Peak oil rebutter speaks at Rozsa Center - Michael Lynch
Peak oil rebutter speaks at Rozsa Center - - The Mining Gazette
HOUGHTON - Worries about a coming oil crisis are unfounded, a leading skeptic said Monday at the Rozsa Center.
Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research Inc., has analyzed international energy for the past 20 years. He is the primary author of Global Petroleum SEER and Global Petroleum Outlook, which forecasts short- and long-term oil markets.
Those long-term forecasts have proven more reliable than those of the oil pessimists, he said. He cited an oil-price forecast where his estimate landed far below more more pessimistic predictions, which were off by about 350 percent.
His, decried at the time for being Pollyanna-ish, came in closer.
"I was only off by 180 percent," he said.
In recent years, the idea of an upcoming oil peak has gained traction in popular and academic circles. The most popular model plots oil production on a bell curve.
On the upside of the curve, oil is plentiful and relatively inexpensive to access. By the time of the downslope, the major discoveries have been made, and finding new oil depends on increasingly expensive technology development, leading to greater market instability.
Many scientists have projected that peak to occur worldwide sometime this decade. Lynch disagrees, saying it's at least 25 to 30 years in the future.
Why the discrepancy? For one, Lynch said, geologists fail to take into account political factors that might slow down oil production.
Something like the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, he said, could lower the number of barrels for reasons that have nothing to do with capabilities.
Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette
Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research Inc., talks to eventgoers after his speech at the Rozsa Center Monday night. Lynch argued that predictions of an upcoming peak and subsequent decline in world oil production are overly pessimistic.
HOUGHTON - Worries about a coming oil crisis are unfounded, a leading skeptic said Monday at the Rozsa Center.
Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research Inc., has analyzed international energy for the past 20 years. He is the primary author of Global Petroleum SEER and Global Petroleum Outlook, which forecasts short- and long-term oil markets.
Those long-term forecasts have proven more reliable than those of the oil pessimists, he said. He cited an oil-price forecast where his estimate landed far below more more pessimistic predictions, which were off by about 350 percent.
His, decried at the time for being Pollyanna-ish, came in closer.
"I was only off by 180 percent," he said.
In recent years, the idea of an upcoming oil peak has gained traction in popular and academic circles. The most popular model plots oil production on a bell curve.
On the upside of the curve, oil is plentiful and relatively inexpensive to access. By the time of the downslope, the major discoveries have been made, and finding new oil depends on increasingly expensive technology development, leading to greater market instability.
Many scientists have projected that peak to occur worldwide sometime this decade. Lynch disagrees, saying it's at least 25 to 30 years in the future.
Why the discrepancy? For one, Lynch said, geologists fail to take into account political factors that might slow down oil production.
Something like the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, he said, could lower the number of barrels for reasons that have nothing to do with capabilities.
Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette
Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research Inc., talks to eventgoers after his speech at the Rozsa Center Monday night. Lynch argued that predictions of an upcoming peak and subsequent decline in world oil production are overly pessimistic.
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