Peak Oil: The Elephant at the Summit Saturday, 19 April 2008 The Peak Oil, oil crisis, and petrol rationing plans are topics that should have been on the agenda at the 2020 summit. Bruce Robinson, Convenor of ASPO-Australia, says that governments are ignoring the probability that global oil shortages will start to hit Australia in the next few years, just as our own production continues to decline. We could be facing a crippling oil trade deficit of $100 billion pa by 2015, four times the figure mentioned by Martin Ferguson, unless we can take serious steps to reduce our oil vulnerability. Many bnght people from the Australian Association for the Study of Peak Oil nominated for the summit, but none were selected. ASPO is concerned that the threats that Peak Oil poses are being systematically ignored and there will be chaos if oil shortages hit Australia. We should plan well ahead for petrol droughts and oil crises, just as we do for cyclones and bushfires. Oil vulnerability assessment should be a routine risk management feature, not a rarity. The most probable date for Peak Oil is 2012 (+/- 5 years)
ABARE's determined forecasts of falling oil prices have been consistently wrong for five years, as it is geological limits that control oil production not economics. Economists do not realise that geological forces are more powerful than market forces. A random number generator would perform better than ABARE's forecasters.
