Erika Beauchesne
The Edmonton Journal
Saturday, July 26, 2008
original article
EDMONTON - Jordan Schroder lives in a province with one of the richest supplies of oil in the world, but the Edmontonian is the driving force behind a Facebook group to raise awareness about the resource’s scarcity.
Schroder had been following the peak oil theory — that production of oil will peak, then decline — for several years before starting the common-interests Facebook group this January.
Since then, his “Have you heard about peak oil?” collective has ballooned to include members from virtually every continent.
To raise awareness about what peak oil theorists see as the increasingly scare resource’s potential to be outpaced by demand, the 25-year-old said Facebook seemed the obvious place to start.
Online mediums such as Facebook, where people can post videos and links to articles or studies, are being used more and more to organize individuals with a particular cause. “It’s so easy for people to join, then they invite their friends,” Schroder said.
If silly groups such as the “One million strong for Colbert as President” can grow that quickly, “imagine if it’s something important.”
He believes raising awareness of peak oil is vital.
“With India, China and the rest of the world following in the industrial footsteps of the West, refining and production capacity is being strained,” reads one excerpt from Schroder’s introduction to the site.
It goes on to forecast, “unstable and soaring fuel prices could send shocks throughout the global economy, radically affecting the cost of everything we consume.”
Schroder isn’t the only one concerned about the demand outpacing supply. A search on the social networking site for peak oil turns up 341 groups.
But John Underwood, who came across “Have you heard about peak oil?” from his home near London, says he joined because it “was both the most active and the most sensible.”
That’s not always the case, when it comes to peak oil.
“Some groups are perhaps a bit too eager on the doomsday part of oil shortages,” said Mikael Hook, secretary of ASPO International, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas.
Since 2000, when the global collective of scientists, researchers and theorists formed, Hook said the concept of peak oil has been creeping into the mainstream as “we have seen phenomenal rise in the oil price and at the same time many of the most important oil regions are in steep decline.
“Many alternatives, such as ethanol, are being developed too slowly and in too small a scale,” he said.
“The world’s single largest oilfield, Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, is producing more barrels of fuel than the entire world’s production of ethanol and biodiesel.”
But some experts argue the theorists’ warnings — based on historical production numbers — don’t take into account other factors such as market pricing or new technologies.
“Fifty years ago, oilsands were not as economically efficient — today they are,” said University of Alberta energy and economics professor Joseph Doucet.
“What really matters is the price, and how that price has an impact on utilization or development of substitutes is the more important and interesting question.”
Not everyone is as optimistic.
“At some point, it is going to happen,” said Leo Mariani, an oil and gas senior equity analyst at Royal Bank of Canada’s capital markets.
When production peaks, Mariani said, “price adjusts and demand drops, and you have to find alternatives. “Use transit, carpool or do whatever you have to do … you’ve seen a bit of that here in the States,” he said from his office in Houston.
Schroder said combating peak oil could mean everything from pressuring municipal and provincial governments to invest in a solid LRT system or focusing on higher-density development rather than sprawl.
“With these tools like Facebook or Wiki or Linkedin, it allows for a great deal more participation and interactivity than before,” said Leslie Chan, a professor of New Media studies at the University of Toronto.
Chan says we’re entering a new chapter in online social organization. “Once people realized how powerful it is, they started to mobilize special interests and movements,” he said.
