The peak is nigh - interview with Kjell Aleklett in Petroleum Economist

Oil production is peaking and the world must rethink its energy-supply strategy, says Kjell Aleklett, professor in Physics, Global Energy Systems, Uppsala University, Sweden and president of ASPO, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas. Interview by Tom Nicholls in Petroleum Economist. Aleklett: "You can play around with the words, but the hard-core truth is that something must come out of the ground at some time and that’s physics".

The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) statistics are routinely trotted out at energy conferences in support of various theories and arguments, the authority of its forecasts and data assumed and
unquestioned. So it’s disorienting to hear the august number-crunching body described as “dream factory number one”.

But, says Kjell Aleklett, the IEA’s methodology for forecasting oil supply is based on wishful thinking – on the oil the world would theoretically need to maintain a certain rate of economic
growth, rather than on what is physically possible to extract. “You can write down any demand figure you like, but if you can’t fill it with real production it doesn’t help you,” he says.