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Video - Dr Fatih Birol of the International Energy Agency on oil, climate change and the financial crisis

11 January 2009 - 10:28am — s_yajaman

I saw this video http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=m377Is4tGF0 on another blog that I frequent - called The Oildrum (www.theoildrum.com).  It features a small talk by Dr.Fatih Birol (now how many of us have heard of him) - the chief economist of the IEA (International Energy Agency).  The IEA is a Paris based organization that among other things does research and forecasting on the energy outlook for the world over the next 20-30 years.

Recently the IEA commissioned a study on the 800 largest oil fields in the world to study their decline rates.  If you have read about oil fields, you will know that all oil fields hit a peak flow rate somewhere at the mid-poin of their reserves and then taper off, declining at an accelarating rate.  They came to a startling conclusion that globally oil fields are declining at an average of 6.4% per year vs previous (gue)estimates of about 3% per year.  The world produces and consumes about 30 billion barrels of crude oil each year.  On this basis and the 6.4% decline rate we will be producing 8 billion barrels a year in the year 2028.  That means we need to find an extra 22 billion barrels a year of new reserves over the next 20 years.  That is like finding 4 new Saudi Arabias.  WHat are our chances - time will tell.  But our track record of finding new discoveries has been falling over the past decade.

In the video, Dr Birol touches upon 3 distinct but inter-related topics - a) Crude oil projections b) Climate change and c) the financial crisis.  The financial crisis impacts both as investments in technologies and new fields will go down.  Climate change is on us - whether we like to believe it or not.  The Arctic could very well be ice free in the next couple of summers.   Moving to coal based energy means more CO2 and we are at the tipping point for CO2 as it is. 

Why have I posted it?  To clearly show the disconnect between our policies and what is needed.  Car based transportation is not a good solution.  Cutting down trees in the name of road widening is not the way to go.  Opening Kudremukh and degrading the Western Ghats is not the way to go. Do take the 1 hour to watch this.  Fatih's accent is a bit hard as well.

I will cross post this in gyaan.  Hopefully Mr.Sreehari has already seen this or will see it here on Praja.

Srivathsa

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