The doubts about OPEC’s spare capacity have persisted. Last month, The Guardian published the contents of U.S. embassy cables from Riyadh, which were released by Wikileaks and based on information provided by Sadad al-Husseini, a geologist and former head of exploration at the national oil company Aramco. They suggested that Saudi Arabia may not have enough capacity to prevent oil prices from galloping ahead and that the kingdom’s reserves were greatly exaggerated.

Earlier this week, the oil analysts at Goldman Sachs accused the Saudis and the other cartel members of, in effect, fudging their output figures. “We believe that Saudi Arabia has been producing 0.5 million to one million barrels a day above the official numbers since November … implying that OPEC spare capacity is significantly lower than reported,” they said.

Plan B can only be less oil consumption. Whether Americans realize it or not, they are already on that path. The disaster in the Gulf is just putting that reality into sharper focus. Last year there were four million fewer vehicles on the road in the United States than there were the year before. In the next decade, there will be 40 to 50 million fewer cars than today. In the process, an economy that once consumed over 20 million barrels of oil per day will find a way to run on 15 million barrels or even less.

Peak supply defines peak demand. That, in a nutshell, is Plan B. “

‘Peak Oil’ and the German Government
Military Study Warns of a Potentially Drastic Oil Crisis

By Stefan Schultz

A study by a German military think tank has analyzed how “peak oil” might change the global economy. The internal draft document — leaked on the Internet — shows for the first time how carefully the German government has considered a potential energy crisis.

The term “peak oil” is used by energy experts to refer to a point in time when global oil reserves pass their zenith and production gradually begins to decline. This would result in a permanent supply crisis — and fear of it can trigger turbulence in commodity markets and on stock exchanges.

The issue is so politically explosive that it’s remarkable when an institution like the Bundeswehr, the German military, uses the term “peak oil” at all. But a military study currently circulating on the German blogosphere goes further.

The study is a product of the Future Analysis department of the Bundeswehr Transformation Center, a think tank tasked with fixing a direction for the German military. The team of authors, led by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Will, uses sometimes-dramatic language to depict the consequences of an irreversible depletion of raw materials. It warns of shifts in the global balance of power, of the formation of new relationships based on interdependency, of a decline in importance of the western industrial nations, of the “total collapse of the markets” and of serious political and economic crises.

The study, whose authenticity was confirmed to SPIEGEL ONLINE by sources in government circles, was not meant for publication. The document is said to be in draft stage and to consist solely of scientific opinion, which has not yet been edited by the Defense Ministry and other government bodies.

The lead author, Will, has declined to comment on the study. It remains doubtful that either the Bundeswehr or the German government would have consented to publish the document in its current form. But the study does show how intensively the German government has engaged with the question of peak oil.

The world’s oil reserves have been exaggerated by up to a third, leading UK scientist Sir David King claimed today, warning of oil shortages and price spikes within years.

News wires 23 March 2010 14:59 GMT

The scientist and researchers from Oxford University claimed official figures are inflated because Opec member countries over-reported reserves in the 1980s when competing for global market share.

The new research, released today, said estimates of conventional reserves should be downgraded from 1.15 trillion barrels to 1.35 trillion barrels to between 850 billion and 900 billion barrels, adding that demand may outstrip supply as early as 2014, an Australian Associated Press report said.

The researchers also claimed it is an open secret that Opec is likely to have inflated its reserves, but that the International Energy Agency (IEA), the Energy Information Administration and World Oil do not take this into account in their statistics.

“It is necessary to investigate ambiguities and sources of error that are broadly acknowledged but not taken into account in public data due to political sensitivities,” the researchers said.

But whether we burn filthy unconventional fuels or slightly less filthy oil and gas, beyond a certain point they will tip us beyond a critical level of global warming. Most governments identify this as 2C. Several game-changing papers published in Nature last year suggest that even if we were to burn no unconventional fossil fuels, we can afford to use only 60% of current reserves of oil, gas and coal if we’re to prevent the global average temperature from rising by more than 2C.

In other words, if governments are serious about climate change, then far from encouraging the expansion of supplies, they should be deciding which 40% or more of current reserves they are going to leave in the ground. Current policy suggests that they are not serious about climate change.“

Now we rarely talk about the future or think about the future except in apocalyptic terms.

…

The Canadian documentary, The End of Suburbia, aired the other night on TVO. It features my eco-crush, James Howard Kunstler, so I’ve seen it a few times. Though his vision of the future, and the message of the documentary overall, is bleak, I think it’s also accurate.

…

But ifn case they’re not nuts, here is some of the stuff we can expect in the future:

* Price of gasoline will become prohibitively expensive
* People will not be able to afford to buy, maintain or run a car
* Suburbanites will have difficulty commuting to work, shopping, schools
* Suburbanites and others living in McMansions will not be able to afford to heat their homes
* Like the Victorian mansions of days gone by, McMansions will be chopped up into several apartments housing more than one family
* Kunstler believes the suburbs will become slums; others think with a little vision and foresight we can convert them into self-sufficient villages