# Transcript

Shaun Chamberlin
I'm Shaun Chamberlin. I co-authored a report for the All Party Parliamentary Group on peak oil, and I run the campaign for TEQs, which is the energy rationing system being discussed around the world.
Peak oil is based on the discovery, from experience, that for any given oilfield the production from that oilfield will increase over time, and then eventually reach a peak, and decline from that point in terms of the flow rate that's coming out of that oilfield. And the same is true of a region of oilfields or a country or, indeed, global oil production. And so the term peak oil usually refers to that, that global peak in oil production. I think crucially one of the things that's often said about peak oil is that it's when, when half the oil's been extracted, but that isn't necessarily true. It was probably true more when conventional oil made up the bulk of oil production. But now if you look at things like, for example, oil shale there are vast reserves of this stuff but the extraction rate from oil shale is very low for other reasons so, for example, the amount of water that's required to produce that. It's the flow rate that determines what's actually available to society to use, and reserves are just one limiting factor on that. We often say in peak oil terms that it's not the size of the tank that matters, it's the size of the tap that matters.
I like to challenge people when they talk about peak oil theory or peak oil hypothesis, because in the present we can say it's not really a theory or hypothesis, it's an observable fact. I mean the US oil production peaked in 1971; UK oil production peaked in 1999; global oil production has sort of levelled off over the last six or seven years. And, fundamentally, oil is a finite resource clearly, and so it's obvious that there will come a time when production declines over time. But in terms of looking to future scenarios and future impacts of, of peak oil, one of the key things was in 2005 the US Department of Energy produced a report, led by a guy called Robert Hirsch, and he spoke about economic, social and political impacts that would be abrupt, revolutionary, and not temporary.
Now, there are many, many different scenarios as to how peak oil and its implications could play out, but there are some undeniably important facts. I mean energy is probably best thought of as our ability to do stuff; that's fundamentally what it is. And so you'll find some kind of energy supply in the supply chain of every company and every activity that goes on. It obviously has a huge impact on the economy. If, if energy prices are increasing dramatically, as they have, then there's a complex relationship, and an important relationship, between that and the strength of the global economy generally.
The one absolutely core fact that really emphasises peak oil and its importance is that if you look at the energy content of petrol then a fill-up of petrol for a car, say 40 litres of petrol, is equivalent to four years of manual labour by a person, in terms of its energy content, and other things you can do with it, and yet, you know, we're paying for that maybe fifty quid. You know, you see if you can find someone who'll do four years of manual labour for you for fifty pounds and it's very easy to see why we've industrialised everything we can and, and powered it with fossil fuels.
And it's also I think crucial to look at the interplay with climate change, because there's a sort of a debate around whether peak oil is, is a good thing or a bad thing in terms of climate change. Because some people say well, you know, if we don't have as many fossil fuels, great, you know, we're not going to burn as many fossil fuels so that improves the climate change situation. Whereas others would say, oh my God, you know just at the point where we've got this huge challenge of climate change, we've also got this problem that's going to limit our ability to act and limit our ability to adapt and, you know, it's going to undermine our society's ability to do things about it.
And this is where I think it's really important to recognise that peak oil is no longer a future issue. This is something that's already shaping our world. I mean when I first started looking into peak oil around, around the turn of the century, the oil price had never been over $40 a barrel, except for during the '70s oil crisis when it, when it shot up. But that was a short-term political situation whereby certain oil producing and exporting countries reduced their production, reduced their exports for political reasons. After that crisis, it dropped back down and remained around $15-30 a barrel until I think around 2003. And actually I remember at one point in 1999 the oil price was under $10 a barrel, that recently, and yet now the average price last year, the average price, not the peak, was over $100 a barrel. And I remember 10 years ago we were told we were absolute nutcases for talking about the possibility of $100 a barrel, where that would never happen, and now it's absolutely normal and it's absolutely what everyone expects to happen.
You've got the International Energy Agency, for example, which is the leading global authority on energy absolutely acknowledging that we're facing this huge problem here. Their chief economist said a couple of years ago that we, we absolutely need to leave oil before it leaves us, and we have sounded the warning; these were his exact words,
It's hard to find a credible observer who doesn't believe that we're going to peak by 2030, you know that's the, that's a real outlier. You know some of the big sort of oil companies who consider it in their best interest to deny that this is a problem, they talk about peak oil by 2030. But even if that were true, it would still be time to be doing something about it right now.