That’s a pretty stark warning from the IEA. And begs the question whether OPEC can increase production by 4.9 million barrels over the next five years. There’s supposedly
3.5-4 mbd spare capacity in Gawar, but as posted in February, a Saudi Aramco spokesman admitted last year that its mature fields are now declining at a rate of 8 percent
per year,a decline 50% of production in about 9 years time. This all puts enormous significance on the un-exploited Iraqi reserves. This again makes me ponder the question upon which, without exageration, the future of mankind depends - will the oil supply crunch have a positive effect of constraining global carbon emissions? Potentially, high oil costs put a brake on economic growth and encourage energy efficiency gains while high energy costs more generally make renewables economic. Two key factors working against this are of course that the high cost of conventional oil makes economic the production of carbon intensive unconvential oil (whether tar sands or coal liquefaction) and bio-deisel (which, unless there is substantial control on the use of palm oil and soya as feedstocks will lead to a huge increase in rain forest destruction in S.E Asia and South America Respectively). Would the reduced emissions resulting from decreased consumption be out weighed by the consequence of economic stagnation - namely, a failure to invest in low carbon technologies? I’m reminded that the only Kyoto signatories that “achieved” substantail cuts in carbon emissions was Russia during the collapse of its industiral base.

These issue make two campaigns all the more important :The Polaris Institute in Canada, is currently mounting a campaign calling for a moratorium on oil production from the Alberta tar sands.

When we talk about foreign oil imports to the U.S., we usually think of the Persian Gulf or Venzuela. But Canada a few years ago replaced Saudi Arabia as the number one foreign importer of oil to the U.S. More recently, the Bush administration has called for a five-fold increase in Canada’s oil exports to the U.S. by as early as 2015.

“According to the Pembina Institute tar sands mining requires 750 cubic feet of natural gas for each barrel of oil. “In-situ” methods require 1500 cubic feet of natural gas per

barrel. The tar sands consume as much gas every day as is needed to heat half the homes in Canada. Through these high energy-intensive processes, the tar sands industry now produces just over one million barrels of dirty crude oil a day mostly for export to the U.S. in order to provide an uninterrupted fuel supply for its transportation [including energy guzzling SUV vehicles] ,industrial and military operations.

And now, behind the scenes plans are underway to rapidly expand Alberta’s tar sands exports over the next few years. In January 2006, at a two-day summit organized by
Natural Resources Canada and the U.S. Department of Energy in Houston, Texas, leading industry and government officials from both countries pledged to rapidly increase
tar sands production from one million to five million barrels of oil per day [bpd]. Yet, a five-fold increase would be highly optimistic, in view of the National Energy
Board’s predictions that reaching three million bpd by 2015 would be stretching it. Nevertheless, if this five-fold increase target were achieved, Canada would be supplying
one quarter of all U.S. oil consumption and close to one half of all American imports, assuming all of the tar sands crude is exported.”

Biofuels Watch is campaigning for a moratorium on EU biofuel targets and incentives (in the absence of a robust sustainability regime) - there is
an argument that such a moratorium would destroy the economic motivation for research into second generation bio-fuels, but my own sense is that there could be specified
funding or incentivising of R&D involving sustainable feedstocks. The recent open letter from 250 organisations and key individuals to the EU Council, states:

“In March 2007, EU Heads of States decided in favour of a 10% agrofuel target by 2020. The European Commission have made it clear that they expect a large proportion of
those agrofuels to come from palm oil, soya and sugar cane from the global South. Producing the full amount in Europe would require up to 50% of EU farm land. The current EU target of 5.75% by 2010 has already stimulated large-scale monoculture expansion and caused damage to tropical and sub-tropical forests, grasslands, the peatlands
of South-east Asia, and to large numbers of communities. The 10% target is creating a further impetus for big projects for infrastructure and production in the global South,
where most of the crops to produce agrofuels would have to be planted. Indonesia alone is planning 20 million more hectares of oil palm plantations in order to meet future
agrofuel demand (tinyurl.com/33lb7r). Much of this expansion is expected to happen at the expense of community lands, peatlands and forests.”

Incidentally, my friend Samantha Lacey, who represents CIS on the Executive Board of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, has just written a report [pdf] “Sustainability of Biofuels”