Rimini protocol
The Rimini Protocol is a proposal made by the geologist Colin Campbell. It is intended to stabilise oil prices and minimise the effects of peak oil. It is named after the XXIX. Annual Conference The Economics of the Noble Path: Fraternal Rights, the Convival Society, Fair Shares for All of the Pio Manzù International Research Centre in Rimini, Italy on 18-20 October 2003, where Campbell presented his idea of an oil depletion protocol. A few months later, he published together with Kjell Aleklett, the head of the Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group, a slightly refined text under the name Uppsala Protocol.
Basic mechanism
To ease peak oil effects and to manage the long decline in the second half of the oil era, producing countries would not produce oil in excess of their present national depletion rate: i.e., roughly speaking, the oil used or exported must equal the oil produced or imported. Furthermore, it would be required that importing nations stabilize their imports at existing levels and match their consumption to the global decline rate. Consuming nations should actively reduce oil consumption each year by the global decline rate. This would have the effect of keeping world prices reasonable without price shocks and let Third World countries afford their oil imports.The protocol consists - beyond introducing whereas considerations and a list of objectives - the following provisions:
Campbell's own words
Campbell also stresses the need for outdated principles of economic growth to be surpassed. He states : "the economic fundamentalists... have these really outdated economic principles inherited from the Industrial Revolution, when the world was indeed large and the scope for Man’s activities were at that time more or less infinite.... these economic principles... are very short term in their nature... these people who say that there can be no shortage in an open market and their battle cry is liberalize markets - these people have become really the enemy..." As such, Campbell strongly criticises those who accelerate the peak oil crisis, rather than taking action to curtail it as he recommends.Campbell substantiates the prediction of the urgent forthcoming "peak oil" crisis by making reference to Saudi Arabia, a nation covering a geographic region wherein there is a huge concentration of oil. Campbell hypothesises: "I think even the Sauds would always develop the larger ones first. So the biggest field in the world is Ghawar, with 80 billion in it perhaps, you step outside from this trend to Safaniya with 35 perhaps, Hanifah about 12 and Shaybah 15, and you come on down. If they develop the big ones first, which one must assume they did, you are down to well, still nice oilfields but of a modest scale, and so I suppose the other discoveries they made have made are smaller by orders of magnitude... it’s quite evident that this doesn’t come close to the past."