Peak Oil, Energy Futures and Violent Conflict

What is Peak Oil?

The term “peak oil” refers to the phenomenon of oil production reaching a maximum output at some point in time. Once peak production is reached, the number of barrels of this non-renewable resource extracted yearly will decline forever thereafter. Several nations have already reached peak oil for their domestic wells. The US, for example, reached peak oil in 1970 and has become dependent on imported oil, much of it from Canada.

The big question is when peak oil will occur on a global scale. M. King Hubbert, the oil geologist who devised the methodology for determining peak oil, predicted a global peak in the year 2000 [1]. But he made this prediction before the “oil crisis” of the ’70s and could not account for the decline in oil use over that period, thereby extending the period of peak oil by a few years.
Numerous estimates have been generated for the occurrence of peak oil on a global scale. They each use slightly difference assumptions about the amount of recoverable oil and global reserves (the most complete data on these issues are the private properties of various oil companies and oil producing nations). The vast majority of projections place the global peak sometime between 2000 and 2010.[2] Some few projections go out as far as 2020 or 2030, but these are based on assumptions most geologists challenge. All estimates say the peak will occur within the next few decades.

The Association for the Study of Peak Oil (www.aspo.org) tracks the oil production of various countries and provides information about the phenomenon. Early in 2005 Exxon Mobil publicly stated that they have projected peak oil for non-OPEC countries to occur in five years. [3] The Saudi government announced in 2003 that it had reached its maximum production, and Matthew Simmons,[4] a petroleum investment banker from Texas, and Vice Chair of Cheney’s Energy Task Force, has declared that when Saudi Arabia (the world’s largest oil producer) reaches peak oil, the world has reached peak oil (www.simmonsco-intl.com ).

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