Desperate oil junkies in search of the final fix

Recent press reports have carried interesting and frankly alarming news about oil exploration. It seems that the boundaries for exploration and exploitation are creeping into areas formerly thought untouchable — new fields within the biodiversity-rich Amazon and the little-understood Arctic.

While the industry protests experience in working in harsh and unstable environments, there is little evidence that it can be done without serious impact on local ecosystems and inhabitants. A recently published UN report holds Shell and others responsible for unaddressed spills which contaminated towns, villages and swathes of land in the Niger Delta, ordering a $1 billion clean-up expected to take 30 years. This disregard for social and environmental responsibility does not inspire confidence — particularly as the Niger Delta is not technically demanding terrain, unlike the Arctic.

The hydrocarbon industry is seeking access to new sources of oil and natural gas and, like a classic addict, is pursuing high-risk ventures in environmentally sensitive areas to secure its next supply. It is not oil that oil companies are addicted to, but the wealth it generates for them and their shareholders. It is the rest of the world that is addicted to cheap oil — and cheap oil no longer seems to exist, as recent price-per-barrel figures demonstrate.

There is an alternative, and one that even some of the largest oil corporations are pursuing through disparate and largely tokenistic R&D programmes: renewable energy. Investment in wind, tidal, wave and hydroelectric technologies has been insufficient to match our appetite for hydrocarbons, partly because rather than accepting that things must fundamentally change, oil companies have used their substantial political influence to sustain demand, forcing themselves into increasingly risky supply measures.

Rather than trying to extract the last hard-to-reach reserves, the industry needs to accept that it risks becoming obsolete and diversify towards cleaner technologies. Meanwhile, rather than increasing output to meet the demands of a growing global population, efforts should be focused on reducing consumption and demand so that further environmental disaster is not the price of progress. Unfortunately, that does not excite shareholders.

It is ironic that an industry with a large hand in creating the problem is now benefiting from the impacts of global warming, as receding ice sheets make it easier to access and transport previously inaccessible oil and gas deposits.