CERA Official Acknowledges “Peak Oil is Here”
Speaking at the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC on 8 June, CERA Global Oil Group Managing Director Jim Burkhard began and ended his talk by stating that “CERA acknowledges that peak oil is here, you heard it from a CERA person.”
Mr. Burkhard spoke at a CSIS session on “Transforming the Transportation Sector: Energy Security, Climate Change and Transportation”.
During his presentation, Mr. Burkhard explained that in acknowledging that peak oil is here, CERA’s interpretation is that US gasoline demand peaked in 2008 and is expected to decline in future years. He also stated that CERA maintains its position that the reasons for US liquid fuel demand having peaked are economic and geopolitical in their nature, rather than in any way driven by geologic factors.
ASPO-USA Advisory Board member Scott Pugh was present and provided this report.
Mr. Burkhard’s presentation should be available soon under “Events” at:
Comments
By Bart Anderson on June 10th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Thanks for the report on CERA. I can’t make any sense out of it, though. According to the report, “CERA maintains its position that the reasons for US liquid fuel demand having peaked are economic and geopolitical in their nature.”
As you know, peak oil is not about peak demand. It’s about peak supply.
Would you ask Scott Pugh what, if anything, Jim Burkhard said about peak supply? I assume he means that greater investment would lead to greater oil production, but demand and prices are too low to encourage the investment, despite IEA’s and IMF’s warnings of higher prices to come soon.
By LB on June 10th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
this is a stunning turnaround, why is it not in the news?
By Sun Wangmin on June 11th, 2009 at 9:28 am
I agree Mr.Anderson’ viewpoint，peak oil is about the Peak Oil Supply, not demand. Because in the future, if there are enough oil reserve to supply, human will use more oil to sustain the world economy growth.
So we should know that whether CERA have agreeed that Peak Oil supply is here?
By Iconoclast421 on June 11th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
By saying it was economic/geopolitical factors rather than geologic factors, what Burkhard is really saying is that if the economy didn’t collapse from plateaued oil production, then oil production would not have plateaued. Seriously. Jim Burkhard is a freakin genius at doublespeak. We need to ask Jim Burkhard how high does he think global crude oil production would have risen if the economy hadnt cratered. 77mbpd? 85mbpd? 99mbpd? lol
Keep in mind that if the economy was roaring any hotter in 2007/2008, oil prices would have shot up even higher, leading to the exact same type of collapse. And we know the lack of supply was not due to lack of investment, because investment had gone parabolic the last 5 years.
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