The Beginning of the (rapid) End of the Petroleum Era Change  

The unwieldy title to this post is taken from the latest "TAI Alert" from John L Petersen at The Arlington Insitute.

Long time readers - if there are any left, while traffic keeps growing I'm not seeing too many familiar "faces" from 3 or 4 years ago - may remember my fondness for the occasional "emails from the future" that appear in my inbox from time to time (though lately they don't come from "The Future", having taken on a less colourful TAI address).

I've referred to TAI periodically since then, most recently in "The Limits To Scenario Planning", as they continue to intrigue me with their steady drumbeat of global warming, peak oil, epidemic disease, financial collapse, species extinctions and other doomer memes all clustered around the idea of an imminent "great transformation", which they often tie into the 2012 school of thought. I notice that James Woolsey seems to have disappeared from TAI's board of directors now but they still remain a very unusual bunch of people given the subject matter (but perhaps not if you believe some of the theories about their other purpose).

This latest alert is well-aligned with my thinking - peak oil is the gateway to a new, clean energy age - and seems to be prompted by this column by John Mauldins at Investors Insight on "What the export land model means for energy prices". You may also want to check out their set of writing on peak oil while you are at it.

For quite a number of years different analysts and observers have forecast the “peaking” of oil – reaching the point of maximum global production – which would be followed by less oil pumped and higher prices. Others, primarily those related somewhat with the oil industry or the government, argued that in the past, technology advancements have always allowed producers to find more oil where it was previously was thought either impossible or uneconomical. Well, they appear to have been quite wrong. In the last six months even mainline sources are now discussing peak oil without smirking and depreciating the idea.

The indicators have been there for some time. Some said that with the Saudi’s pumping the same amount for the last two years (and spurning President Bush’s multiple requests for increased production) it was obvious that the world had peaked. The Mexicans have peaked. The North Sea has peaked. It was only a matter of time before it became common sense.

Here, from John Mauldin’s “Out of the Box” is David Galland’s rather succinct – and galvanizing – analysis, which portends great change in the energy sector in the coming years. The jockeying and global manipulations will begin in earnest quite soon, as it becomes clear that the fuel that has given us most of everything we have is rapidly running down. And the price of oil will only increase while alternative energy breakthroughs will amaze. The disruption will be significant. The world will move rapidly toward becoming all-electric. Welcome to the new (energy) age.