One of the principal bases for this weekly blog is to look at long-term trends. Most of my information, for want of any other source material, comes from the NIC Global Trends 2025 report. With the current focus on energy security, I looked up what the document says about a transition to a post-petroleum world:

 ”…in the energy sector, it takes an average of 25 years for a new production technology to become widely adopted. A major reason for this lag is the need for new infrastructure to handle major innovation. For energy in particular, massive and sustained infrastructure investments made for almost 150 years encompass production, transportation, refining, marketing, and retail activities”.

This reflection is interesting in the light of the enormous outcry following the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which now looks much more serious than originally thought.   President Obama, during his election campaign, said “I will set a clear goal as President. In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil in the Middle East”, a goal for which I praised him in this blog, calling on President Barroso to do likewise. The question is how should this be achieved? In recent months President Obama advocated further oil exploration off the US East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico but with developments relating to the spill, the tune is now radically changing.

On Tuesday this week he started to address the fundamental challenges ahead, calling on the US to change the way it thinks about energy forever, saying the path to ending America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels has for decades “…been blocked - not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candour.” He added that “The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight.  Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be right here in America.  Each day, we send nearly $1 billion of our wealth to foreign countries for their oil.”

Pursuing this line of thinking Anatole Kaletsky picked up on the theme in the Times on Wednesday saying that “The Obama Administration’s strategic objective, beyond sealing the gusher and cleaning up the mess, should be to ensure that drilling for oil becomes prohibitively expensive. The oilmen and investors must be forced to recognise that the true costs and risks to society of oil exploration are far greater than the costs and risks of investing in alternative energy or nuclear power”.

Last word - as often is the case - comes from Thomas Friedman who commented in his article on Tuesday that if we really want to end our oil addiction, we all need to do more as individuals - it was ‘we’, he said, who “…sent BP out in the gulf to get us as much oil as possible at the cheapest price.”

In this saga, the British government is right to protect British interests but we should remember that BP is a major global operator and is now more of a transatlantic company than a British company with more American employees than those from the UK and with roughly equal American/British ownership. Perhaps Lord Browne was right while CEO when he commented that ‘BP’ should stand for ‘Beyond Petroleum’.

In conveying the need to end our oil addiction to a sometimes sceptical public, however, wouldn’t we be better off in Europe by having a similar long-term planning system to the NIC in place which could help us understand the full scale of the energy challenge we face and investments needed including energy security considerations?

For supplementary thoughts on this look at the recently released Chatham House report  ”Sustainable Energy Security: Strategic Risks and Opportunities for Business“…

Energy Security