Bush may be taking the idea of peak oil seriously

“America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world,” George W. Bush declared in his State of the Union speech last month. His solution is what he calls the “Advanced Energy Initiative,” consisting primarily of investment in alternative technologies. Was Bush serious? The Wall Street Journal didn’t think so. Bush’s proposal, the newspaper editorialized, was the result of a “fixation on polls” that show Americans “are anxious about gas prices.”

But Bush’s proposal for solar or safe nuclear power will not lead energy prices to fall anytime soon. So while it’s true that, like most Bush statements, this one clearly contained a kernel of politics, it may also have reflected genuine concern about a real problem: America’s dependence on oil, regardless of where it comes from. This concern, which originated decades ago among maverick geologists, has spread recently to Bush’s Department of Energy (DOE) and may have been at least partly responsible for his surprising and uncharacteristic remark about the country’s addiction to oil. If so, it’s a welcome admission–even if the solutions Bush is proposing fall woefully short.

M. King Hubbert, a Shell Oil geophysicist, was the first to propose what has come to be called the theory of peak oil. Hubbert predicted in 1956 that American oil production, thought at the time to be virtually limitless, would peak around 1970 and then decline, which it did. Hubbert’s students and disciples, including Princeton geologist Kenneth S. Deffeyes, have extended his theory to world oil reserves, predicting that global production will peak sometime soon and thereafter decline, even as demand continues to rise. The present debate among energy experts is no longer over whether a peak will occur, but how soon and how precipitous the subsequent decline will be. Deffeyes thinks the peak was reached at the end of last year and could lead to a “hard landing.” Caltech physicist David Goodstein thinks it could occur before 2010. By contrast, Daniel Yergin’s Cambridge Energy Research Associates puts it after 2020 and predicts an “undulating plateau.”

Until recently, the Bush administration’s DOE appeared to side more with Yergin than with Deffeyes and Goodstein, but a DOE report issued last February, along with recent comments from Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, suggests it might be rethinking its position. The report, “Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management,” by Robert L. Hirsch, Roger Bezdek, and Robert Wendling, argues that the predictions of imminent peaking must be taken seriously. “The oil reserves discovered per exploratory well have been declining worldwide for more than a decade,” they write in an article adapted from the report. “We are finding less and less oil in spite of vigorous efforts, suggesting that nature may not have much more to provide.” At the same time, the authors note, the DOE predicts that world oil demand will grow by 50 percent by 2025.

The New Republic