An energy crisis or energy shortage is any significant bottleneck in the supply of energy resources to an economy. In literature, it often refers to one of the energy sources used at a certain time and place, in particular, those that supply national electricity grids or those used as fuel in industrial development and population growth have led to a surge in the global demand for energy in recent years. In the 2000s, this new demand – together with Middle East tension, the falling value of the US dollar, dwindling oil reserves, concerns over peak oil, and oil price speculation – triggered the 2000s energy crisis, which saw the price of oil reach an all-time high of $147.30 per barrel ($926/m3) in 2008.
Marion King Hubbert was an American geologist and geophysicist. He worked at the Shell research lab in Houston, Texas. He made several important contributions to geology, geophysics, and petroleum geology, most notably the Hubbert curve and Hubbert peak theory, with important political ramifications. He was often referred to as "M. King Hubbert" or "King Hubbert".
The Hubbert peak theory says that for any given geographical area, from an individual oil-producing region to the planet as a whole, the rate of petroleum production tends to follow a bell-shaped curve. It is one of the primary theories on peak oil.
Peak oil is the hypothetical point in time when the maximum rate of global oil production is reached, after which it is argued that production will begin an irreversible decline. It is related to the distinct concept of oil depletion; while global petroleum reserves are finite, the limiting factor is not whether the oil exists but whether it can be extracted economically at a given price. A secular decline in oil extraction could be caused both by depletion of accessible reserves and by reductions in demand that reduce the price relative to the cost of extraction, as might be induced to reduce carbon emissions.
Colin J. Campbell was a British petroleum geologist who predicted that oil production would peak by 2007. He claims the consequences of this are uncertain but drastic, due to the world's dependency on fossil fuels for the vast majority of its energy. His theories have received wide attention but are disputed and have not significantly changed governmental energy policies at this time. To deal with declining global oil production, he has proposed the Rimini protocol.
Richard William Heinberg is an American journalist and educator who has written extensively on energy, economic, and ecological issues, including oil depletion. He is the author of 13 books, and presently serves as the senior fellow at the Post Carbon Institute.
The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream is a 2004 documentary film concerning peak oil and its implications for the suburban lifestyle, written and directed by Toronto-based filmmaker Gregory Greene.
The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, by Richard Heinberg, is an introduction to the concept of peak oil and petroleum depletion.
The Rimini Protocol is a proposal made by the geologist Colin Campbell. It is intended to stabilise oil prices and minimise the effects of peak oil. It is named after the XXIX. Annual Conference The Economics of the Noble Path: Fraternal Rights, the Convival Society, Fair Shares for All of the Pio Manzù International Research Centre in Rimini, Italy on 18-20 October 2003, where Campbell presented his idea of an oil depletion protocol. A few months later, he published together with Kjell Aleklett, the head of the Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group, a slightly refined text under the name Uppsala Protocol.
Ali Morteza Samsam Bakhtiari was an Iranian author and oil expert employed by the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC). He held a number of senior positions with this organization beginning in 1971. He was also an adviser to the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre.
Chris Skrebowski is a well-known commentator on the oil industry and an expert on global oil supply. He is the founding Director of Peak Oil Consulting and consulting editor for Petroleum Review, the magazine of the UK Energy Institute. Skrebowski is also a founding member of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO) and sits on the board of the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (ODAC). He is a Fellow of the Energy Institute and advises the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and Gas (APPGOPO).
Jean H. Laherrère is a petroleum engineer and consultant, best known as the co-author of an influential 1998 Scientific American article entitled The End of Cheap Oil.
The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MOP&NG) is a ministry of the government of India responsible for the exploration, production, refining, distribution, marketing, import, export, and conservation of petroleum, natural gas, petroleum products, and liquefied natural gas in the country. The ministry is headed by the Cabinet Minister Hardeep Singh Puri. M. M. Kutty is the Secretary of the Ministry.
Jeremy Leggett is a British social entrepreneur and writer. He founded and was a board director of Solarcentury from 1997 to 2020, an international solar solutions company, and founded and was chair of SolarAid, a charity funded with 5% of Solarcentury's annual profits that helps solar-lighting entrepreneurs get started in Africa (2006–2020). SolarAid owns a retail brand SunnyMoney that was for a time Africa's top-seller of solar lighting, having sold well over a million solar lights, all profits recycled to the cause of eradicating the kerosene lantern from Africa.
Peak coal is the peak consumption or production of coal by a human community. Global coal consumption peaked in 2013, and had dropped slightly by the end of the 2010s. The peak of coal's share in the global energy mix was in 2008, when coal accounted for 30% of global energy production. The decline in coal use is largely driven by consumption declines in the United States and Europe, as well as developed economies in Asia. In 2019, production increases in countries such as China, Indonesia, India, Russia and Australia compensated for the falls in the United States and Europe. However, coal's structural decline continued in the 2020s.
Peak oil is the point at which oil production, sometimes including unconventional oil sources, hits its maximum. Predicting the timing of peak oil involves estimation of future production from existing oil fields as well as future discoveries. The most influential production model is Hubbert peak theory, first proposed in the 1950s. The effect of peak oil on the world economy remains controversial.
Richard Frederick Paynter Hardman, CBE is a British geologist and a leading applied petroleum geologist. He was the president of the Geological Society of London, 1996 – 1998 and Chair of the Petroleum Society of Great Britain. In a career spanning over 40 years, he worked in oil and gas exploration as a geologist in Libya, Kuwait, Colombia, Norway, and the North Sea with companies including BP, Amoco and Amerada Hess. Working as an Oil & Gas Drilling & Exploration consultant, he was later Executive Director, Exploration at Regal Petroleum (2005–2006), Atlantic Petroleum UK, and a Director of FX Energy, Inc., based in Salt Lake City, US, since 2003.
Post Carbon Institute (PCI) is a think tank which provides information and analysis on climate change, energy scarcity, and other issues related to sustainability and long term community resilience. Its Fellows specialize in various fields related to the organization's mission, such as fossil fuels, renewable energy, food, water, and population. Post Carbon is incorporated as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and is based in Corvallis, Oregon, United States.
Peak minerals marks the point in time when the largest production of a mineral will occur in an area, with production declining in subsequent years. While most mineral resources will not be exhausted in the near future, global extraction and production has become more challenging. Miners have found ways over time to extract deeper and lower grade ores with lower production costs. More than anything else, declining average ore grades are indicative of ongoing technological shifts that have enabled inclusion of more 'complex' processing – in social and environmental terms as well as economic – and structural changes in the minerals exploration industry and these have been accompanied by significant increases in identified Mineral Reserves.
Rabi Narayan Bastia is an Indian geoscientist and the Global Head of Exploration at Lime Petroleum, Norway, known for his contributions in the hydrocarbon explorations at Krishna Godavari Basin (2002), at Mahanadi Basin (2003) and at Cauvery (2007). A non-executive director of Asian Oilfield Services Limited and the President at OilMax Energy, Bastia is a recipient of the Odisha Living Legend Award. The Government of India awarded him the fourth highest civilian honour of the Padma Shri, in 2007, for his contributions to Science and Technology.
