Photojournalist Neil Jackson has recently conducted an interview with Dr. Colin Campbell, founder and Honorary Chairman of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas (ASPO). The interview is reproduced here in full.

Neil Jackson: Why is peak oil important?

Colin Campbell: Peak Oil is a turning point for mankind. It is a big subject.

In short, the population only doubled over the first 17 centuries of the last millennium. But then came coal followed by oil and gas, and the population increased six-fold. These new energy sources, especially oil, the easiest, allowed the rapid expansion of industry, transport, trade and agriculture allowing the economy to expand greatly. It was accompanied by the growth of financial capital as banks lent more than they had on deposit, confident that Tomorrow's Expansion was collateral for Today's Debt.

But now we face the dawn of the Second Half of the Age of Oil when supply declines from natural depletion, meaning that debt goes bad (as is already happening) and the economy contracts. Today's oil supply support 6.7 billion people, but by 2050 the supply will be enough to support no more than about 2.5 billion in their present way of life. So the challenges of using less and finding other energy sources is great.

The transition threatens to be a time of great tension : there are already tribal wars in Africa, disturbances in many places including rioting in Greece. Urban conditions will become especially difficult.

Peak oil coverage in the mainstream Australian media has generally been quite good in recent years - while the idea of an imminent peak is far from the accepted wisdom, pretty much every major news outlet has provided decent coverage of the subject at some point or another (see the Australian Financial Review, Sydney Morning Herald, ABC, Melbourne Age and Brisbane Courier Mail for a random set of examples)

While I tend to regard The Australian's Nigel Wilson as the best journalist covering energy news in the country, his column in The Australian ("Long-term oil prophecies proven wrong") this week left much to be desired.

IN the early 1970s the end of the world was predicted when a group of Middle East oil-producing countries decided to use their product as a political weapon.

At the time, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries controlled more than 80 per cent of the world's traded oil, which was being sold at about $US7 a barrel. By 1978 oil was traded at around the equivalent of $US120 a barrel - and the end of the age of oil was widely predicted.

The Club of Rome predictions of the late 1960s, based on the idea that there is a limit to global economic expansion because of scarce natural resources such as oil, have not eventuated, and today there is scepticism about OPEC's ability to dictate oil prices.

And the political choices facing the OPEC members - 11 of them if you include Iraq - are nowhere near as simple as they were four decades ago.

OPEC oil ministers will meet in Abu Dhabi this week to consider a crude market that is again testing $US100 a barrel, and there is no certainty about what will happen. Theoretically, the OPEC members could just turn up their taps: more oil would flow and the world would be an easier place. ...

While its very easy sitting in an office in downtown Sydney to say that OPEC has as much oil as we could ever want and all they need to do is open the spigots a bit further and we'll be drowning in cheap, sweet crude, there doesn't appear to be a great deal of evidence for this theory if you look reasonably hard for it.

The pace of information that comes at you during the ASPO meetings is so intense, and immediate that it is sometimes hard to capture all the information, particularly where it is tabulated data on a slide that is on the screen for only a short time. The organizers have, however, taken pity on the ineptitude of your humble scrivener, and from sometime in the morning (i.e. Saturday) they will have the Powerpoints up on their website . For the full power of the debate you will still, however, have to buy the DVD’s.

I had left you at the end of my earlier post with George Baker reviewing the situation in Mexico. We have seen Cantarell dramatically decline from the point that it was providing more oil than Mexico exported to the United States, to the current position where it produces significantly less. I asked George later about whether, given the choice between reneging on their contracts, and dropping internal use, which they would select. In contrast to Westexas views that countries will always look out for the internal demands first, he expected that they would fulfill their contracts. He was also curious as to why Pemex had installed an FPSO at the Ku Maloob Zaap field, since there is existing infrastructure that should have handled all the product. Mexican deepwater production is likely to come on in 2013, but the issue of cross-border fields has not been addressed.