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Comment by Tom Bennion on July 10, 2010 at 1:02

Oildrum says that the 2010 EIA report is pessimistic:

"For the remainder of the decade, even though China would be expected to hit its stride for increased oil demand, the EIA sees no year in which liquids production will increase by even 1%. Petroleum liquids supply increases by an average of 0.6% per year from 2011 to 2020. In other words, the EIA is expecting the oil supply to be essentially flat for the rest of the decade. The supply will creep up from 86 mbpd today to approximately 92 mbpd to 2020, but that is not much growth, and indeed, is about the same as current global liquids production capacity. Moreover, it represents a reduction of nearly 4 mbpd from last year's forecast for 2020. On paper, the output of China has disappeared over the course of the last year.
In its forecast, the EIA, normally the cheerleader for production growth, has become amongst the most pessimistic forecasters around."

And oildrum discusses whether EIA has underestimated China's demand:

"the EIA sees China's oil consumption at only 10 mbpd for 2015, a growth rate of approximately 2.7% from current levels, and at only 16 mbpd by 2030. Is this consistent with a country whose vehicle sales are up 56% in the first five months of the year? Where sales of Audi's are up 77%, and those of BMW have doubled compared to the first five months of last year? Is China truly going to be satisfied, as the EIA would have it, with less than 1/5th of the per capita oil consumption of Korea in 2030, even though they should be similar by that time?"

Comment by paul bruce on July 9, 2010 at 18:21

shows that the govt have been
briefed on the heightened vulnerability of NZ's economy to supply disruptions and price increases, due to heavy dependence on road vehicles, long supply lines and poor efficiency.

"...New Zealand has one of the highest per capita transport demand profiles, and is highly dependent on oil imports to support this demand. New Zealand has comparatively low energy productivity, at 3.6 litres per US$100 GDP. Sweden is of a comparative size and population density to New Zealand and only requires about 2 litres per US$100 GDP. The Czech Republic, which has a similar GDP per capita to New Zealand, only requires 2.5 litres of fuel to generate US$100, 30 percent less than New Zealand.....
In terms of affordability of transport for business and individuals, a comparison between 17 IEA countries shows that New Zealand has one of the highest levels of vehicle kilometres travailed per capita, while having one of the lowest levels of personal consumption expenditures per capita...."

And yes, Wellington is slightly better placed with our electric rail
but it all ends at Wellington railway station..

Comment by Tom Bennion on July 9, 2010 at 16:57

Better advise http://www.oilcrash.com/index.htm

Comment by Tom Bennion on July 9, 2010 at 16:56

Brilliant work Pat.

To summarise the advice: 'scenarios can be divided into pessimistic and optimistic, but there are always tar sands' .

Its astonishing, with so much of our health and happiness riding on the price of oil and future supply that this 5th form essay is the best advice the NZ govt has. Hell, a 5th former would get a C for it for not better using available official sources.

You are liaising with relevant groups and a press release is underway right?

Better advise .

Comment by Rimu on July 9, 2010 at 16:47

The IEA 2010 report is more optimistic than their 2009 one. They seem to have gone back to their normal tune

Comment by Deirdre Kent on July 9, 2010 at 16:30

Well done Patrick. What patience. I have also had a correspondence with NZTA people re peak oil and found it rather frustrating. However I did eventually get a letter to say they assumed the price of oil would remain constant, or vary around the price at the time, which was I think about $70 a barrel. I have copies of the letters but haven't scanned them. When they plan to spend $11billion on roads of national significance it is time to examine their assumptions! I did find some advice from a consultant from an international firm which warned not to build roads because of peak oil. Bet they have taken that off the site by now. I suspect we are going to have a lot of half finished expressways round the country in ten years time.

Comment by Carl Chenery on July 9, 2010 at 16:21

Thanks for this Patrick (and good patience), how does this sit alongside Monbiot's interview with Faith Birol, Chief Economist of the IEA in Dec 2008? ( Intersect Discussion with link here).
The document seems pretty vague and non-specific e.g. the use of "Optimistic vs. pessimistic views on the future of oil" without any figor, when clearly the IEA did its survey as mentioned by Monbiot in the above.
This also needs to go alongside the Hirsch report which talks about a 20-year lead in period to transition, as mentioned in the Monbiot post above.

Comment by Patrick Morgan on July 9, 2010 at 14:09

I've often wondered what advice the govt is getting on peak oil, as there's little evidence it's on their radar. So I wrote to Transport Minister Steven Joyce. After 6 weeks, he replied that he had received a report. I asked him for it under the OIA, and after another 4 weeks received the attached.
I scanned the hard copy and here it is a pdf, which includes the charts; and a doc, which does not.

On p7: "Many international and governmental institutions, including the International Energy Agency, have tended, at least until recently, to be relatively optimistic in their outlooks."
In other words, even the IEA says it's a problem.Oil Prices and Transport Sector Resilience_Sept_2009.doc
Ministerial-briefing-Oil-prices-and-transport-sector-resilience_Sep...

Comment by Tom Bennion on July 4, 2010 at 23:41

The New York Times reports that the new coalition government in Britain has “canceled longstanding plans to build a third runway at Heathrow Airport” and will also “refuse to approve new runways at Gatwick and Stansted, London’s second-string airports.” May be the first government in the world to cancel future plans for runways on an explicitly climate change basis. Have blogged it here.

And it seems NZ has a world first in its emissions scheme - by including aviation directly.

Comment by Tom Bennion on July 2, 2010 at 11:45

An interesting development. NGOs in the US are suing the EPA for failing to regulate aircraft carbon emissions.

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