The IEA prognosis is riddled with dubious assumptions. For starters many informed observers predict that crude oil production will decline, not increase. Since liquid fuels are critical to the economy in growing and distributing food, delivering materials and getting to work it is on the cards that world economy may shrink, not grow. On the way demand for coal and gas may decline as well unless these become oil substitutes. If it turns out that way the fundamental premise of continued economic growth will turn out to have been wrong.

The report fails to notice that China and India are running out of domestic coal and exporters like Australia will be unable to fill the gap. Politicians will find a million reasons to delay carbon pricing but eventually carbon will get expensive anyway. However I think the report hits the nail on the head with a few other observations. The gas glut won't last long, renewables subsidies will be too expensive, fossil fuel subsidies will linger on and a nuclear build will be slow and costly. The IEA report is really more about making reassuring noises for economic conservatives. I think reality will turn out to be a slow paced muddle, hopefully without major wars breaking out.

It would be good if we had a government that looked into the future and took steps to organize for the inevitable disruption that peak oil will soon cause.
We are getting to the bottom of our oil barrel and will soon be spending more than we can afford to import oil to keep our economy going. We have a large but not infinite supply of gas here and this could be used as a stopgap to provide us with transportation fuel until other methods (if any) are discovered.
The first step would be to nationalize the gas industry, curtail the exports and set up an infrastructure to distribute the gas to the main population centers.
When you poke a US dollar into a fuel tank on a truck or bus it will not run the engine.
What is the use of selling of this precious asset for useless US dollars?
We only have a few years left before we are in serious trouble.
Recently I noticed that commercial trucks were sporting a sign that said, “without truck Australia stops”.
A better sign would be “with out diesel, trucks stop”.

Tasweagen.
The author did not comment on the where the IEA report states that
crude oil production peaked in 2006 at around 70 Mbd and has now fallen
to 65 Mbd and that it will never reach its peak again.
Such a statement by the IEA would have produced banner headlines one
should expect.
Funny thing is crude oil peaked in 2005, not 2006.

Re the coal well the German Energy Watch group expects peak Coal by 2025.
There us a later report from elsewhere that predicts 2011, hmmm.

Sarnian;
A better sign would be “with out diesel, trucks stop”.

Good one, where can we get them made ?

Sorry fellas but the IEA report changed nothing whatever. All it really shows is what the rest of the oil industry suspected, that the IEA has gone "peakist". Oil prices are expected to go up but, as has long been acknowledged, the main factor is OPEC's power as a cartel. The real question has never been a shortage of oil, as such, but whether the switch between easy-lift cheap oil, and unconventional oil and the likes deep water oil will occur without disruption.

In 2006 the influential advisory company Cambridge Energy Research Association (more authorative than the IEA), put the peak in conventional oil production at 2040 but with unconventional oil adding quite a bit to that, and the peak extending over several decades. The CERA release, dated November 14, 2006, can be found online. Its also clear the organisation, like most of the rest of the industry, has little time for peak oil. Nothing has happened to change that - yes, I do realise there has been a price spike which brought the peak oil hopefuls out in droves. the spike has since gone away (leaving oil prices higher, as was generally expected).

Posters were saying that the peak in oil production has already occured. Bwwwhahahahahaha! You do know that the oil reserve figurtes are simply guess work? OPEC has not produced reliable reserve figures for decades. The real problem is and remains the cartel's failure to invest in production - for very good reasons for their own.

How many decades has it taken to get to this supposed peak oil.
It's just as far down the hill as it is up.
For some reason you mob can't wait for oil to run out.
It's not going to happen in your lifetime.
I think you will find that the fuelling of engines will change long before oil runs out.
It takes a machine to make a machine.
So rest easy, and don't let it rob you of any sleep.

Every time an article begins with "It's Official" you can bet that its yet another attempt to make a weak case sound much stronger than it really is.

Of course peak oil is inevitable. The only question is just when.

This year, this decade, this century, it's got to happen some time, but may be not soon.

As a keen sailor I started to get excited in the late 70s, when the subject was first talked up in the media.

Beauty I thought, I'll build a 150Ft sailing cargo boat, & transport goods up & down the coast, as the trucks disappear. A great life was offering.

Good thing I didn't rush into it, isn't it?

Ahhh, 579 you fall into the same old trap.
Oil is not going to run out for 100s years.
It is just that conventional crude oil has peaked.
It is now a little below the 2005 value.
The problem is can the other components of supply make up for the
decline that will occur in conventional crude oil.
Some say it will some say it won't.

Even the IEA says we will need another Saudi Arabia every few years.

Problem is, as fossil fuels become scarcer or harder to extract, the energy cost in getting them will escalate, so we could well be using fossil fuels to obtain fossil fuels, just as we could end up growing crops to provide fuel to grow crops. A dog chasing its tail comes to mind.

I don't think it is fair to say that people who believe that peak oil is a problem 'can't wait for it to run out'. I'd just like us (companies, governments, etc) to be thinking seriously about the changeover to other fuels. For a start, I'd limit coal extraction in Australia to companies which are also heavily investing in future fuel research. Nuclear may well have a role, but it can't fill all the gaps.

Never seem to hear much about peak wood or peak tallow these days. Electric motorcycles are already feasible, and could replace their petrol powered counterparts in much of Asia.

http://motoring.asiaone.com/Motoring/News/Story/A1Story20101115-247260.html

Higher oil prices will speed the change.

There's more going on with alternate fuels than you are about to give credit for. And i am not talking about growing crops to make fuel.
Oil extraction will eventually become more time consuming to get out of the ground. When an oil well is opened it only has free flow for a limited time, then it has to be suction pumped,or water displaced. Costs will rise, but all these oil wells are not going to run out in the same decade or century.
I would be a little skeptical about gas fired power stations costing more. Gas is delivered in a pipe. Coal is delivered by extraction with gigantic mining equipment. So i don't know where the imballance of cost would be. I haven't herd the Arabs worried about where their next dollar is going to come from, seeing that oil is running out. How many oil wells are there around AU with caps on them, left for emergency use only. America used to put oil back into pumped out oil wells, they probably still do.

We're running out of oil again, huh? Yep, that's been happening pretty regularly for the past century or more.

To carry Fester's analogy: you don't hear much about Peak Flint these days, either.

Wood and tallow, Fester, are renewable resources, but of course can be depleted to the point of no return by over exploitation, as happened on Easter Island in the case of trees, or if you eat all your tallow-producing animals. And flint, Clownfish, was not an expendable resource but a durable material which was used in very small quantities to make long lasting tools. The stone age was superseded because a better material was discovered, and it lasted an awful lot longer than the fossil fuel age will.

Like it or not, a finite resource will eventually run out if you keep on using it. Many will run out faster than you think, as demand from China and India grows. Coal, for example, was predicted to last a few hundred years a couple of decades ago. Now it is ninety years, based on present extraction rates, or forty five years if current growth in demand is factored in. We really do need to be planning for the post fossil fuel era.

George Bush and the US oil group tried to increase their oil standing, and that is why we have that unwinable war in the Middle East.

"Wood and tallow, Fester, are renewable resources,"

So are fossil fuels, though they take a bit longer to make. But ingenuity is by far the most important foundation of civilisation. If that runs out we are really in for it.

Bazz, 9:25:14 AM Monday

try:

http://www.pricescreen.com.au/stickers.html

I'm sure there's thousands more.

The clearer thinking today is that Peak Oil is playing out on the financial scene. To explain:
The world growth economy will oneday stop growing (most thinking people don't believe in perpetual economic growth) and it is inherently unstable. As the cost of producing a barrel of oil rises, due for example to new expensive off shore deep well production, so the cost to the economy rises. It is a drag on the economy at all levels. This drag is added to other events happening in the economy (like a debt crisis) and eventually, the growth economy stops growing.

I think we are seeing the effect of Peak Oil now and I think we are lining up for the second world depression.

<I think we are seeing the effect of Peak Oil now and I think we are lining up for the second world depression.>

Powering a vehicle with electricity is much cheaper than diesel or gasoline at current prices. The hurdle has been the battery, but this is no longer true for light vehicles.

http://en.luyuan.cn/future/latest_NewTechnology.asp

More a revolution than a depression.

Michael DW,
Your opinion is reasonable, but it is complicated by the in-elasticity
of demand for liquid fuel. I believe that the price rises at first will
not effect demand. There will be a price point where the demand will
drop very significantly, but I think that will not happen until
physical shortages appear.

To change our individual transport from petrol cars to electric will
take at least 20 years and will require major expenditure of energy.
This means, I believe, that the change to electric vehicles is not the
direct savings in fuel that many expect.

Once physical shortages occur rationing will be imperative to enable
those services such as emergency services, food distribution etc.