I’m with you all the way Michael.

There can be no more urgent matter in desperate need of resolution than peak oil. The impending stresses being placed on every aspect of our society by ever-rising fuel prices are of such a magnitude that they threaten to disrupt the very fabric of our society. And that’s before we actually suffer any shortages of supply.

The outlook is extremely grim. The 2020 summit should be centred on the peak oil issue, with anything else to be discussed strongly connected back to it.

If the approaching end to cheap and abundant liquid fossil fuel energy is not discussed at this forum, then the forum will be in effect useless.

Yes, it is well and truly time for all those concerned with this issue to band together and launch some very strong demands that our government deal with it as it’s highest priority.

We desperately need the Tim Flannerys, Ian Lowes, Greg Bournes and Andrew McNamaras to pull this issue together and garner support from the general community, and get that pressure building upon Rudd to act decisively.

The recent greatly increased awareness and action on climate change needs to morph very quickly into action on peak oil. The approach is pretty much the same, but the urgency is much greater. Issues of sustainability, population stabilisation and an end to continuous-growth-forever mantra are fundamental components.

So, while the long-term goal is a sustainable society and healthy environment, the short-term focus must be fairly and squarely on the end to the cheap energy regime that our society is so fundamentally dependent on.

Australia, as a whole, is completely blind to Peak Oil. How long this continues remains to be seen. Either by education or reality it's effects will be known soon enough. Perhaps action by Peak Oil proponents does need to go to the streets. Unfortunately most of the people who know about it don't seem to be the banner whirling types. I'm not in Academic circles, where most of it's proponents lie, and I couldn't tell you one other person I've met that can even make a connection between the words "Peak" and "Oil". Are there any Peak Oil aware celebrities?
Australia's media are also blissfully unaware. You may get the odd small article here and there with a mention, but never a dedicated article. I personally have written time and time again to the Sydney Morning Herald trying to relate Peak Oil to a particular story. Not one of my letters have ever been published (though that may have more to do with my writing style than the issue at hand).
If a street walk is required perhaps now is the time to do it. You may get a minute or two in the nightly news.

MIchael,
It really is an uphill battle.
The pollies have been so long silent that they have put themselves into
a position that to admit to peak oil publically will raise the
question as to why they have kept us in the dark for so long.

In the Sydney Morning Herald a year or more ago the government announced
they were mothballing replaced buses instead of as usual selling them.
Just that they thought they might be needed in the future.

It is a reasonable assumption that it has been seriously discussed in
cabinet, hence Ferguson's comment the other day.
However they cannot admit to peak oil. When it happens they will say
"Oh dear what a surprise !".

I believe that while some politicians understand peak oil, the vast majority have never given it thought. Instead they're still following the old infinite-growth philosophy that permeats the thinking of both major parties and even the Greens. Combine this with the economic mantra that oil supply will always rise to meet demand, and to them peak oil becomes the raving of a lunatic fringe.

You can even see this in Martin Ferguson's comments. He's acknowledging the perils for Australia as our own oil production declines, but only from a balance-of-trade point of view. He assumes that there _has_ to be another Bass Strait out there - all we need do is create the economic incentives for exploration. If the demand is there supply must surely follow, hence no need for a Plan B if another Bass Strait doesn't present itself.

We should be preparing now. Instead of developing more soon-to-be-useless motorways, we need urgent boosting of public transport in our cities and rebuilding of our rail infrastructure in the country. In other words, preparing for the future instead of thinking only of today's profits and votes.

Despite Michael's good intentions in this article I don't see ASPO marching in the streets as a solution at all; its a sure-fire way of peak oil being dismissed as a madcap theory with no substance. On the other hand, people are seeing fuel prices skyrocket and are, at the moment, content with blaming it on the big oil companys profiteering. If, somehow, the message that the price is due to oil supply failing to keep pace with demand over the last 3 years despite massive worldwide exploration investments, perhaps the public would get worried enough to start demanding solutions from our elected leaders.

I do not understand the position the Government is taking on petrol prices.It is reasonable to say that the Government gets up to 50% excise on some of Australias larger oil fields. So this means that they get $50.00 a barrel and the Australian public pay $150.00 a barrel. But the big question is this.
Why does the Government insist on selling petrol under the OPEC banner?. I mean , If we really do have all these reserves of oil and gas do we have a shortage of oil or gas? Why do we not have a domestic price and a international price?.Who owns the oil anyway?.
Mr Rudd wants to control inflation but he has no control over the price of oil.
Seriously ,he has no control over the price of our oil.

Like climate change, awareness of the reality and meaning of peak oil will only begin to hit home when the price of oil rises even more precipitously (could it hit $500 a barrel within a decade?), scarcity and hoarding become the norms and costs of they myriad of goods - including food - rise in response, that we will see the headless chooks emerge from every political cupboard squawking that we need to act. And unfortunately, the squawking is likely to be 'use hydrocarbons - dig up everything, everywhere no matter the climate consequences because alienating the car driving, energy guzzling public is worse than ignoring climate change.' Not only do we have to begin to discuss peak oil but we have to discuss it in the context of changing the way we live not finding new ways to continue to do business as usual.

Robbo5; From what I have read most of our oil imports do not
come from OPEC countries, however some does.

We import it because we have no choice, it is import or introduce
rationing now. We have a little over 50% of our needs.
We are committed to importing more each year and paying ever higher
prices for what we import.

We do not have the enormous resources of oil that the conspiracy
theory pushers insist are sitting out in the desert just capped and
waiting for the prices to get higher.
Well on second thoughts, maybe there are capped wells waiting for
the prices to reach $500 barrel and so become economic.
They won't help much however, it is just too big a problem for a
couple of new fields to do more than slow down the fall in supplies.

It is this dismal future that the politicians are too frightened to
face up to. As much as I dislike the thought the Greens seem to be
the only political party to recognise the problem for what it is.

Their problem is they are so wrapped up in global warming that their
cures are worse than than the disease.

Peak oil is “just” an element of attitudinal dysfunction. As the author himself and others have intimated, the direction of world and Australian society is the fundamental problem.
The concept of perpetual growth is like using fossil fuel to drive a four wheel drive vehicle - into a bog stretching beyond the horizon, and towards an unknown destination. As experienced country traveler Ludwig might tell us, it indicates an unhealthy attitude of mind.
If a statesman were steering society he would, rather than continue on towards insurmountable problems, change direction towards firmer ground. Unfortunately it is evident that, as Peak Oil bites increasingly severely, our current leaders will be urging us to get out and push, ever and ever harder – in the same old direction.
It will be ever the same while they have a fixation for taking a three wise monkeys attitude to the issue. The call for submissions to the 20/20 Group on Population, Sustainability, Climate Change and Water framework asks “How do we plan future population growth at a national and regional level”. This carries the assumption that increasing population is to be fostered, without cessation, both at the national and regional levels. That, by 2020, will contribute another Sydney, in population terms, to impact on our oil needs

It does look like oil really did peak when Kenneth Deffeyes said it would - in 2006. It was odd really - one man against the might of the US Geological Survey. And he proved them all wrong. There must be a biography in there somewhere.

If it peaked in 2006 then the price is going to keep rising. It was at a new highs over Easter as I recall. My guess is it moving faster than the political machinery can keep up with it - especially with distractions like Global Warming.

I imagine oil will reach $2/litre in this electoral cycle. The pain will become too much to ignore. Really, a year or two isn't going to make that much difference. And if it doesn't happen, well then it was all much ado about nothing.

I was hoping to go to the Summit and have been talking about peak oil since 1973. But I didn't make it either. I had a former Premier and a current Minister as my referees.
I think we now have a good story to be able to tell about how you can rebuild and extend a successful railway in a modern Australian city, but there is almost no-one going from Perth and certainly no-one who knows about the train. I cant believe that they would be as clever as conspiring to keep us out and that its just a problem of choosing from a large list. But it doesn't mean we dont let everyone know that their choice of attendees is rather biased.
Peter Newman

That is interesting Peter. I would have thought that you were one of the most eminently qualified people to be involved in this summit.

I wonder if it was because there were just so many good applicants or whether there was indeed a deliberate bias in the selection process.

Actually, I don’t wonder at all (:>|

As Colinsett points out, there are fundamental problems with the Summit, evident in the wording of some of the questions, which indicate the innate desire to continue with business as usual in some key ways and to not even explore some of essential changes to the ways we operate that we need to make in order to deal with climate change, peak oil, sustainability, etc.

I hear many conflicting stories about Australian domestic oil supply.

The author says that SA has only 10 days supply at any one time and is reliant on deliveries from Singapore. Others say that we produce less than half of our own needs. Others say we produce around 75%. Still others say that we produce most of our own oil and have the probable capacity to supply 100% of our own needs for decades to come, and that in addition, Australia is still mostly unexplored for petroleum.

These widely differing opinions can't all be correct.

My grandfather worked on the exploration rigs in western Queensland in the 1950's and he recalled no shortage of successfull strikes. They simply capped the wells with a small concrete block and marked the co-ordinates on a map. What size the reserves actually were is probably anyone's guess.

I'm not denying peak oil or saying that we shouldn't breaking a leg to get as many working alternatives in place as soon as possible, I would just like to know the truth as to how much oil we actually have here in this country. If we are in fact, sitting on a reserve surplus to our own small needs, then the parity system is a rort. Our oil does not need to travel halfway round the world to get here and is pretty safe from terrorists and middle-eastern wars. We should not be paying the exorbitant world price if the stuff truly is abundant here.

Anyone know much about this?

Fozz, this will answer your questions:

http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/rrat_ctte/oil_supply/report/report.pdf

You peak oilers should be able to make a lot of money if you have the courage of your convictions: the Nymex future for light sweet crude in Dec 2013 is priced at only $99!

OC617, "make a lot of money if you have the courage of your convictions ...".

That depends on what our convictions are, OC617. I can't speak for the others, but it appears oil peaked in 2006. Right now we are in the flat spot of the curve. From past articles here on OLO, we start sliding down the other side of the curve in earnest at around 2012.

I would indeed take the bet offered by Nymex future if that was what the bet was for. But what the availability of sweet crude will have to do with its price in 2013 is unclear. A couple of facts may illustrate why.

Fact 1: Conversion from coal to oil using the Fischer-Tropsch yields oil priced at around $50/barrel. Its not too difficult to come up reasons why we have not as yet taken up a way to produce oil at around 1/2 the price we pay for it now - but predicting if and when we will is beyond me.

Fact 2: To very roughly calculate the "price equivalent" for electricity, multiply the price of electricity in Kw/Hours by 2 to yield an equivalent price per litre of petrol, retail. So, if you are paying around 15 cents per Kw/hour, then it would take 30 cents of electricity to power your car for roughly the same distance as 1 litre of petrol. The first plug in hybrid cars will hit our shores in 2010.

Fact 3: We are on the peak of the oil availability curve, so supply is roughly flat. Ergo, the price increases we are seeing are being driven mostly by demand - from China and India I guess. Should that demand dry up, maybe because their best customer hit a sub-prime mortgage crisis, the price of petrol would stop rising for now.

So if demand remains flat, and we put the effort in now to do lot of oil substitution, the price of crude may go down. But if demand continues to rise, and we don't take steps to substitute, the price will go through a meteoric rise.

rstuart has a point with oil substitution.
Personally I'd like to see some choices right now. Currently I use leg power and a coal powered train to get to work. For those other trips;
I'm in the market for a new car and don't want one that uses oil. That pretty much leaves me using LPG or gutting a hybrid on my own time and hoping the RTA here will let me register it.
I doubt my grand kids of the future will believe me when I tell them we used to just hop in a car and drive for a holiday.

rstuart, how could demand ‘remain’ flat with China’s, India’s and indeed the whole world’s rapid increase in per-capita consumption and/or population growth?

It will continue to increase rapidly.

Even with the best efforts to substitute liquid fossil fuel energy, oil prices would continue on their meteoric rise.

Unfortunately, our political and social systems will remain blissfully unprepared for the continuing rapid rise in oil prices. There will come a point when the political outcry to 'do something' about petrol prices will become loud, prolongued and impossible to ignore. Will the solution be climate friendly? Highly unlikely - we're more likely to see short term, knee jerk political reactions from a system that demands short attention spans - subsidies for fuel, reductions in taxes, and a push to produce oil from coal - cheap, available and requiring fewer systemic changes. Peak oil could be a great opportunity, but there is no evidence it will be.

Ludwigl Demand is not flat but production is flat.
This apparent contradiction becomes possible because many of the poorer
countries are cutting back on their consumption.
Many of the power stations in Africa are oil fired and cannot purchase
all the oil they need for uninterrupted service, hence the widespread
blackouts. The same also applies in Pakistan and others.

Sooner or later we will run out of poorer countries.
Bit dismal isn't it ?

I agree with many posters that we cannot continue with perpetual growth. However it is obvious to me why politicians don't want to talk about it.

The reason is that when growth ends, so does full employment. What we face is a permanent depression, with 40 or 50% of people unemployed, and with considerable social unrest.

About they only way the politicians may be able to keep us in line would be to show us on television what is happening overseas, as things will be very much worse there.

Remember that Australia is the only country with the four vital things that will see us through a very rough and brutal century. These are:

1. A surplus of food.

2. A surplus of minerals.

3. A surplus of energy.

and, most important of all,

4. A sea boundary.

Plerdsus;
I am not sure your list is correct.
There is a problem with food. It requires, at present, a lot of oil
to get it from the seed to your table.
Fertiliser will also be a problem. Phosphorous is in short supply
already.
We will need to restructure our whole food chain and become largely
vegetarians.

Large scale agriculture will only survive it it can be electrified.
If you are talking about to the end of the century then for energy
we had better stop selling it off overseas. Our own demand on other
energy forms such as coal and gas will increase by several times
to make up for the loss of oil supplies.
Other renewable energy forms will require very large investment of
funds which may just not be available from the economy as it will be
when it is needed.

It all gets back to the denial by politicians of the rapidly
approaching depletion of oil supply.
If you deny it you cannot mitigate it.
It really is as simple as that.