from?’,” Reid said, adding the economic crisis had further restricted investment.

Macquarie saw the potential for a huge supply deficit to emerge, with global oil demand predicted to rise to 90.9 million bpd by 2015 from 84.2 million bpd today because of rising consumption from China and other emerging markets.

“Adding sufficient productive capacity on time is nearly impossible,” Reid said in his report.

Episodes of higher oil prices would be an obvious consequence, without either a greater political push for efficiency savings or new technological advances, he said.

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