West Point Instructors Presentation On Peak Oil - Energy Bulletin

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This post is a slightly annotated summary of a poster presentation (Army Energy Strategy for the End of Cheap Oil) at the 25th Army Science Conference, Orlando, Florida, November 27-30, 2006, by three scholars of the US Military Academy at West Point. The authors are Colonel Kip P. Nygren, head of Department of Civil & Mechanical Engineering, Lit. Colonel Darrell D. Massie, assoc. professor in the same department, and Paul J. Kern, a retired four star general. Note that Kern was commanding general of US Army Material Command.

As far as I know, this is the first article (written by the US military officers) that has “end of cheap oil” in the title. Since military and civilian aspects are handled together in the original article, I separated them and almost completely reshuffled for easy reading. I discuss the military part in End of Cheap Oil and Military.

"The era of cheap, available oil is coming rapidly to an end,” argue the authors. “We are either at or very near the era when the demand for oil will outstrip the ability of the earth to supply the needs of the global society,” driving the price of liquid fuels to rise steeply over the next decade. “Without ready alternatives to replace ever more costly and scarce oil, we are entering an age of uncertainty and insecurity unlike any other that could include economic stagnation or even reversal.”

They define the subject very well: the production peak of global oil. And warn that it “does not mean that all oil wells will run dry. Oil will still be plentiful after the peak. In fact, about one-half the total recoverable oil buried in the earth will still be in the ground waiting to be extracted. The problem will be that production will no longer be able to keep pace with the exponential demand for oil, and that is a situation which society has never before had to confront” .

EDIT

http://www.energybulletin.net/22991.html

On edit: slight title alteration.

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1. K&R/nt

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2. Sounds like somebody has finally been listening to Dr. Colin Campbell

Those are almost the exact same terms and phrases he uses when he talks about Peak Oil.