In the run-up to credit crunch of 2007, whistleblowers were warning that an incumbency, the financial-services sector, had its asset assessment fundamentally wrong. The incumbency poured scorn on this, many of them professing that they had invented a new asset class – mortgage-backed securities and related complex derivatives – that represented an entirely new method of generating wealth.
Today, rather more whistleblowers are saying that another incumbency, the oil and gas sector, has its asset assessment fundamentally wrong. The incumbency pours scorn on this, insisting that they have opened up another new asset class – unconventional oil and gas – and that it represents another unforeseen road to riches. Some go so far as to say that North America is en route to being self-sufficient in hydrocarbons.
The first incumbency illusion proved to be a deadly bubble, the legacy of which still threatens to torpedo the global economy five years on. We will find out about the second within a few years. The UK industry taskforce on peak oil and energy security, which I convened, is among many groups forecasting a global descent in oil production by 2015 at the latest, notwithstanding all the incumbency rhetoric.
Ahead of the credit crunch, commentators echoed the incumbency mantras right across the media. Ahead of the oil crisis, the same is happening. Just Google “peak oil myth” and see what comes up. Yesterday George Monbiot joined this group with an article entitled We were wrong about peak oil. There’s enough to fry us all.
The many misunderstandings he relays begin with the title. There is more than enough potential oil resource below ground to create the climate disaster he refers to. Peak oil is not about that. It is about when global production falls never again to reach past levels: a disaster, if the descent hits an oil-dependent global economy years ahead of expectations. This descent depends on flow rates in oilfields, not the amount of oil left. What worries those who believe the global oil peak is imminent is the evidence that the oil industry will not be able to maintain growing flow rates for much longer.
The whistleblowing in the run-up to the credit crunch involved a few maverick economists and some far-sighted financial journalists. The peak-oil whistleblowing is different. Many within the incumbency itself are sounding alarms. Every year, when the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO) meets, recently retired oilmen queue to give their latest assessments of how their industry is getting its asset assessment wrong. The latest ASPO event was held a few weeks ago in Vienna, which I attended.
There has been “a boom in oil production” of late, Monbiot says. Wrong. Global production has been essentially struggling along a plateau since 2004, as Bob Hirsch, an ex-Exxon advisor to the US Department of Energy describes. Hirsch expects the descent to begin in one to four years.
Monbiot is correct that there has been a small increase in oil production in the United States in recent years. But can that continue, as he infers? Gas-industry whistleblower Art Berman describes how the shale gas gold-rush of recent years, now extending into shale oil, may well be a giant ponzi scheme: decline rates in wells are unexpectedly fast, meaning more and more have to be drilled at ever more expense, meaning ever more money has to be borrowed against cash flows from production that fall ever further behind. He looks at the resulting disaster in the balance sheets of oil and gas companies, and expects the bankruptcies to start any time soon. John Dizard has also warned of this particular bubble, in the Financial Times.
Even if oil production in America could somehow grow all the long way back to self sufficiency, what of the global picture, when conventional oil peaked back in 2006, as the International Energy Agency (IEA) has shown? The six Saudi Arabias of new production that would be needed to lift production to 100m barrels a day by 2030, according to the IEA, are a laughable prospect to the whistleblowers of ASPO, as many presentations in Vienna showed. The IEA clearly does not believe it is feasible. Neither do many still active in the incumbency, not least Total’s head of exploration, who recently warned that peak is just around the corner.
Society ignores such warnings, and listens to potential bubble-backers like Monbiot, at its peril. Like his conversion to nuclear power during the Fukushima disaster, Monbiot has chosen an interesting time for a change of mind.
Arthur on Sat, 7th Jul 2012 7:06 am
Wow, the peakoil message finally making it to the pages of the MSM. It’s a start.
Arthur on Sat, 7th Jul 2012 8:43 am
And the link from the article shows this was on ABC…
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3201781.htm
The world is in for a nasty surprise.
Oh wait, ABC Australia.
Arthur on Sat, 7th Jul 2012 9:11 am
Yesterday to my delight I discovered that Richard Heinberg is a truther as well:
http://deepresource.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/ae911truth-experts-speak-out/
Third video.
ronpatterson on Sat, 7th Jul 2012 3:43 pm
@Arthur Oh no! Here we go again. I thought peak oilers were through with these stupid 9/11 conspiracy theories. Peak oil and stupid 9/11 conspiracy theories are not remotely related. For God’s sake, give it a rest.
Arthur on Sun, 8th Jul 2012 9:47 am
@ron, so Richard Heinberg is ‘stupid’? Paul Craig Roberts? Former Italian president Cossiga? Former British cabinet minister Michael Meacher? Former German cabinet minister vob Buelow? President Ahmadinedjad.lol?
I understand that 9/11-truth is very inconvenient for anyone who would like to preserve the status-quo in the US, but for the rest of the world 9/11-truth is a golden opportunity to get rid of AIPAC-Washington on the cheap and prevent a devastating WW3.
So why do you think WTC7 collapsed in its own footprint with the acceleration of gravity other than through controlled demolition?
Silverstein (cornered): we decided to pull…
Exactly, but you can only pull a building after a lot of preparation, not in a few hours, certainly not during the panic of that day. The explosives were already present in the building, waiting for a plane that never showed up, F93. And that plane did not show up, because it had an unforseen delay of an hour, so a local commander who understood from television pictures that planes were used as missiles, send a fighter to F93 to see what was going on. The pilot, Eric Gibney, reported that everybody on board was dead (gassed, just like on the other 3 planes) after which the decision was taken to shoot the plane down.
Arthur on Sun, 8th Jul 2012 10:18 am
@ron, so you claim there is no relationship between peak oil and 9/11. Well, the most prominent face of the US peakoil movement begs to differ:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/689
But Heinberg chooses to stay within the realm of political correctness and to stay away from the Israeli angle to 9/11, lthough he comes close by praisingly refering to the concept of ‘The New Pearl Harbor’, which is a concept from the zionist dominated PNAC-movement. The zionists behind 9/11 needed this event to mobilise an unwilling American population behind their Full Spectrum Dominance agenda. Just like Delano-Roosevelt (check his ethnic background) left Japan no choice but to attack PH, in order to get their oil from the Dutch East Indies, after Roosevelt had imposed a devastating oil embargo against Japan, to be lifted under impossible conditions.
The zionist architects behind 9/11 knew from PH that sacrificing 2500 American lives is enough to mobilise the American population. The goal was to create a terror meme to be able to invade any country at will. And that is the situation now.
Arthur on Sun, 8th Jul 2012 10:29 am
@ron, after a few google searches I found out that THE grandfather of the global peak-oil movement, the Brit Colin Campbell is a truther as well.lol!!!
http://peakoil.com/forums/9-11-redux-pt-3-t62846.html
Still want to maintain that there is no relationship between 9/11 and peak-oil?
Arthur on Sun, 8th Jul 2012 11:06 am
About Full Spectrum Dominance:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frw87_Fbc8g
The zionists ruling Washington understood that oil is THE lifeline of the modern world and that control over oil means planetary control. That is their real motivation, not to enable these poor Americans to keep driving their SUVs. And since most of the oil is situated in the Islamic Middle East, the zionists, who aspire global control (which is the centerpiece of their Chosen religion), needed to invent the myth of Islamic Terrorism to find a justification for invading the ME. And that is the real story behind 911.
Arthur on Sun, 8th Jul 2012 1:02 pm
To make life even more miserably for ron, here is another top five US peakoiler/collapser, Michael Ruppert:
MIKE RUPPERT 9-11-2011 PORTLAND, OREGON
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbiyCldxG8s
He was a 9/11-truther even before I was (from 2005 onwards).
You can safely say that peakerism and trutherism almost overlap, certainly for the top of the movement, meaning the ones with brains.
I1 on Sun, 8th Jul 2012 1:51 pm
Arthur, notice how he’s got nothing but rotten fruit to heave at you, nothing of substance. Typical denialist mentality.
To believe that the largest intelligence complex ever assembled has not been cognizant of the implications from oil depletion for decades is the height of naivety. This is why the peak oil movement cannot gain traction and is continually the target of establishment derailleurs like Monbiot. Yes, Monbiot is a 9-11 truth denialist as well.
Richard Heinberg is intelligent and savvy enough to recognize the pitfalls associated with discussing the truth about 9-11. He’s kept it low key.
Arthur on Sun, 8th Jul 2012 2:02 pm
Thank God for ron I did find a prominent US-peaker, who does believe (or says he does) the official government conspiracy theory, James Howard Kunstler:
http://kunstler.com/mags_diary15.html
“After nineteen religious maniacs from the Middle East, mostly Arabs (though unaffiliated officially with any state in their actions) flew planes into our skyscrapers and a big government building, we had to kick someone’s ass.”
Now this makes me think of two other prominent (lefty) American intellectuals, Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky. These two guys had the nerve so say that they ‘did not care about who did 9/11’!!!!
See youtube: “Zinn on investigating 9/11”
and
“Chomsky dispels 9/11 conspiracies with sheer logic”
Chomsky admits that his position, that researching 9/11 is a ‘waste of time’, makes him pretyy much isolated within the political left.
My explanation for Kunstler’s, Chomsky’s and Zinn’s position is that these are very smart people who understand very well who did 9/11 if it was not done by ‘Arabs with boxcutters’. These people are sh****** in their pants for the repurcussions it could have for their position if this kind of truth comes out. I sincerely hope they have a plane ticket to Israel in their drawer once that will happen. And it only takes the leakage of a single confiscated Pentagon video to the internet to set America on fire. I understand very well why so many decent Americans are rather silent about this topic.