Former UK Minister Warns - Plan now for a world without oil

".... for the US alone, oil imports, or imports of other sources of oil, such as natural gas liquids, will have to rise from 11m bpd to 18.5m bpd by 2020. Securing that increment of imported oil - the equivalent of total current oil consumption by China and India combined - has driven an integrated US oil-military strategy ever since [the May 2001 National Energy Plan of Vice President Dick Cheney]. There is, however, a fundamental weakness in this policy. Most countries targeted as a source of increased oil supplies to the US are riven by deep internal conflicts, strong anti-Americanism, or both. Iraq is only the first example of the cost - both in cash and in soldiers' lives - of facing down resistance or fighting resource wars in key oil-producing regions, a cost that even the US may find unsustainable. The conclusion is clear: if we do not immediately plan to make the switch to renewable energy - faster, and backed by far greater investment than currently envisaged - then civilisation faces the sharpest and perhaps most violent dislocation in recent history."
Michael Meacher - Plan now for a world without oil
Financial Times, print edition, 5 January 2004

'Plan now for a world without oil'
Article Cartoon, Financial Times, print edition, 5 January 2004

"We believe no more in Bonaparte's fighting merely for the liberties of the seas than in Great Britain's fighting for
the liberties of mankind. The object is the same, to draw to themselves the power, the wealth and the resources of other nations."
Thomas Jefferson
President of the United States of America, 1801 - 1809

Four months ago, Britain's oil imports overtook its exports, underlining a decline in North Sea oil production that was already well under way. North Sea oil output peaked at about 2.9m barrels per day in 1999, and has been predicted to fall to only 1.6m bpd by 2007. Even the discovery of the new Buzzard field, the biggest British oil find in a decade, with a total of some 500m barrels recoverable, will not alter by much the overall picture of dwindling resources.

This prospect would not be so bleak were it not that similar trends are now becoming manifest around the globe. The three main oil-producing regions are Opec, the former Soviet Union, and the rest of the world. According to papers presented at the latest annual meetings of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil, Opec's future production is expected to peak in 2020 at about 40-45m bpd. Under-production in the former Soviet Union in the 1990s has been followed by a new surge in east Siberia and Sakhalin. Together with new discoveries in the Caspian, this will yield a peak of about 10m bpd in 2010.

Combining the models for Opec, the former Soviet Union and the remaining 40 or more major oil-producing countries puts ultimate world oil recovery - past and future - at some 2,200bn barrels, with production peaking at about 80m bpd between 2010 and 2020. To this may be added non-conventional oil and other liquids brought into commercial production by the rising price as oil becomes more scarce. These include oil from coal and shale, bitumen and derived synthetics, heavy and extra-heavy oil, deep-water oil, polar oil and liquids from gas fields and gas plants. These sources, though at very much greater cost, could provide an ultimate recovery of about 800bn barrels and might peak in 2050 at around 20m bpd. But the combined model suggests a peak from all sources of about 90m bpd around 2015.

Today we enjoy a daily production of 75m bpd. But to meet projected demand in 2015, we would need to open new oilfields that can give an additional 60m bpd. This is frankly impossible. It would require the equivalent of more than 10 new regions, each the size of the North Sea. Maybe Iraq with enormous new investments will increase production by 6m bpd, and the rest of the Middle East might be able to do the same. But to suggest that the rest of the world could produce an extra 40m barrels daily is just moonshine.

These calculations place the coming oil crunch some time between 2010 and 2015, perhaps earlier. The reserves in the world's super-giant and giant oilfields are dwindling at an average rate of 4-6 per cent a year. No more big frontier regions remain to be explored except the north and south poles. The production of non-conventional crude oil has already been initiated at enormous cost in Venezuela's Orinoco belt and Canada's Athabasca tar sands and ultra-deep waters. Yet no major primary energy alternative can replace oil and gas in the short-to-medium term.

The implications of this are mind-blowing, since oil provides 40 per cent of all traded energy and no less than 90 per cent of transport fuel. But not only are the motor vehicle and farming industries dependent on oil, so is national defence. Oil powers the vast network of planes, tanks, helicopters and ships that provide the basis of each country's armaments. It is hard to envisage the effects of a radically reduced oil supply on a modern economy or society. Yet just such a radical reduction is staring us in the face.

The world faces a stark choice. It can continue down the existing path of rising oil consumption, trying to pre-empt available remaining oil supplies, if necessary by military force, but without avoiding a steady exhaustion of global capacity. Or it could switch to renewable sources of energy, much more stringent standards of energy efficiency, and a steady reduction in oil use. The latter course would involve huge new investment in energy generation and transportation technologies.

The US response to this dilemma is very striking. The National Energy Policy report prepared by Dick Cheney, US vice-president, in May 2001 proposed the exploitation of untapped reserves in protected wilderness areas within the US, notably the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in north-eastern Alaska. The rejection of this extremely contentious proposal forced President George W. Bush, unwilling to curb America's ever-growing thirst for oil, to go back on White House rhetoric and accept the need to increase oil imports from foreign suppliers.

It was a fateful decision. It means that, for the US alone, oil imports, or imports of other sources of oil, such as natural gas liquids, will have to rise from 11m bpd to 18.5m bpd by 2020. Securing that increment of imported oil - the equivalent of total current oil consumption by China and India combined - has driven an integrated US oil-military strategy ever since.

There is, however, a fundamental weakness in this policy. Most countries targeted as a source of increased oil supplies to the US are riven by deep internal conflicts, strong anti-Americanism, or both. Iraq is only the first example of the cost - both in cash and in soldiers' lives - of facing down resistance or fighting resource wars in key oil-producing regions, a cost that even the US may find unsustainable.

The conclusion is clear: if we do not immediately plan to make the switch to renewable energy - faster, and backed by far greater investment than currently envisaged - then civilisation faces the sharpest and perhaps most violent dislocation in recent history.

Other Articles By Michael Meacher Related To The So Called 'War On Terrorism'

'This war on terrorism is bogus' - 6 September 2003

'The very secret service' - 21 November 2003

'The truth about WMD lies beyond Hutton' - 4 January 2004

"Of the many factors that went into the Bush administration's decision to attack and occupy Iraq, one of the most important was the long-held view of Richard Cheney, the vice-president, that America's power was threatened by the potential loss of control over Middle East oil.... This year the US will have imported about 11m barrels of petroleum a day and mainstream forecasts project a growth of imports to about 20m barrels a day by 2025. Moreover, global competition for worldwide oil supplies is projected to grow markedly, especially with China's emergence as a huge oil importer. Despite discoveries of new reserves elsewhere, petroleum supplies from the Middle East and the nearby Caspian Sea region are expected to become even more pivotal in the coming decades, accounting for two-thirds or more of the world's petroleum reserves in 2025. With oil supplies and production increasingly concentrated in the Middle East, and with growing competition from other oil importers, Mr Cheney and associates believe the US has a long-term strategic need to secure military pre-eminence in the region. This sentiment helped fuel the invasion of Iraq. Yet the vice-president's view of US energy security is dead wrong, in terms of both energy economics and geopolitics.... The US is playing out Mr Cheney's fantastical vision of national security - one in which a future struggle over scarce and vital petroleum resources must be won by force of arms."
Professor Jeffrey Sachs - America's Disastrous Energy Plan
Financial Times, 23 December 2003

"We must not be prisoners of our own time. The horrific terrorist attack in Bali, the attack on the French tanker off Yemen the other week - these threats are coming at the world from all directions....And you can't continue.... to just keep erecting security and defence barriers all around you..... We have a way of life, a set of [energy] consumption patterns, that are going to have to change - all of us. We have to recognise that without a major shift in the whole way we organise ourselves, our pattern of life is simply not sustainable."
Peter Hain, UK Minister for Europe
Mid-East oil 'too costly' for Europe
BBC Online, 17 Oct 2002

"My forecast is that between 2000 and 2005 the world will be reaching peak production from our known fields."
Franco Bernabe, chief executive of the [30% government owned] Italian oil company Eni SpA
Energy apocalypse looms as the world runs out of oil
Observer, 26 July 1998

"Industrialized world and US [will] become steadily more dependent on imports... Asia will become the dominant consuming region by 2010...The growing domestic demand for oil in other developing regions will become a major factor and will steadily limit the export capabilities of the Middle East, Africa, and FSU.... Pipeline, port, and tanker geopolitics will change fundamentally during 1998-2020... Iran, Iraq, Libya, and Russia represent 'high risk' oil suppliers with major potential geopolitical impacts."
The Changing Geopolitics of Energy – Part I
Key Global Trends in Supply and Demand: 1990-2020
Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, 12 August 1998

"The United States is entering a period of relative shortages of energy that will require an overhaul of U.S. foreign policy, including possibly revamping sanctions against Iraq, an independent task force of energy and foreign policy experts told the White House in a report released Thursday. The report, drafted by a panel assembled by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University and the Council on Foreign Relations, was submitted this week to the White House energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. In its comprehensive look at the United States' energy situation, the panel warned that increasing domestic energy supplies and reducing consumption would not be enough to insulate the United States from the ups and downs of world oil markets... 'Tight markets have increased U.S. and global vulnerability to disruption and provided adversaries undue potential influence over the price of oil,' the report said. 'Iraq has become a key 'swing' producer, posing a difficult situation for the U.S. government.' Political turmoil in the Middle East, including the Arab-Israeli conflict and potential internal unrest in the Persian Gulf states, gives Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein greater leverage in using his vast oil reserves as an economic and diplomatic weapon. 'Like it or not, Iraqi reserves represent a major asset that can quickly add capacity to world oil markets and inject a more competitive tenor to oil trade,' the report said."
Oil-Hungry U.S. Reconsiders Iraq
UPI Newswire, 13 April 2001

"An influential energy task force headed by Vice President Cheney has broached the possibility of lifting some economic sanctions against Iran, Libya and Iraq as part of a plan to increase America's oil supply. According to a draft of the task force report, the United States should review the sanctions against the three countries because of the importance of their oil production to meeting domestic and global energy needs. The April 10 draft acknowledges that sanctions can 'advance' important national security and diplomatic goals. But it adds that United Nations sanctions on Iraq and U.S. restrictions on energy investments in Libya and Iran 'affect some of the most important existing and prospective petroleum producing countries in the world.'.... A cross-section of the energy industry, including oil companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp. and production services companies such as Halliburton, have been pressing Congress and administration policy-makers under Bush and former president Bill Clinton to give them access to Libya, Iran and Iraq. Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton before Bush tapped him to be his running mate last year... a key conclusion of the energy task force will be the need to diversify the nation's sources of energy supplies as widely as possible, administration officials have said. 'Growing levels of conventional and heavy oil production and exports from the western hemisphere, the Caspian and Africa are important factors that can lessen the impact of a supply disruption on the U.S. and world economies,' the task force draft said."
Cheney Panel Seeks Review Of Sanctions Iraq, Iran and Libya Loom Large in Boosting Oil Supply
Washington Post, 19 April 2001

"President Bush's Cabinet agreed in April 2001 that 'Iraq remains a destabilising influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East' and because this is an unacceptable risk to the US 'military intervention' is necessary. Vice-president Dick Cheney, who chairs the White House Energy Policy Development Group, commissioned a report [on which this policy was built] from the Baker Institute for Public Policy, a think-tank set up by James Baker, the former US secretary of state under George Bush Snr...."
Official: US oil at the heart of Iraq crisis
Sunday Herald, 6 October 2002

"Our industry can certainly be proud of its past achievements. Yet the challenges we will face in the coming years will be every bit as great as those encountered in the past, due in part to ever-increasing global energy use. For example, we estimate that world oil and gas production from existing fields is declining at an average rate of about 4 to 6 percent a year. To meet projected demand in 2015, the industry will have to add about 100 million oil-equivalent barrels a day of new production. That's equal to about 80 percent of today's production level. In other words, by 2015, we will need to find, develop and produce a volume of new oil and gas that is equal to eight out of every 10 barrels being produced today."
John Thompson, President of ExonnMobil, the world's largest oil company
The Lamp (published for ExonnMobil shareholders), 2003, Vol. 85 No.1

Hussein Kamel And The Big Anglo-American Deception - 4 Jan 2004
Iraq: British Government admits to 'Operation Mass Appeal' - 28 Dec 2003
Iraqgate 2003 - Dr Kelly and 'Operation Rockingham' - 19 Oct 2003
A Vision For Transforming America - 24 March 2003
This Is Our Prime Minister - 23 Feb 2003
What Is Happening To Britain And America? - 9 Feb 2003
The 911 Omar Sheikh Files - 2 Jan 2003
'October Surprise 2002' - Life After The US Constitutional Coup - 31 Oct 2002
What Did Britain Know About 911? - 28 Aug 2002
Why Did Bush Not Act On Sept 11? - 9 May 2002
World Peace Offered From Hiroshima - 22 April 2002
Did Sept 11 victims die for Enron? - 8 March 2002
CIA provided funds to financiers of Sept 11 bomber - 18 Nov 2001