peak oil again...
Financial Times Germany reports in their really detailed "financial crisis live ticker" of today:
Die amerikanische Energy Information Administration EIA hat ihre Produktionserwartungen für die Opec-Staaten nach unten korrigiert: Im vierten Quartal rechnet die Behörde nur noch mit einem täglichen Öl-Output von 31,93 Mio. Barrel nach zuvor 32,44 Mio. Barrel. 2009 werden die Opec-Staaten demnach durchschnittlich 31,13 Mio. Barrel Öl am Tag fördern. Zuvor war die EIA für das kommende Jahr von 31,59 Mio. Barrel ausgegangen. Die Nicht-Opec-Staaten sollen 2009 49,2 Mio. Barrel produzieren nach zuvor 49,51 Mio. Barrel. Für die Sorte West Texas Intermediate erwartet die EIA 2009 einen durchschnittlichen Fasspreis von 63,50 $.
For anyone not speaking german this is the official Oil watchdog agency of the USofA that says that we are beyond peak oil now with heavily declining oil output for the first time ever next year. Opec countries will reduce oil output from 31,93 Mio Barrel after this year producing 32,44 Mio. Barrel - non Opec countries go from 49,51 Mio. to 49,2 Mio. Barrel. The reduction does not seem much but remember - Peak oil means a bell curved shape and the top of the slope is almost straight until the abyss comes closer. Interesting is that the agency dropped their estimate for next year from 31,59 to 31,13 for the Opec countries - knowing that the current vice president has some stake in that business I wonder if the numbers where made to look a bit better before the election. All that means is that even so demand is rising (yes demand is rising even so there is a financial crisis but the SUVs need to be refilled you know) there just is not enough oil redealy available and tapping "new" reserves is highly expensive, takes about 10-15 years to get an oilfield on the line and there is just not much new to tap anyway. The only stuff left is tarsands - have a look at pictures on google on how pretty that is. So no matter what we are going to get with the financial crisis - be assured that we hear something about oil not being enough for even a short time horizon.
PS: On a side note - the Financial Times ticker linked above has been running for quite a while now (about 4-5 month I think) - this is likely to become a historic document to see how a system collapses in slomotion - I wish they would have a better RSS feed for it so that you can do remix things with it.