Over the last year or so, the Telegraph Journal has regularly published the columns of Roy MacMullin, a Moncton-based energy writer and peak-oil disciple.
While his columns are interesting enough, they fail to convince this reader how a new world of very expensive oil barrels will fundamentally change public policy in New Brunswick (even if this economic fact probably should). Apparently, this economic fact haven't caused much concern over at Irving Oil either, as plans for Eider Rock keep lurching forward.
My beef with peak oil? It focuses too much on geology, when the real issues policy-makers need to concern themselves with are over the environment and foreign affairs. While climate change gets most of the attention, the really smart analysis seems to focus on where more and more of our expensive oil comes from. Not surprisingly, NYT columnists and others are identifying petro-dictatorships as a key catalyst behind high summer gas prices.
A fantastic article in Texas Monthly puts a very human face behind the worsening oil economy, in the form of the story of a kidnapped oil worker in the petro-rich troubled Nigerian delta. No need for a geologist to explain tapped reserves here - as long as this oil-producer (and others) is torn by civil strife, that summer trip to Freeport is going to be more expensive, and millions of residents in petro-dictatorships will continue to suffer.
Wouldn't it be nice if New Brunswickers could pay a premium for fair-trade oil, like they do for their coffee? I know I'd feel better coughing up $70 at the pump, if I knew that the gasoline that was refined here in Saint John came from oil regions in which children could walk into their neighbourhood woods without coming across guerillas with automatic rifles.
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Great commentary.
35 years ago during the last flourish of the peak oil theories, several economists took to putting a slightly different face on things.
They noted that while the world may have run out of $5 a barrel oil, there would still be plenty of oil left at other price points. In other words, the easy-to-find-and-develop stuff might be running out, but that would just shift attention to other oil fields.
At the same time, development of technology as well as other factors might make oil which is today very expensive actually be much cheaper later on.
Sounds kinda familiar and certainly it is something people these days seem to have forgotten.
In my own corner of cyberspace, I've taken to reminding people that just five years ago you couldn't find anyone who wasn't severely medicated who predicted oil would be US$150/bbl by 2008.
These days no one wants to think of oil at US$25 a barrel for fear of being considered a kook.
Well, interestingly enough when we had the last major spike in oil prices (late 70s/early 80s) we had a precipitous cdrop in oil prices back down to levels they'd been before. In 1992, oil was US$8/bbl when just a decade earlier, there'd been people running around forecasting US$100 before the end of the 80s with higher prices out beyond.
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