Peaking of World Oil Production

Download or read book Peaking of World Oil Production written by Robert Louis Hirsch and published by Nova Science Publishers. This book was released on 2007 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking. Dealing with world oil production peaking will be extremely complex, involve literally trillions of dollars and require many years of intense effort. To explore these complexities, three alternative mitigation scenarios are analysed: scenario I assumes that action is not initiated until peaking occurs; scenario II assumes that action is initiated 10 years before peaking; scenario III assumes action is initiated 20 years before peaking. For this analysis estimates of the possible contributions of each mitigation option were developed, based on an assumed crash program rate of implementation.