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A Peak Oil Primer

** This seems to be yet another under-researched parrot piece by well-meaning BNP supporters **

Click for Russia Proves 'Peak Oil' Is A Misleading Zionist Scam

While Moscow invests heavily in unlimited oil production for the future, New York squanders America's dwindling oil profits on fast cars and fast women - Copyright Joe Vialls, 25 August 2004

See also Oil secrets and oil shortage in nukelies.org

Added by rerevisionist - 1 March 2013

A question and answer introduction to the big issue of the 21st century.

What exactly is "peak oil"

This means that the oil fields have less than 50% of their original reserves remaining. A virgin untapped oil field has 100% of its reserves intact. The cost of extracting oil from a field increases slightly as extraction continues; the drill bits have to be drilled deeper and greater pumping pressures are required. This raises the cost of extraction.

At 50% of the reserves the production declines as costs increase, so at 50% of remaining reserves we have a maximum - a peak of oil production.

Add all of the world's oil fields together and the world's peak oil production occurs at the same 50% of global reserves. The remaining 50% will be more expensive to the end consumer.

So how does that affect me?

The increase in the cost of oil extraction means a greater cost of a barrel of oil on the international oil exchanges. That means a higher cost of petrol on the forecourts, a higher cost of diesel, a higher cost of everything that is transported by petrol and diesel fuelled vehicles, a higher cost of everything - from plastics to fertilisers to paints and pesticides and washing powders that are derived from oil. A higher cost of living for all of us tied into the national economy, everyone who travels, buys food from supermarkets, everyone who pays taxes; the council refuse vehicles need to run on diesel and the police stations, hospitals and schools need heating and lighting.

But we have always had fluctuations in the price of oil, what is all the fuss about now?

Yes, the price of oil has fluctuated in recent decades due to political crises, power struggles in the main oil producing countries and of course demand.

As demand for any product rises, the price goes up. As production of any product declines, the rise goes up for the remaining scarce commodity.

Increased demand + decline in production = Higher Prices

Look at the two elements on the left hand side. A reduced demand and /or an increase in production would lead to lower prices, but neither is about to happen. The price fluctuations of the past were short term as globally there was still more than 50% of the oil reserves remaining. When oil peaks globally, the decline will be permanent and irreversible.

Oil companies are always finding new places to drill, an increase in production could occur couldn't it?

It is a myth that companies are finding new reserves. It is estimated that 90% of the entire world's oil reserves have been discovered and are either exhausted, being drilled at the moment or ready to be drilled shortly. The 10% of the reserves that remain elusive do so for a very good reason, they are located in places which are geologically very challenging which means a high cost of exploration and extraction. Some of the known reserves (part of the 90%) can be tapped over the next few years as the rising price of oil makes it economic for the oil companies to start drilling, but these reserves are of inferior quality and will only provide a fraction of the global demand.

But isn't there loads of oil left?

Petroleum engineers estimate that globally there is something like another 40 years' worth of reserves (at current rates of extraction and consumption). The oil fields around the world were created by unique natural geological forces over a period of millions of years; no new reserves are being made. Besides it is not the complete exhaustion of oil reserves that is the issue here. The issue is the decline in production. There will always be some small reserve somewhere but the cost of extracting the oil would be uneconomic and will actually involve a greater input of energy to extract than is obtained from the consumption of the extracted oil.

The other element in the formula - reducing demand. That must be possible?

Yes, that is a possibility, but how are you going to get to work in the morning? Are you going to be the one that saves the planet by walking to work? Better still are you going to be the one that gives up commuting and stays at home and grows your own food, but how much land would you need to do that?

Could you actually grow enough for you and your family to survive? Can you persuade the millions of Britons, Americans and Europeans to give up cars, cheap flights and foreign holidays, turn down the central heating and air conditioning, cut down on buying food and drink hauled from one side of the planet to the other?

Do you not want your waste to be uplifted by the council bin-men? Can you explain to your children why the school heating has to be turned off for a few days a week or why the council leisure centre is closing throughout the winter?

Even if you could do that, could you then set about persuading the burgeoning Indian and Chinese populations to do likewise; that they need to abandon any idea they entertain of pulling themselves out of third world poverty to become first world developed superpowers?

Now do you begin to see the scale of the issue?

We didn't use much oil before the second world war, we just have to all cut back a little.

Cutting back on our obscene consumerism is admirable. In the UK and North America, we are all continuing to eat too much, eat too much of the wrong foods, buying mass produced tat and gadgets we do not really need and making ourselves physically and mentally stressed in the process. Cutting back "a little" is a start but our society is so much more complex and interdependent compared to just 60 years ago. The entire way of life for "western" societies is oil dependent. Our expectations are higher and even if some of our people decided to not just "cut back" but radically change their way of life, where would they start? Where would a family of four living in the midshires of England find the land to grow their own food, rear sheep and spin their own garments? Where would a community of 1000 get its water from if it decided to stop pumping water from some remote reservoir? What would a town the size of Bedford with 150,000 inhabitants do with its human sewage if it decided to stop pumping and processing the sewage with electric pumps?

Every little "cutting back" helps but we need to do a lot more than "cut back", we need to stand back and assess and determine just what kind of society we want.

So when is this peak oil thing going to happen?

Some countries have already peaked in oil production. That means they have already extracted more than 50% of their national reserves and their cost of production is increasing. Indonesia , USA and the UK 's and Norway 's North Sea reserves have already peaked. Globally there is considerable debate about when peak oil will occur. According to the most optimistic estimates by the US Geological Survey, oil production will peak in 2037. That is a comfortable way off, a generation away. But other independent analysts suggest peak oil production may occur in 2008. The gap of 30 years has been partly explained by the reliance of the US on what turn out to be false reporting about OPEC's real oil reserves. If the analysts are correct there remains only three years before oil peaks and from that point oil costs continue to increase. If the US is correct and if we did nothing now, we would be guilty of leaving our children with the issue to be resolved.

Aren't these "independent analysts" just cranks and doom-mongers, maybe they have a vested interest in upsetting the current economic situation?

Admittedly, one person's "expert" is another person's "drip under pressure"! Seriously there are very few dissenting voices in the petroleum world, almost all agree that peak oil is an issue. Some doubt the impending sense of urgency to address the issue, but almost all agree that because oil is a finite resource the peak of oil production occurs at 50% of reserves, beyond which the cost increases. If one doubts the geologists and the environmentalists for having a hidden professional or political agenda, then would you doubt those who help make the decisions for global corporate investors?

Investment bankers are powerful men with their own agendas but they never knowingly make decisions based on environmental romanticised views of the world.

What about coal? Britain has loads of coal, we don't need to import oil do we?

The UK recoverable reserves of coal were (2001 figures), 1.65 billion short tons.

Our annual consumption is running at 64.2 Mmst. (million short tons), so assuming we do not change our rate of consumption we have 25.7 years worth of reserves. If we switch to an exclusively coal based energy strategy, assuming that we could do such a thing, we would simply hasten the exhaustion of the remaining coal. Coal, like oil is a finite resource with its own peak moment, beyond which the cost would increase in the same manner as oil.

Even the Labour regime is suggesting we switch to nuclear, that must be answer?

Oil accounts for 90% of the world's transportation energy. Nuclear might be a short term answer for electricity generation but cars would need a source of petroleum unless car manufacturers start rolling out electric propelled cars on a very large scale.

It takes about 15 years to build a conventional nuclear power station and furthermore all that concrete, all those cooling pipes, pumps, control systems and security systems have to be produced, distributed and then assembled and all those workers require feeding and transport to the work site and the nuclear fuel itself is mined, extracted, processed and distributed and ALL these use good old black oil!

You cannot use nuclear to propel a plane from Heathrow to Sydney and you cannot directly use nuclear to power a tractor to plough the wheat fields of Norfolk, furthermore the battery packs have not been invented to store the electricity needed to power said tractor.

And one other thing, there is not a finite source of the nuclear fuel - uranium ore.

So called fast breeder reactors offer a glimmer of hope but no one has yet made one work. Pilot plants have been closed in France , UK and Japan and mothballed on grounds of maintenance costs and safety issues.

What about all the other energy possibilities; wave, wind, solar, biomass?

All very useful for small projects but each one is useless for large scale industrial production.

Here are a few examples:

Let's compare motor fuel with its nearest renewable equivalent, biodiesel. It takes two hundred and fifty gallons of diesel per year to keep the average diesel car going the average distance travelled every year. Replace that with biodiesel, and you have to find a hectare (2.5 acres) of land to produce the three tonnes of oilseeds biodiesel production requires. Want to make the twenty-odd million cars in the UK run on biodiesel? - sorry, but that would take five times more land than all the farm land currently in cultivation in the UK . Even if we turned over half the cultivated land in the UK to produce biofuels it would only keep just over two million cars (less than 10% of the current car fleet) on the road - and of course this figure doesn't include lorries, trains, tractors, etc., which would also demand biodiesel to keep running.

Of all the renewable technologies wind power is the most useful source of energy. The problem is that energy production from wind is unpredictable. Producing an amount of energy equivalent to the UK 's electricity supply each year would require 4% of the UK 's land area to be densely covered with over 50,000 of the largest wind turbines currently manufactured.

So, there is a looming shortage of energy, but so what? We will be able to survive won't we - someone will come up with an alternative, Americans put men on the moon, this is not so difficult to answer is it?

Yes, a survival gene still exists within humanity and humanity will strive to continue to live, work, procreate, engage in arts, conflict, trade and all those other activities, good and bad, which it means to be human.

That "someone" is unlikely to be one person as there are so many related but different issues to address and so many possible solutions.

All the disciplines of science, engineering, law, psychology will be needed to arrive at practical solutions and those solutions enacted at national, regional, local and individual level.

Finally, what has this got to do with the BNP? This is something for university boffins to answer. The BNP will not win elections by scaring people about these so called energy crises; it is mass immigration that is to blame.

"Scaring" is an emotive term. Sometimes telling the truth is difficult. Sometimes it is necessary. No one wants to hear the cry of "wolf" but if the shepherds do not heed the cry of "wolf" and the wolf is very real, the consequences are easy to envisage.

The BNP is a political movement which has at its core, policies ensuring the survival of our people against the many threats. Uncontrolled immigration from the third world is one obvious issue and a demographic threat to our people. The erosion of national sovereignty and handing over of decision making to unelected supra-national entities such as the EU is another. The drugs and alcohol abuse by our young folk which fuels local crime waves is another. Peak oil may be seen as a threat, a problem or a difficulty, but those terms are also emotive. Let us simply state that peak oil is an "issue" which needs to be addressed.

Some may view the demise of massive out of town retail parks and the demise of a centralised State bureaucracy as a "problem". Some may see the massive slump in share prices of those companies heavily dependent on fossil fuel use; the agri-businesses, the chemical giants, the recently privatised utility companies as a problem. Other may see the rise in share prices of those companies which can create, develop and maintain sustainable solutions as an opportunity.

Projects which plan to capture the limitless supply of energy from the sun, the waves and the earth's hot core may seem ambitious or even fanciful but if they can generate energy in a sustainable manner the earnings are there to be had.

We could of course move outside the existing profit-determined paradigm to a scenario of low consumption, localisation of resource-acquisition and decision making. Instead of nations combining to become huge unwieldy supra-national entities such as the EU, maybe a score of new nations will emerge.

It is a time of massive opportunity for change; change in the way we all live and work, change in political structures, change in behavioural patterns and change in our perceptions, expectations and ambitions. It also depends on who is in place to make the decisions which bring about change.

The leadership of the BNP is not sitting idly by waiting for peak oil to occur and allow those that have profited from the exploitation of our finite resources to come up with draconian measures to feather their own nests while corralling the rest of the population into an urbanised, deracinated, heavily policed, slave mass living in oppressive and tightly controlled conditions with total dependence on a centralised allocation of resources.

The BNP leadership is prepared to suffer the usual brickbats, the name calling and the hostility when we force discussion of peak oil on to the political agenda just as it has endured the hostility resulting from our crying "wolf" over asylum and uncontrolled immigration. The BNP cried "wolf" and as a result asylum and immigration are two of the main topics on the UK 's political agenda. A similar result is expected on the topic of peak oil. We have set up an Ideas Forum which is addressing all issues and seeking answers across a wide range of topics from land reform, alternative energy production, co-operative working, organic farming, housing and planning, to decentralisation of decision making to local levels.

We will be educating our members and supporters about the peak oil issue, inviting participation to those stimulated by the possible opportunities for change to allow us to create policies which we can present at the next set of elections where we will have the answers while the political opposition are left floundering, trying to explain why their tired old short term promises and lies have failed.