"A decline in world oil production therefore appears inevitable in the 2030s, and perfectly possible from the 2020s," said Matthieu Auzanneau in Oil, the decline is near.
Not so much a prediction but much more the qualification of a risk, "whereas half of the oil production is now mature and has already started to decline", says the director of the Shift Project.
At the same time, global demand for black gold is not weakening.
These two intersecting curves threaten the world with future oil shocks.
If the economy does not anticipate weaning, the consequences promise to be severe, for Matthieu Auzanneau.
One more reason to initiate the energy transition.
It is the lifeblood of the economy.
Few of the objects around us that have not been made or shipped thanks to him.
It is oil, which has been exploited since the middle of the 19th century, and which today remains the main source of fossil energy consumed on Earth.
For how long before the reserves run out? The boom in shale oil and other unconventional oils in the late 2000s seemed to offer respite to a world increasingly addicted to black gold. While this lifeline shows signs of fragility, the question of the decline in world oil production is resounding with a bang. It is at the heart of
Pétrole, the decline is near
(Ed. Seuil Reporterre)
,
published this month by Matthieu Auzanneau, director of the energy transition think-tank The Shift Project, with Hortense Chauvin, journalist at Reporterre.
This is the second book that Matthieu Auzanneau, a former investigative journalist, devotes to hydrocarbons.
In 2015, he published
Black Gold, the great history of oil
, special prize of the Association of Energy Economists.
His new work focuses on the major geopolitical upheavals to which our world is exposed while the decline in world production seems inevitable in the 2030s. Matthieu Auzanneau responds to
20 Minutes.
When did we come out of the era of "easy oil"?
In a way, this issue of oil decline is as old as the oil industry. The first black gold rush began in 1859 with drilling in Pennsylvania. These first wells have been exhausted for nearly a century. And there is nothing surprising: the exploitation of an oil well - a source of non-renewable energy on the scale of human history - inevitably follows a bell curve. It necessarily goes through a maximum before returning to zero. The decline can only be slowed by investing in pumping and injection techniques.
In 2008, world production of conventional oil - conventional liquid oil which provides three quarters of current production (see box) - reached an absolute peak in production.
This record can never be broken again, has since confirmed, on several occasions, the International Energy Agency (IEA).
But the end of "easy oil" - when oil was relatively easy to find and exploitable without heavy investment - dates even earlier.
Oil tankers began to mention it at the end of the 1990s, when it was necessary to start looking ever deeper at sea or exploiting heavy oils.
The near end of oil has been announced several times in the past ...
In the 2000s, the idea that oil production would soon peak before declining was indeed agitating the energy world. This happened for conventional oil with this peak of production in 2008, which the British Colin Campbell and the French Jean Laherrère, two major oil specialists, had anticipated ten years earlier. On the other hand, almost no expert had seen the spectacular rise of unconventional oils at the end of the 2000s. That of shale oil in particular, all the more surprising since it almost only takes place in States. -United. Not only did shale oil enable this country to put an end to forty years of decline in its hydrocarbon production, but also to continue to meet, during the 2010s, a worldwide demand for oil which was still growing.
But this lifeline remains extremely crumbly, as this new industry has difficulty in being profitable.
We can then see this boom in unconventional oils as one of the symptoms of the end of easy oil.
These hydrocarbons had been known for a long time, but the tankers were not going to look for them because they are more difficult to exploit and therefore less profitable.
It is as if, for decades, we had gathered the best fruits within easy reach, and now we must turn to those spoiled at the end of the most inaccessible branches.
Is the decline in world oil production - conventional and unconventional - near?
This book does not make a prediction but qualifies a risk. Half of the world's oil production is now “mature” and is starting to decline. We have mentioned the weaknesses of unconventional oils. For its part, the annual volume of conventional oil discoveries has been steadily declining since the mid-1960s, although the amounts invested in exploration are increasing. Parts of the Arctic Ocean and the greater depths are about the only areas that still have surprises in store. In any case, this oil will not be easy to find. A decline in world oil production therefore appears inevitable in the 2030s, and perfectly possible from the 2020s. At the same time, it is likely that demand for oil will continue to grow,driven in particular by demographic and economic growth in Asia and, to a lesser extent, Africa.
The threat is not ignored by tankers.
An example among those we give in the book: Last February, Helle Kristoffersen, Chief Strategy Officer of Total, mentioned the risk of a deficit of 10 million barrels per day by 2025 to meet demand .
Ten million barrels a day is a tenth of world production.
The great oil shocks of the 1970s were triggered by much smaller deficits.
Are we sufficiently aware of what a world weaned from oil means?
Not at all, and that's one of the reasons for this book.
As individuals, we only come into contact with oil by refueling our cars.
But its domination is almost absolute in all transport - land, sea or air.
This is what makes black gold the lifeblood of the economy.
But a quarter of the oil consumed in the world is also consumed by industry, either as fuel or as raw material.
Oil, for example, remains essential in the production of plastic.
Clearly, when you look around you, rare are the objects that were not manufactured or transported thanks to oil.
We are addicted to it.
And in such a state of addiction, problems arise not when there isn't a single drop left, but when you start to run out.
Is the European Union at the forefront of the decline in oil?
Along with China, we are the world's largest importer of oil. This dependence is not limited to the consumption that one makes of it. Take France: its fourth budgetary resource is the TIPCE [an indirect tax on petroleum products], which earns it some 30 billion euros per year. We will not do without it easily. And the EU can worry about the security of its supplies. The total oil production of the sixteen main suppliers is likely to contract significantly by 2030, estimated a study that the Shift project published last May, carried out at the request of the Ministry of the Armed Forces. Marc Blaizot and Alain Lehner, two Total alumni took part. Without doubt the best French oil experts today.The Kremlin itself announces that the decline in production from Russia [the EU's largest supplier of hydrocarbons] is expected to begin in the decade of 2020.
Is this near decline that you describe then one more reason to make this ecological transition?
This is one of the main messages of this book.
Since the Kyoto protocol in 1997 [the first international agreement aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions], we have practically stood still on the issue of phasing out fossil fuels.
However, if we do not do it voluntarily - to avoid a world at more than 2 ° C - we will have to do it by force, simply faced with the depletion of the resource.
This second issue even makes it possible to envisage a new way of approaching the problem.
By starting by posing it in its physical-technical dimension.
That is to say, starting by taking the time to look at the problem in these objectivable dimensions.
We would then understand that we have come out of “easy oil”.
We would also realize that, if oil and other fossil fuels have been so dominant for decades, it is because they were the easiest to exploit.
By definition, all of their alternatives are more complicated to implement.
It is therefore essential to find a way to consume less energy.
To do more with less.
The remedy is energy efficiency gains.
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Conventional, unconventional… What's the difference?
"The oil that we exploit today has been formed over a billion years, that is to say since there has been on this planet organic matter from living beings," explain Matthieu Auzanneau and Hortense Chauvin, in Pétrole, the decline is near.
"Conventional oil, the queen form of hydrocarbons, is drawn from porous and permeable rocks called" reservoirs ", sealed in the depths of the earth under a layer of permeable rock", they continue.
All hydrocarbons that are not drawn from reservoir rocks are said to be unconventional.
In the lot, between in particular the tar sands, exploited in Canada, but also therefore the shale oil extracted at the periphery of the source rocks by hydraulic fracturing.
"
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