Goed nieuws van het oliefront

Tot voor kort werd algemeen aangenomen dat de olieproductie dicht bij zijn piek zat. In mijn 'postings' heb ik altijd stelling genomen tegen dat soort somberheid. De laatste tijd verschijnen er hoe langer hoe meer rapporten en artikelen die dit optimisme lijken te bevestigen.

Door toepassing van meer geavanceerde technologie kan nu ook olie op moeilijker te bereiken plaatsen worden geboord. Verwacht wordt dat de totale olieproductie de komende jaren dusdanig zal toenemen dat er overproductie zal ontstaan, die een neerwaartse druk op de prijzen zal uitoefenen.

Onder de titel, 'The Coming Oil Boom', rapporteert Chrystia Freeland in de 'New York Times' (NYT):

Forget America’s fiscal cliff, Europe’s currency troubles or the emerging-markets slowdown. The most important story in the global economy today may well be some good news that isn’t yet making as many headlines — the coming surge in oil production around the world.

Until very recently, our collective assumption was that oil was running out. That was partly a matter of what seemed like geological common sense. It took millions of years for the earth to crush plankton into fossil fuels; it is logical to think that it would take millions of years to create more. The rise of the emerging markets, with their energy-hungry billions, was a further reason it seemed obvious we would have less oil and gas in 2020 than we do today.

Obvious — but wrong. Thanks in part to technologies like horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracking, we are entering a new age of abundant oil. As the energy expert Leonardo Maugeri contends in a recent report published by the Belfer Center at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, “contrary to what most people believe, oil supply capacity is growing worldwide at such an unprecedented level that it might outpace consumption.”

Mr. Maugeri, a research fellow at the Belfer Center and a former oil industry executive, bases that assertion on a field-by-field analysis of most of the major oil exploration and development projects in the world. He concludes that “by 2020, the world’s oil production capacity could be more than 110 million barrels per day, an increase of almost 20 percent.” Four countries will lead the coming oil boom: Iraq, the United States, Canada and Brazil.

Maugeri verwacht dat deze ontwikkeling belangrijke geopolitieke implicaties zal hebben. Ook verwacht hij verzet van milieugroeperingen tegen uitbreiding van de exploitatie. Klimaat vormt een verhaal apart.

The implications for the climate change debate are even more fraught. Until now, the arithmetic of oil supply and the agenda of environmentalists conveniently dovetailed. Since we were running out of oil anyway, environmentally motivated efforts to limit fossil fuel consumption and increase our use of renewable energy boasted the additional virtue of being inevitable. In an age of abundant oil, those economically utilitarian arguments lose their power.

For environmentalists, and for the liberal political parties with which they are usually aligned, that poses a serious challenge. The temptation will be to oppose new oil production projects indiscriminately. That instinct could be politically dangerous. Political progress in combating climate change has been slow, but the battle for hearts and minds, especially of the younger generation, is being won. That political capital can be lost in an instant if the environmental movement allows itself to be equated with opposition to one of the lone sources of growth — and of good blue-collar jobs — at a time of global economic stagnation.

Lees verder hier.

Als het hier geschetste scenario werkelijkheid wordt, kan iedereen tevreden zijn. De energieverbruikers vanwege gunstige vooruitzichten voor de prijs van energie en de milieubeweging omdat zij geen moeite zal hebben om de actieagenda te vullen.  

Voor mijn eerdere DDS-bijdragen, zie