The Australian Senate (Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee) recently published it’s hearing (transcript here) on Australia’s future oil supply and alternative transport fuels. Present to address the hearing is Dr Ali Samsam Bakhtiari, former senior advisor to the National Iranian Oil Company in Tehran. Here are some notable snippets:

The decline of global oil production seems now irreversible. It is bound to occur over a number of transitions, the first of which I have called transition 1, which has just begun in 2006. Transition 1 has a very benign gradient of decline, and it will take months before one notices it at all. But transition 2 will be far steeper, and each successive transition will show more pronounced declining gradients. My WOCAP model has predicted that over the next 14 years present global production of 81 million barrels per day will decrease by roughly 32 per cent, down to around 55 million barrels per day by the year 2020 … Preparation should be carried out on individual, familial, societal and national levels as soon as possible. Every preparative step taken today will prove far cheaper than any step taken tomorrow.

And a further note on LNG:

Fortunately, Australia has an enormous amount of gas, and I believe this is going to become very handy because the peak for gas will be between 100 and 105 TCF global production in
2008-09 … The price of LNG is going to go sky high because everybody will want LNG—in America, Mexico and Canada, which are in full decline; in all the South-East Asian countries and especially in China

And more on the volatility of LNG prices:

I can tell you that, with gas prices in the US being around $6 per barrel, you have LNG spot sales today of $12 per barrel—and we are in a normal situation. So, wait for the panic and you will have prices of $25 or $30 per barrel, and maybe much more than that. For one week in March this year the British did not have enough gas and the price of gas shot up to $258 per barrel oil equivalent. At first I thought I had made a mistake of one decimal place, but then I realised it was not $25.8—it was $258.