Peak Oil : IEA reports global depletion rate could go up to 9.1%, struggle to produce crude oil

Output from the world's oilfields is declining faster than previously thought, the IEA said in its annual report. Without extra investment to raise production, the natural annual global crude oil depletion rate is 9.1%. The findings suggest the world will struggle to produce enough oil to make up for steep declines in existing fields, such as in the North Sea, Russia and Alaska. The effort will become even more acute as prices fall and investment decisions are delayed. Even with investment, the annual rate of output decline is 6.4%.

Demand is slowing down, but with the expected slowdown in investment the eventual effect will be magnified. The IEA warned that the world needed to make a "significant increase in future investments just to maintain the current level of production". The share of rich countries in global demand will drop from last year's 59% to less than half of the total in 2030, the clearest indication yet that the demand side is moving away from the US, Europe and Japan, towards emerging nations.

This is bad. In the Great Depression of the 1930's, energy usage went down 8%. If we are talking about crude oil prices falling because demand is falling faster than supply is falling, then we're talking about the global economy possibly going to shrink faster than say 9%. Welcome to the Second Great Depression.

Comments:

Anybody that has studied the production data and the discovery date is just dreaming if that think that oil production will ever hit 90mbd. At least it wont without a massive ramp up of tar sands production which is very costly and evironmentally damaging and will only be able to offset production declines for a few years. The world is going to have to voluntarily reduce usage or have reduced usage imposed by nature. There are two main ways to reduce usage. Cut out all recreational usage of fuel, and use more fuel efficient vehicals. Cutting electricity usage helps a lot too because the energy saves can can free up coal for conversion to liquids for fuel replacement. Also the electricity saved can help fuel the energy hungry production of alternate sources. The other way to reduce is die off.......massive wars........economic collapse causeing widespread disease, famine, lack of health care, suicide, civil unrest including looting, killing. Yeah.....that would do it.......lets have a nuclear war with a follow up massive famine and kill of 3 quarters of the worlds population.....that way there will be enough oil to go around again and I can keep driving my hummer and going to bed with five lights on and two TVs and a computer going while I sleep. Just use lots of neutron bombs so we don't damage the infrastructure, especially them oil fields and refineries etc.

Posted by Stu on November 19, 2008 at 06:24 AM SGT #

According to most independent scientific studies, global oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time demand will increase 9%.

No one can reverse this trend, nor can we conserve our way out of this catastrophe. Because the demand for oil is so high, it will always exceed production levels; thus oil depletion will continue steadily until all recoverable oil is extracted.

Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment. The Energy Watch Group (funded by the German Parliament) concludes in a current report titled: “Peak Oil Could Trigger Meltdown of Society:”

"By 2020, and even more by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can hardly be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame."

http://www.globaliamagazine.com/?id=482

We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel trucks for maintenance of bridges, cleaning culverts to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables, all from far away. With the highways out, there will be no food coming in from "outside," and without the power grid virtually nothing works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated systems.

This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html

I used to live in NH-USA, but moved to a sustainable place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area with a good climate and good soil? Email: clifford dot wirth at yahoo dot com or give me a phone call which operates here as my old USA-NH number 603-668-4207. http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/

Posted by Clifford J. Wirth, Ph.D. on November 22, 2008 at 05:59 AM SGT #