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Welcome words from PM on peak oil

Tuesday May 2nd, 2006. 4:26 pm by frog

On 18 April, Helen Clark (as noted in the comments thread of the petrol prices post below) made the following comment: “[the] oil price is very high because probably we’re not too far short from peak production if we’re not already there”.

You could have blinked and missed it, since it was only covered by Scoop and the Energy Bulletin. But it was there nonetheless, an acknowledgement of Peak Oil.

Today, when questioned on this acknowledgment in the House by Jeanette, the Prime Minister went further and made a number of welcome statements on the issue, the Greens to put out this release. Clearly we’ll be holding the PM to her words on this one.

I’ll post the full transcript from the House when it’s avaialable so you can see what she actually said.

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Posted in Environment & Resource Management | Parliament | by frog | Tue, May 2nd, 2006 |

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5 Responses to “Welcome words from PM on peak oil”

1. uk_kiwi Says:
   May 2nd, 2006 at 9:52 pm

   Indeed, this is good news. Although I don’t blame her for keeping it quiet, its a pretty big paradigm shift, and soon it will be very hard to explain to an angry public why they cannot afford to drive anymore. Hopefully the Greens ideas on rail and public transport will be adopted.

   Some ideas for when oil is $200/bbl:

   * Put on hold new motorway construction where not already begun and establish an oil price limit to new roading decisions.

   * Wrest back control of strategic rail corridors from the dysfunctional local councils, and develop comprehensive electric light rail in urban areas using ex-roading funds and those raised by fuel taxes (to keep the AA quiet)

   * Improve long distance passenger and freight rail, and repair and re-lay new tracks along old branch lines- some of the track I have seen was laid in the 1930s and is seriously past its use-by date. This should be done as a priority while construction is still relatively cheap.

   * Look at coastal shipping regulations for freight- trucking will become very expensive and the economies of scale for shipping are unbeatable.

   * New oil and gas exploration- even a few small finds could ease the transition. Dust off the rationing schemes of the early 1980s otherwise.

   * Beef up the police and military, the next couple of decades could be pretty hairy if peak oil does happen.

   *Ignore the idea of a coal-to-liquids plant, these are awfully inefficient and polluting. Plus very expensive when the coal can be worth heaps to export.

   Thankfully the main NZ oil refinery is geared to handle cheap heavy crude which there should be enough of for some time.

2. fastbike Says:
   May 2nd, 2006 at 10:37 pm

   UK_kiwi, glad to see we agree at last

   And Scoop has the transcript. Here’s selected highlghts.

   Jeanette Fitzsimons: Is she confident that the national energy strategy will take sufficient account of her statement, with which I agree, that oil is not going to get cheaper over the long term, given Treasury’s projection in the December Economic and Fiscal Update that prices will drop to $54 a barrel, from $75 now, after this year and the 2003 projections still on the Ministry of Economic Development’s website that forecast a drop in oil prices to $25 a barrel by 2020 and constant prices thereafter?

   Rt Hon HELEN CLARK: I think there will be fluctuations around the price, but I have little doubt that the long-term trend will be for the price to go higher. That is because of the huge demand for oil now as a finite resource from the emerging mega-economies of China and India and also the fact that the world’s oil supplies tend to be drawn from rather unstable parts of the world. All those factors are leading great economies like that of the United States to start to think actively about how to move to a post-oil economy.

   Jeanette Fitzsimons: Does she agree that if cities are to remain viable, investment must shift from new motorways into better public transport, especially electric rail in Auckland and trolley buses in Wellington, and what does her statement about peak oil imply for the economics of a new Transmission Gully motorway at a time when the affordability of private motoring is declining?

   Rt Hon HELEN CLARK: I absolutely agree with the member about the importance of investment in public transport. The investment that has gone in over the last 6½ years is many times what was there before then, and that is the right thing to do. I think for the modern day and age, people want the independence the private vehicle offers, but for the future I think we will see the private vehicle increasingly be powered by sources other than oil.

   …snip…

   Jeanette Fitzsimons: Will the Government consider establishing a process involving both the Government and the private sector to study the work done in Sweden, which plans to cut its reliance on petroleum by 2020, and to plan a similar transition here?

   Rt Hon HELEN CLARK: I am open to such suggestions. I am well aware of the impetus that Sweden is giving to how to develop a post-oil economy, and it is good to see those kinds of initiatives from offshore now being reported in our own press, and quite fully. I think we do need new initiatives, and I am certainly open to discussing initiatives like that.

3. alistair Says:
   May 3rd, 2006 at 2:46 am

   Smart woman. Say what you like about Helen, she’s a safe pair of hands.

   If only she would ditch the losers. i.e. about two thirds of her ministers.

4. kane9 Says:
   May 6th, 2006 at 10:53 pm

   Strange that the “energy bulletin” link above is broken again.

5. stuey Says:
   May 7th, 2006 at 6:02 pm

   the whole of energy bulletin appears to be down - maybe the webmasters are away for the weekend and they haven’t realised

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