Can you name, w/o googling, 1 country that's experienced Peak Oil?

[JanMichael]

Recently I might add.

Have you guessed yet?

Yes? You know?

No? You don't?

Well folks it was Cuba which lost about 50% of its oil imports when the Soviet Union closed shop.

There's a little documentary that examines how this nation dealt with that massive shock on transportation, agriculture and home power.

See it here.

Better yet here is a great article on the situation and the film.

"Scarce petroleum supplies have not only transformed Cuba's agriculture. The nation has also moved toward small-scale renewable energy and developed an energy-saving mass transit system, while maintaining its government-provided health care system whose preventive, locally-based approach to medicine conserves scarce resources.

The era in Cuba following the Soviet collapse is known to Cubans as the Special Period. Cuba lost 80 percent of its export market and its imports fell by 80 percent. The Gross Domestic Product dropped by more than one third.

"Try to image an airplane suddenly losing its engines. It was really a crash," Jorge Mario, a Cuban economist, told the documentary crew. A crash that put Cuba into a state of shock. There were frequent blackouts in its oil-fed electric power grid, up to 16 hours per day. The average daily caloric intake in Cuba dropped by a third."

Of course reletively poor small island nations would get hit worse that the almighty U.S. of Fuckin' A but it might behoove us to at least attempt to understand what needs to be done in a "down" time...

[Gabi Hayes]

1. thanks.....they were talking about this on Thom Hartmann the other day

also, Brazil, according to recent reports (linked here) is now supposedly energy independent, due to their heavy reliance on 'alcool'---ethanol/gashohol combos

[KerryOn]

2. I thought it was the USA...

Peak oil production hit the top in he US in the early 1970's. By peak I mean we had hit the top limit of the available oil. It could not go any higher, and the only place oil production could go was down.

Now the world has peaked or is about to peak, and of course oil production for the world has no where to go except down. China and the US have a very big thirst for the crude. Hydrogen fuel cells are a joke, because it takes fossil fuels to produce it. Ethanol is also a joke because we do not have enough farm land to support both our food demands as well as food for our cars.

It has been predicted that within five years a gallon gasoline will cost $8.00 to $10.00 per gallon.

We are in big trouble folks.

[JanMichael]

3. Our production peaked but not the aggregate supply.

Cuba lost 50% aggregare supply.

But ultimately we'll probably see the same just on a slower dive down.

Yes we're in deep doo doo.

[SophieZ]

4. Ding Ding Ding. USA is one correct answer.

USA hit its peak of production around 1973.

The entire peak theory is built around the idea of looking at the peaks of different countries, and forecasting when the world peak might hit.

The world is in deep doo - doo, indeed. We have been on a century or so binge of cheap oil, using a large portion of the fossil fuel made over eons. It's not replenishable-- kinda like chain sawing an old growth forest today, and expecting there will magically be a forest in its place tomorrow. Ainta gonna happen.

We use petroleum for transportion, heating and cooling. But, fossil fuel is embedded in plastics, fertilizers, and many products. (Not to mention massive use of petroleum by the US military -- don't get me started on that.)

And, pretty much everything you use traveled by truck/ship/rail to get to you.

Anyway, start thinking about how YOU will manage when fossil fuels get increasingly expensive.

[1932]

8. Yes. Get ready to buy a scooter, move closer to your job, and forget about

driving miles in your SUV to stock-up at the big-box store.

[JanMichael]

9. No no no! The US production, production, peaked not the aggregate...

...supply. The US did not have anything even remotely comparable to deal with compared to Cuba which lost 50% of its AGGREGATE supply.

Oy vey.

This is like a median v. mean conversation.

[400Years]

5. I'm reading that article now, thanks for posting.

[trof]

6. USA, in the 70s.

Yes, I saw the answer above, but I've known it for a year or so.

[1932]

7. Richard Gott's book on the history of Cuba adds interesting info to this

issue:

The USSR convinced Castro to focus its entire industrial concentration on sugar production. Guevara opposed that plan. He wanted to diversify the economy. He wanted to build factories that made all sorts of things. Castro followed the USSR's advice rather than Guevara's.

When the USSR collapsed, so did the market for Cuban sugar. (The USSR had contracts to buy all Cuba's sugar for high prices -- those contracts were all terminated.)

Interestingly, had Castro followed Guevara's advice, it probably would have blunted the desire of those Florida sugar barrons to buy US politicians so that they would make life hard for Cuba so that they could get some of that sugar market in eastern europe and russia.

(By the way, Peak Oil is really about oil production not oil consumption. Lots of countries are already producing much less oil than they did at their peak -- see the introduction & chapter one of Phillips's new book, American Theocracy. Cuba has just discovered oil fields and has probably not reached Peak Oil production yet.)