Deffeyes revises oil shortage prediction: Oil already declining

A brief history of oil: In 1865, John D. Rockefeller founds Standard Oil, and America's palate for crude-oil is wet. Soon the hunger spreads to the world.

Over the next century our appetite is insatiable; the global output goes from 150 million barrels per day to 25 billion.

In 2003, Saudi Arabia announces it has maxed out on oil production at 9.5 million barrels a day. To Ken Deffeyes, professor emeritus of geoscience and author of the newly re-released "Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage," the news confirmed his theory that the world is inevitably set on a downward spiral toward the exhaustion of oil.

And along the way — or at least over the next several years — the price of oil will "go wildly up and down."

In the new release of his book, Deffeyes updated his prediction — originally that the world would max out in oil this year — now saying that we're already on the other side of the peak, which happened in 2000.

Deffeyes will be speaking about his book at noon today in Guyot Hall Room 220.

"The U.S. government's asleep. They're trying to convince us there's no shortage," said Deffeyes, who added we're already feeling the economic impact of the short fall.

"Economists act as if they're puzzled with the recession . . . why jobs aren't picking up," he said. But a major cause for the 6.1 percent unemployment rate, he said, is the world "running out of cheap energy sources," preventing our oil-centered economy from growing.

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Deffeyes' research builds on the work of geophysicist King Hubbert.

Deffeyes matched global oil output to a "bell curve," like the ones used in statistics classes. The curve fits the data when its apex is in the year 2000.

The only agreed upon fact regarding oil is that global demand keeps increasing. Not even the major oil companies are of like mind as to when oil will run out.

Exxon-Mobile "believes there is plenty of oil," Deffeyes said. By contrast, Shell Corporation has fully operational hydrogen filling stations overseas and is spending billions on alternative energy sources.

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Deffeyes said America's only chance of minimizing the effect of an impending crisis is to immediately shift over to proven non-oil technologies such as nuclear, wind and high-efficiency diesel. Aware that nuclear power is widely unpopular, Deffeyes exclaimed, "Look if gasoline gets to four bucks a gallon nuclear power won't look so scary!"

"[There's] no time to develop a hydrogen powered car . . . we have to invest in what we have now," said Deffeyes.

Though he is far from optimistic that President Bush or any of the Democratic hopefuls will bring the issue to the table, Deffeyes said the best thing American's can do is "try to get the politicians' attention."

After stating that he doesn't believe it was a motivation in Operation Iraqi Freedom, Deffeyes revealed "Iraq or Iran would be [his] top choices to get more oil on the market."

Organizations like O.P.E.C. are "one-legged: [Now they] can't increase production, only decrease."