Thursday 8 October 2009
Why the 'peak oil' debate is irrelevant ☀
Global production of oil is declining at a rate of 4 per cent per year in existing oil fields and we have very little to replace it with, says Sorrell: “If we want to maintain global oil production at today’s level we would need to discover the equivalent of a new Saudi Arabia every 3 years.”
Yet discoveries of new oil fields are in decline. Even the “giant” Tiber field recently found by BP in the Gulf of Mexico “will only serve to delay peak oil by a matter of days”, he says.
“Of the 70,000 oil fields on Earth, just 100 giant fields account for 50 per cent of the oil we use,” says Sorrell. “Most of these giant fields are quite old and past their peak of production, and we’re not going to find many new ones.”
