Monday, November 12, 2007

Peaked Out?

For another good article on peak oil check out Michael T. Klare's piece Beyond the Age of Petroleum in The Nation

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071112/klare


Michael T. Klare is the defense correspondent of The Nation and a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College.

Here's an excerpt from the article;


"This past May, in an unheralded and almost unnoticed move, the Energy Department signalled a fundamental, near epochal shift in US and indeed world history: we are nearing the end of the Petroleum Age and have entered the Age of Insufficiency. The department stopped talking about "oil" in its projections of future petroleum availability and began speaking of "liquids."
The global output of "liquids," the department indicated, would rise from 84 million barrels of oil equivalent (mboe) per day in 2005 to a projected 117.7 mboe in 2030--barely enough to satisfy anticipated world demand of 117.6 mboe. Aside from suggesting the degree to which oil companies have ceased being mere suppliers of petroleum and are now purveyors of a wide variety of liquid products--including synthetic fuels derived from natural gas, corn, coal and other substances--this change hints at something more fundamental: we have entered a new era of intensified energy competition and growing reliance on the use of force to protect overseas sources of petroleum."















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