What are some good sources of RELIABLE information regarding Peak Oil and current global oil reserves?

Question

I'm researching Peak Oil and consumption/production data. I need data on known oil reserves, rates of consumption, and rates of production. Please list sources that are independent of the usual government agencies. The government agencies are skewing their figures on known reserves to support their agenda, and so are not factual. Their consumption figures may be more accurate, however, so I am not as resistant to those sources. If you have any credible sources I can access online, please post the links and any comments you may have for me.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I think you are going to run into issues with this. The reason that you get so many conflicting reports and different answers on this topic has much more to do with economics than what's in the ground.

Basically, when an oil field is produced, it has to be profitable. Well, as demand growns and supply drops, price increases and fields that were unprofitable become profitable. For example, the Albertan oil sands and Utah/Colorado oil shales are now being investigated for production, and 10 years ago that was unimaginable.

There are vast reserves of organic material that have petrolium potential. The problem is, all the easy fields are gone, and it gets harder and more expensive. Basically, anyone's 'peak oil' estimate is not much more than that, a guess. It's impossible to know how th emarket will react in the future and how many unprofitable fields will be opened in the future. Take any estimate with a grain of salt.

Below are some American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG, I'm a member!) links to these issues. If you look at their site more, you may find more info you need. Good luck!

Answer 2

Global warming is by far a bigger problem, however, I view peak oil as part of the solution to global warming, not necessarily another problem. With peak oil, global supply of oil cannot keep up with the demand, which increases the price of oil. At some point, however, the price of oil will get so expensive that we will start conserving the oil we currently use. It's called demand destruction, and I think we're starting to see it with gasoline around $4/gallon. People are driving less, trading in their SUVs for a smaller car, even Ford and GM have been shutting down truck plants to build smaller cars. With peak oil upon us, there will be some economic pain, but I think our society can handle it. I think if the US developed a national renewable energy policy that mandated an ever increasing % of our electricity be generated by solar/wind/geothermal power, combine that with big tax breaks and other incentives for consumers to buy plugin electric hybrid cars that should be on the market soon, we'll get out of this mess OK. However, if we insist that we can drill our way out of this problem, we're just going to make it much worse.

Answer 3

Try GreenPeace.