The world is not going to ‘run out’ of oil, but we are near the point at which we will have used up half of the total reserves of commercially extractable oil;

Experience from areas which have already passed this Peak (including the USA and North Sea) indicates that a steep decline sets in immediately past peaking. A compound fall of 2% per year may well be the minimum.

While more fields are still being discovered, they tend to be smaller, harder to exploit, and to have lower energy out to energy invested ratios, which means that they cannot compensate for the decline of the older fields.

At the same time, world demand for oil is continuing to grow by several percent every year;

The combination of falling production and energy ratios, and rising demand, is likely to lead to a post-Peak 5% gap between supply and demand each year;

The last time we saw this 5% gap was in 1973 – and it led to the price of oil quadrupling;

Economic recession

That would lead to such an economic recession that the price of oil would then slump, before soaring again on ‘recovery’. Such wild fluctuations will make the efficient development of alternative energy sources desperately difficult.

In any case, while various other energy sources do have significant potential, nothing which is at present remotely feasible can close the gap left by declining oil supplies.

Economists claim that the gap will be closed because demand will create new supplies. The geologists who make up the vast majority of Peak Oil enthusiasts decry this as fantasy – akin to a claim that being thirsty in a desert will create such demand for water that it will appear by magic in a glass.

In particular, the vast reserves of so-called shale oil are next to useless given current technology, natural gas and uranium sources are also approaching their own peaks, and OPEC producers have been pushed to massively overstate their reserves since self-certified reserves are the basis on which their production quota is allocated.

99% of Britain’s transportation power comes from oil.

Modern agriculture is extraordinarily inefficient in terms of energy invested for food energy produced, and almost all cultivation, fertilisers, pesticides, harvesting, processing and transport of our food relies on oil.

Catastrophic consequences

The massive growth in world population, prosperity and technological advance of the last hundred years has been based on the short-term almost free energy bonanza created by oil. As that energy supply collapses, so will the superstructure that has been built upon it.

I imagine that you’ll have got the general idea by now: If the Peak Oil theorists are right (and the free trade liberal and Marxist critiques that I have seen of their ideas so far are totally lacking in credibility) then industrial civilisation and the capitalist concept of perpetual economic growth are about to slam into a very solid brick wall – with potentially untold millions of casualties.

A longer account of this problem, and also of a fascinating Peak Oil conference that I attended with several colleagues in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago, will appear in a future post

For myself, I was able to speak briefly about this issue on national BBC radio early on the morning of 6th May. Curious, then, that Radio Four’s John Humphries raised the subject with the Tories’ new environment/energy spokesman Tim Yeo just a couple of days later. From Yeo’s waffling it was clear that either he had no idea what Humphries was on about, or that the Conservative Party at least is caught like a rabbit in the headlights of an historical juggernaut and doesn’t have the faintest idea of what to do.

Actually, that wouldn’t be surprising, because if the Peak Oil theorists – most of whom are geologists and former oil company executives – are right, we are on the verge of a crisis of shattering proportions, with both globalism and its capitalist parent being among the casualties.

Our Vision

Our vision contains a number of key points which would help greatly in reducing the impact of a Peak Oil crisis on Britain, with our plans to encourage population reduction, for a big shift away from oil-based agribusiness and towards smaller, sustainable family-run farms, and greater self-sufficiency being only the most obvious examples.

Of course, if such a crisis does break, it is likely to break with it the Old Parties which will inevitably get the blame for the indigestible nature of the Banquet of Consequences which will come with it. Indeed, at that point, having established a firm support base in the region of 5% of the electorate, as well as an effective grass-roots campaigning organisation and an experienced leadership cadre, we are well on the way to being in the right place at the right time when it comes to taking advantage of the situation.

But, to be honest, any government would struggle to cope with this crisis if it is only half as bad as the more optimistic Peak Oil theorists estimate. Still, the first step towards dealing with any problem is to admit that it exists, and then to do our best to quantify it. I am still not totally convinced by the Peak Oil argument – being by nature an optimist I half expect to have someone point out a blindingly obvious flaw in it which guarantees that we will all live ‘happily ever after’ after all.

Survival strategy

If that flaw isn’t found, however, all I can say is that the homogeneous, traditional, ‘rooted’ Britain that I have spent my entire adult life advocating would be far better able to withstand the almost unbearable stresses and strains of the Peak Oil crisis than the strife-torn, divided, cosmopolitan shambles imposed on us by our multi-culti masters. Which is one reason those of us who have always opposed their crazy Utopian ‘experiment’ have always warned against it.

As for Peak Oil itself, I have no doubt we are going to hear much more about the concept in the months and years ahead – not least because, true or false, the theory is clearly a major factor influencing George Bush (who is surrounded by advisors who believe in Peak Oil) in his attempt to seize control of the world’s biggest remaining reserves in the Middle East. So see for yourself why, sooner or later - probably sooner - the USA is going to invade Iran. And make up your own mind about the theory itself.