Chapter 8 - Peak Oil

In this chapter, Robinson starts out by providing a bit of world history around energy sources. Although the information he provides is interesting, I'm not going to go into detail on this here.

Robinson provides a definition of peak oil, which is basically when the easily extractable oil has be extracted and the oil that is left costs more to extract than it is worth. In the author's words, "when energy extracted from the ground begins to require more energy than can be produced by the extraction, this is referred to as peak oil.

He goes on to say that the issue is not a lack of oil and that the earth will likely never run out of oil. The issue is that we will run out of cheap oil and, actually, the "peak oil theory" says that our world is already running out of cheap oil supplies.

Robinson spends the remainder of the chapter on discussing peak oil vs cheap oil in a question and answer format.

The first question is regarding proof about the peak oil theory. In the answer, the author discusses Marion King Hubbert, an American geophysicist and Shell Oil employee in the 1950's and also the one to first advance the peak oil theory. Hubbert gave a famous speech in which he described the three phases that energy production moves through. In 1956, Hubbert predicted that America's oil production would peak sometime between 1965 and 1971. Robinson provides the data to show that our oil production did indeed peak in 1970.

The next question is how are we still increasing our oil consumption if our production peak in 1970. The answer is we get it from foreign countries, which I think everyone already knows. This is interesting though: "in 1970 we imported only 24 percent of our oil from foreign nations. Today, that number has increased to 70 percent. And it is growing. In fact, each and every day America consumes around 25 percent of the world's available oil production. That's about 21 million barrels a day! What makes this number even more staggering is that America only makes up 5 percent of the global population. Never before in history has one nation been as dependent on foreign nations for its own supply of energy as America is today."

The next question is does the government have a plan? The answer, which I think we all know, is no.

Next question: don't we (America) still have some large, untapped oil reserves here and won't we be fine with that? He goes into a little more detail but the answer is no.

Next question: so our oil has peaked but what about the rest of the world? Robinson quotes an in-depth report commissioned and sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Energy and released in 2005 (Peaking of World Oil Production: Impact, Mitigation and Risk Management, also known as the Hirsch Report). Significant points made from this report by Robinson are that the world's oil supplies will peak and already have in 33 of the world's 48 largest oil-producing countries, we will likely have less than 1 year's warning when global peak happens, it is estimated to happen sometime between now and 2040, we will be greatly impacted since we are so highly dependent on cheap oil.

The days of easy oil are over is the message of this chapter.