EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs posted an interesting viewpoint in his blog recently. The post is called “Are we moving towards a new oil crisis?” and points out that the world seems to be moving towards a new set of high oil prices.
He concludes the following:
The current relatively low oil prices give a respite to prepare for the coming new oil crisis. We have to reduce our dependency in all those areas in which black gold is not indispensable, such as heating, or electricity production. For those areas which will have to continue to depend on it, like transport, we need to accelerate the research for alternatives, like biofuels, electric cars or hydrogen. And in all sectors, we have to accelerate our efficiency being aware that every barrel of oil that we are using is one of the last.
It ‘s hard to forecast when the next oil crisis is going to come. As Nobel Price Niels Bohr once put it “prediction is tough, particularly about the future.” But one thing is certain, one day we are going to run out of oil, and to prepare for that day we may be running out of time.