The first notable act of our newly-minted culture minister, Steven Guilbeault, was to recite to media scribes the myth of peak oil. Asked whether pipelines would continue to be a disruptor to Alberta-Ottawa relations, he replied:
“The Canadian energy regulator, as well as the International Energy Agency, are telling us that probably by 2028, 2029, demand for oil will peak globally and it will also peak in Canada.”
“So… before we start talking about building an entirely new pipeline, maybe we should maximize the use of existing infrastructure.” He went on to claim that the Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMX), which came online in
, was running at only 40 per cent capacity. This was wildly incorrect: in 2024, TMX
at 77 per cent capacity, and that share is projected to grow over the years to reach 96 per cent in 2028.
As for peak oil, Guilbeault was also very likely wrong. For years, activists have claimed that the highest volumes of oil consumption were just over the horizon, only to be proven wrong time and time again. Just like how the deadline on COVID restrictions of “two weeks to flatten the curve” was stretched to two years, the impending decline of oil constantly moved farther and farther out.
The theory was first put forward in 1956. Geologist and Shell researcher M. King Hubbert put forward a paper predicting the beginning of the end of U.S. oil production somewhere between 1965 and 1971. This was a fearsome prospect because life in the developed world was dependent on cheap, readily available energy, and its absence (and subsequent increase in price) could reverse hard-fought economic progress.
For a time, he appeared to be right: when the early 1970s hit, oil production in the United States began falling slowly — but the bottom of this trough was hit in 2006, and U.S. production surpassed historic highs around 2014.
Globally, Hubbert predicted a production peak for 2000. In reality, production hit what is now a mini-peak in 1979, sinking to early ’70s levels during the early ’80s — but it later
and steadily climbed over the years. No ceiling was hit in 2000; production kept on rising. It did hit a trough in 2020, but that was due to worldwide COVID shutdowns and the price shock they caused to oil contracts.
Had technology never advanced past the achievements of the 1950s, Hubbert may well have been proven right. But humans continued to innovate and eventually found new ways of extracting harder-to-reach hydrocarbons from the earth’s crust.
Doomsday predictors continue to be fooled by humanity’s ability to improve technology and find new ways to consume. “Peak Oil Production May Already Be Here,”
one 2011 headline in Science. One 2005 paper sponsored by the U.S. government
a number of other failures following Hubbert: an Iranian oil executive thought 2006, a California Institute of Technology vice-provost thought 2010 or earlier, various oil company geologists predicted somewhere between pre-2009 and 2020.
On the far end of peak-oil predictors was Shell energy, which pegged the end-time at “2025 or later,” and energy economist Michael C. Lynch, who in 2003
the hysteria and predicted no foreseeable peak at all. The math behind this supposed end to oil was shoddy and inconclusive.
“Most of their key findings appear to be no more than a misunderstanding of statistical analysis,” Lynch
of the alarmists in a later paper. “Not only can some of their methods be demonstrated to be ineffective, and their conclusions repeatedly failed, but the authors publish data and cases selectively, omitting those which contradict their theories, implying that the work is unreliable.”
Now that previous predictions have been blown by at hurricane speeds, new ones are being made. The International Energy Agency (IEA), an intergovernmental organization on energy aimed at achieving global net-zero emissions, made the bold
last year that peak oil would hit before 2030. Consulting company
and French oil company
figure it’ll be around 2030. It won’t be long before we find out whether they’re right — but there certainly isn’t a consensus.
Indeed, just one month before the IEA made its bet, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) released its own forecast, setting the peak oil date sometime beyond at least 2050. Last month, OPEC
with a statement pointing out the IEA’s own interests: “In recent years, the IEA has pushed for ideologically driven net-zero goals, ones that have often been accompanied by targets or timelines that lack a grasp of what meeting them truly involves.”
The same could probably be said about the Canada Energy Regulator (CER), which in 2023 predicted peak oil would hit as early as 2026. The CER is independent but its leadership consists of many federal appointees, which after a decade of Liberal governance makes it a softly Liberal institution, governance-wise. Its CEO lists her pronouns and an Indigenous territorial acknowledgement in her bio and one of its
is the achievement of net-zero.
Those aggressively pushing for net-zero — including agencies and regulators ideologically opposed to hydrocarbon extraction — will point to their alarming figures as evidence that there’s no need to construct additional pipelines and refineries. If demand is about to plummet, they say, it’s not worth the environmental and financial cost.
It’s fair to assume that someday, perhaps if humanity unlocks fusion energy and superconductors, that oil will be a thing of the past, much like how coal no longer fuels trains and firewood is no longer used for cooking, at least in the developed world. But that’s likely years, even decades, away yet — the experts certainly haven’t reached a consensus. Indeed, artificially constraining oil production and forcing energy prices to rise for climate reasons could hamper the very technological advancement we need.
National Post
