Representatives Roscoe Bartlett and Tom Udall were quick to respond to the CERA report on the future supply of oil. (see immediately preceding post) The cofounders and cochairmen of the Congressional Peak Oil Caucus, said that a new report released today by CERA confirms the urgency for the United States government to adopt a crash program to mitigate the devastating consequences of peak oil.
Congressman Bartlett said that, "The CERA report agrees that world oil production will peak and projects it will occur within 20-25 years. However, world demand is growing exponentially - faster than production so the CERA report confirms the likelihood of future shortages of liquid fuel and much higher and volatile prices. A major flaw in the CERA report is its reliance upon questionable assessments of global reserves by the USGS. USGS estimates of future world reserves equate a 50 percent probability with a 50th percentile or mean. That is a bizarre and totally inaccurate use of statistics. It almost doubles the amount of projected reserves compared to the 95 percent probable estimate. Actual discoveries are tracking the 95 percent probable trend. That means world oil production will peak much sooner than CERA projects in this report."
Read the entire press release here.
Somewhat the opposite reaction that I might have expected, I guess these congressmen are smarter than I gave them credit for. As I said, who cares what the theory is, oil will get more expensive as conventional oil resources are depleted and we are forced to find alternate supplies. I think that CERA's assessment of reserves is probably incorrect for the short term, but there projections may be more accurate in the long term as we have to use more of our harder to use reserves. This is reflected in Canada's adding some oil sands reserves to its official reserves and Venezuela and China considering adding more of its heavy oil to reserves.
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