Good News for the TarSanders

The Independent ran a feature today on the dwindling future of oil.

BP released a study yesterday claiming that we have enough reserves to meet the existing level of demand for up to 40-years. BP's optimistic forecast was immediately criticized by the London-based, Oil Depletion Analysis Centre. They maintain that the peak for regular, easy to extract and process oil passed in 2005 and that the peak for global oil production from all sources is expected to arrive in the next four years. The warning came from Dr Colin Campbell, "a former chief geologist and vice-president at a string of oil majors including BP, Shell, Fina, Exxon and ChevronTexaco."

"This scenario is flatly denied by BP, whose chief economist Peter Davies has dismissed the arguments of "peak oil" theorists.

"'We don't believe there is an absolute resource constraint. When peak oil comes, it is just as likely to come from consumption peaking, perhaps because of climate change policies as from production peaking.'"

Of course economist Davies is right. He must be, he works for BP. They don't make mistakes, not even in Alaska. Of course there is no absolute resource constraint, not if you're willing to wait a couple of million years and put up with the inconvenience of a couple of mass extinctions. Besides we can all rely on climate change policies to dry up the demand for oil long before then, right? Big Oil really is beginning to sound exactly like Big Tobacco.