By Kjell Aleklett, President of ASPO International, Association for the Study of Peak Oil&Gas, www.peakoil.net. Professor in Global Energy Systems, Uppsala University, Sweden, www.fysast.uu.se/ges
Newsweek’s cover declares that we shall have ”Cheap Oil Forever”. …
As individuals we need 2500 kcal of energy in food per day and this means that the world’s population needs 7100 TWh per year. Expressed as the equivalent amount of energy in oil this is 610 Mtoe or 4.2 billion barrels of oil. If one remembers that part of grain production is seed for sowing the following year’s crops then the world’s annual agricultural production constitutes a net food energy amount of 9400 TWh. This means that there is currently just enough food energy for the world’s population. However, for agriculture to produce 1000 kcal of food energy it requires 1600 kcal of oil equivalents on the farm. When that food has finally reached the dinner table in the USA the energy that was required has grown to 7500 kcal and most of that was from oil. This means that a large part of the world’s oil production is required just to prevent starvation. …
Newsweek and “Cheap Oil forever”
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