Hiding the Hirsch Report?

The report, Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, & Risk Management, as I’ve noted before, is well worth the time reading.

In an article today EnergyBulletin.net suggests that perhaps the report is being purposely ignored or shifted aside by the powers that be. Conspiracy? Or politics? Or a little of both? Perhaps the blogosphere can help by opening more eyeballs up to the content.

Following up the CERA report with Hirsch’s work gives one a good counterbalancing opinion through which we might view the potential problem more objectively.

No matter which spin on the topic one chooses to side with, we must remember that all such analysis is based largely an accumulation of assumptions.

Assumptions are a real problem in the energy business. National and international demand forecasters can’t get their forecasts right, based on more quantifyable assumptions, so it clearly doesn’t make any sense to have more faith in producers, especially since the largest producers hide behind dictatorial governments where transparency is a concept quite foreign.

One of the major problems with the world wide petro market is the near total opacity of OPEC production and reserve information. Russia is also a murky pond. Very little is really known about the state of the large Saudi oil fields which this world depends upon now totally. If these fields, as some industry observers have suggested with increasing frequency lately, are anywhere near their “peak” output capacity, no amount of world wide exploration in conventional and unconventional sources is likely to keep up with the current rate of demand growth.

In such a case the only alternative for the world will be to reduce demand, and the only way this happens is through deep recession, but depending on the shape of the oil production “peak” or “plateau”, it may require world wide economic depression before demand is brought inline with future supply capacity.

We are a ways off from this… but how long is the question – 1, 2, 5 or 10 years? Will alternatives be in place before such a challenge is faced by the world?

I’m not convinced we’ll be ready. In order to deal with a problem effectively one must generally first accept that a problem exists. There’s absolutely zero evidence of problem recognition in current policy and political activity in the United States and Canada.