"The increasing shift from conventional to unconventional forms of oil
and gas—tar sands, oil shale, and especially shale gas—heralds an
unnerving acceleration of carbon emissions, rather than the deceleration
promised by those who advocate shale as a clean 'bridge fuel' to
renewables ... Delving deeper into the available data shows that we are already in
the throes of a global energy transition in which the age of cheap oil
is well and truly over. For most serious analysts, far from signifying a
world running out of oil, "peak oil" refers simply to the point when,
due to a combination of below-ground geological constraints and
above-ground economic factors, oil becomes increasingly and irreversibly
more difficult and expensive to produce. That point is now ... Therefore, world conventional oil production is already on a fluctuating
plateau and we are increasingly dependent on more expensive
unconventional sources. The age of cheap oil abundance is over ... The eventual consequences of the current gas glut, in other words, are
more than likely to be an unsustainable shale bubble that collapses
under its own weight, precipitating a supply collapse and price spike.
Rather than fuelling prosperity, the shale revolution will instead boost
a temporary recovery masking deeper, structural instabilities.
Inevitably, those instabilities will collide, leaving us with an even
bigger financial mess, on a faster trajectory toward costly
environmental destruction."
Zum Artikel von Dr. Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, erschienen auf Foreign Policy in Focus (10. Januar 2013) »
