Peak Oil: Does your country "get it"?

I was recently introduced to the wonders of Google Trends in an open thread at The Oil Drum (which, by the way, is by far the best source for factual, non-panic-mongering information & discussion about Peak Oil)

Trending 'peak oil' provides some interesting insights. (Sorry I can't post images as dynamic pages in the IMG tags are not allowed, but click on the links to see the graphs).

The increasing trend is good, showing slow but steady progress is being made on the issue (but probably not fast enough, I fear). But what is really interesting is the distribution of the results by region, which are in descending order:

1. New Zealand
2. Australia
3. United States
4. Ireland
5. Canada
6. Sweden
7. Finland
8. United Kindom
9. Switzerland
10. Netherlands

Now, considering the population of these countries shows that, in particular, the citizens of NZ, Ireland, Sweden, Finland & Switzerland are especially aware of the problem, and Australia is doing quite well too. The US has a particularly poor showing considering its population.

It comes as no suprise that Sweden is very forward thinking, with a goal to be oil free by 2020.

It is also illuminating to compare trends between terms, such as peak oil vs gas prices, or peak oil vs petrol prices. Unfortunately the different vernacular used for the same product (gas vs petrol) makes direct comparison between North America and the rest of the world difficult.

However, it is still worth nothing that there were approx 10 times more results for 'gas prices' than 'peak oil' in the US and Canada, indicating that these countries don't really "get it" yet. For 'petrol prices' vs 'peak oil', Australia & Ireland have about twice as many results for 'petrol prices', NZ about 1.5 times and the UK about 5 times, showing that the UK still has some way to go with regards to education about peak oil and NZ is slightly ahead of Australia. Other European countries had more results for 'peak oil' than 'petrol prices', but this could be an artifact of language and the way the google trending software works.

This topic was discussed in today's open thread on TOD, and several Kiwis piped up with some reasons why their country scored so highly:

Regarding New Zealand, during the 2005 general election campaign, two parties (Green, Maori) were pushing peak oil awareness. Another psychological factor is that this is an island nation. No town is far from the ocean. People here are aware of limits. Also, this far flung OECD outpost doesn't have any major corporations headquartered here trying to deny peak oil and distort the politics. While there are many clueless people pushing for more freeways, there is a growing awareness in some circles that eventually NZ will have to become a self sufficient Pacific island.

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All the Kiwis who read and post on TOD would agree: New Zealand still has a lot to do in building awareness of peak oil. That being said, we're ahead of the US (in the opinion of this American transplant).

However, the factors that are working to build latent peak awareness in NZ don't translate to the US.

NZ has mainstream media that is more receptive to peak oil. Campbell Live, a daily news analysis show with good journalism, devoted about 15 minutes to peak oil, with the main speaker being Dr. Rick Sibson, a very peak-aware geology professor. The biggest newspaper has had responsible reportage as well.

Our political climate is very liberal, and more willing to talk openly about difficult issues. In this environment, both The Green Party and the Maori Party have spoken forcefully and correctly about peak oil during the elections.

The NZ populace is more travelled, and less insular than the average American. Our petrol prices are at a record level here as well, but I don't hear a lot of conspiracy theories that the oil companies are shafting consumers. There is much more awareness that geopolitical tension, supply issues, and currency fluctuations are affecting prices.

External energy circumstances add to the peak oil drumbeat as well. We've had drought issues, leading to national electricity conservation drives when the hydro reservoirs were low. We're also facing an imminent natural gas shortage for industrial users (though homes, using only about 5% of our NG, should be fine). Traffic congestion issues lead to awareness of the need for mass transit.

The peak oil education process takes years, and lots of non-contradictory exposures to the main ideas. As Pavlov pointed out, you can cause extinction of the response if you provide contradictory information.

This issue of misleading, wrong, or dis-information is a real problem for the US that NZ doesn't have: trumpet enough about the hydrogen economy, or ethanol, or tar sands, or oil shale, or any other cornucopian idea and you'll wipe out months or years of good and accurate information. Unless the "iron triangle" gets weakened, this problem will be tough for America to address.

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Given the recent increases in gasoline/petrol prices, has this topic received any attention by politicians or the media recently in your country, or has it all been blamed on "big oil" and "price gouging"? Do you personally have an understanding of what Peak Oil is and how it could affect our industrial society? Is your country doing anything to prepare itself, and if not what more could it do? Is your country aware of the limits to growth like it seems the New Zealanders are, or is it closer to the cornucopean ideas of the infinite resources/infinite technological progess?

When I was a kid, the textbooks I was reading said the world had about 30 years of oil left, if then-current consumption stayed constant.

That was thirty years ago. Guess what? The prediction was wrong.

And, we can't become completely oil-free, because oil is required to manufacture plastics.

So, no, I don't "get it". Actually, I consider the thread title to be in bad taste. I don't see a reason why intelligent people should agree on everything.

"Peak oil" and "gas prices" are not so far apart as you think.

If the world is genuinely short of oil, then that will have an immediate and powerful impact on the gas price (which is high, but not yet at its historical peak in inflation-adjusted terms). So, if I were worried that the world is running out of oil, I would be far more likely to check an indicator of shortage rather than some theorists' predictions about shortage.

And, we can't become completely oil-free, because oil is required to manufacture plastics.

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I particullary like arguments like this. As I understand it wants to say: We need plastics, so there allways will be oil . As if the fossil ressources available on earth will adopt to your needs.
And by the way on this point I'm rather optimistic that chemists will find ways to use other organic materials to replace plastics, the interesting question is more how expensive will it be.

When I was a kid, the textbooks I was reading said the world had about 30 years of oil left, if then-current consumption stayed constant.

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Yes, there were wrong predictions. This is firstly due to the fact that it's very very difficult to do them because of huge uncertainties on the database, and because of the unknown human factor (after the oil crises in the seventies, big efforts were made to increase energyeefficiency and this meant of course an increase of this duration). And secondly of course every group interpretes data in favor of their own agenda.
But I'm quite sure that these 30 years were not the prediction for the end of oil, but for the end of cheap oil (and this is a big difference).
But still, even if we have 20 years of cheap oil left, considering the huge costs of investment in infrastructure necessary it would be very wise to start now to prepare for the time after.

No, Goa, those predictions were for running out of oil, period. But then again, them missed the mark a lot in the Seventies. Ice age hasn't come about like they said it would, Carter was elected, you name it.

I am going to side with BasketCase. There are more known oil reserves now than at any time in history around the world. In 2004, Saudi Arabia announced that it's oil reserves were triple, I'll repeat and bold that...TRIPLE, what was previously thought. We're constantly finding more. No, I don't think we're going to run out anytime soon at all. As far as price goes, if the tree huggers and caribou lovers would let us drill in more places and build more refineries, that wouldn't be an issue either.

Thing is, even if we do find another oil field, it wont do much to the timescales involved. I mean, if we find another oilfield, and that adds 10% to the amount of oil we have left, that just means that the amount of oil-time we have left is increased by 10%. If we have 100 years worth of oil left, an extra 10% is only going to be 10 years. And I doubt that a single discovery would yield a 10% increase in oil production. That number just seems too high. I would put it at more like 1-3%, judging from that recent Norway thread.

VRWCAgent said:

I am going to side with BasketCase. There are more known oil reserves now than at any time in history around the world. In 2004, Saudi Arabia announced that it's oil reserves were triple, I'll repeat and bold that...TRIPLE, what was previously thought. We're constantly finding more. No, I don't think we're going to run out anytime soon at all. As far as price goes, if the tree huggers and caribou lovers would let us drill in more places and build more refineries, that wouldn't be an issue either.

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Hot to trot to get into alaska, are we?

I don't really care about oil reserves anymore. Like you said, we're discovering new ones all the time, finding out new ways to extract them (yay oil sands..!) and getting more efficient and both finding and developing.

What I do care about is the use of that oil. I think a society as advanced as ours should really be putting more energy into finding a cleaner, more efficient fuel. Without getting into another global warming debate, I think there enough negative side effects of burning petroleum products to warrant a real movement to switch to something that doesn't put so much crap in the air. Whether or not that stuff warms the planet, I can't say for absolute certain, but I do know I don't like that **** in my lungs. So sure, keep pumping that oil, but lets save it for plastics and vaseline and put something cleaner in our cars.

Even if we're constantly discovering new fields of oil (which we aren't), it's completely irrelevant because consumption just keeps shooting higher and higher, particularly from countries like China. Even if Saudi Arabia's reserves were triple what thought (which they aren't, I googled it and only found blogs featuring right-wing ass holes denying the concept of the oil peak; wikipedia makes no mention of it), oil is being consumed faster and faster so even greater reserves wouldn't make a difference.

Not a difficult concept to grasp.

Here's a great page on the topic of oil field discoveries: http://wolf.readinglitho.co.uk/mainpages/discoveries.html

That Site said:

Salutary fact: Saudi Arabia has the world’s largest proved reserves, 262.7 GB according to the BP Review (about twice as big as the next largest country, Iraq). If we found another source as large as the whole of Saudi Arabia, its oil would lengthen the P/R ratio by less than ten years!

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This chart shows how oil discoveries have been dropping since the 1960s. New major discoveries only last for a few years - the trend line continues. The orange line indicates annual consumption. To avoid the problems of peak oil, we would not only have to slow the discovery curve but reverse it so that annual discoveries moved above the consumption line (or the line fell). Neither option seems likely.


Because the USA (excluding Hawaii and Alaska) has been producing longer than anyone else, largely unaffected by external matters, it shows the Hubbert Curve better than anywhere else. You can see that production has been declining since the 1970s and, despite the efforts of the richest, most technologically advanced society in the world, has not been stopped.

No, Pasi, it is very relevant. I'm all for alternate fuel sources, but until those are developed and made ready for mass production & consumption, we don't have a choice about oil. We need it, and we're just going to need more. Luckily, we're not about to run out any time soon at all, so that isn't a concern for me.

I don't know to what predictions you make reference, but mine are from the club of rome (which I consider as quite serious), and these weren't for running out of oil but for running out of cheap oil, period.

In 2004, Saudi Arabia announced that it's oil reserves were triple

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This is new to me. Could you provide a link please?

We're constantly finding more.

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As far as I heard and read, we find much less than we consume and this since over 20 years, but I must admit that I never did a closer research on this topic (and unfortunately I don't have the time at the moment)

Goa said:

This is new to me. Could you provide a link please?

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Yahoo search for "known oil reserves". The Saudi story is the first link.

EDIT: Okay, cheesy link. I had to follow it a few links to get to a legitimate news link about it. Sorry. New linky.

VRWCAgent said:

No, Pasi, it is very relevant. I'm all for alternate fuel sources, but until those are developed and made ready for mass production & consumption, we don't have a choice about oil. We need it, and we're just going to need more. Luckily, we're not about to run out any time soon at all, so that isn't a concern for me.

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Do you not understand basic supply and demand? It isn't when the oil runs out, it's when it peaks. After it peaks, the supply available decreases, while the demand continues to increase exponentially. The price of oil skyrockets and as a result, since oil is used in basically everything on the planet touched by human hands, the collective global economy goes into a massive depression.

It is a concern for you, because your country is one of those that's likely to suffer the worst consequences.

Again, just so I'm 100% that you finally understand this concept, it's when the oil peaks, not when it runs out, that's the issue.

I'm all for alternate fuel sources, but until those are developed and made ready for mass production & consumption, we don't have a choice about oil.

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And there is another time this argument in the wrong direction: You say we need oil, so it will be there.
And by the way, developping these alternative fuel sources costs lots of money and time, so we need to develop them now. And even then it will probably not be enough to keep the energywasting way of live we have at the moment, so we should reduce energyconsumption now (and the priority is in my opinion this reduction in energyconsumption)

VRWCAgent said:

Yahoo search for "known oil reserves". The Saudi story is the first link.

EDIT: Okay, cheesy link. I had to follow it a few links to get to a legitimate news link about it. Sorry. New linky.

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I have to give you credit; you finally used an arab news source for something other than the typical "random arab wants to kill all americans" story. Bravo!

Sadly, no other source can be found to verify the claim. Looks like Saudi officials just trying to bolster confidence in their own economy. We've got tons and tons of sources saying otherwise, and no major American, Canadian, or European news source verifying the story. Looks like we're going to have to give this one the thumbs down.

Pasi Nurminen said:

Again, just so I'm 100% that you finally understand this concept, it's when the oil peaks, not when it runs out, that's the issue.

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The only reason it would peak is because of the previously mentioned tree huggers and caribou lovers trying to restrict where we can go to get it.

Goa said:

And there is another time this argument in the wrong direction: You say we need oil, so it will be there.

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Again, It IS there. It's all over. We're just not allowed to touch. The US could be self-sufficient in oil if we were allowed to get at it.

Pasi Nurminen said:

I have to give you credit; you finally used an arab news source for something other than the typical "random arab wants to kill all americans" story. Bravo!

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I've never done that, that I can think of. I've linked to a few other Arab sources before when it was relevant. Are you confusing me with someone else?

Pasi Nurminen said:

Again, just so I'm 100% that you finally understand this concept, it's when the oil peaks, not when it runs out, that's the issue.

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Don't supply and demand laws go under the assumtion that we know how much is left? What I mean is that we'll never really know when we've hit the peak (there have been so many wrong predictions in the past...), since we'll probably be able to extract at the same rate for years, probably decades after, without knowing for sure how much is left...

VRWCAgent said:

Yahoo search for "known oil reserves". The Saudi story is the first link.

EDIT: Okay, cheesy link. I had to follow it a few links to get to a legitimate news link about it. Sorry. New linky.

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I doubt if anyone here's read the article

That link is talking about estimated oil reserves, not proven oil reserves. The hidden message is: "Don't research renewable energies out of fear of oil depletion! Keep buying Saudi Oil!"

Also:

Salutary fact: Saudi Arabia has the world’s largest proved reserves, 262.7 GB according to the BP Review (about twice as big as the next largest country, Iraq). If we found another source as large as the whole of Saudi Arabia, its oil would lengthen the P/R ratio by less than ten years!

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That's exactly what I said! I deserve a medal.

VRWCAgent said:

The only reason it would peak is because of the previously mentioned tree huggers and caribou lovers trying to restrict where we can go to get it.

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So, it's all a conspiracy by environmentalists to destroy the economy?

I was going to type more than that, but at this point, considering what you've been reduced to posting, that will suffice.

I've never done that, that I can think of. I've linked to a few other Arab sources before when it was relevant. Are you confusing me with someone else?

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Yeah, for some reason I keep thinking I'm posting with Elohir.

VRWCAgent said:

No, Pasi, it is very relevant. I'm all for alternate fuel sources, but until those are developed and made ready for mass production & consumption, we don't have a choice about oil. We need it, and we're just going to need more. Luckily, we're not about to run out any time soon at all, so that isn't a concern for me.

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It isn't a concern of oil running out, it's a concern of demand constantly going up, while supply goes down.

Look at the first graph in post #9. There is no way that supply can catch up to demand, unless.. we find a new planet with oil reserves.