Rol van Fossiele bronnen: rapport - Instituut Samenleving en ...

Management summary
In recent years, the notion that the availability of fossil energy carriers and uranium is
limited has become more topical than ever before. The cause of this lies in physical,
political and economic limitations, in combination with a rise in global demand. The
importance of these issues will only increase during the coming decades, according
to the expectations.
Aim and analysis framework
This report intends to provide the Flemish parliament and other interested people
with insight in the so-called upstream part of the markets for fossil fuels and uranium;
the route from localising resources up to the moment of the actual winning. The
report yields insight in the terminology, the current reserves, the techniques and the
market actors. But above all the report provides an analysis framework to explain the
forces that work on the searching and winning of the energy carriers. After all, the
developments in the upstream part cannot be seen separately from what happens
further in the energy chains. The analysis framework is applied in the report on the
historical developments, in most detail for the oil and the gas market, to indicate the
driving forces that make future explorations possible.
Moreover, the report gives insight in five aspects of the sustainability of the
exploration and extraction of oil, gas, coal and uranium and in the possibilities to deal
with these processes in a more sustainable way.
The report concludes with the significance of the previous for the North-Western-
European society in general and for Flanders in particular.
Resources sufficient, but availability not guaranteed
The volume and quality of the energy resources in the world is not exactly known.
Resources are qualified as reserves as soon as the probability of their existence is
high enough and winning is considered to be economically feasible. Both factors
evolve over time, due to technical progress and to developments on the energy
market. Some resources will be commercially recoverable in the future, against the
market prices then applying. The volume of these resources is less well assessed
than that of the reserves.
The information in this report makes clear that the reserves for coal, oil, gas and
uranium are substantial and that they will suffice for many decades to come, even
under a strongly increasing demand worldwide. The additional resources are even
much larger.
However, the presence of huge resources does not imply automatically that the
desired energy carriers will be available in Flanders in the next decades.
On the short term the production capacity of the present installations is fixed and
limited. Total supply depends on decisions of governments and energy companies on
the allocation of capacity. On top of that, calamities may occur, as well as political
disorder or wars, which lead to discontinuances in the production.
On middle long term supply is determined by investments of energy companies in the
production of the known reserves and in geological studies, exploratory drilling and
production assessments to create new reserves. The expansion of the production
capacity will depend strongly on the investments of the national oil companies
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