The Politics of Climate Change Read Online Free Page B

communications, published some such texts concerning Saudi oil. The texts in question urged Washington to take seriously a warning from a senior Saudi oil executive that the country’s oil reserves may be overstated in official estimates by as much as 40 per cent. He said that the Saudis had exaggerated their recoverable reserves in order to sustain foreign investment, and for fear of the consequences for oil prices if the truth were made public. If he was correct, Saudi oil could peak in 2012 or shortly thereafter. Following the leaks, the executive in question denied the views attributed to him, but worries remain about whether the Saudis regularly overstate their known reserves.
    The quest for new sources of oil has led to drilling not only in more and more remote places but at greater and greater depths under the sea, from floating platforms. The Deepwater Horizon platform in the Gulf of Mexico, owned by BP, was a technological wonder. Early drilling platforms were built to stand on the sea bed. However, as the drilling moved to deeper and deeper locations, the oil companies introduced ‘semi-submersible’ rigs, which float on the surface.
    In April 2010 the rig exploded. Eleven crew members were killed and a huge volume of oil gushed into the Gulf. Government scientists estimated that over the lengthy period before the spill was finally plugged, 62,000 barrels-worth of oil were flowing per day into the ocean early on, and 53,000 barrels per day just before the closure. The authors of a study of the events argue that the episode was ‘not just a tragedy,but also a challenge . . . to move to confront the reality of using ever-increasing quantities of scarce precious petroleum’, and to move towards a future that will not be shackled to ‘our dependence on the fast-disappearing remnants of the time when dinosaurs last roamed the earth, a good hundred million years ago’. 9
    The Deepwater Horizon rig was drilling in an area where the water was nearly a mile deep, and where the oil reservoir was a further two and a half miles below the sea-flow. To have to resort to such extreme endeavours to produce oil surely reeks of desperation, however much our current dependence on oil is prolonged by such endeavours. The US government blamed BP and its collaborators for inadequate management of Deepwater Horizon, and, looked at narrowly, it was right to do so. Yet the US is a country where no government has been willing or able to curb the country’s thirst for energy.
    Supposing the theorists of peak oil are right, can natural gas step into the place of oil to some degree? After all, gas produces lower emissions than either oil or coal, and can be used for at least some of the purposes to which oil is put – for instance, cars can be converted to run on compressed natural gas without too much difficulty. It is often said that world supplies of gas far outstrip those of oil; some say there is enough to last the world for some 70–80 years from now, even given growing demand. David Victor and colleagues have suggested that there will be a worldwide move towards this energy resource. 10 By 2050, they argue, gas could supplant oil to become the most important energy source in the world. According to them, there is enough gas available to last for a century at today’s rates of consumption. Yet, as in almost every aspect of energy security, controversy exists here too. There is a large distance indeed between the most optimistic estimate of recoverable gas reserves (20,000 trillion cubic feet) and the lowest (8,000 trillion cubic feet). The availability of natural gas has been transformed by techniques of extracting it from shale. The impact of the technology looks to be considerable. It has attracted interest and widespread investment in the United States in particular, but also in Europe, Asia and Australia. About 6 per cent of US naturalgas production now comes from shale. Some experts predict