”Peak oil” advocates blast U.S. industry study

Proponents of “peak oil” — the theory that global crude oil production has hit its zenith and is headed for a steep decline — are steamed with a U.S. oil industry group’s findings that the world has plenty of oil.

Next week the U.S. National Petroleum Council — a board of high-level U.S. oil industry executives — releases its study titled “Facing the Hard Truths about Energy,” conducted at the behest of Energy Secretary Sam Bodman.
According to the report’s executive summary obtained by Reuters, the world is not running out of oil but there are “accumulating risks” to securing supply through 2030.

Peak oil theorists say such findings gloss over Bodman’s request to study the issue in detail.

“They’ve labored mightily and come up with a mouse,” said Randy Udall at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, whose group dismisses the report as “petro Prozac.”

“Give me four college students and two weeks, and I could do better,” Udall said.

“I don’t think (the council) did what they asked them to do,” Bartlett said in his office this week, brandishing a closet-full of charts and graphs that map out various world oil consumption scenarios. “We’re disappointed.”

Reuters