In early May a short item appeared in the financial press. The release was probably a page long but the subs reduced it to three or four lines—enough to say that the Bass Strait oil field had reached a milestone: it had 10 per cent oil remaining. Such treatment of the news was poor given the contribution the field has made to jobs, taxes, exports and royalties, but perhaps there were mixed feelings. After all, this was a kind of obituary—90 per cent of the Bass Strait oil has gone and the chances of finding anything like this again are very slim.
The previous week’s news may have had some bearing. Oil had hit US$58 a barrel, a 50 per cent jump on the previous year and 100 per cent higher than 2003. It was the highest price for 30 years and prompted the International Monetary Fund to call for urgent investment to prevent the price of oil doubling again. The Paris-based International Energy Agency said the same: oil production was not keeping pace with demand. Billions of dollars needed to be spent on oil exploration and now.
So, it was not the ideal moment to announce that Bass Strait was all but over. The news also tempted wider musings: the sediment of the Eocene and upper Cretaceous periods had been transformed into 3.5 billion barrels of concentrated energy over a 35-year period—just 30 per cent of the time cars have been manufactured at Dearborn, Illinois.
But why stress? We’ve found more oil and gas in other parts of the strait, and continue to find moderate amounts in the central basins and in WA. The numbers, however, aren’t big. The North West Shelf produces 0.1 per cent of annual world oil production. Surely we can always buy? There’s plenty of oil. The authoritative US Geological Survey (USGS) says there are just over one trillion barrels of various types of oil remaining world-wide, 60 per cent of which is to be found in the Middle East. This is sufficient to last 34 years at present demand. Of course, if we can reduce demand, the supplies will last longer.
At present the world uses 30 billion barrels each year. At the current global growth of 2–3 per cent we will need an extra nine–ten billion barrels (Gb) in five years. China is building eight-lane freeways; India too. China has 20 million vehicles already, increasing by