Fracking and oil on the rise

Global energy consumption is growing again in 2015, but by a comparatively small 0.4%.

Figures from energy company BP show that oil production continues to rise, up 3.2% or 133 million tons in 2015. The increase is mainly due to petroleum extracted using fracking methods and the environmentally damaging exploitation of the Canadian oil sands. The USA, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in particular participated in this growth. Because oil consumption in the USA also continued to rise in 2015, this country remains the largest importer of crude oil.

World natural gas production also increased; slightly larger than in the previous year at 2.2% or 69.3 million t of oil equivalents. Fracked gas from the USA was responsible for more than half of this increase (+ 36.2 million t); Iran also made significant gains. In the case of natural gas, there is still no sign of an end to the fracking boom.

Coal declining

For more than 20 years, until 2013, the production of coal had increased very strongly, driven mainly by the accelerated mining of China, which is responsible for about half of the global production and consumption. The first significant decline in coal production was already seen in 2014, to the tune of 27.9 million tons of oil equivalent.

In 2015, the shortfall in production now amounted to 158.8 million tons ( - 4.0%), mainly due to production declines in the USA, Indonesia and China. China's consumption of coal was also down in 2015, yet China consumes 50% of the world's share and shows production levels that are below consumption. This country is apparently making an effort to reduce coal production somewhat for environmental reasons, in exchange for which it is increasing its oil and natural gas production and is also leading the world in the production of solar energy.

If the decline in fracking in the USA, which has already been forecast on various occasions, actually materializes, it is to be feared that coal production will be ramped up again to compensate.

The development of the percentage shares of the individual energy sources in the total world production has slightly modified in 2015 only within the framework of the already mentioned trends. The share of fossil energy sources (production figures) has decreased by 0.4%.

Peak Gas looms

Josef Jenni, Managing Director at Jenni Power Engineering, together with political scientist Christian Moser, has analyzed the figures. As they write in their media release, the new production maxima should by no means allow the conclusion that fossil energy sources will continue to be available without danger. The experts cite four reasons for this:

• Peak oil cannot be avoided, and its delay due to fracking and forced, also politically conditioned production by individual producer states will not last;
• peak gas also looms in the medium term, because it is very questionable whether the production increase in the USA, due to the fracking boom, will last long, because the new wells could be exhausted very quickly;
• the reported reserves for fossil fuels have changed only marginally;
• Despite larger reserves, even a renewed increase in coal production will not be able to compensate for possible declines in the production of other fossil fuels and to satisfy a further increase in demand.

At the same time, Jenni and Moser see a shrinking role for fossil fuels in the future. This is due to the excessively high prices of fracking technology, a production volume that can hardly be increased any more, and the increasing CO2 input into the atmosphere.