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. [1] 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. [2]
To ease peak oil effects and to manage the long decline in the second half of the oil era, producing countries would not produce oil in excess of their present national depletion rate: i.e., roughly speaking, the oil used or exported must equal the oil produced or imported. Furthermore, it would be required that importing nations stabilize their imports at existing levels and match their consumption to the global decline rate. Consuming nations should actively reduce oil consumption each year by the global decline rate (then estimated at ~2.6%). This would have the effect of keeping world prices reasonable without price shocks and let Third World countries afford their oil imports. [3]
The protocol consists - beyond introducing whereas considerations and a list of objectives - the following provisions:
No country shall produce oil at above its current Depletion Rate, such being defined as annual production as a percentage of the estimated amount left to produce;
Each importing country shall reduce its imports to match the current World Depletion Rate, deducting any indigenous production.— Colin J. Campbell, Proposal at the 2003 Pio Manzu Conference, and to be the central theme of the 2005 Pio Manzu Conference, Rimini, Italy [4]
Campbell also stresses the need for outdated principles of economic growth to be surpassed. He states (May 2004): "the economic fundamentalists ... have these really outdated economic principles inherited from the Industrial Revolution, when the world was indeed large and the scope for Man’s activities were at that time more or less infinite. ... these economic principles ... are very short term in their nature ... these people who say that there can be no shortage in an open market and their battle cry is liberalize markets - these people have become really the enemy ..." [5] As such, Campbell strongly criticises those who accelerate the peak oil crisis, rather than taking action to curtail it as he recommends.
Campbell substantiates the prediction of the urgent forthcoming "peak oil" crisis by making reference to Saudi Arabia, a nation covering a geographic region wherein there is a huge concentration of oil. Campbell hypothesises: "I think even the Sauds would always develop the larger ones first. So the biggest field in the world is Ghawar, with 80 billion in it perhaps, you step outside from this trend to Safaniya with 35 perhaps, Hanifah about 12 and Shaybah 15, and you come on down. If they develop the big ones first, which one must assume they did, you are down to well, still nice oilfields but of a modest scale, and so I suppose the other discoveries they made have made are smaller by orders of magnitude ... it’s quite evident that this doesn’t come close to the past." [5]
Support for the Rimini Protocol has even been found in retired politicians. Yves Cochet, the former Minister of Environment of France and author of Pétrole apocalypse, has been supportive. The closest endorsement of the Rimini Protocol by politicians can be found in The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse (Heinberg, 2006). Its author states in the preface that his book was written with the "silent collaboration" (p. XI) of the aforementioned Colin Campbell, the petroleum geologist who first proposed the Rimini Protocol alongside Kjell Aleklett. The list of former politicians who endorse this book (and, arguably, by extension, the Rimini Protocol) are as follows: Andrew McNamara, MP, Parliament of Queensland, Australia; Roscoe G. Bartlett, U.S. Congressman belonging to the Republican Party; and Michael Meacher, former member of the U.K. parliament belonging to the Labour Party. [6] In regard thereto, Campbell proclaims: "And then ... you have the people I call the Renegades. These are senior politicians who are now out of office and being freed from the system, are able to tell the truth. And some of them do." [5]
The Hubbert curve is an approximation of the production rate of a resource over time. It is a symmetric logistic distribution curve, often confused with the "normal" gaussian function. It first appeared in "Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels," geologist M. King Hubbert's 1956 presentation to the American Petroleum Institute, as an idealized symmetric curve, during his tenure at the Shell Oil Company. It has gained a high degree of popularity in the scientific community for predicting the depletion of various natural resources. The curve is the main component of Hubbert peak theory, which has led to the rise of peak oil concerns. Basing his calculations on the peak of oil well discovery in 1948, Hubbert used his model in 1956 to create a curve which predicted that oil production in the contiguous United States would peak around 1970.
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 theorized point in time when the maximum rate of global oil production will occur, after which oil production will begin an irreversible decline. The primary concern of peak oil is that global transportation heavily relies upon the use of gasoline and diesel fuel. Switching transportation to electric vehicles, biofuels, or more fuel-efficient forms of travel may help reduce oil demand.
Colin J. Campbell was a British petroleum geologist who predicted that oil production would peak by 2007. He claimed 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 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 14 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.
Oil depletion is the decline in oil production of a well, oil field, or geographic area. The Hubbert peak theory makes predictions of production rates based on prior discovery rates and anticipated production rates. Hubbert curves predict that the production curves of non-renewing resources approximate a bell curve. Thus, according to this theory, when the peak of production is passed, production rates enter an irreversible decline.
Robert L. Hirsch is an American physicist who has been involved in energy issues from the late 1960s. Through the 1970s he directed the U.S. fusion energy program at a variety of government positions as responsibility for the project moved from the Atomic Energy Commission to the Energy Research and Development Administration and finally to the Department of Energy. After that time he was a senior energy program adviser for Science Applications International Corporation and is a Senior Energy Advisor at MISI and a consultant in energy, technology, and management.
Eugene Island block 330 oil field is an oil field in the United States Exclusive Economic Zone in the Gulf of Mexico. It is located 170 miles (270 km) southwest of New Orleans, 70–85 miles (113–137 km) off the Louisiana coast comprising six and a half leased blocks: Eugene Island 313, 314 south, 330, 331, 332, 337 and 338.
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 French petroleum engineer and consultant, best known as the co-author of an influential 1998 Scientific American article entitled The End of Cheap Oil.
Dale Allen Pfeiffer is a geologist and writer from Michigan, U.S. who investigated and wrote about energy depletion and potential future resource wars. He also wrote about class war, sustainability, direct action and the environment. He is also an anarchist activist and a member of the Industrial Workers of the World. In 1999, he was one of the organizers of a hunger strike to provide medical care for the incarcerated Leonard Peltier.
The Oil Depletion Analysis Centre (ODAC) is an independent, UK-registered educational charity. The centre is working to raise international public awareness and promote better understanding of the world's oil depletion and peak oil problem. It is based in London and belongs to the New Economics Foundation.
Peak coal is the peak consumption or production of coal by a human community. Peak coal can be driven by peak demand or peak supply. Historically, it was widely believed that the supply-side would eventually drive peak coal due to the depletion of coal reserves. However, since the increasing global efforts to limit climate change, peak coal has been driven by demand. This is due in large part to the rapid expansion of natural gas and renewable energy. As of 2024 over 40% of all energy sector CO2 emissions are from coal, and many countries have pledged to phase-out coal.
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.
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.
Ugo Bardi is a professor of physical chemistry at the University of Florence.
Filmed on 27th May 2004 after The APSO 2004 Conference [..] Colin Campbell speaks with Julian Darley in Berlin on The ASPO 2004 Conference, the Rimini Protocol, Shell and Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.