Galway Greens

Seems everyone is doing a book for dummies so here’s my take on this very important subject…
I first heard of peak oil about 5 or 6 years ago and it came across as very alarmist stuff. After doing some research I concluded that yes it’s right to be alarmist – peak oil will have a huge impact on our lives and indeed has started to impact already with oil hitting €109 a barrel a few weeks ago and staying there more or less since.

The basis of “peak oil” is that production will peak or has already peaked due to increasing demand and decreasing supply. Some people think it means we no longer have oil whereas it really means that we’re starting to run out. It’s an economic and sustainability problem.
Mathematically (graphically) speaking oil production from individual wells resembles a “bell curve”. When you add all the bell curves together you get one large bell curve. The major constraint is that discovery peaked in the early 1960’s and today we’re only discovering one barrel for about every 4 we consume.
Another major constraint is that we’re now starting to extract the dirtier fuels which consume a lot of our cleaner fuels to extract. The technical term is EROI (energy returned on energy invested).
To get a good handle on the topic, put the terms “peak oil”, EROI, “Hubbert’s peak” and “bell curve” into any search engine and see what turns up.

Here are some relevant links:

Here’s some useful peak oil links.

http://www.peakoil.ie/
http://www.aspo-ireland.org/index.cfm/page/newsletter

http://www.peakoil.net/

http://www.theoildrum.com/
http://www.theoildrum.com/special/archives

http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/

http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/

http://www.oilcrash.com/index.htm

http://news.energyscenariosireland.com/index.php/esi/
http://www.feasta.org/events/foodconf/foodconf_media.htm

http://www.dieoff.com/
http://www.energyscenariosireland.com/

http://www.peakoilfordummies.com/

Author: Kieran Cunnane.