Las medias verdades de los guardianes de la energía

Presentamos un informe escrito por W. Zittel y J. Schindler, de la consultoría alemana en energía sostenible y sistemas de transporte L-B-Systemtechnik, titulado "The Countdown for the Peak of Oil Production has Begun – but what are the Views of the Most Important International Energy Agencies" (archivo PDF, 197Kb), en el que se realiza una severa crítica a la metodología empleada por agencias como el USGS, la EIA y IEA a la hora de calcular las reservas de hidrocarburos. Se trata de un excelente resumen de las razones por las que, según estas agencias oficiales, y por mucho que se consuma, siempre contaremos (aparentemente), con el petróleo suficiente para satisfacer la demanda. Destacamos la conclusión del informe:

The projections presented by USGS, EIA and IEA regarding the future availability of oil give reason to grave concerns because the comforting messages of these studies unfortunately are not based on valid arguments. These studies ignore future limitations in the supply of oil which are meanwhile apparent, and by doing this they send misleading political signals.

This article describes how, as it were, a “building” has been erected by well-known institutions:

• The supporting ground floor has been built by the USGS 2000 study: it describes, how much oil the world has at its disposal - it just needs to be found.
• On this the EIA has built a first floor which describes the future production potential. The result is that in fact any conceivable future growth of production will be possible – with growth rates exceeding everything that could be observed in the past.
• On top of this the IEA constructs a second floor: the predicted growth in oil demand for the next decades will not be restricted by any limits of supply.

However, if only one brick removed from the ground floor, the whole edifice collapses like a card house.