What Happens When Demand for Oil Outstrips Supply?

[katty]

more: http://richardheinberg.com/node/267/view

Richard Heinberg in OIL APOCALYPSE

What Happens When Demand for Oil Outstrips Supply?
…and There’s No ‘Plan B’
OIL APOCALYPSE

A New Documentary from Filmmaker Martin Kent
For Immediate Release
November 7, 2007 -- This week, the price of crude oil is trading at a shocking $96 a barrel.

By year’s end, analysts predict petroleum will reach $100. And it’s not going to stop there. The world we’ve created runs on oil. But energy experts say the world is running out of oil. Much faster than previously thought. Demand will continue to outpace supplies, shortages are inevitable, and the price will only continue to rise dramatically -- causing a ripple effect of disastrous economic, social and political consequences.

On Tuesday night, November 13th, (at 9 p.m. EST/PST – 8 p.m. C), the History Channel will present Megadisasters: Oil Apocalypse, a documentary that Los Angeles-based filmmaker Martin Kent is calling “a wake up call,” about the world’s energy crisis. “We can no longer count on getting all the gasoline we need – and there’s no plan B.”

[Deja Q]

1. They said the same thing in the 1970s.

Maybe it's real. Maybe it isn't. Maybe the truth is in the middle. Maybe modern collection techniques will make old wells viable. Mabye oil shale can be harvested.

Neither is it healthy to dwell on this stuff.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. I beg to differ, my dear Hypno...

We need to prepare for the end of oil...

We need to have alternative sources of energy...

We need to find other ways of making things that we currently use oil for...

And you can believe that the OP is correct.

Someday, there won't be any more oil, no matter what the price...

It's like running out of air...

We need to have other sources.

[Warren Stupidity]

5. oil shale - yeah that will be a swell future.

huge energy requirements, vastly more expensive to refine than crude without taking into account 'externalities', which if taken into account include sucking up and polluting vast quantities of water, creating huge piles of poisonous waste, and spewing vast amounts of greenhouse waste into the environment.

[sam sarrha]

2. well.. the oil companies start pumping our oil they have been drilling and capping and they really

start gouging us.. they'v been capping for 40 yrs, we have more oil than the arabs ever thought they did.. we just created a false shortage to manipulate the money

[sandnsea]

4. We'll invent new sources of power

Like we are now. If we'd put that $600 billion into energy production, we wouldn't be having all these economic problems.

Take 2 prozac and go shopping. :)

[AndyTiedye]

6. What Happens is the Price Goes Up Until The Demand Goes Down

[bhikkhu]

8. It is production, rather than price or demand that is the issue

Demand at this point exceeds production, and currently production is sliding even with the industry furiously drilling and pumping.

What happens then is that a limited supply goes to those who can afford it, which is the "developed nations". We might look at Burma or Zimbabwe for examples of what happens to a developing nation that can no longer afford oil. Expect many more such examples, and expect to have to stop using the "developing nation" - always a rather condescending term, soon a fiction. In the US as long as other countries keep lending us money we should be ok, and our massive expertise and industry at blowing up other people stuff should continue to provide incentive for awhile.

Food production is my main concern. If you consider the complete dependency of modern agriculture upon oil, and then the near perfect correlation between food production, population, and oil production we have had in the past century. What happens when we find ourselves on the wrong side of the production curve? Nothing good...but largely dependent upon the steepness of the production declines to come and the level of alternatives we have in place. Currently, it is fairly easy to say we are completely screwed, or at least four billion of us are screwed. But then again optimism always has its place when the future has yet to occur.

[lvx35]

7. HUGE question. Really.

Nobody in the media is talking too much about it, they seem to be commited to a short term price decrease. But its coming big time. Investers know it, the International Energy Agency knows it:
http://nation.ittefaq.com/issues/2007/11/13/news0907.htm
And I know it. There are no substitutes ready to go by any means.