“Energy CFOs Are Split on World’s Peak Petroleum Production Rate, According to BDO Seidman, LLP.” This quote is from Business Wire

What this means is that half the most cautious people in the entire energy business, Chief Financial Officers, are saying that we are peaking, or will peak soon.

It’s not just the CFOs. The CEO of French oil company Total S.A., said that production of even 100 million barrels a day by 2030 will be “difficult.” The CEO of ConocoPhillips said, “I don’t think we are going to see the supply going over 100 million barrels a day.” The CEO of Royal Dutch/Shell emailed his employees, “Shell estimates that after 2015 supplies of easy-to-access oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand.”

The problem is far graver than it appears for one simple reason: Replacing oil in the transportation sector requires strong government action two decades before a peak because of the time needed to replace vehicles and fuel infrastructure. That was the conclusion of a major study funded by the Bush Department of Energy in 2005 on “Peaking of World Oil Production” also known as the Hirsch Report [PDF]. The report says:

The world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil) were gradual and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.

We have been warned. It’s not only Climate Change that we have to worry about, but the threat of a sudden and irreversible end to the energy lifestyles to which we have become accustomed.

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