Thursday, March 4, 2010

The Oil Crunch; The ITPOES Report

The second report of the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security was released last month.  Richard Branson, Virgin Group's founder is one of the members, and was in the news regarding the report.   People can download it from their website--http://peakoiltaskforce.net/.   I read through it, 60 pages, although I skimmed some of the appendices.  This might be the best recent analysis I've read, although I admit I've only skimmed the IEA's reports, which I think soft-pedal the situation.

The report has quite a bit of supporting information relative a projected oil production plateau of 92 million barrels per day.  This is significantly higher than the 89 million b/d I've seen claimed by Morgan Downey and others.   If true, this puts the point at which demand intersects with production (their "oil crunch") out a few years, rather than happening within the next year.  Same effect, but a bit further in the future.