Reply #69: ASPO Strikes Back!

[Nordmadr]

647. Vituperation

The following website alleges dishonesty and incompetence by the Editor of this Newsletter along with schizophrenic and Fascist tendencies.

http://peakoildebunked.blogspot.com/2005/10/122-colin-campbell-wrong-again.html.

This avalanche of abuse was apparently triggered by reporting a reassessment that moved the peak date from 2007 to 2010. The word Peak possibly confuses those ignorant of the subject. It is not a Mount Everest but merely the maximum value on a gentle curve. Additional confusion is introduced by the several categories of oil, each depleting at different rates. The present assessment indicates that Regular

Conventional Oil was at peak in 2004, whereas the profile for “all liquids”, as compiled from individual
country evaluations (excluding refinery gains), is as follows:

2000 74.2 Mb/d 2006 81.7 Mb/d 2012 82.3 Mb/d 2018 71.9 Mb/d
2002 73.4 2008 83.6 2014 79.4 2020 68.6
2004 79.6 2010 84.5 2016 75.9 2022 65.0

It is obvious that a fairly minor change in the input, or the modelling assumptions, can shift the maximum value (Peak) by a year or two, one way or the other, while the general position remains clear. We know that the estimates are wrong, given the appallingly unreliable public data. The questions are By How Much? and On What Evidence? If we have missed the impact of the Cretaceous in the Sudan or the delta fronts of Sumatra, please let us know. It is worth noting in passing that were Middle East production to rise higher than presently forecast, it would simply give a higher and possibly earlier peak followed by a steeper
subsequent decline.

In a separate incident, Jack Zagar, giving a talk on Peak Oil to the Society of Petroleum Engineers in Geneva, found himself facing a member of the audience who accused ASPO of being a political conspiracy to justify the invasion of Iraq.



I highly recommend regularly reading the ASPO newletter releases.
This is all taken from the December Newsletter.
http://www.peakoil.ie/downloads/newsletters/newsletter60_200512.pdf

Olaf