Sleepwalking over the oil peak

(History and prediction of Australia and New Zealand future oil production in Crude Oil, The Supply Outlook by Energy Watch Group)

Even the Export Land Model cannot predict what will happen when the world’s financial and political elite finally decide that declining oil supplies are an irrevocable fact. There will probably be hoarding and conflict that will reduce the availability of oil on the world market even faster. For example, if the USA does eventually attack Iran (and recent rhetoric about acting now to "avoid WWIII" make that seem increasingly likely) we will probably see the flow of oil from Gulf states stopped and serious retaliatory damage done to oil infrastructure outside of Iran. 25 per cent of the world’s oil exports may be lost overnight and access to 2/3rds of the world’s remaining oil reserves may be denied for months or years. My home state of South Australia has a maximum fuel storage capacity of less than 20 days average use (too little to allow rationing) and receives its fuel supplies in "just in time" fashion from Singapore. We may find ourselves without fuel imports and desperate for emergency deliveries from crisis-struck refineries in other Australian states!

Is it possible that Australians may have virtually no oil by 2020? How will we grow our food, let alone distribute it? When the crisis hits (by all accounts soon) will our government recognise it for what it is and institute a drastic policy of conservation of our remaining oil supplies to give us some small chance to adapt to that new world or will it blindly push for maximal use of our remaining resource and so drive us headlong over the cliff? Unfortunately, it is not in the nature of economic conservatives to conserve …

Thanks to www.energybulletin.net for making it so easy to keep up with peak oil-relevant literature.