Comment & Analysis
Life’s a journey of peaks and troughs. Riding high in April, and all too easily shot down in May, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra. Proponents of peak oil theory know what it’s like to be out in the cold, with the mainstream media wagging its finger in judgement at them and screaming: “Doomsayer!”
It is, perhaps, tempting to marginalise the views of experts on peak oil – because what they have to tell us is so unsettling, with implications for every aspect of our lives and lifestyles and the way in which the global economy works. In these troubled times, it’s easier to cry “conspiracy theorist” at people such as Dr Colin Campbell than it is to engage in reasoned debate about their views.
Petroleum geologist Dr Campbell, who lives in rural Ireland (“self-sufficiency will become a priority,” he said in 2000), believes that the maximum rate of extraction of oil from the ground was reached in 2005, after which, so the theory goes, production must necessarily enter a period of inexorable decline. Oil companies and Opec nations have historically misrepresented the level of reserves in the interest of profit and to fill quotas, Campbell argues, and there is likely to be far less oil left in the ground to extract than they claim.
The result will be a decline in production of 1-2% a year with economic slowdown triggered when oil hits $100 a barrel again on the back of constricted supply and ever-increasing demand for energy. Oil lubricates the economy: if we are running out, it entails a “turning point” in history, Campbell believes – an erosion of the fundamentals on which the empire of the West is based.
Dr Campbell, as he will tell you, has converted journalists into peak oil theorists – he mentions several who have happened upon the concept and retreated to rural idylls or gone away to spread the word (One such is David Strahan, a former BBC journalist turned documentary maker and author of The Last Oil Shock). And now there are signs that the idea is gaining traction in respected academic quarters, too, with Sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser to the government, warning this week: “We have to face up to a future of oil uncertainty much like the global economic uncertainty we have faced during the past two years.” Sir David’s comments came as the Oxford University Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, of which he is director, published new research that said oil production was likely to peak in the next five years and that reserves had been exaggerated by at least 250 billion barrels.
It’s a sign, perhaps, that peak oil theory is moving into the mainstream of scientific thinking and it will be interesting to see if it gains more traction in the coming months. Perhaps then Campbell and his adherents will be able to come in from the cold. Is peak oil theory destined to peak?