Five Years On: Oil Price Sweepstake October 6, 2009
Posted by Graham in : Peak Oil, collapse , trackbackTom has just blogged here about a sweepstake he initiated five years ago with myself, Rob Hopkins, Tom’s partner Ruth and a couple of other friends.
We each made a prediction on what we thought the price of oil would be in five years time.
My first thought when Tom told me the five years was up was blimey doesnt time pass quickly, but oddly enough it actually seems a long time ago looking back on those dim and distant days of Peak Oil initiation and endless late night discussions about the end of the world.
Astonishingly, Peak Oil seems to have passed, most likely a year or so ago, and although it has probably played a role in precipitating the current economic collapse , the price at the pumps has hardly changed- in fact it has only gone up 14cents!
Ruth won the sweepstake with the most conservative etimate of just 2euros while yours truly was way out at 10 euros a litre! Which just goes to show you shouldnt believe a word I say (you know that already of course…)
La plus ca change as they say, but five years did seem like a long way into the future in those days when anything could happen. In reality, price is not such a good indicator anyway, because demand destruction as a result of economic collapse could keep it quite low even in much more challenging times than we have currently.
A better indicator would be how much we are able to actually afford; I confess that in those early days when peak oil awareness was still quite new, the possibility of shortages and rationing did not seem out of the question.
There is still a lot of oil left, and although we may have passed peak, there may be a while to go before the system collapses, although as Dmitri Orlov so poignantly says, collapse when it does happen will be an intensely personal affair.
Let us not forget that the understanding of peak oil has given us a lot of impetus to redouble our efforts at building resilience and personal preparedness- and we have all, I’m sure, come a long way on those counts in the past five years.
So many congrats to Ruth and now I know who to go for when I need advice in the futures markets!
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