Re: SC53

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2007/11/10/71327/177

Panic gripping our oil elites

After the CEO of Total (the French oil major) last week, two more CEOs of an oil major came out this Thursday to give stark warnings that mean that peak oil is happening right now. In addition, the chief economist of the International Energy Agency (the IEA), one of the main cheerleaders of the "there's more than enough oil" camp until now, is giving an extraordinarily pessimistic interview in the Financial Times, following the recent publication of their latest World Energy Outlook............

.............The fact that two CEOs spoke separately, but at the same conference, on this topic, is, in itself, significant. We've already had various "worried" messages coming from executives or senior analysts of the oil world with bearish messages, but they could be reported in isolation, and safely ignored the next day. This time, very similar messages came from 2 sources, making it harder to ignore (and, of course, the proximity of the symbolic $100 barrel makes it all the more newsworthy)............

................ "Where is the oil going to come from?" This is the CEO of the third biggest oil major in the USA, admitting that we no longer know where we can get access to oil. And he's repeating exactly what Christophe de Margerie, the boss of energy giant Total said a few days before: that IEA's projections, that everybody uses, are completely absurd...............

................Despite "rejecting the notion" of a peak in production, he is nevertheless the first senior oil executive, to my knowledge, to say that "half the oil" being gone - something which is usually considered to happen at pretty much the same time as peak production (although the two are not necessarily simultaneous). Even with enhanced recovery techniques, no country has been able to increase its maximum production once the peak had been reached - starting with the US and the North Sea region, where oil companies have had all the liberty to use all the most sophisticated techniques.

So yes, it is a pretty huge deal that the BP CEO says that half the oil is gone.....................

................Ah... the little matter that nobody knows what the real reserves of OPEC countries are - they were pushed artificially in the 80s in the quotas wars: export quotas being proportional to reserves, all countries 'unveiled' new reserves... Kuwait has recently admitted that its reserves were only half their previous claims, and there is wide suspicion that it's the same for others. But the IEA has been using official OPEC numbers for years.........

.................All in all, these declarations and this interview underpin the gravity of our energy crisis. One would think that $100 oil would be a wake up call, but alas, we still seem to be in full demagogic, declarative mode. Will we have to wait for actual shortages and lines to do something?