PowerSwitch

Ok, here's a thought can we come up with a rough way of timing when the major effects of peak oil start to be felt. It probably isn't possible to come up with a date but we could come up with an oil price at which serious economic shocks start to be felt. I've thought of one measure, though I don't have the numbers to make it rigorous:

How much does it cost to fly a plane of fruit/vegetables from New Zealand/South Africa/etc to the UK? How much would the price of oil need to increase before it is uneconomical to do so (I'd assume uneconomical to do so would mean necessitating a 50% increase in the prices of the fruit/veg, or possibly making them 25% more expensive than domestically produced produce). If we have rough figures for this (even using a basket of agricultural produce & an average of fuel costs) we'd know when the costs of peak oil would start to be felt at the supermarket checkout. I'm sure there are other measures, such as pertol price, price of fertilisers etc & other assumptions of what would be uneconomical but does anyone have an idea of figures to try to work this one out?

Allan

too many unknowable factors invovlved. Impossible to say.

Not impossible, just tricky, and worth doing. Allan why don't you try finding the figures? Estimate the proportion of fuel costs involved in flying food, in making petro-chemical pesticides/fertilisers, in road transportation and in packaging. Would also be very interesting for domestically grown food as we can easily live without kiwi fruit. It doesn't have to be 100% correct, just an interesting guess.

Example:
Boeing 777 Freighter carries a payload of some 100 tons or 37 pallets (2.5 x 3m), whichever comes first.
It has a fuel capacity of 180,000 l (= 1500 barrels) and max range of 9,000 km.

So, assuming jet fuel moves in sympathy with oil, every $1 increase in oil price increases 9,000km round trip cost by $3000 in total, or $30 per ton, or 3 cents per kg.

Assume some fruit cost $1 per kg, to get 50% increase would require an increase in oil price by almost $20, i.e. from 70 to 90 (although of course the same calculations could have been done at oil price of $50, in which case this type of fruit would no longer be imported).

So the effect is with us already.

Any mistakes in the above calculation?

PaulS wrote:
So the effect is with us already.

Any mistakes in the above calculation?

So the prices of things go up when the price of oil goes up, which is
pretty obvious. Saying that the effect of Peak oil is with us already is a bit of a jump.

Is that price rise an effect of peak oil? - the ultimate geological restraint on production, or just market jitters due to a bunch of guys running round the Niger delta blowing stuff up and the President of Iran getting mouthy (amongst many other things) ?