”Peak oil”, the point at which global petroleum production reaches its maximum, could come as early as 2011, a Cape Town conference on oil and gas heard on Tuesday.
Chris Skrebowski, editor of the British Energy Institute’s magazine Petroleum Review, told the conference that the peak, of about 93-million barrels a day, will come in 2011 or 2012.
However, there will be supply shortfalls in winter before then.
Current production is about 86-million barrels per day, of which one-quarter is used by the United States.
Skrebowski told the conference that the world remains reluctant to face up to the looming peak, and that to avoid economic disaster, it needs to shed oil demand.
While petrochemicals, and air and sea transport, will continue to be largely reliant on oil, something can be done about the fact that half of every barrel of oil goes to land-based surface transport.
The technology already exists for electric vehicles, and the concept can even be extended to heavy-duty vehicles such as trucks by using pantographs, or overhead electric connections, on major roads.
The trucks could use battery power for the last leg of their journey.
The German-based Energy Watch Group said in a report issued last year that world oil production in fact peaked in 2006 and that output was now declining by several percent a year. — Sapa