Canada Reaches Peak Oil In 2020

Behind the rosy glasses and good news, tinkling of champagne glasses, report of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, touting the increased growth in the Tar Sands oil production, there lies the ominous Peak Oil prediction. Yep peak oil will begin in Alberta in 2020, about the time that Hubbert predicted. " production from conventional oil wells will decline by half by 2020, to only 550,000 barrels a day, CAPP predicts."

And Alberta is not the only region in Canada facing a decline in conventional gas and oil production. Canada's newest oil supply source, offshore production on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, is forecast to peak at 320,000 barrels per day in 2010 then sink by 50 per cent to 160,000 barrels daily in 2020. Slow exploration, poor drilling luck, forbidding environmental conditions and political disputes over resource ownership and revenues are expected to stall development.

So while CAPP predicts Tar Sands production will replace conventional production, that still does not mean that Peak Oil conditions will be allievated in 2020. Rather they are betting that Tar Sands production will meet world demand, however they fail to consider that their predictions are based on current world demand, not on the inevitable; increasing demand. And again they gloss over the more serious issue, our conventional oil and gas reserves are on decline. Period.



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Technocracy Inc. Predicted Oil Crisis Over 50 years ago

I thought I would re-post this article here, as it is buried deep in my RedBetweenTheLines blog at Modblog. And given how often Modblog fails, which is why I no longer post there, I thought I would republish it here. Just in case it disappeared into the cyberabyss. And it is still relevant since it was published in January 2005. Wow way back then.

Recently a discussion on M.K.Hubbert arose on the marxism discussion list. This in itself was rather surprizing since Hubbert is a technocrat, and Technocracy Inc. is usually dismissed by the left as being some utopian scheme, or some kind of strange sect or cult. They were the original scientists and engineers for social responsibility, and being ahead of their time their theories appear to read like science fiction.

Hubbert is a favorite reference for my uncle, John Gregory, a professional engineer and geologist who worked for the National Research Council of Canada and is a long time member of Technocracy Inc here in Edmonton. As a social democratic technocrat living in the energy capital of Canada, his promotion of Hubberts therom was downright heresy. I grew up with a political understanding of technocracy as a progressive movement thanks to my uncle. Technocrats in Edmonton have always been activists appearing at all the progressive rallies and forums promoting their form of planned industrial/energy economy.

M. K. Hubbert predicated the Oil Crisis of 1972, waaaay back in the Fifties. He predicts that we will face a further oil crisis in the early part of this Century as reserve stocks decline along with increased demand.
Hubbert was dismissed at the time as a technocrat and his work is still villified in some circles today.Hubbert's work however has gained further legitimacy as oil prices have rocketed, and the Imperialist oil wars have drawn attention to this ongoing crisis.

Hubberts solution to this crisis was his theory of steady state economics. What was once thought of as crackpot theories of Technocracy, Hubbert has gained with new respect for his predictive analysis. Especially now that the impact of oil culture on the biosphere has been documented. Hubbert had already predicted that increasing reliance on oil would lead to an evironmental crisis in 1974.

Before dismissing Technocracy, one should review their work on economics needing to be energy based, actual credits based on the total value of physical energy available in an industrialized society. Not wage based, in other words they call for abolishing the wage system! Technocracy opposes capitalisms m-c-m formula (money-capital-money, or as we would call it today the Casino Capitalism of the Stockmarket) they oppose this money economy or price economy as they call it and propose replacing it with an energy economy.

Technocracy is a left wing industrial/social planning model , once banned at the same time as other left wing groups in the US and Canada. They promoted the theories ofthe Icelandic/American socialist Thorstein Veblen, author of the Leisure Class which gave us the term 'conspicious consumption'. Spefically Technocracy was influenced by his work: The Engineers And The Price System, regarding the social responsibilities of Science and Engineering which were direclty linked to the radical workers movement of the 1920's. The opening chapter is about Sabotage in the work place, the workers dissastisfaction with work and their alienation in industrial societies.

Technocracy Inc. from its beginings had friendly relations with the IWW, and was influenced by its unique form of North American syndicalism. Howard Scott was a friend of IWW General Secretary Vincent St. John, who got him to write articles for the union. Like other brain workers Technocrats viewed themsleves as workers, not a professional managment class as scientists and engineers have become today.

Unfortunately like left wing ideas of workers control, or self management which have been recuperated by capitalism and its managment theorists, technocracy and the term technocrat have been used as a prejorative for years. The reality is that technocrats are not just social engineers but socialist engineers, and an open organization to everyone, except politicians. Why thats downright anarchist of them.

Which may explain why politicians use technocrat as prejorative, they don't like being left out of anything.

Modblog stories on Peak Oil

Le Revue Gauch stories:

Thorstein Veblen

Technocracy

Peak Oil



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Another Free Trade Deal

I must have been sleeping through these talks....but note why they take on importance now...more open markets to importing not just goods and capital, but skilled labour into the Tar Sands.

Canada and South Korea are in the midst of negotiating a free trade agreement and have just wrapped up the fifth round of bilateral talks aimed at signing a comprehensive deal by the end of 2006.South Korea is interested in expanding its presence in the Canadian oilpatch and the country's state oil firm, Korea National Oil Corp., will be opening an office in Calgary. The country is also interested in providing skilled labour

Time for Alberta's unions to begin to organize their own globalization campaign by working with unions in Korea, the Phillipines and Venezuala and anywhere else that the capitalists are planning to import temporary labour from.
Also See Waugh


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