Vital Trivia

George Monbiot, prominent environmentalist and regular writer for The Guardian newspaper wrote an article for the newspaper last week titled It’s better to cry wolf now than to wait until the oil has run out.

In it Monbiot asks the question Are global oil supplies about to peak? Whilst not forwarding an answer to this rhetorician question, what follows is a eloquent analysis of just how precarious the situation is. Monbiot covers the ludicrous revisions of OPEC reserves, the Hirsch report and the flawed argument of the economists that the market can trump geology when it comes to oil discovery. He also highlights the problem facing the refining industry and the lack of light sweet oil as identified on Vital Trivia recently.

Last week Chris Vernon of the organisation PowerSwitch published figures showing that while total global oil production has risen since 2000, the production of light sweet crude - the kind that is easiest to refine into motor fuels - has fallen, by 2m barrels a day. This grade, he claims, has already peaked. The refinery crisis results partly from this constraint: there aren’t enough plants capable of processing the heavier grades.

The article is reproduced on www.monbiot.com complete with 19 references. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/09/27/crying-sheep/

This post was written by Chris Vernon