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Peak oil may undermine anti-poverty campaign

24 July 2008

The impending peak in global oil production will retard international development and undermine efforts to make poverty history, according to MPs.

Historically high oil prices, which hit a record $147.27 a barrel earlier this month, are impacting on international development, according to the report by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil and development groups RESET and Practical Action said.

Advocates of the peak oil theory claim supply has reached, or will soon reach, a plateau and will soon fall.

"The deepening energy crisis has the potential to make poverty a permanent state for a growing number of people, undoing the development efforts of a generation," the report said.

"Communities across the globe are more vulnerable than ever, living in an unsustainable present and facing an uncertain future."

The 20-strong parliamentary group addressed the view that peak oil will likely to occur before 2015 and the current jump in oil prices is "a prelude to even more severe increases in the next decade".

The group recommended a working group be set up on energy security and international development, and funding measures to boost local food production and energy security.

"It is clear that the current level of global energy consumption is unsustainable, from both environmental and geological points of view," the report added.