Canadian natural gas : eight years left

peakoil.com (thread) -> republic-news.org :

The University of Calgary's Geology Department played host to a presentation given by Dave Hughes, an employee of Natural Resources Canada : "The Coming Energy Sustainability Crisis: Alternatives to Oil, Implications of Demand Growth and the Way Forward." A look at global primary energy growth showed that over the past four decades, growth has been 165%. Overall, natural gas has been the fastest growing fuel source in percentage terms at 283% since 1965. In most recent years, from 2001 to 2004, the fastest growing fuel source has been coal.

North America peaked in terms of conventional natural gas production in 2001-2002, leading to dramatic increases in prices for natural gas and natural gas-dependent products, such as fertilizers and plastics. North America is now on what Hughes calls an "exploration treadmill," meaning that the number of wells drilled must be continually increased in order to hold production steady. Hughes also touched on Liquefied Natural Gas imports, coal bed methane, and the Mackenzie Valley pipeline. His conclusion was that it is going to be extremely challenging, perhaps even impossible, to keep North American production at a level plateau in the years ahead. Canada, for example, has 8.1 years left in natural gas reserves.

The one billion people in the industrialized world consume 60% more energy than the five billion in the developing nations which, however, are growing their consumption at much higher rates, as well as doubling their populations since the 1960s. Both China and India's total energy consumption have grown 600% in that time; Indonesia's total energy growth was 1,400%.

At the end of the presentation, Hughes stated that there is no question that the world will eventually become energy sustainable. The only question is how that transition will occur. The importance of conservation and efficiency was also stressed, along with the savings that will result from "demand destruction". As talks like this one become more common around the world, less and less people will be able to state truthfully that they had no idea about the impending energy crisis. Now comes the toughest part: actually doing something about it.

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