Top Quotes from 2011

Every morning Tom Whipple, editor of ASPO-USA’s Peak Oil Review, sends out his daily Peak Oil News – a collection of international news stories from the world of energy.

You can sign up to receive Peak Oil News every morning via email here:  http://aspo-usa.org/newsletters/peak-oil-review/subscribe-peak-oil-news/

You can also receive Peak Oil Review, a weekly summary of the news of the week, using this link: http://aspo-usa.org/newsletters/peak-oil-review/subscribe-peak-oil-review/

In each Peak Oil Review, one quote of the week is chosen. Here are some of the quotes from 2011:

 
US President Barack Obama
(from the May 16 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“I am directing the Department of Interior to conduct annual lease sales in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, while respecting sensitive areas, and to speed up the evaluation of oil and gas resources in the mid and south Atlantic.”

(Note: As part of his forthcoming book, Robert Rapier has prepared a counter-intuitive graph showing US domestic oil production over the past decade. Oil production decreased each year under President Bush and has increased every year under President Obama. However, US oil production remains far less than the peak production of the 1970s.)

 
Ernst U. von Weizsäcker, co-chair, UNEP Resource Panel
(from the May 23 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“We must realize that prosperity and well-being do not depend on consuming ever-greater quantities of resources. Decoupling is not about stopping growth. It’s about doing more with less.”

 
John Miles, Chairman, UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security
(from the May 30 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“We must define the risks and develop sensible contingency plans. This means thinking critically about what we should be doing now if we knew that the oil price would soar over the next five years. Many of the possible courses of action could also help to accelerate our response to the parallel threat of climate change.”

 
Bob Dudley, Group Chief Executive, BP
(from the June 13 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“Consumption growth reached 5.6 percent, the highest rate since 1973. It increased strongly for all forms of energy and in all regions. Total consumption of energy in 2010 easily surpassed the pre-recession peak reached in 2008.”

(Note: This quote is from the release of BP’s annual Statistical Review of World Energy. BP also used the occasion to announce that China officially became the top world energy consumer, passing the USA in 2010.)

 
Nobou Tanaka, IEA Executive Director
(from the June 27 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“For the third time in the history of the International Energy Agency, our member countries have decided to act together to ensure that adequate supplies of oil are available to the global market. This decisive action demonstrates the IEA’s strong commitment to well-supplied markets and to ensuring a soft landing for world energy markets.”

(Note: Steven Kopits would later write this commentary for ASPO-USA explaining why prices fell after the IEA intervention, but quickly recovered to higher prices within a week.)

 
Art Berman, ASPO-USA Board Member
(from the July 4 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“This kind of data is making it harder and harder to deny that the shale gas revolution is being oversold.”

(Note: Art Berman was quoted in the June New  York Times article “Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush.” And he was later interviewed on CNBC’s Kudlow Report. Chris Nelder recently wrote an article questioning optimistic shale gas predictions for Slate.)

 
Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO)
(from the July 25 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“The U.S. military is the world’s single-largest industrial consumer of oil… Every $10 increase in the price per barrel of oil costs the Pentagon $1.3 billion.”

 
Matthew Simmons
(from the August 8 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“If the inevitability of peak oil is ignored and the event overtakes us unprepared, the unintended consequences could easily spiral into a sequence of ever-worsening conditions that would create not just twilight in Saudi Arabia, but twilight also for the lifestyles we all now enjoy.”

(Note: This quote is from Simmons’ book “Twilight in the Desert.” Matthew Simmons passed away August 8, 2010.)

 
Matthew Nisbet, Associate Professor at American University
(from the August 22 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“A strong majority of Americans say it is likely that oil prices will triple in the coming five years and that such a tripling would be harmful both to the economy and to public health. Conservatives and those dismissive of climate change are among the most concerned by the threat of a major spike in oil prices, suggesting that a broad cross section of Americans may be ready to engage in dialogue about ways to manage the risks associated with peak petroleum.”

(Note: Nisbet’s study is part of a series of articles that examined the interaction of Peak Oil and Public Health. Also recall slides/presentations from the 2009 Peak Oil and Health conference.)

 
From the German Military’s Analysis of Peak Oil
(from the September 5 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“When considering the consequences of peak oil, no everyday experiences and only few historical parallels are at hand. It is therefore difficult to imagine how significant the effects of being gradually deprived of one of our civilization’s most important energy sources will be. Psychological barriers cause indisputable facts to be blanked out and lead to almost instinctively refusing to look into this difficult subject in detail. Peak oil, however, is unavoidable.”

(Note: Special thanks to Rick Monroe and the Energy Bulletin for bringing us the complete 125 page  English translation of this document. You can download the report here.)

 
US President Bill Clinton in a 2006 Keynote Speech
(from the September 12 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“A significant number of petroleum geologists believe that in this decade, and perhaps already, we have reached global peak oil production, something that happened in 1970 in America, where half of all the oil that we can get out of the ground has been taken out… that’s a cause of great concern independent of global warming….”

(Note: To our knowledge President Clinton remains the only US President to publicly address Peak Oil by name. And this 2006 speech, where he discusses at length the work of Matthew Simmons and Jeremy Leggett, displays his mastery of the topic.)

 
Jan Mueller, ASPO-USA Executive Director
(from the September 26 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“With demand for oil and all forms of energy continuing to rise exponentially, and with huge uncertainty whether fossil fuels can keep pace, business as usual isn’t an option.”

(Note: Daniel Yergin’s essay “There Will Be Oil” generated much discussion in the energy world. The ASPO-USA response was provided by Executive Director Jan Mueller and was quoted in the Wall Street Journal. ASPO-USA Board Member Jeffrey Brown also wrote a response to Yergin’s essay and later examined the accuracy of some of Yergin’s past predictions.)

 
Brad Plumer, Washington Post
(from the October 10 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“In the old days, Saudi Arabia had plenty of spare capacity and could always flood the market with extra oil if supplies got pinched. But that’s no longer the case. Global demand is growing too quickly, and the Saudis are running out of spare capacity. Nor will new, unconventional sources alleviate the problem entirely… However you want to define peak oil, it looks like we’re in for an uncomfortable ride.”

 
James D. Hamilton
(from the October 24 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“Most economists view the economic growth of the last century and a half as being fueled by ongoing technological progress. Without question, that progress has been most impressive. But there may also have been an important component of luck in terms of finding and exploiting a resource that was extremely valuable and useful but ultimately finite and exhaustible. It is not clear how easy it will be to adapt to the end of that era of good fortune.”

(Note: From Hamilton’s paper: “Oil Prices, Exhaustible Resources, and Economic Growth.”)

 
Tom Murphy
(from the November 7 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“Our moment in history is rather special. It is dangerous to assume that we’ll gracefully handle problems at this scale, because such assumptions amount to dismissals and concomitant inaction… It bothers me that we don’t have a plan. It scares me that we (collectively) don’t think we even need a plan. Faith in the market to solve the problem represents a high-stakes gamble. We can and should do better.”

(Note: From Murphy’s post “Peak Oil Perspective.”)

 
Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State
(from the November 21 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“You can’t talk about our economy or foreign policy without talking about energy. With a growing global population and a finite supply of fossil fuels, the need to diversify our supply is urgent.”

(Note: From Secretary Clinton’s comments upon the formation of the State Department’s new Bureau of Energy Resources.”)

 
Robert Rapier
(from the November 28 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“In its simplest form, Peak Oil means that just as oil production in the US peaked in 1970 and began to decline, so shall global production do the same. Once you get past that basic premise – one in which there is near-universal agreement once people understand that is what you mean when you say “Peak Oil” – there are many different opinions of exactly how events will unfold. The would-be Peak Oil debunkers are only addressing their arguments at one of the ways some people think this will play out, and then declaring that they have debunked Peak Oil.”

(Note: After Rapier attended the 2011 ASPO-USA conference, he wrote his post “Five Misconceptions About Peak Oil.”)

 
Kevin Drum
(from the December 5 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“Saudi Arabia has been making excuses for years for their inability to produce more than 10 million barrels of oil per day. They’re publicly stating – for the first time, I think – that they aren’t going to keep up the pretense anymore. Their exploration and drilling program is over, and 10 million barrels is as good as it’s ever going to get.”

(Note: Kevin Drum is a writer for Mother Jones. He has written at length about Peak Oil in the past. Gail Tverberg wrote a commentary for ASPO-USA examining the Saudi announcement to halt their $100 billion oil production expansion plan.)

 
ExxonMobil
(from the December 19 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“Much attention is paid to new energy technologies, with good reason. But it also is important to know that most of today’s liquid fuels come from fields that have been producing for decades. More than 95 percent of the crude oil produced today was discovered before the year 2000. About 75 percent was discovered before 1980.”

(Note: From ExxonMobil’s 2012 Outlook for Energy report.)

 
Gregor Macdonald
(from the December 26 edition of Peak Oil Review)

“Global giants such as Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil have essentially abandoned the effort to meaningfully expand their oil reserves. Instead, they are now shifting course in favor of a strong, natural gas emphasis. The result is that Russia in the past decade has accounted for nearly all of the supply growth in crude oil, among Non-OPEC producers. Indeed, without Russia, Non-OPEC supply would be in steep decline. Instead, it’s merely flat.”

(Note: From Macdonald’s post: “Under the Surface of Non-OPEC Supply.”)

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