Energy estimates “speculative”

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33426, 7 January 1974, Page 8

Energy estimates “speculative”

IN.Z. Press Assn— Copyright) LONDON, January 4. The world should not become too obsessed by the present oil crisis, according to an expert with the Royal Institute! of International Affairs' in London. Mr Louis Turner, a research specialist with the in-; stitiite, said that although the I world needed to conserve! energy, there might be no essential shortage before the year 2000, or even after. Mr Turner said many ways might be found to curb oil!

use in the immediate future, and other sources of power imight be increasingly developed. The pessimists had usually been wrong in predicting crises in energy supplies. “But the Jeremiahs persist, land they have been given a J boost by the current Arab oil embargo,” he said. YEARS AHEAD There was no doubt that -the world’s thirst for oil ’would have to be curbed in 4he years ahead. “We shall have to find ways of making the available oil work more efficiently, and switch certain industries and ! activities into using other ■ sources of energy,” he said. / Half the fossil fuels'the world consumed were wasted ! when they were converted into more convenient forms of energy, and during transport. “A lot more is wasted Through extravagant social practices, such as the use of inappropriately powerful qars and planes, when buses and trains are much more economical in their use of energy,” said Mr Turner. The United States Office of, Emergency Preparedness had suggested that the United States could save 3.9 million barrels a day of oil bv 1980, and .7.5 million by 1990 if: maximum conservation measures were carried out. BETTER INSULATION The Americans had suggested improved insulation of homes to reduce the need for fuel heating, a shift of intercity freight from roads to rail, and inter-city passengers ’ from aircraft to the ground, and more use of public transport rather than cars. Other wavs to cut oil use would invoke more efficient; industrial processes and; equipment. Mr Turner said the Americans were “notoriously profligate” with their energy, but there might be less scope for, savings in Europe. Mr Turner said predictions about where the world’s energy would come from in

the 1980 s and beyond were very speculative. ! Some experts said that the! oil industry’s apparently! declining ability to find new oil fields merely reflected how cheaply the world had been getting oil to date. ’ “MORE EXPLORATION’’ “With oil prices now ris-i ing fast under political pressure from exporting counItries, exploration activity will: certainly increase, and the! technologies involved will rapidly improve,” he said. ' This process had been happening already. In 1960, offshore oil production was pos- ) sible only in shallow, shel-' tered water. Today, the industry was about to exploit giant fields as deep as 600 ft in the North Sea. The oil industry was also; pressing governments to set’ up the political ground rules! to enable them to exploit ocean depths- even deeper than this. NORTH SEA Mr Turner said that if some estimates were correct, the l

North Sea would be “runining neck and neck" with I Iran as the second largest ’source of oil after Saudi Arabia in the late 1980 s. “This would lead to a de,crease, in the oil imports that ■ Europe needs, instead of the ’increases which most estimates now assume,” he said. Alaskan fields could similarly reduce North America’s j need for oil imports. But even the most optimistic predictions suggest that life would be highly uncomfortable in the next five to 10 years before the new oil ■ was flowing and reducing the ’Middle East’s stranglehold. Moves to diversify from oil would depend on the fuel’s price in relation to various substitutes. | Arab moves to increase the ’price had already begun to make ‘it economical to recover oil from shales and tar sands. One difficulty, however might be that the ecological impact would be high. Prices might have to rise I considerably before North

America would allow these other resources to be fully exploited. Mr Turner said that, looking further ahead —over the next century or so—the situation was more cheerful. Coal, although facing some of the environmental problems of tar sand and oil shales, was abundant enough to meet the world’s entire’ energy needs to the year 2150. Its main use would be in electricity generation, releasing oil for transport needs, he predicted. Mr Turner said nuclear power should be establishing itself as the world’s basic energy source by the turn of the century. The problems of safety and nuclear waste disposal would' be “enormous,” and a single: accident could set all programmes back years. One way or another the citizens of the year 2001 should have enough ’energyl to buy time, while they’ looked into other technologies, Mr Turner said.