Figure 1947 poster for AutoCar Trucks, ironically hauling petroleum for a distributor called “Peak Oil”. Source: Plan59 Museum of Mid-Century Illustration, Fairfax Virginia. http://www.plan59.com/. (Source M. Gutteridge paper).

Peak oil in General

Popular articles explaining “peak oil” and urging governments to prepare for it have fallen away since about 2010, primarily because the exploitation of large reserves of shale oil in the USA using new drilling techniques increased global supply substantially, then later, because Covid suppressed demand. Neither of these phenomena invalidate the concept of peak oil, which marks the date when production cannot be expanded to meet demand, which is when about half the easily accessible oil has been consumed.

There is a large literature on peak oil and it is beyond the scope of QSN to summarise the issues or present a comprehensive archive. However, copies of two landmark papers suppressed by the organisations that produced them fell off a truck and are reproduced here. To them we have added a few other thoughtful documents, prepared in an era when concern about peak oil was at its height, and that deserve wider exposure than they ever received.

Official attempts to ignore the phenomenon will cost Australia dearly as they have been a major cause of our nation’s slowness to transition to sustainable forms of transportation and city design. Physical infrastructure is expected to have a lifetime of 50+ years, perhaps much more, and governments’ continued investment in roads built on assumptions that vehicular traffic will continue to increase without limit shows that the lessons of the peak oil debate have not been heeded. The delays in arrival of peak oil have simply delayed, not avoided, the need to reduce consumption of liquid fossil fuels, so in one sense the date of peak oil is not particularly relevant and the usefulness of peak oil as a proxy for the limits to economic growth has not been invalidated.

Suppressed Reports

A competent report by staff of Brisbane City Council was, we are informed, not published, by instruction from management.

A competent report by ABARE was withdrawn and attempts made to erase it from memory by re-assigning the report number (061) to a quite different publication.

Oil Vulnerability

An introductory report Toward Oil Resilience by the Queensland public service’s Oil Vulnerability Task Force was published in 2008 but the recommendations were not pursued when the champion, Andrew McNamara MP of Hervey Bay, lost his seat at a state election. This was a pathetic effort by the public service, as if Queensland’s dependence on imported oil had evaporated on the day of the election. The saga demonstrates that officers’ persistence AND political support as well as technical knowledge are needed for progress. In the absence of any one, progress is hobbled. The transcript of an interview with Mr McNamara is insightful. This report was described as “the world’s first known study of a region’s vulnerability to energy shortages due to global oil peak.”

Two reports produced by consultant Michael Gutteridge for South West NRM in 2007 also did not receive the exposure they deserved. But the issues require a state and national response beyond the capacity of local organisations. When reading Peak Oil: An Introduction for the Average Australian and Peak Oil: Implications for Rural and Remote Australia, keep in mind that global and national circumstances and law have evolved since then. Also, carbon policy has pushed oil vulnerability aside in public debate.

Statistics

Comprehensive statistics on oil production and consumption clearly explained with graphs are available on Matt Mushalik’s Australian site https://crudeoilpeak.info/.

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