(Swedish below)
When one examines the programme for the World Petroleum Congress in Qatar, December 5-7, one can see that there are seven plenary sessions and the last of these has the theme “Peak Oil: Ahead of Us or Behind Us?”. The managing director of the French oil company Total, Christophe de Margarie, is the main speaker and it will be exciting to see what he has to say.
However, Peak Oil was already a topic of discussion yesterday at a round table discussion titled, ”Peak Oil: Reality or Mirage?” The online oil news site Upstreamonline.com headlined its daily news with, “ExxonMobil: ‘Technology to beat Peak Oil’’’. This was because Marco Rasi, vice president of Asia Pacific at ExxonMobil Development had made the following statement during the discussion,
“We don’t need to discover a lot of new resources if we continue to push forward with new technology and make it possible to economically produce resources that we already know about,”. He added, “Many of the assumptions that underlie peak oil theory…are really unfounded, because they do not take into account the role of technology. Technology makes it easier, and therefore more economically viable, to find hydrocarbons.”
This optimistic attitude towards Peak Oil was not shared by Alexey Kontorovich, Academician and Chairman of the Presidium of Kemorovo Scientific Center, Russian Academy of Science. He thought it possible that oil production would reach a maximum in 2020 and not later than 2030. It was also interesting that he gave an estimated oil production in year 2100 of between 4.2 and 4.5 billion barrels per year. That should be compare with current production of 30 billion barrels per year.
Of course, it would have been interesting if I had been invited to participate in the discussion on Peak Oil but it was gratifying nevertheless that Peak Oil is now on the agenda of the large oil companies.
(Swedish)
Då man studerar programmet för World Petroleum Congress i Qatar, december 5-7, så har man under de tre dagarna 7 planarsessioner och den sista av dessa har temat ”Peak Oil: Ahead of Us or Behind Us?” Det är verkställande direktören för det franska oljebolaget Total, Christophe de Margerie, som är huvudtalare och det skall bli spännande att få referat om vad han sagt.
Men redan igår tisdag diskuterades Peak Oil vid en rundabordsdiskussion under temat: ”Peak Oil: Reality or Mirage?” Den dagliga oljetidningen ”Upstreamsonline.com” toppade dagens nyhetssida med rubriken: ExxonMobil: ‘Technology to beat Peak Oil’. Det var Marco Rasi, vice president of Asia Pacific at ExxonMobil Development, som hade uttalat sig och i debatten gjorde han följande uttalande:
“We don’t need to discover a lot of new resources if we continue to push forward with new technology and make it possible to economically produce resources that we already know about,” med tillägget “Many of the assumptions that underlie peak oil theory…are really unfounded, because they do not take into account the role of technology. Technology makes it easier, and therefore more economically viable, to find hydrocarbons.”
Denna optimistiska inställning till Peak Oil delades inte av Alexey Kontorovich, Academician, Chairman of the Presidium of Kemorovo Scientific Center, Russian Academy of Science, Russia. Han kunde tänka sig att oljeproduktionen skulle nå en topp år 2020 och inte senare än 2030. Det var också mycket intressant att han angav beräknade att oljeproduktionen år 2100 skulle vara mellan 4.2 och 4.5 miljarder fat om året. Det skall jämföras med dagen produktion på 30 miljarder fat om året.
Självfallet skulle det varit intressant om jag blivit inbjuden och fått vara med och diskutera Peak Oil, men det känns ändå stort att vi nu placerat Peak Oil på de stora oljebolagens agenda.
Aleklett's Energy Mix 
yt75
December 11, 2011
It is so tiring to have peak oil still being refered to as a “theory”, when it is a pure high school level banality.
But the truth is that Americans have such a lying history about it that they now almost can’t escape the habit anymore.
After all the US went through its oil production peak in 1970, that is 41 years ago, and the population or citizens (if that term still apply) is still totally unaware of this fact, allowing for instance the repub candidates web pages to be a set of variations around “drill baby drill we can be energy independent let’s go”.
But for sure the cover up efforts have been very efficient, the main one being most probably having succeeded in labelling the first oil schock “arab embargo”, when first the embargo was only towards a few countries, was never effective from KSA to the US, see for instance James Akins (ex US KSA ambassador, and the one that audited US capacity under Nixon at US peak time) interview in “la face cachée du pétrole” documentary, E Laurent and P Barberis about that (doc available on youtube dailymotion but unfortunately only in French maybe German to my knowledge, many key guys interviews in that doc, and really well done). US (then top world producer let’s not forget) peak being of course the key event behind first oil shock (and fuel shortages in the US started before OPEC quotas/price rise or embargo anyway, besides the fact that OPEC quotas prod limitation was is fact also pushed by US diplomacy majors, higher prices being necessary to start new plays, Alaska, GOM, North Sea).
And the cover up continued unabated , see for instance :
Lionel Badal’s work on 1998 IEA report and further :
http://petrole.blog.lemonde.fr/how-the-global-oil-watchdog-failed-its-mission/
Or :
Robert Hirsch interview about it :
http://petrole.blog.lemonde.fr/how-the-global-oil-watchdog-failed-its-mission
Now you have Exxon moving on Iraq Kurdish oil for instance (with a bunch of mercenaries help, blackwater/Xe and the like for sure), this going almost unoticed by so called MSM or even “peak oil aware Americans”, “peak oil aware Americans” that, besides homesteading and the like, or techno dreams, avoid any mention reagrding for instance their totally ridiculous volume based gas tax level compared to any other OECD countries (while SUVs and trucks still being the car segment with biggest growth in the US), even if volume based fossile fuel taxes should of course be the prime policy to push products and manage the transition if their is a slight chance of being able to.
yt75
December 11, 2011
Sorry wrong link for Robert Hirsch interview, below correct one :
http://petrole.blog.lemonde.fr/2010/09/16/interview-with-robert-l-hirsch-22/
and sorry for typos
Harquebus
December 12, 2011
What Marco Rasi fails to take into account is, how much energy technology requires.