Munich American
Peace Committee (MAPC)
Radio Lora, 9. März 2009
Alternative Radio
Richard Heinberg
Peak Oil - Ölförderung bis zum Anschlag - und was dann?
Eugene, Oregon, 29.1.2006
Richard Heinberg ist ein weltweit
anerkannter Fachmann für Energiefragen. Er lehrt am New College of
California und schrieb u..a. Bücher wie "The Party`s Over - Oil,
War and the Fate of Industrial Societies" und "Power Down, Options and
Actions for a Post Carbon World"
Am 29. Januar 2006 hielt Richard Heinberg in Eugene im Staat Oregon, die hier kurz auf deutsch zusammengefasste Rede:
Menschliche Gesellschaften benötigen wie alle Organismen und
Ökosysteme Energie. Und nur aufgrund ihres hohen Energieverbrauchs
hat sich die Menschheit in den vergangenen Jahrzehnten so sprunghaft
entwickeln können. Das Zeitalter fossiler Kraftstoffe begann erst
vor wenigen Hundert Jahren. Öl kam sogar erst Mitte des letzten
Jahrhunderts zum Einsatz. Davor bezogen wir unsere Energie
hauptsächlich aus Holz und unserer Nahrung. Doch ganz
allmählich begannen wir, immer mehr Energie auch für
Transportmittel, Wärme und Beleuchtung zu erzeugen.
Noch 1850 wurden in den USA 85% aller Energie durch tierische oder
menschliche - meist afrikanische oder chinesische - Muskelkraft
erzeugt. Nur rund 100 Jahre später stammte die gesamte Energie
ausschließlich von Kraftstoff betriebenen Maschinen. Das
verdanken wir der Tatsache, dass eine Gallone Benzin zum Preis von 2
Dollar so viel Energie erzeugt, wie ein Schwerarbeiter in 6 Wochen.
Dieses billige Benzin hat die ganze Welt verändert. Jahrtausende
lang gab es höchstens ein paar hundert Millionen Menschen auf der
Erde. 1820 übersprangen wir die erste Milliarde, 1930 die zweite
und 1999 waren wir bereits bei sechs Milliarden angekommen. Und bis
heute ist noch eine weitere halbe Milliarde, etwa so viel wie die
Bevölkerung Nordamerikas, hinzugekommen. Verbesserte
Transportmöglichkeiten und die Intensivierung der Agrar- und
Forstwirtschaft verschafften uns einmal hervorragende
Lebensbedingungen, doch inzwischen gefährdet der von ihnen
ausgelöste Klimawandel unser Überleben auf diesem Planeten.
Als man Mitte des 19. Jahrhundert begann, nach Erdöl zu bohren,
erkannte der junge J.D. Rockefeller ganz schnell die Chancen dieses
Marktes und wurde zum reichsten Mann der Welt. Autos, Flugzeuge, die
Plastik- und die chemische Industrie trieben den Ölverbrauch immer
weiter in die Höhe. Aber spätestens seit den 1970er Jahren
wissen wir, dass die Ölverkommen nicht unerschöpflich sind.
Lange hatte man ja geglaubt, dass versiegte Ölquellen durch die
Erschließung neuer Felder ersetzt werden könnten.
Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts waren die USA noch die führende
Exportnation für Öl, Industrie- und Handelsgüter. "Made
in USA" galt als Gütesiegel. Die ganze Welt lieh sich bei uns
Geld. Heute importieren wir soviel Öl wie China und Japan
zusammen. Unsere öffentlichen und privaten Schulden sind die
höchsten der Welt. Kein anderes Land importiert mehr
Industriegüter. Unser Handelsdefizit beläuft sich auf
täglich 2,5 Milliarden Dollar. Im Rest der Welt sieht es
allerdings nicht viel besser aus. Vermutlich werden wir das Versiegen
der Ölquellen erst begreifen, wenn es bereits zu spät ist.
Als das Ölembargo von 1973 und der Sturz des Schahs im Jahr 1979
die Ölpreise eskalieren ließen, schränkten wir unseren
Verbrauch deutlich ein. Als die Preise fielen, gaben wir uns prompt
wieder dem gewohnten Benzinrausch hin. So kommen wir dem Ende der
Öl-Vorräte immer näher. 2004 wurden 7 Milliarden Barrel
Öl neu entdeckt, aber gefördert und verbraucht wurden 30
Milliarden Barrel. In Europa werden die 1970 entdeckten
Nordsee-Ölvorräte bald erschöpft sein. Das OPEC-Mitglied
Indonesien importiert heute mehr Öl als es exportiert. Auch in
Großbritannien, Argentinien, Pakistan, Kongo, Neuseeland, Jemen,
Tunesien, Gabun, Norwegen, Kolumbien, Ägypten, Katar, Venezuela,
Iran, Nigeria und Algerien gehen die Ölvorräte
allmählich zur Neige. In Saudiarabien hüllt man sich
diesbezüglich in tiefes Schweigen.
- 2-
Wenn laut einer englischen Studie bald täglich zusätzlich 30
Millionen Barrel Öl benötigt werden, aber nur 16.5 Millionen
Barrel zusätzlich gefördert werden können, dürfte
die weltweite Erdölproduktion ab 2008 ihren Zenit
überschritten haben. Kleine schwer und teuer zu gewinnende
Ölvorkommen können versiegende reiche Quellen nicht ersetzen.
Weil viele Ölländer und Ölgesellschaften ihre
tatsächlichen Vorkommen aus wirtschaftlichen oder politischen
Gründen falsch angegeben haben, wissen wir nicht genau, wie lange
die Ölvorräte noch reichen werden. Niemand sollte jedoch
darauf vertrauen, dass man ja noch immer eine Lösung gefunden
habe. Wenn wir an der Tankstelle über die gierigen
Ölgesellschaften schimpfen, sollten wir nicht vergessen, dass sie
ständig in immer kompliziertere Förderanlagen investieren
müssen und ihre Gewinne deshalb sehr viel bescheidener ausfallen
als die der Pharmaindustrie. Vielleicht wird es sogar die
Ölindustrie sein, die uns vom Öl weg hin zu anderen
Energieformen führt.
Nur mit großer Anstrengung und viel Geld wird es gelingen, die
unvorhersehbaren, wirtschaftlichen, sozialen und politischen Risiken
rechtzeitig in geordnete Bahnen zu lenken. Wenn uns erst die hohen
Spritpreise veranlassen, Wasserstoff-Autos zu entwickeln, dann kommt
das 20 Jahre zu spät. Es gibt ja bereits Pläne für das
Drei-Liter-Auto - aber weder GM, Ford und Chrysler noch die Kunden
konnten sich bisher so recht dafür erwärmen. Selbst mit hohen
Investitionsanreizen und großzügiger Staatshilfe würde
es mindestens noch 20 Jahre dauern, bis unsere gesamte PKW- und
LKW-Flotte umgestellt wäre. Auch wenn wir nicht so ganz genau
wissen, wie lange die Ölvorräte noch reichen, müssen wir
uns spätestens heute für die Umstellung auf erneuerbare
Energien einsetzen. Niemand kann vorhersagen, wann der nächste
Hurrikan in New Orleans tobt und in Kalifornien das nächste
Erdbeben droht, trotzdem muss man immer darauf vorbereitet sein,
genauso wie auf das in absehbarer Zeit bevorstehende Versiegen der
Ölquellen.
Wie und durch was kann man Öl ersetzen?
Energie aus Erdgas ist keine bezahlbare oder vernünftige
Alternative, ebenso wenig. Kohle. Sie ist teuer, umweltschädlich
und ihr Vorkommen ist begrenzt.
Atomenergie?. Mit ihr kann man Strom erzeugen, aber auf unseren
Straßen fahren keine 200 Millionen Elektroautos. Wenn wir mit
Atomenergie Wasserstoffautos betreiben wollten, benötigten wir
Hunderte von neuen, teuren Atommeilern. Sie zu bauen, würde
mindestens 10 bis 20 Jahre dauern. Das ist auch keine Lösung.
Erneuerbarer Energie? Da bin ich ganz dafür. Aber noch besteht sie
hauptsächlich aus Wasserkraft und Biomasse und dem
gemütlichen Holzfeuer im Kamin. Sonnen- und Windenergie decken
heute erst einen kleinen Teil unseres Energiebedarfs. Und auch sie
eignen sich nur zur Stromerzeugung.
Für Biokraftstoffe, wie Bio-Diesel und Ethanol würden wir so
viel Ackerboden benötigen, dass wir bald vor der Frage
stünden, ob wir in Zukunft Menschen oder Autos ernähren
wollen. Unser gesamter Kraftstoffbedarf lässt sich einfach nicht
mit Biokraftstoffen abdecken.
Das bedeutet, dass es keine einfache Patentrezeptlösung gibt und
wir in die unterschiedlichsten alternativen Energien sehr viel Geld
investieren werden müssen. Aber vor allem und in allererster Linie
müssen wir unseren Verbrauch einschränken. Diese Lösung
sagt nicht jedem zu. Ingenieure und Wirtschaftsleute sprechen lieber
über alternative Energien als über Energiesparen. Dabei ist
das die billigste Lösung und deshalb müssen wir uns darauf
konzentrieren.
- 3 -
Die Ölquellen werden nicht plötzlich, von einem Tag auf den
anderen, versiegen, In den nächsten fünf Jahren etwa werden
wir ein ständiges Auf und Ab erleben. Je geringer die
Fördermengen, umso höher die Preise, umso schwächer die
Wirtschaft. Der Ölbedarf geht zurück. Die. Preise fallen.
Wirtschaft und Nachfrage erholen sich, und alles beginnt
wieder
vonvorne.AuchextremeWetterbedingungen,werdensich negativ auf die
Energieversorgung auswirken. Es könnte sogar zu Krieg und
Völkermord um die Kontrolle über das Öl kommen. Niemand
weiß ob und wann all das passiert. Sicher ist, dass wir
rückblickend feststellen werden, dass in der ersten Dekade des 21.
Jahrhunderts die Ölförderung auf der ganzen Welt ihren
Höhepunkt überschritten haben wird.
Ich setze meine Hoffnung auf ein Abkommen, das so genannte
Öl-Förderprotokoll, wonach die Öl produzierenden
Länder ihre Förderrate jährlich um 2,6 oder 2,7 %
reduzieren und die Öl importierenden Länder ihre
Einfuhrquoten um genau diesen Prozentsatz senken. Damit könnten
wir weltweit die Fördermengen an die noch verbleibenden
Restvorkommen anpassen. So blieben die Preise stabil, es gäbe
keine Wirtschaftskrisen und auch ärmere Länder könnten
sich die von ihnen benötigten geringen Ölmengen leisten.
Kriegerische Auseinandersetzungen, vielleicht sogar ein 3. Weltkrieg um
das restliche Öl würden vermieden.
Wie können wir unsere Regierungen dazu bringen, einem solchen
Öl-Förderprotokoll zu- zustimmen? Es gab bereits früher
Abkommen zur Öl-Marktkontrolle, wie zuletzt durch die OPEC, nur
hat diese inzwischen längst ihre stabilisierende Funktion
verloren.
Sogar die Ölgesellschaften wären Gewinner eines solchen
Vertrages, weil extreme Preisschwankungen und ein gefährliches
weltweites Wirtschaftschaos vermieden würden und sie ihre durchaus
noch einträglichen Geschäfte in einem gesicherten
Wirtschaftsklima abwickeln könnten.
Das Öl-Förderprotokoll würde die Gemeindeverwaltungen
jedoch nicht ihrer Verantwortung für die Versorgung ihrer
Bürger mit Nahrung, Wasser und Energie entheben. Denn auch bei
unserer Ernährung spielt Öl eine wichtige Rolle, es wird
nicht nur für den Warentransport und den Betrieb
landwirtschaftlicher Maschinen benötigt, sondern auch zur
Herstellung von Dünger, Herbiziden und
Schädlingsbekämpfungsmitteln. Wir fordern deshalb weniger
Chemie in unseren Lebensmitteln und mehr Unterstützung für
lokale Bauernmärkten mit Produkten aus der Region.
Auch beim Verkehr muss sich etwas ändern. Weniger Zersiedelung und
weniger Autobahnen, dafür mehr Fußgänger- und
Fahrradwege. Die Waren sollen nicht mehr über lange Transportwege
zu uns kommen, sondern wir kommen zu den Waren, zum Dorfschneider, zum
Dorfschuster und zum Mann, der uns einen neuen Klodeckel macht. Unsere
lokale Wirtschaft stirbt, wenn wir weiterhin zu Wal-Markt gehen, nur
weil es dort ein paar Cents billiger ist.
Was wir dringend brauchen, ist ein langfristiger Notfallplan -
ähnlich den Katastropheneinsatzplänen für
Vulkanausbrüche, Erdbeben und Hochwasser. Wir müssen darauf
vorbereitet sein, dass mit dem versiegenden Öl die
Arbeitslosigkeit schlagartig zunehmen wird. Darum dürfen schon
heute Menschen nicht mehr durch Maschinen ersetzt werden, sondern
menschliche Arbeitskraft, Fantasie und Geschicklichkeit sollen die
Maschinen ersetzen. Wir dürfen nicht warten, bis der
Ölstandanzeiger auf Null steht!!!
Einzelpersonen und Bürgerinitiativen, die nach vernünftigen
Alternativen zu Erdöl und Erdgas suchen, können sich gerne an
das Post Carbon Institut wenden. EnergyBulletin.net ist eine Website,
die Sie über Energiefragen auf dem Laufenden hält.
Weitere Informationen erhalten Sie auch unter:heinberg@newsletter.com
Vielen Dank für Ihr Kommen.
RICHARD HEINBERG
Peak Oil
Eugene, OR 29 January 2006
Richard Heinberg, a leading expert on
energy issues, teaches at the New College of California. He is the
author of "The Party's Over: Oil, War & the Fate of Industrial
Societies" and "Power Down: Options & Actions for a Post-Carbon
World."
Human societies, like all organisms and ecosystems, are
energy-processing Systems, and it's only the high rates of energy flow
that we have experienced over the past few decades that permit
increases in the scale and complexity of our societies. That's
important, because we've never seen human societies of the scale and
complexity that we see today. And there is a reason for that: it's
because we have so much energy. The fossil fuel era began really only a
couple of centuries ago. Of course, you can quibble a little bit.
Britain started using coal a little earlier. But we didn't really start
using oil until the middle of the last Century. All of this has sort of
been like winning the energy lottery. Prior to this short interval of
time, we were relying on energy harvested from the environment on an
immediate, annual basis, through wood, through food, primarily. The
evolution of human societies has all been a process of gradually
figuring out ways to harvest just a little bit more, incremental
increases in energy supply that we could use for things like
transportation, sailing ships, for warming and heating ourselves, for
lighting our dwellings, and so on.
Back in 1850, about 85% of the energy that was powering modern
societies like the U.S. was coming from muscle power, and most of that
the muscles of domesticated animals, about 65%, maybe another 15% or
18% from human muscle power. And, of course, if we're talking about the
U.S., a lot of that was muscle power of kidnapped Africans and
indentured Chinese. Only about 17% or 18% of all the work being done in
the U.S. economy was being done by fuel-fed machinery, a very small
portion. But you get to about 1960, and virtually all of the work being
done is being done by fuel-fed machines.
Why this change? Because of the enormous power and cheapness of fossil
fuels. A single gallon of gasoline has about the same work potential
äs maybe six weeks of hard human labor. Think about that. A gallon
of gasoline, for which we pay maybe $2, equivalent to the work of six
weeks of hard human labor? If we were to equate the two economically,
either we would be paying people a fraction of a cent per hour for
their labor or we would be paying over $1,000 a gallon for gasoline.
Obviously, we're not doing either one. What we're doing is we're
reaping enormous economic benefits from these extraordinarily cheap,
abundant fuels.
One of the ways we can gauge how this has changed us äs a species
and our presence on earth is world population. For hundreds of years,
thousands of years, our population was much less than l billion, just a
few million up to a few hundred million. We got up to l billion about
around 1820, 2 billion around 1930, 3 billion around 1960-something, 4
billion around 1970-something, 5 billion in the late 1980s, 6 billion
around 1999. And we've added a half billion people just since 1999. How
many people are in North America? Just a little shy of half a billion
people. So we've added basically a North America's worth of population
to the world just since 1999.
What has enabled us to do this? Fossil fuels have certainly played an
enormous role. It's not that we are directly eating oil, but we have
increased the scope and speed of our transportation, so we can take
resources from where they're abundant to where they're scarce. That
includes food and raw materials of all kinds, all the things that
support human life. We've used fossil fuels to increase our
agricultural production enormously and to clear forests so that we can
increase arable land globally. So here we are at kind of the pinnacle
of the human presence on earth. We're consuming this amazing resource
that has enabled us to increase our population so dramatically; and
then the waste product from burning fossil fuels, namely CO2, carbon
dioxide, is changing the planet climate and possibly undermining the
possibility for our species to continue to exist on this planet, at
least in the numbers that we are familiär with.
Oil is almost without doubt the most important of the fossil fuels. We
actually started using oil äs a result of the depletion of another
resource, namely whale oil. We were using whale oil to illuminate our
houses back in the mid-19th Century. Whale oil was starting to get
awfully expensive because we were getting so skillful at killing
wholesale. So somebody, a fellow by the name of Edwin Drake, had the
bright idea of substituting rock oil, which is the literal translation
of the word petroleum, rock oil, for whale oil. He also had the idea of
drilling wells for the stuff, just äs people were already drilling
wells for water. Of course, this worked. And it worked to such an
extent that the problem then was an overabundance of the stuff. The
market for oil äs a lubricant and äs a source of Illumination
was quickly overwhelmed. And then the question was, what eise can we
use this stuff for?
There was a clever young man who was early on the scene by the name of
J. D. Rockefeller. Not only did he corner the market and become the
world's wealthiest man and start the world's first multinational
Corporation, Standard Oil, he also hired teams of scientists and
inventors to figure out new uses for the stuff. Within a few decades,
we had ships running on oil, we had people heating their houses with
the stuff. Rockefeller wasn't responsible for the invention of the
internal combustion engine, but that happened in short order, and then
the automobile and the airplane and the plastics industry and the
chemicals industry. Before you know it, here we are. So how things have
changed in the last 150 years.
The problem, of course, is that we're talking about a depleting
resource. People say, "When is the oil going to run out?" It's been
running out ever since we extracted the first barrel from the ground.
The question is not when is it going to run out but when is the flow
going to start to diminish. We didn't know how to ask that question,
really, until the last few decades. We learned to start asking that
question here in the U.S. after 1970, which is when U.S. oil production
peaked. The discovery of oil in the U.S. peaked right around 1930 and
then started its inevitable decline. In the lower 48 U.S. there is
virtually no new oil being discovered today. Some in the Gulf of
Mexico and, of course, there is more to be had in Alaska, and maybe on
the Continental shelves of California and Florida, but in the lower 48
U.S. we've just about tapped it out. We've extracted just about 90% of
all the oil that's there. We've done a really good Job. So discovery
peaked right around 1930, and then extraction continued to increase
until right around 1970, and then the rate of extraction started to
decline. That wasn't because people decided they were tired of
extracting oil in the U.S. and they would go someplace eise and do it.
This was for geographical reasons. It became impossible to maintain the
rate of flow, the rate of extraction, in the U.S. So we experienced
peak oil here in the U.S.
U.S. peak oil had some effects. Those effects were blunted by the fact
that we were able to import oil from other countries. Nevertheless,
this country has changed äs a result of what happened in 1970.
Back when I was born in 1950, this country was the world's foremost
oil-producing nation. It's sometimes a little hard to remember that.
The U.S. was also the world's foremost oil exporter in the early part
of the 20th Century. And we were the world's foremost exporter of
manufactured goods and machine tools. In fact, 50 years ago, 60% of the
world's trade goods carried a "Made in U.S.A." label, 60%! And that was
a symbol of quality. We were the world's foremost creditor nation, by
far. We were loaning money to the rest of the world.
So what's changed in the last 55 years? The U.S. has become by far the
world's foremost oil-importing nation. The second and third countries
are China and Japan. The U.S. imports twice äs much oil äs
China and Japan combined, so we're way ahead of whoever is in second
place. We've also become by far the world's foremost debtor nation. We
are borrowing $2.5 billion per day just to finance the trade deficit,
never mind consumer debt or government debt. We have also become the
world's foremost importer of manufactured goods and non-petroleum
resources. By the way, that trade deficit, how much of that goes to
paying for oil? About 40% directly for oil. Then, of course, there are
indirect costs äs well. So if this happened to the U.S., it Stands
to reason it's going to happen to the world äs a whole at some
time. Nobody knows for sure exactly when that will be. We will know
when it is in the past, when we can look in the rear-view mirror and
confirm that global oil production has been declining for several
quarters in a row.
Remember in 1973, there was the Arab oil embargo that caused the price
of oil to shoot up 400%. Then in 1979, with the fall of the Shah of
Iran, oil prices went up another 200%. As a result of those incidents,
we actually reduced our demand for oil and our use of oil for several
years running, and the effect was substantial. Then, when the price of
oil plummeted in the mid-1980s, we went back to using the stuff at the
same rates. In fact, it took a few years for us to get back to the same
rate of oil consumption globally äs we had experienced back in the
late 1970s. Then starting in the 1990s, we have really gone back on a
binge. Some experts are saying that we may actually have peaked already
in terms of regulär, conventional oil. It may have happened in the
fourth quarter of 2005. But we may still experience some growth in
production from deep-water oil and the other nonconventional sources.
Some clues äs to how close we may be? One is certainly the fact
that global oil discoveries have been declining for some time.
ExxonMobil shows global oil discoveries peaking right around 1964.
In 1999 and 2000, we had unusually good years for discovery, but since
then discoveries have fallen off again. In 2004, I think we found about
7 billion barrels of oil, but we extracted and used 30 billion barrels.
So the ratio is in the general region of 4 or 5 to l at this point in
terms of discovery versus consumption. It used to be that we were
discovering more oil every year than we used. 1980 was a year in which
the amount we discovered was pretty much equal to the amount that we
used. Since 1980 we have been drawing down on that bank account, if you
will, of discovered oil, and ever increasingly so.
Meanwhile, individual nations in not just the U.S. but many other
nations have peaked in production, and, in fact, whole regions, like
the North Sea. The North Sea was an extremely important oil-producing
province because most of the discoveries took place in the 1970s, when
we were very concerned about global supplies. Finding lots of light
sweet crude in areas under the control of non-Middle Eastern countries,
like Norway and Denmark and Great Britain, was very good news for a lot
of oil-importing nations. So we went about extracting that deep-water
oil in the North Sea using all the latest technologies and doing it
äs efficiently äs possible, with the result that peak of
extraction occurred only 30 years after peak of discovery. The rate of
decline is pretty substantial in the North Sea. We're not seeing 1% or
2% or 3% rates of decline in the North Sea. We're seeing 5%, 7%, and
10% rates of decline in the North Sea, really precipitous and
substantial.
Indonesia has been a very important oil-producing country throughout
the 20th Century. It played an extremely important role in World War
II. Much of the Pacific theater of World War II revolved around the
U.S. finding way s to prevent Japan from having access to oil from the
Dutch East Indies. Royal Dutch Shell, the great oil Company, got its
start in the Dutch East Indies, what's now called Indonesia. Indonesia
is so far into depletion that even though it's still a member of OPEC,
the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, it is actually
importing more oil than it exports today. Of course, there is some
question äs to whether it can continue to be a member of OPEC,
being in that Situation. U.K., Argentina, Pakistan, Congo, New Zealand,
Yemen, Tunisia, Gabon, Norway, Colombia, Egypt, altogether these are
OPEC countries that are in the depletion zone. Qatar, Venezuela, Iran,
Nigeria, Algeria.
Saudi Arabia is a big question mark because, of course, the Saudis
themselves insist that they will be able to continue increasing their
rate of extraction for several decades. But Matthew Simmons, who is the
founder of Simmons & Company International, the energy investment
bank, recently wrote a book called Twilight in the Desert in which he
analyzed about 230 technical papers by members of the Society of
Petroleum Engineers who had worked in Saudi Arabia, papers about their
experience in the Saudi Arabian fields. He concludes from his analysis
of these technical papers that Saudi Arabia may in fact be very close
to its oil production peak right now. It's a point of great
controversy, but I think it's a very persuasive argument.
So altogether, non-OPEC and OPEC countries that are in decline number
something like 33 out of 48 countries. This has been actually admitted
by Chevron in some of its recent press releases. Another interesting
press release, 6 September 2005, "CNOOC"—that's Chinese National
Offshore Oil Corporation—"Chief Economist Predicts $90 Oil." What
does this actually say? '"Oil will peak at $90 per barrel by March of
next year,'" CNOOC chief economist Zhang Weiping said at
a conference discussing China's energy needs in Beijing on
Monday." Buried in the paragraph it says, "Zhang also expected global
oil production to peak at 94 to 100 million barrels a day during the
next five years." That's a pretty important statement, actually. And
his next statement is just the icing on the cake, actually. '"High oil
prices will have adverse effects on China's economy,' said Zhang." Yes,
right.
The IEA, International Energy Agency, which is headquartered in Paris,
was actually set up in the 1970s by the world's wealthy oil importing
countries to warn of future oil shocks. While the IEA is very careful
about upsetting investors or people in the industry and tends to make a
pretty rosy projection of the future of oil, nevertheless, some of the
chief analysts in the IEA occasionally make presentations where they
say things that sort of make you wonder from about a year ago. The IEA
is predicting for 2006 a little less than 2 million barrels a day of
new production capacity that will be needed to meet new demand. Right
now in the world we use about 84 million barrels of oil per day. That's
our current production capacity, 84 million barrels a day. But that's
not static. The IEA says that this year that's going to increase
because of new demand, especially from places like China, India, and
somewhat from the U.S. There will be increased demand, so instead of 84
million barrels a day, by the end of the year we will have to be
producing almost 86 million barrels a day. Meanwhile, we'll need to
develop more production capacity, about 4 million barrels a day of new
production capacity, to offset the depletion.
What's that about? Remember, many individual countries are past peak.
That means this year they will reliably and predictably produce less
oil than they did last year. So some other countries have to produce
more oil than they did last year just for us to stay even. This 4
million barrels a day, all of that is not that kind of depletion, but
some of it is. Whether it's Russia or Saudi Arabia or Kuwait, some
nations are going to have to produce more this year than they did last
year to offset the depletion and decline rates of countries like
Norway, Great Britain, the U.S., Indonesia, and so on. So altogether
this adds up to 6 million barrels of production capacity per day.
That's a substantial amount. That's hard work for the global oil
industry. And they've got to do the same thing in 2007 and 2008 and
2009. This is accumulative. By 2010 we're talking about over 30 million
barrels a day of new production capacity that has to be developed and
brought on line. That's drilling out existing fields and finding new
fields and bringing them on line. That's a tremendous amount of
investment and hard work in marginal areas like continental shelves and
deep water.
So can the industry do it? That's the question. How long can the
industry continue doing it? Obviously, up to this point the industry
has successfully managed to do this with every passing year. But for
how long? That was the subject of a study by Chris Skrebowski, who is
the editor of Petroleum Review in London. Chris has an ongoing study he
calls oil field megaprojects, in which he carefully analyzes all the
new production projects that are coming on line over the next few
years. He's found that while we need over 30 million barrels of oil a
day of new production over the decade, there is only about 16 1/2
million barrels of day of new production capacity that's actually in
development over the next five years. And we're not likely to see any
surprises in this regard, because new production projects take years to
bring on line and they require immense investment. They're not the
kinds of things you can keep secret, and not many oil companies or
oil-producing countries would want to keep them secret. In fact, they
tend to brag about them and overstate them, if anything. This leads
Skrebowski to conclude that the all-time global oil production peak is
most likely to occur in about 2008.
The IEA says, "Older fields are mature and declining." What's the
problem there? The problem is that not all oil fields are created
equal. There are some giant and super-giant oil fields and there are
some real minnows. There are some oil fields or oil wells that produce
literally a few barrels a day. The super-giant fields, the ones like
Ghawar, which produce millions of barrels a day, are really rare, and
they were all discovered a long time ago. Most of them were discovered
in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. In fact, there are only about a hundred
giant oil fields that account for about a half of global oil
production. The other half of global oil production comes from
thousands of much smaller fields. So the problem is the older fields,
the super-giants, are mature and declining, and what we're finding, the
new discoveries, are the much smaller fields. That means that the
industry is on a treadmill that's constantly speeding up. In order to
replace those giant fields, which are in decline, they have to discover
large numbers of small fields, which deplete fairly rapidly.
Here's an interesting statement. Again, this is from the International
Energy Agency. "Global reserves have been overstated for political
reasons." Back in the 1980s, OPEC made a rule which said that member
countries could extract and export oil in proportion to their reserves.
So if a country had large reserves, it could export more oil. If a
country had smaller reserves, it could export less oil. This is because
the whole point of OPEC was to constrain production in order to control
prices. So the only way they can do that is to have their members
adhere to the rules. What this did was to provide an incentive for
member countries to overstate their reserves. Between 1984 and 1985,
Kuwait went from 63.9 billion barrels of stated reserves to 90. Where
did those 30 billion barrels of oil come from? There didn't happen to
be any major discoveries in Kuwait that year. So a couple of years
later, Abu Dhabi, not to be outdone, went from 31 billion barrels to
92.2, Iran went from 48.8 to 92.9, and Iraq from 47.1 to a nice round
100. Saudi Arabia, which didn't approve of this practice, by the way,
waited a couple of years and finally, because Saudi Arabia was losing
market share—presumably, I guess, that's the reason—decided
to change its stated reserves from 170 billion barrels to 257 1/2. Is
all of that oil there? Answer: Nobody knows. Why? Because Saudi
Arabia's actual oil reserves are a state secret.
How much oil we actually have in the world is a matter of some interest
to all of us, because we all live in this world. It's kind of like
we're all on this airliner that's flying at 600 knots and the altimeter
is broken and the fuel gauge is broken. When we read these figures in
Time magazine or The New York Times, they're always followed by two
words, "proven reserves." You would assume from those two words that
somebody is out there proving the existence of those reserves or their
size, that there is a global oil cop with a giant dipstick who visits
Riyadh once a year to check up on things. But there is no such agency,
there is no one doing that job. So we just have to take their word for
it.
When I give lectures like this, there are a couple of things that
always come up. So let's just get them out of the way right now. What
about the history of reserve additions? The industry has always been
able to keep up with demand in the past, so why assume that is
going to change in the future? A lot of those reserve additions are
probably of a political nature and don't really reflect physical
reality. Other reserve additions were as a result of reporting rules
instituted by the Securities and Exchange Commission back in the 1930s
and that still apply to oil companies today. That causes them to
actually have to underreport their reserves. According to SEC rules, if
you find a billion barrels of oil, let's say you're ExxonMobil, and
you're only producing from part of that field, you can really only
report that part of the field as reserves this year.
Then, as you drill out the field, you can report reserve additions. But
the field was actually all discovered when you first drilled that
initial well. When that first wildcat came in successfully, that's when
you discovered the field. On paper, it looks as though you're finding
new oil with each passing year, when that's not actually the case. This
creates a very murky situation in terms of analyzing the situation with
regard to how much oil we actually have and how quickly discoveries are
declining and so on.
Then there is the matter of the really nonconventional petroleum
resources, like the tar sands, of which there is an immense amount in
Canada, in Alberta, and there is a lot of heavy oil in Venezuela, and
there is an immense amount of oil shale in Colorado and Wyoming. But
this stuff is not the same as liquid oil. We can't consider it in the
same category, because the rate of extraction is constrained by
noneconomic factors. In other words, you can't arbitrarily increase the
rate of extraction just by throwing money at it. The tar sands of
Canada, for example: It requires a tremendous amount of natural gas and
fresh water to produce synthetic oil from the tar sands. Right now
Alberta is producing about a million barrels a day. Maybe they will be
producing 2 million barrels a day by 2015; maybe, with lots of
investments and technical breakthroughs, 4 million barrels by 2025. But
remember, we need 6 million barrels a day of new production capacity
every year. So that 4 million barrels a day by 2025 is significant for
Alberta and for the Canadian economy—it means environmental hell
for Alberta, but it's a significant economic boon—but in terms of
what the world needs in terms of flow rates, it's not going to be
enough to turn the tide.
This is the problem with many economic analyses that just look at what
is cost-effective. Yes, it's cost-effective to produce synthetic oil
from the tar sands. The assumption then is it can be scaled up
arbitrarily. That simply isn't the case. I mentioned earlier Chevron
and its declaration in Time and Newsweek and all over the place. It has
taken out these ads saying that oil production is in decline in 33 of
the 48 largest oil-producing countries and that we're nearing the end
of cheap oil, and so on. This is really a very interesting development.
Chevron has a Web site called WillYouJoinUs.com, and the idea is that
we citizens should join together with Chevron to figure out an answer
to this problem.
The cynical part of me looks at that and says, maybe this is all public
relations, and to a large extent I think it probably is. After all, the
oil companies are being demonized because as we Americans pay more at
the gas pump, we have to find somebody to blame, and ExxonMobil is now
the world's most profitable corporation, so they make a pretty easy
target. Of course, the actual profit rates against investment for these
companies are not astronomically high. They're in the range of 7% or
so. Compare that to what the pharmaceutical industry is making and
it's not all that spectacular. Nevertheless, I think we can expect the
oil companies to take some role in finding ways to mitigate this
situation that we're in as a society. They are profiting by the fact
that we are becoming ever more dependent on their product. So shouldn't
they take some of their profits and use them to figure out a way to
decrease that dependency and find replacements for oil as we need it?
So maybe Chevron is doing a good thing. I like to give them the benefit
of the doubt. I think it's very helpful that in fact they are telling
the American people that so many countries are in decline and that we
can't rely on much more cheap oil.
A report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy and released in
February 2005 is extraordinarily important. It was commissioned from
the Science Applications International Corporation, which is an
organization that regularly produces scientific reports for the
Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and other government
agencies. The project leader was Robert L. Hirsch, who has a long and
very distinguished career in the energy industry, both in government
and in private industry. The U.S. Department of Energy asked Hirsch and
his colleagues two questions. They asked, "Is peak oil a real problem?
And if so, what should we do about it?"
Let me just read you the executive summary of this report. "The peaking
of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an
unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid
fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and,
without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs
will be unprecedented." When they say unprecedented, they're looking
back at occasions like the Great Depression and the world wars. "Viable
mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to
have substantial impact they must be initiated more than a decade in
advance of peaking." In fact, in the scenarios analyzed in the report,
they conclude that something like two decades of very hard work, with
investment in the range of trillions of dollars, with effort on the
scale of World War II level of effort, with all of society, the
citizenry, government, and industry, working together to deal with this
problem, two decades of that kind of work will be required in order to
prepare for peak oil.
They also analyze the scenario in which we just wait for the peak to
happen before we respond. This is the argument of so many economists
who say that even if peak oil is real, even if global oil production is
going to peak, we shouldn't worry about it because, of course, the
market will take care of it. Oil prices will rise, and as they do, that
will create incentives for research into other energy technologies,
that will create incentives for energy efficiency measures. The
transition will occur almost automatically, and 20 or 30 years later we
will all be driving hydrogen hypercars, and nobody will have even
noticed a bump on the economic highway. The Hirsch report says that's
just not what's going to happen, because if we wait for the price
signals, they will come 20 years too late.
Consider, for example, the mitigation strategy of increasing fuel
efficiency in the U.S. car and truck fleet. It certainly can be done.
It doesn't even require any really major innovations. We already have
technologies that would enable us all to be driving cars that get 40,
50, 60, even 100 miles per gallon right now. The technology exists. So
what's the problem? Right now GM and Ford and Chrysler aren't making
very many of those cars that get 100 miles per gallon, and it would
take them a few years to get around to it. Even in the
best-case scenario it would take them a lot of investment and it
would probably take some government help. Even once they got to market,
not everybody buys a new car ever year. I don't know about you, but my
car is 25 years old. So how long would it take to change out the
entirely of the U.S. car and truck fleet? Just to get most of those
cars and trucks it's going to take 15 years, maybe even 20 years. So
altogether we're looking at over 20 years to implement that very simple
strategy.
Everywhere you look it's a similar situation. Developing renewable
energy sources, if we want to have a hydrogen economy, fine. How long
is that going to take and how much is it going to cost? If we wait for
the price signal, if we wait until nature tells us unequivocally, okay,
oil has peaked now, and then we start, we're at least 20 years too
late. So this is a good answer for those who say, "There is so much
uncertainty." We don't know. Some people are saying oil is peaking
right now and some people are saying it's not going to happen for
another 20 years. Why should we make hard decisions now when there is
so much uncertainly? Because even in the best case, it's going to take
us a while to make the adjustment. Shouldn't we as a society take the
worst-case scenario into account? We do that with disaster planning all
the time. Should New Orleans assume that a hurricane would never
actually hit here? Theoretically it's possible, but it wouldn't really
happen, now, would it? Those of us who live in California have to
assume that an earthquake is going to happen. It's going to happen. It
may happen literally tomorrow or it may happen 20 years from now, but
it's going to happen. The same thing with peak oil, so we have to plan
for it.
Assuming we do that, what are the alternatives? The alternatives for
replacements of oil are not all that good, frankly. This is our major
energy source in this country. The second is natural gas. Natural gas
is just about as big a problem, some would say a worse problem, for us
than oil. You may have noticed natural gas prices a few years ago were
consistently $2 a thousand cubic feet, year in, year out. Within the
past few years they've gone up to $5, $7. Just a few weeks ago, they
were up around $14, $15. They've declined a little bit from there, but
only because we're having a very mild winter. It's about 20% warmer
than the typical winter throughout North America, and that's reducing
the need for natural gas for home heating. But North American natural
gas is in decline, and we don't have any good way of replacing natural
gas, at least over the short term. Yes, there is liquefied natural gas
(LNG) that we can bring in by tanker from other places, like Russia or
Australia or who knows where, but we only have four offloading
terminals right now and one of those is out of commission. Building
more of them is going to take a lot of time and be very expensive. The
ships themselves are very expensive. Most of that supply is already
spoken for by other countries like Japan and China. So we'll be really,
really lucky to maintain anything like our current natural gas supply
in the future using LNG. So to think that we could replace petroleum
with natural gas somehow by liquefying natural gas as a transportation
fuel is really a pipe dream. Nor can we imagine using natural gas as a
transition fuel to make hydrogen. The cheapest way to make hydrogen is
by reforming natural gas. But if we are running out of the natural gas,
that really doesn't make much sense.
Coal? Coal is good at making electricity, but we don't have 200 million
electric cars in this country, we have 200 million cars that run on
liquid transportation fuels. And that's not going to change anytime
soon. So unless we liquefy the coal, which can technically be
done, coal is not going to help us. Suppose we did that. I was in South
Africa just a few months ago and speaking to the executives of Sasol
Corporation, which has the world's most advanced technology for coal to
liquids. I asked them, "How's it going?" They're producing about
150,000 barrels of synthetic oil from coal right now. South Africa has
some of the best coal reserves in the world. Meanwhile, South Africa is
importing 450,000 barrels of oil per day from Saudi Arabia and Iran. So
even the country that has the most developed technology in this regard
and lots of good coal isn't putting it to use very much because it's so
expensive and it's hard to scale up. Those Sasol plants in South
Africa, if you look at them in a satellite image from space, you can
see them, because they are the single largest point source of pollution
on the continent of Africa. Do we really want to go there? I don't
think so.
How about nuclear electric power? Again, that's a source of
electricity, and we don't have any good way of running cars on
electricity. Yes, if we had tons of extra electricity, we could use it
to electrolyze water and produce hydrogen, but it would take an
enormous amount of extra electricity. We're talking about building
hundreds of new nuclear plants, each of them costing hundreds of
millions of dollars and taking 10, 20 years to construct. It's not
going to happen, folks.
How about renewable energy? I'm all for that, but most of that is in
the form of hydro power and biomass. A lot of that is just folks
burning wood in their fireplaces. Solar and wind currently form only a
tiny fraction of our current energy budget. So we have a long way to
go. Again, that's producing electricity.
How about biofuels? How about biodiesel or ethanol? There we run into
the problem of we'll need a heck of a lot of arable land to grow those
biofuels. At some point it becomes a trade-off between food for people
and food for cars. Again, do we really want to go there? I think we can
use biofuels on a small scale, but we can't imagine using biofuels at
the rate we're currently using oil.
So what is the upshot of all this? It's that there really is no supply
side fix here. Yes, we will need to invest in alternative energy
sources, we will need to diversify our energy supplies, and so on. We
will have to invest tremendously in all of these new sources as we go.
But the main thing we're going to have to do is reduce demand. That's
number one, and all the rest are far down the list. Not everybody likes
that answer. When I talk to groups of engineers and economists, they
want to stay on the alternative supply side and figure out what can we
do about it, how can we nudge that. They just don't want to talk about
how to reduce demand. In fact, that's the cheapest way of dealing with
this problem. Reducing demand is always going to be cheaper than
increasing supply of alternative energy sources, so that's where we
need to concentrate.
The metaphor of hurricane Katrina. We had days of warning, we could see
it hundreds of miles away on the computer screen. We could see it
coming. Nevertheless, when the hurricane hit, there was a shameful lack
of response by federal officials, even after the fact, after the
hurricane had hit. Local officials and agencies were overwhelmed by the
magnitude of the disaster. In fact, the most effective response was
mounted by coordinated groups of volunteer citizens. I would suggest
that we're likely to see a similar situation with regard to the next
big disaster, which I think is likely to be peak oil and natural gas.
There is no reason not to anticipate this disaster. We can see it
coming for years ahead. Nevertheless, I think there is going to be
woefully inadequate preparation, especially on the part of the federal
government and in most places on the part of state and local
governments. As a result, I think most of the responsibility is going
to have to be taken up by volunteer citizens' groups working to ensure
local food security, local water security, the ability of our emergency
vehicles to keep operating, and so on. That's not to say that we
wouldn't be much better off if the federal government did take an
active role in this. I think we would be vastly better off. And I
certainly hope we can turn the tide in that regard by waking up our
federal officials.
Here is a medium-term forecast for oil. I don't think that we're
looking at this point at a sharp peak where we can say one month,
production is going up, the next month it's going down, there it was,
and that was the historic moment. I think what's much more likely is
that basically from now on for the next five years or so, maybe a
little less, maybe a little bit more, but let's say for the next five
years, we're going to be experiencing a kind of bumpy plateau, where
some months production will seem to be going up and some months it will
seem to be going down. Prices will become extremely volatile, and
prices will go up to a certain level where they destroy economic
activity. When the economy takes a big hit, that will destroy demand
for oil, and the price will come down temporarily. After the price
comes down, then people will be able to afford more of it, and economic
activity will pick up a bit again. We're also likely to see more
extreme weather events in places like the Gulf of Mexico that will
impact energy production. We're likely to see geopolitical events: more
oil wars between nations and within nations, civil wars over control of
oil wealth and so on. All of these things are going to impact the rate
of oil trade in the world. So it will be really hard to put our finger
on what really is happening. But at some point we'll be able to look
back in the rear-view mirror and say, "During that period of the latter
half of the first decade of the 21st century, global oil production
reached its all-time peak and it's all downhill from here."
I think one thing that is desperately needed is a kind of oil depletion
protocol, and I'm going to discuss that for just a moment with you.
This is something that my colleagues and I are working on very hard
right now. I'm working on a book on the subject of the oil depletion
protocol—actually, that's going to be the title of the book, The
Oil Depletion Protocol—with some colleagues helping to form a
nonprofit organization to publicize this. I didn't suggest the idea of
an oil depletion protocol. It's the brainchild of Colin J. Campbell,
who is a retired petroleum geologist who is really one of the world's
experts on oil depletion. He lives in Ballydehob, Ireland. Anyway,
Colin's idea for an oil depletion protocol is pretty simple. It's just
that oil-producing countries would agree to produce less oil every year
and oil-importing countries would agree to import less oil every year
by some nonarbitrary fraction like about 2.6 to 2.7% a year, which is
the world depletion rate. That's how much we produce over how much is
left to extract.
What's the advantage of that? If the nations of the world were to enact
the oil depletion protocol, that would stabilize prices, so we wouldn't
have to worry about extreme price swings that will bankrupt whole
economies, that will make it impossible for less industrialized nations
to afford to import the little bit of oil that they need in order to
keep their economies running. It would also reduce competition for the
remaining oil supplies, competition that is likely otherwise to
devolve into conflict, possibly even on a global scale, conflict
between major oil importers like the U.S. and China, conflict between
and countries that have a lot of oil, like Nigeria and Middle Eastern
countries, Central Asian countries, and Iran. So we could avoid
potentially World War III or World War IV, depending on if you count
the Cold War as World War III. I don't know if you do. The benefits
from the oil depletion protocol are pretty substantial, in fact. If we
don't have something like the oil depletion protocol, I think the
downside is extraordinary, it's horrific.
So how can we possibly talk the nations of the world into agreeing to
this? In fact, we've had ways of controlling the oil trade for most of
the last 150 years. It was either Standard Oil in the latter part of
the 19th century setting prices or it was the Texas Railroad
Commission, from 1935 to 1970, controlling production in Texas to
stabilize prices of oil in the world or it was OPEC, from 1970 to the
present. So in a way this is not a new idea. It's just that OPEC is no
longer in a position to stabilize global oil prices because they're
pumping pretty much flat out. We need something else, and I think the
oil depletion protocol is it. Even the oil companies will benefit,
because if we don't have something like this, the extreme price swings
will result in global economic chaos and an environment in which the
oil companies will not want to operate, will not be able to operate.
I'm sure they would much prefer to have relatively high but not
extraordinary, not exorbitantly high, oil prices that are nevertheless
stable and predictable. They would much prefer to have that kind of
operating environment. So I think a pretty good argument can be made
for this suggestion, and we hope to be making it to the nations of the
world over the next several months.
At the same time, even as we have a global oil depletion protocol, a
lot of the responsibility for dealing with this problem is going to
devolve upon local communities. And here I think it's going to be up to
local communities to ensure their local food, water, and energy
supplies. Food, you know, is tremendously dependent on oil, not only in
transportation of food long distances—the typical American food
item travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate these days—but also
the fossil fuels used in fertilizers and pesticides and herbicides and
operating the farm machinery, the planting machines, and harvesting
machines, and so on. Altogether, for every calorie of food energy,
typically about 10 calories of fossil fuel energy have to be invested
to bring it to us to be consumed. That's a big problem. Our food
industry is going to have to be reformed, and the direction of that
reform has to be in the way of reducing our chemical inputs and
localizing food production. That means taking care of your local
farmers and making sure that they stay in business. That means shopping
at your farmers' market. That means joining a CSA, Community Supported
Agriculture.
We also need to find ways to operate our communities with much less
transportation. That means redesigning communities. No more sprawl.
Let's stop building highways and build walkable communities. Bike
lanes, yes. We need more human-powered vehicles. And by that I don't
mean things that look like bicycles. Yes, we need lots more bicycles,
but anything that you can get around on with human power. That means
delivering things by means of human power as well. Globalization, the
kick we've been on for the past 20 years, has been run on cheap
transportation fuels. Take away the cheap
transportation fuels and globalization just doesn't work very well.
So we're going to have to run that movie backwards and relocalize our
economies in all kinds of ways. We just don't have people in our
communities anymore who make clothes and shoes and toilet seats and all
the other things that we need. We're going to have to change that, and
we're going to have to support one another in the process of doing
that. Because if we keep going to Wal-Mart just because it's cheaper,
that means that we're going to be killing our local economic activity.
We've been doing that, God knows, for decades. You go to any town in
the Midwest, actually across this country, and you can tell where
Wal-Mart has been because the downtown is dead and the local merchants
are working for Wal-Mart now. We can't let that happen.
We have to plan for long-term emergency services. We tend to plan for
things like volcano eruptions and earthquakes and floods, but peak oil
is going to be, as my colleague James Howard Kunstler calls it, a long
emergency. It's going to be more like the Great Depression than like an
earthquake or a hurricane. So we're going to have to plan for that and
we're going to think about if, for example, we have high levels of
unemployment, how we can employ each other's services. What happened as
we started using fossil fuels was we displaced human labor with machine
power. As we run out of fossil fuels, we're going to need lots more
human labor. We just have to reorganize our economy in a rational way
so that we can take advantage of the skills and enthusiasms and
abilities of each other in making our economies work once again.
Once you start getting into it, it's all kind of a no-brainer, and a
lot of communities around the country are starting to get into it. My
students at New College and I are working with the City of Sebastopol
in northern California to develop an energy plan.
I think so much could happen here in Eugene in this regard. You already
have a mayor who clearly takes this seriously. Take advantage of it.
Take advantage of this moment in time to see that your community can
address this proactively rather than simply waiting for the feces to
contact the rubbery oscillator.
Finally, these are a few Web sites that I find particularly helpful.
The Post Carbon Institute has Post Carbon outposts all over the
country. The whole point of the Post Carbon Institute is to help local
groups of people find rational responses to the problem of peak oil and
gas, EnergyBulletin.net is a fabulous Web site for keeping up with
energy news on a daily basis. Thank you so much for being here.
For more information - heinberg@newsletter.com.
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Alternative Radio
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©2006