Australia's Dwindling Oil Resources
by ASPO (via adhok) Saturday July 12, 2003 at 08:09 PM

Peak Oil may be the most pressing issue of our age (and that's saying something). A frank assessment of Australia's remaining oil resources by the Association for the Study or Peak Oil.

For those unaccustomed to the the concept of the Hubbert Peak, or peak oil production, you may wish to do some background reading, but here's a brief summary:

Civilisation as we know it depends on abundant cheap energy through fossil fuels, the most important of which is oil. The remaining stocks of oil appear to independent observers to be critically low; that the peak of world oil production is starting to occur, right now - this decade - while Australian oil production peaked three years ago.

At the most sensationalist end of predictions this means the immenent end of civilisation. At best, alternative energy systems do not seem to be sufficiently widespread or convenient enough to prevent global economic depression (oil of course is also the source of tar for roads, plastics, pharmaceuticals, and industrial agricultural fertilisers and chemicals).

The Association for the Study of Peak Oil are an international association self-described as "retired oil geologists, concerned about the future of their grandchildren," who challenge the optimistic interpretations of oil-industry data. An excellent introduction to ASPO and peak oil data is available on the CSIRO website.

The analysis provided by ASPO may be too shocking to face for many politicians, while oil chieftans have vested interests in maintaining public confidence to avoid an early domino-like financial collapse across not just the oil industry. In an era where the most powerful public leaders have professional and family ties to oil companies and secret security forces many of the recent world events can be analysed in terms of peak oil.

Control of the remaining oil resources will enter an important new phase at the point where demand for cheap oil outstrips supply, and control of the last great reserves, esp. the Gulf region, will be of paramont importance to any imperial nation, which goes some way to explain the ongoning invasion of Iraq. While the oestensible reasons for the Iraq invation seemed almost farcical to some observers (US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz has admitted such), one might also question whether the reasons for the oppressive security legislations now enacted in Australia, the UK and the US, might be in preparation for a period of ongoing economic depression and predicted civil unrest. Mike Ruppert's website From The Wilderness often includes analyis of world events in light of peak oil.

Of course, oil is a 'dirty' resource which is a key input into the global warming and polution crises. Its demise does not need to be an entirely negative event, but that may depend on peoples' preparedness for the crash.

Below are a few items from the April 2003 edition of the ASPO newsletter which included an assesment of Australia's remaining oil supplies, and a reference to the recently released book, The Party’s Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies (New Society Publishers, www.newsociety.com) by Richard Heinberg.

[ adhok ]

174. Country Assessment - Australia

[...]Aboriginal people have lived in Australia for over 40 000 years. They developed a system of land use and management that used all parts of the continent sustainably. They had a complicated ceremonial style of life before contact and conflict with European settlers decimated their population and cultures. It was not until 1606 that Dutch navigators started to put Australia on European maps. Unlike the land-use patterns of the Aboriginal people, many of Australia's European-derived farming systems are inherently unsustainable, as they do not work in harmony with the local ecosystems. Australia's rural producers are now experiencing serious and increasing problems that signal the degradation of their natural resources: soil erosion, declining water quality, loss of biodiversity and salinity.

The British explorer, James Cook, reached Australia in 1770, which effectively brought the territory into the British Empire. When Britain was no longer able to ship convicts to America after independence, it began to establish penal colonies in Australia, the first convoy of eleven ships with 759 convicts arriving in Botany Bay in 1788. Life was harsh but in 1810 came the introduction of merino sheep with its long staple wool that was to grow into a major industry. Freed convicts and new settlers began to build a new society during the 19^th Century, encouraged in part by the discovery of substantial gold deposits in 1851. The discrete early colonies were brought together as a Commonwealth in 1901.

Immigration continued during the 20^th Century, predominantly from Britain, such that Australia became a loyal member of the British Commonwealth making major military contributions to the allied cause in two world wars. Its population is now close to 20 million, which is concentrated in the principal cities, leaving an empty harsh interior. Politically, the country seems to be moving towards a republican status, as its population gradually loses its ties with their original homelands.

Exploration for oil began early, with a reported small discovery being made in 1900. As many as a 157 wildcat wells had been drilled onshore by 1930 despite very little encouragement. A new chapter opened in the 1960s when important discoveries were made in a Tertiary basin in the Bass Strait between Australia and Tasmania and on Barrow Island off Western Australia. The three largest fields were Kingfish (1967) with 1200 Mb, Halibut (1967) with 850 Mb and Mackerel (1969) with 450 Mb. They stimulated renewed interest in exploration generally, resulting in a number of finds both in onshore Palaeozoic basins and in other marginal basins.

The last campaign came with the opening of the huge NW Shelf. It forms the passive margin of the continent facing the contact with the Eurasian Plate, bordering Indonesia. It is made up of a thick sequence of Mesozoic and Tertiary sediments. The former contains several rather lean source-rock intervals, which in many areas lie below the oil-generating window, explaining the preponderance of gas-condensate finds. Australia and Indonesia have also agreed to share the so-called Timor Gap, where discoveries have been made.

Exploration is now at a mature stage, and, to judge from the discovery trend and field size distribution, is unlikely to deliver more than about 1.4 Gb in new finds. A total of 4200 wildcats have been drilled so far. Peak exploration was in 1985 when 184 wildcats were drilled. The number has since declined to about 80, and is expected to continue to do so as the list of viable prospects dwindles, coming to an estimated end around 2035 after another 650 wildcats have been drilled. Australia may have some deepwater potential, but that is most uncertain.

Production peaked in 2000, some thirty-three years after peak discovery. It is now set to fall steeply, as is recognised in Australia itself, having been confirmed with surprising frankness by the industry (Akehurst, 2002).

About 178 Tcf of gas has been discovered, of which 18 Tcf have been produced. Production stands at about 1 Tcf/a. Assuming that production rises at 10% a year, it could reach a plateau of, say, 6 Tcf/a lasting from 2020 to 2040 before a final fall. Such a depletion profile would give a total of 218 Tcf with a future discovery of 40 Tcf. The gas also yields a substantial amount of gas-liquids, contributing about half the total liquid production by 2010. Australia has large coal deposits offering good prospects for the production of substantial amounts of coalbed methane. But an attempt to develop oil shale in Queensland has proved uneconomic. A large-scale project to produce solar hydrogen in the Stoney Desert, which has an exceptionally high level of radiation, is in the planning stage.

Australia already imports about 25% of its oil, but with even static consumption, the percentage is set to pass 50% by around 2015. The cost of imports will rise steeply following the now near certain surges in price from Middle East wars and the conflicting demands from the other countries for scarce supplies. Sensibly, Australia is now considering its immigration policy in relation to its sustainable energy future.

Useful references:

Akehurst J.,2002, World oil markets and the challenges for Australia :ABARE Outlook 2002, 6 March
Fleay, B., 2002 Natural Gas – “magic pudding “ or depleting resources; bfleay@iinet.net.au
Powell T.G.,2001, Understanding Australia’s petroleum resources, future production trends and the role of the frontiers; APPEA Journ. 2001.
Robinson B, 2002, Australia’s growing oil vulnerability: www.bml.csiro.au/bigrol.htm

175. A Minister recognises the depletion situation

The Hon. Alannah MacTiernan, the Western Australian Minister for Planning and Infrastructure (which includes transport), opened the Beyond Oil Conference on 21st February, with a brilliant speech that drew attention to the impact of oil depletion and the need for a fundamental review of policy. A few key points from the speech follow:

• Western Australia has one of the highest rates of car ownership in the world: 526 cars per 1000 people.
• Perth has the highest ratio of road per resident of any Australian city.
• 32 percent of total energy consumption in the state is by transport.
• Our increasing reliance on private transport means that public transport usage has dropped from around 20 percent of all trips 40 years ago to around 5 percent today.
• There is, of course, widespread acceptance of the environmental harm arising from the scale of fossil fuel burning.
• The problem of the readily availability of the product – particularly oil – has been less widely accepted. People like Brian Fleay, WA, - John the Baptists – have been warning for years that the availability of easily extracted oil was moving to an end – but I believe this is now being more widely recognised.
• The debate now seems to focus on how long – crucial because the longer it is, the more the reliance on ‘science’ providing a miraculous answer – the less on changing behaviour and structures.
• Making predictions about price and availability is made more difficult by geo-political overlays, which see oil pricing and supply, part of an international political power play.
• What then can we do – how can we make our community more sustainable?

176. The Party’s Over

A new book, aptly named The Party’s Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies (New Society Publishers, www.newsociety.com) by Richard Heinberg has just been published. It is a brilliant book, explaining imperialism, eternal resource wars, the hidden benefits of a dominant currency, and the deep conflict between the new and old world. It really is penetrating essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the current situation in a global and historical context. It explains how apparent military supremacy and the quest for world domination covers an underlying weakness of a debt-ridden country whose economy is sustained by the imaginary strength of its largely artificial currency.

It is another indication that at long last the implications of peak oil are being perceived by people around the world. If governments understand, they are reluctant to admit it, finding other pretexts for their actions.

www.asponews.org/ASPO.newsletter.028.php

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