Oil is like a strawberry field

The world’s oil supply is like a “U-pick-it” strawberry field. The early morning pickers have the best selection, and will get the easiest, biggest strawberries. The latecomers will have a harder time finding the good ones, and they will be smaller. This is similar to the way that the world’s oil production is playing out. At first, it was easy drilling and the supply was abundant. After a while, it became harder to find those free-flowing wells. We now have to dig deeper and harder, but are finding less and less oil. This strawberry field analogy is how a Swedish professor of physics, Kjell Aleklett, puts it, as reported by the Vancouver Sun. Even the Houston Chronicle is reporting the “Oil Crunch”. A Chronicle editorial had warned that global oil production would peak in this decade or next, and now a study performed by the U.S. Department of Energy is agreeing. The study was led by Robert Hirsch, a consultant and former government official overseeing research into renewable energy. He is predicting peak oil could come within the next five years, and almost certainly by 2020. The study recommends a 20 year lead time to develop alternative energy sources to replace the dwindling oil supply. However, we may not have 20 years left. Right now the world consumes 82 million barrels of oil per day. The United States Energy Information Agency projects consumption to increase to 103 million barrels per day by 2015, and 119 million barrels a day by 2025. The problem is that global production would have to increase by 45% just to keep up with demand, and no one can assure us where all this extra oil will come from.
Right now gas prices are on a downswing. Some feel that this means that peak oil was just a fabrication by a few loony scientists. Well, the world is running out of oil. It is just a matter of when. The falling gas prices can be attributed to economic slowdown and a surplus of oil reserves at the moment. Many were expecting more turbulence in the Middle East and natural disasters, meaning hurricanes, that never really materialized over the summer. So, the oil companies are left with a bunch of oil and not a whole lot of demand. It would be in the human race’s best interest to begin learning how to live without the abundance of cheap oil. If we begin now, we can wean ourselves slowly. If we wait too long, it will be a big kick in the head. Simply hoping for “alternative energy” is not the solution. The real solution is learning to do with less. This means reducing automobile travel, reducing our consumption of plastic products, and re-localizing our economy. And, we cannot wait until the government takes charge of this situation; it needs to start with the people.