SMITHSON PLANNING 364 Middleton Road Albany WA 6330 www.smithsonplanning.com.au PO Box 5377 Albany WA 6332
[email protected] ΣΠ Tel : (08) 9842 9841 Fax : (08) 9842 9843 Mob : 0428 556 444 Peak Oil, Gas and Nuclear Power The Rainbow 2000© Project is a doctoral research & corporate investment program analysing the relationship between planning and politics in Economic Development in Australia, and more particularly a case study of Albany & the Great Southern Region of Western Australia – thesis : Is planning the antithesis of politics? As good as the Australian Planner (2006 Vol.43 #4) : Energy Planning special edition was : www.planning.org.au Don’t wait for oil drought – hope for best and prepare for worst : “Peak Oil is when the rate of global oil production changes from its increasing trend to the unavoidable downtrend as the world’s oil fields start their overall decline phase. We will not run out of oil, but there will be less available each year in future. Many of the world’s major oil regions are already in decline. The North Sea, Alaska, Kuwait’s Burgan and Mexico’s Cantarell supergiant fields are in clear decline. Australia’s Bass Strait reached peak production in 1985, and has been declining since.” “Australia’s oil production has been declining since 2000, and it is forecast to continue to decline quite quickly. New oil fields coming on-stream around the world are offsetting the declining old fields; but as the decline rates accelerate and new fields become smaller and scarcer, there will soon come the tipping point when overall global oil production will start to decline.