Andy's Peak Oil Information

Petroleum Depletion Info

What's this page about?

Petroleum is a finite resource. It won't last forever. The world's total petroleum production appears to have peaked and begun declining as of July 2008. This was part of the reason why the economy got into trouble, and without a steadily increasing supply of cheap oil the economic situation will only get worse in the long run (until we change things). The problem is that the "consumption" economy requires cheap fuel, and it needs to keep growing, which it can no longer do. Getting gas for our cars is already the least of our worries - we are now concerned about keeping our petroleum-dependent jobs and paying our bills. There are no alternative fuels that will allow the modern world to maintain the "consumer culture" that we've gotten used to. The fossil fuel bonanza was a one-time deal, and we're simply going to have to get by on less energy from now on. We must move promptly, seriously, and graciously towards serious fuel conservation and major changes in how we live. This starts with parking our cars, planting gardens, and working to reduce our population. Eventually it could be a big improvement but there are some troubles to deal with first.

I've compiled a partial set of documents and websites for understanding the problem. Before 2007 or so there were very few or no sites that detailed the whole peak oil problem in one place, and only recently are new websites popping up that tell the story in a coherent and readable way. I made this site a few years ago to provide links to useful information, and I'll leave it here as long as it seems useful.

Oil depletion is actually a predicament, rather than a problem. Problems can be solved, predicaments can't be solved. Worse, oil depletion is part of the bigger resource depletion predicament, which is part of the predicament of trying to sustain the entire modern capital/industrial economy. These troubles are massive, complicated, and scary.

Since peak oil threatens the interests of the wealthy and powerful, we therefore are being surrounded with misinformation, news suppression, denial, and outright lies about it. As time passes we continue to witness famous government inaction, or action in the wrong direction. This page links to information that I believe to reliable, plus it may provide access to tiny bits of wisdom. It's time to park the car and start working on the garden, folks. It will be more fun anyway.

For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong. - H. L. Mencken

Below: What's the problem? | How we got here | Now What? | PO as genre | Andy's Main Page

I'm in a hurry, where do I start?
	The world is entering a period of transition from high energy consumption to low consumption of all things, particularly nonrenewables. Do we make the transition intentionally and gracefully, or will we go down fighting? And are Cokes, Chevies, Plasma screens & Nikes really worth fighting for? The transition movement proposes that we make our lives better by developing resilient communities, looking for joy in the basics of life, relying more on each other, and abandoning certain (some would say childish) things. Learn more about the Transition movement. - The Transition Handbook If you want to work on relocalizing and organizing: Transition South Dakota - Transition US
Transition on:	In a 15 minute TED talk, Rob Hopkins talks about the Transition Movement - why it is needed, where it came from, what it's about.
What's the situation with petroleum, then?
	Billing itself as "a beginner's guide to Peak Oil", this well designed site makes things very clear and it's more optimistic than I am. (So you might want to ease in by reading this first). It also offers a great glossary of terms. If you want to understand the arguments about oil production, you may have to know about conventional vs. nonconventional oil, EROI, and maybe even NGLs.
Wikipedia on Peak Oil	A pretty complete summary but it's very technical as it's written to make it difficult for peak oil deniers - or "cornucopians" - to argue.
Hirsch Report to the DOE. (PDF: 1.2mb) Hirsch Report to the Atlantic Council (PDF: 212k)	The US Dept of Energy commissioned Robert Hirsch and his consulting firm to study the issue of oil depletion. Hirsch found plenty to be worried about. Their report, "Peaking Of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management" is reasonably concise and coherent. Here is a quote: "The problems associated with world oil production peaking will not be temporary, and past energy crisis experience will provide relatively little guidance. The challenge of oil peaking deserves immediate, serious attention, if risks are to be fully understood and mitigation begun on a timely basis." Hirsch's report to the Atlantic Council is shorter and more to the point, with fewer details. Time is wasting on this problem, and the DOE has not been forthcoming with efforts to publicize the situation or to improve on it. Instead they buried the report for a long time.
End of Oil booklet (PDF: 176k)	This is a good place to start. Download this PDF file and read it. This booklet briefly summarizes the main points in the book The Party's Over by Richard Heinberg. Heinberg's other books - Powerdown and The Oil Depletion Protocol are full of useful information as well. These books detail the problem and the issues facing efforts to mitigate the impending energy shortage.
"Why peak oil is roughly now"	A collection of evidence supporting the claim that we are very near or at the peak of oil production right now (or actually two years ago). It was a response to the March 1 2006 New York Times article on peak oil that startled a lot of people. Since the article was written, more supergiant oil fields went belly up, and then the economy ran into trouble. Consumption of petroleum is down because economic activity has declined. Thus, lots of new oil production is not likely to appear in the future.
Take the oil quiz. Test your knowledge.	A dozen questions on the major issues surrounding oil production. Don't worry if you get some of the answers wrong, since correct ones are farther down on the same page. But try to answer first anyway. It's supposed to be educational, and nobody is grading you. But there will be a final exam in, oh, about 2010.
The Causes of High Fuel Prices and Their Effects on International Business	I presented this paper at the International Business Conference in Rapid City, Oct. 10, 2008. It describes the problems with oil production, briefly details why alternative liquid fuels will not solve the petroleum problem, and projects some of the likely difficulties that international businesses will encounter. The main point is that globalization depends on cheap oil, and it began to reverse itself when oil became expensive. The recent decline of "globalization" due to economic difficulties is not likely to reverse for very long if at all.
My own Oil Depletion presentation Keynote (ZIP: 20 mb) Powerpoint (ZIP: 20 mb)	I started presenting this in 2006. This is the last version that focused on oil and the failure of alternatives. Please send me comments if you look at this or use it. The latest Powerpoint version is a direct export from Keynote and I have not checked it over. Some transitions and graphs won't work right. For a version that's been checked over and slightly repaired, use this older one: Powerpoint (ZIP: 7 mb) The Keynote version is prettier.
Newer Sustainability Presentation Keynote (ZIP: 27 mb) Powerpoint (ZIP: 27 mb)	This is a more recent version which focuses more on the fundamental unsustainability of the Growth Machine. Again, the powerpoint version is rough. The Keynote version is much prettier.
How did we get here?
M. King Hubbert's original paper Download (PDF: 2.6mb)	In the middle of the last century, M. King Hubbert - a highly regarded petroleum geologist - predicted that US oil production would reach a peak and start declining in 1970. He made an accurate prediction 14 years in advance of the actual peak. People didn't want to believe him at first, and when it turned out he was right, well, we didn't hear much about that, now did we? Similar calculations using geological and production data are predicting the peak of worldwide petroleum production sometime between "now" and 2010. (And it looks like "now" is the most likely). This is Hubbert's original paper. It is a piece of history that, unfortunately, too few people today even know about.
Limits to Growth Summary (RTF)	In 1970 a group of scientists developed an extensive computer model of "the world system" which accounted in a general way for population, food production, industrialization, capital flows, pollution, natural resources, and other variables. When running this model they found that it nearly always showed a population crash before the year 2100, often as early as 2030. They published their first book in 1971 detailing the logic behind the model and the "systems thinking" that is necessary to understand the world's economic and physical status. The public response to this book involved a lot of reaction but very little positive action. In this summary document, the authors lay out their main points. Read it. Then find the original book "Limits to Growth" and read it, because everything in that book is still valid today, and even more pertinent than it was in 1971. The problem in a nutshell is that populations and industries grow exponentially, while the planet we live on is not increasing in size or capacity. Hmm. The authors have written followup volumes which give updates and detail more of the issues than did the original book. They regretfully admit that the projections of the 1971 model are still valid more than 30 years later. All that has changed is that we now have less time to try to change things. Their computer model, which once required a mainframe computer, now can be run on any desktop computer, and it is still making dire projections. Sorry, but things don't look so good from here.
The Century of the Self	A revealing and frightening BBC documentary on Google Video. It details the rise of psychologically based marketing that was based on Freud's theories of the mind. Powerful people (big corporations) figured out ways to take advantage of our darker emotional urges and promote non-rational consuming behavior. In particular, we're being cajoled into buying more stuff through being convinced that it will somehow make us happier. (What? McBurgers make me happier??) To what degree have we been manipulated for the last three generations? And how are we being manipulated today?
	This great web movie finishes a connection that The Century of the Self begins. It explains the consumer situation, in particular, our vast and unquestioned consumption of a lot of - well - stuff. Nearly all of which we don't need. So where does all of it come from? Why do we keep buying more? Is this normal? (The only reason we have so much stuff is because cheap petroleum made it inexpensive to extract, process, manufacture, and transport all of that . . stuff. This is definitely not normal in the long run).
What a way to go	This movie is for PO and CC groupies. If there is a "solution" to the Peak Oil problem, it begins with totally rethinking our place in the universe. Of the Peak Oil documentaries now available, this one goes the deepest in explaining how we got here, why we are so reluctant to change, and if we were to change what this would entail. We would have to completely remake most of our culture. And we probably will, or else we will die trying not to. The producers have powerfully summarized a lot of very important and useful (and countercultural) ideas. You might want a friend with you when you watch this - it is intense. Whether you agree or not, we have to be talking about this.
No Longer Obeying Orders	Speech by George Monbiot, environmental journalist, on the difficulties of publishing the truth about environmental issues in media. I put this here to draw attention to the political realities of modern news media. There are reasons why we haven't heard about the incipient decline of petroleum until very recently. As of the beginning of 2010 - way too late to make the needed changes - a number of people actually have heard of PO. But of course many are vociferously denying its reality.
Infrequently asked questions about oil	I wrote this series of seven short essays on the issues surrounding the impending peak and decline of petroleum production. I wrote about oil production, the inability of biofuels to support our driving habits, and the economic consequences of running out of oil.
Now What?
Resilient Communities: A video of Heinberg's presentation. A brief text version on Energy Bulletin.net	Richard Heinberg, one of the most well-published writers in the area of peak oil, is now thinking that we no longer have time for negotiated powerdown scenarios. At this point we need to be preparing for a declining economy and its attendant hardships. Communities need to be able to meet the minimum needs of everyone if the economy is failing. Communities should be positioning themselves to deal with this. Don't wait around for someone else to work on this because nobody else is doing it. Written in 2008.
The Long Descent	John Michael Greer admits (repeatedly in this book) that his view of the situation is tempered by his Druid beliefs. But he has a lot of good ideas that are worth reading. Notable examples: Rome took many generations to collapse, the same is likely to happen to industrial civilization. Picking over landfills will be important work in the future, and the most valuable cast-offs will be things like car alternators. And finally, the stories (cultural myths) we tell each other guide our decisions. The Archdruid Report.
Richard Heinberg's Axioms of Sustainability	Lots of people give sustainability lip service, but few take the trouble to think about what it means. In its strong sense (the only sense that has any meaning) "Sustainability" has to mean that you can do it basically forever. This excludes "growth" which, at its root, is fundamentally unsustainable when you live on a non-infinite planet like ours. Before he started worrying about resilience, Richard Heinberg compiled a list of axioms of sustainability. This is my own more loosely defined version of his list, rewritten to hopefully make it easier to uderstand. I hope Heinberg doesn't mind. Written in 2007.
The Oil Depletion Protocol	Similar in spirit to the Kyoto Protocol (but simpler and more effective,) this is the only reasonable way to avoid utter disaster for the majority of humans now alive. The world's governments must begin seriously considering this protocol immediately. Even the good old US of A should get on board this one ASAP. Ask Obama to sign on, will you? An idea from 2006 or before.
	The Post Carbon Institute is probably the most effective organization that is educating people about peak oil and doing something about it.
Postcarbon planning	How do cities plan for a world with declining supplies of petroleum and other hydrocarbons? The "Postcarbon Cities" website offers a guidebook.
Community solutions for oil depletion Peak oil documentary	Cuba used to depend on petroleum imports from the Soviet Union. It was a fairly typical small industrial nation. When the soviet government collapsed in 1991, Cuba's economy had to adapt overnight to relying on much smaller amounts of fuels. Most Cubans lost weight - but they survived - and they eventually learned how to live happily with less oil. This website is the result of a study on how Cuba survived and is now doing pretty well, considering. The lesson of Cuba can help us make plans for our own oil depleted future. The DVD that this group is offering is incredibly valuable.
	Founded by retired petroleum engineer Colin Campbell and others, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil is a source of information that does not seem to be driven by corporations or similar powerful interests. ASPO is becoming more and more effective at raising awareness of peak oil issues. This links takes you to the USA branch of ASPO.
Beyond Hope	Essay by activist Derrick Jensen on the reasons why "hope" is maybe not what we need when instead we need action. Jensen says that hope kills personal gumption and he has a good point. If you 're going to act, you have to first give up on hoping and decide that you're going to deal with the problem yourself. Which, by the way, you will have to do at some point in the future anyway.
Bicycle Fixation	Bicycles. Why, when, how. We'll all be relying on them eventually, if we're all lucky enough to have a bike. Okay, I admit it. I like bikes.
Have you Heard About Peak Oil?	Facebook group for Peak Oil. Join!
Path to freedom	"Path to Freedom is a family operated, viable urban homesteading project (in Pasadena) which is breaking new ground every year." Don't think that this site is full of unnecessary details. We'll all need to know how to do the things that these people are doing. The Pasadena folks made a Movie.
No Impact Man Movie	Inspiring and funny, Colin Beavans decided to live in New York City and have zero environmental impact. He also maintains a blog.
Soviet lessons for a Post-American Century by Dmitri Orlov.	Orlov, who witnessed parts of the collapse of the Soviet Union, posted this essay on the web for a long time but it seems to have disappeared. It consists of darkly humorous recommendations on what to do / expect - if / when the US economy fails. By the way, Orlov has just written a book about this, and maintains a blog.
Peak Oil - A new genre
	Luz - Girl of the Knowing - a nice web comic. Written by Claudia Dávila, Luz is a young girl who is thinking about the end of oil and how things are going to change. So she's working on The Knowing, in which gardening looms large. Luz and I agree about certain things.
World Made By Hand: A Novel	We have problems visualizing this different world that is coming, so James Howard Kunstler envisioned it for us. A pretty good book, and even if you disagree with Kunstler's vision, you have a place from which to start your own imagining.
Kris Can	Kris Can started with some viral videos on YouTube and is getting more and more reflective as time goes on. "When I feel cold, I do a dance!" Just be careful that you don't watch "Public Service Message " or "Kris Can does HotForWords" on your work computer.
Robert Newman's History of Oil on Google Video	Robert Newman is a great standup comic who is worried about peak oil. This video is fun to watch just for laughs. IMHO, it never made sense to me that nations would start WW1 just because somebody bumped off an Archduke, no matter how important he was.
	Kunstler doesn't have a copyright on the Peak Oil genre, but he is busy informing people about the situation. Here is the Kunstlercast, a weekly conversation about "The Tragicomedy of Suburbia". A lot of the discussion is about our petroleum-dependent living arrangements and the importance of good urban design. If you can stand how Kunstler talks, he's fun to listen to.

If not me, then who? If not now, then when?

Visitors since Feb 13, 2006:

Edited Jan 2010