Sylvicultura Oeconomica

They called it right with the Prius… could it be that actually paying attention to upcoming macroeconomic trends could be a positive corporate culture thing at Toyota?

Toyota Warns World Faces ‘Supply Shortages and Resource Exhaustion’

…Toyota’s Sustainability Report for 2008, echoes a July warning from Toyota’s coordinator for alternately fueled vehicles, Bill Reinert, that the world could hit what he reportedly called a “liquid peak” within a decade…

http://energytechstocks.com.previewmysite.com/wp/?p=1676

Recent data is confirming a simply shocking 36% decline rate from the Cantarell oil field in Mexico.

Cantarell is one of the largest fields supplying America with oil.  Despite new fields being brought online to attempt to offset the decline, instead of holding level as was intended, Mexican exports are down 22% in July.

This is particularly troubling data, as this decline was projected some time ago as the “worst case scenario”, and generally serves to confirm predicted accelerations in the decline curve of oil megafileds that have undergone extensive enhanced oil recovery programs (which is now most of them). The impact of this in a global context I will examine in my next post, but suffice it to say, you will not likely be seeing oil under $100/BBL again in your lifetime, and may even start to have an increasingly hard time finding it.

 http://www.energyinvestmentstrategies.com/2008/08/23/mexican-production-disappoints-again-in-july-big-time/

The fact that our media and government is not all over this is testament only to the absolutely shocking lack of energy literacy out in the main stream media and government.

Cantarell is one of the largest oil fields ever discovered. It was the second-fastest-producing field in the world behind Ghawar in Saudi Arabia. If other world oil mega-fields exhibit decline curves anywhere remotely near that of Cantarell, we are in extremely serious trouble from an unstoppable supply-side decline in global crude oil production, which will be impossible to offset with new conventional and alternative production based on the current global inventory of megaprojects and the current pace of alternative energy development.

In English: Supply will decline while demand stays high, and prices will continue to go through the roof!

If we really want to do anything about this, we need to start an alternative energy version of the Apollo Project, Conserve Conserve Conserve, and Drill Drill Drill, all at the same time.