Author offers bleak peek at life after 'peak oil'

Someday the planet will run out of oil. It may be sooner, it may be later, but that day is coming, say most petroleum geologists. They refer to the point where we've used up half of the planet's fossil fuels as "peak oil" and once we've passed that point, many social scientists predict significant and alarming changes. Scientists continue to debate the status of the world's oil reserves. At a November conference on the topic sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences, researchers were divided into optimists who believe peak oil is at least 30 years away and pessimists who think we'll reach that moment in this decade.

"I personally am convinced by the near-term peakers," author Richard Heinberg said in a telephone interview from his California home. "Oil is either at its all-time peak or will achieve it before the end of the decade. "Most of the super giant fields discovered decades ago are reaching and surpassing their peaks." The Mexico Cantarell field has peaked. The world's second largest - Burgan in Kuwait - is in decline. More importantly, he said, petroleum geologists just aren't discovering those kinds of oil fields anymore, and the smaller ones coming online aren't replacing them.

It's not that the world's collective oil spigot will shut off magically sometime in the future, but that over time less oil will be available, driving up prices, and, eventually, availability. The way Americans live now will change, Heinberg said. Shipping food from hundreds or thousands of miles away will become untenable because of the cost of fuel. Workers will need to be closer to their jobs because they won't be able to afford fuel for long commutes. The longer we wait to wean ourselves from our reliance on cheap and plentiful oil, the more difficult the transition to alternatives will be, he said.

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