The Hirsch Report

PEAKING OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION:
IMPACTS, MITIGATION, & RISK MANAGEMENT

The Hirsch Report is a 91 page study released in 2005 that was commissioned by the US Department of Energy and Prepared by the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). While I don't expect that there will be a grand amount of hoo-ha about this, I thought that many of you who are interested in this subject might like to read the contents. You can find a lot more documentation like this at energybulletin.net.


Just for discussion's sake I thought this note on page 14 was very telling.

Because oil prices have been relatively high for the past decade, oil companies have conducted extensive exploration over that period, but their results have been disappointing. If recent trends hold, there is little reason to expect that exploration success will dramatically improve in the future.

Despite all the claims I hear from the optimist that we'll just find more oil, it doesn't appear that that's the reality of things. Even if we could find more and extract it faster, we're only speeding up the peaking point. Better technology helps us use up our limited resources faster.Read more in the Hirsch Report here



[edit on 25-7-2007 by dbates]