The summaries of the first day of the ASPO conference can be found here and here. The second day's morning summary can be found here.

The overlying theme of this year’s conference was Time to React? The final session was set-up to respond to that question, or perhaps it would be more cautious to say to explore it. The session was guided by Eddie Hobbs of RTE , and began with Debbie Cook , a former Mayor of Huntington Beach, CA. She talked about how some the issues should be addressed in local government. She felt that the challenge that we face is more of an adaptive one than that of technology. Because they see some of the highest power costs in the United States, they worked to incentivize power savings for the utilities. As a consequence she learned the benefits of selling problems at the local level. And the scale of the local use was large, with 495,000 gal/yr of fuel used for City Services, 525,000 gal of fuel/year for Waste pickup and recycle (they pick up 4,500 tons of trash a week and recycle 60% though some is sent to China where it is burned to make energy). The City did an Energy Audit and learned that keeping a single Coke machine costs $500 a year in power.

President of ASPO, Kjell Aleklett

The afternoon session of the first day of the Conference was chaired by the Economics Editor of RTE, George Lee who pointed out the general public lack of awareness of the current situation. He noted that when he did a program on the subject he was assailed by the Irish media, with negative cartoons, and the clear impression that he was on a subject that the public did not understand, or care to know about. The first presentation was by Dr Herman Franssen of the IEA, talking about Global Energy Demand trends. Sad to admit, I did not get to hear this so I will pass on to the second paper, which was by Professor Pang the founder of ASPO-China. He noted that China had peaked in oil production in 2005. As production continues it has a ratio of 12:1 between reserves and production of crude, (relative to a figure he quoted of 40:1 for the world ratio); and 42:1 for natural gas (against a world ratio of 60:1). In consequence China spent $63 billion on importing fuel in 2006. In order to meet demand China is sending delegations around the world and now has 65 projects in 25 countries. It has just become a coal-importing country (and in response to a question from Dr. Schlesinger he confirmed that China has cancelled its CTL plans, because of the amount of coal that would be needed for their operation).

China has initiated a program to increase self-produced oil, to reduce oil consumption and to develop renewable alternatives.

The sixth annual international conference of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas (ASPO) takes place in Cork, Ireland over Monday 17th & Tuesday 18th September 2007.

The title, “Time to React”, was chosen because it resonates on two levels, the most obvious is designed to target the mainstream public for whom the concept is still quite new and generally poorly understood. The second is for the more seasoned student of Peak Oil where the focus of attention is moving from trying to predict when peak might occur to the realisation that the range of possible dates is finite and even the most optimistic forecasts suggest that our modern society faces a truly significant challenge in dealing with the phenomenon of Peak Oil.

It is also recognised that Peak Oil will occur within the context of the equally grave challenge we face from the threat of Global Warming. As Global Warming moves into mainstream consciousness we will explore the relationship between these two critical challenges.

The Conference will feature speakers who are leaders in the industry, with Dr. James Schlesinger (former US Secretary of Energy); Lord Ron Oxburgh (former Chairman of Shell UK); Herman Franssen (former Chief Economist of the International Energy Agency); and Eddie O’Connor (Chief Executive of Airtricity) already confirmed. The Conference will be attended by over 500 delegates from across the globe.

Registration is available here: http://www.aspo-ireland.org/

Below the fold, the provisional programme.