CERA Global Oil Group Managing Director Jim Burkhard spoke at a CSIS session on “Transforming the Transportation Sector: Energy Security, Climate Change, and Transportation.”
During his presentation, Mr. Burkhard explained that in acknowledging that peak oil is here, CERA’s interpretation is that US gasoline demand peaked in 2008 and is expected to decline in future years. He also stated that CERA maintains its position that the reasons for US liquid fuel demand having peaked are economic and geopolitical in their nature, rather than in any way driven by geologic factors. He repeatedly came back to the notion that “peak oil is here.”
It commonly claimed, often used in a somewhat derogatory way, peak oil is only about geology. We rather state that peak oil is the result of a complex series of forces which include economics and the physics of oil wells. Bardi has earlier discussed the four stages of an idea and how it diffuses into public knowledge. At the ASPO 6 Conference, former US Secretary of Energy Dr. James Schlesinger declared the following: “The peakists have won … to the peakists I say, you can declare victory. You are no longer the beleaguered small minority of voices crying in the wilderness. You are now mainstream. You must learn to take yes for an answer and be gracious in victory”. We at ASPO can only be glad to see that CERA now is acknowledging our concerns are begins to shift their position.
Only Burkhard’s speech can be found here in a mp3-file.