Rimini protocol

The Rimini Protocol (also called Uppsala Protocol) is a proposal made by the geologist Colin Campbell in 2003. It is intended to stabilise oil prices and minimize the effects of peak oil.

To achieve this, producing countries would not produce oil in excess of their present national depletion rate: i.e., roughly speaking, the oil burnt, expended or exported must equal the oil produced or imported. Furthermore, it would be required that importing nations stabilize their imports at existing levels. This would have the effect of keeping world prices in reasonable relationship to actual production costs and let Third World countries afford their oil imports.

Campbell also stresses the need for outdated principles of economic growth to be surpassed. He states (May 2004): "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 have these really outdated economic principles inherited from the Industrial Revolution, when the world was indeed large and the scope for Man’s activities were at that time more or less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 ..." [1]. 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."

Support for the Rimini Protocol has even been found in retired politicians.^{[citation needed]} In regard thereto, Campbell proclaims: "And then ... you have the people I call the Renegades. These are senior politicians who are now out of office and being freed from the system, are able to tell the truth. And some of them do."

Further reading

• The Oil Depletion Protocol, book by Richard Heinberg discussing the Protocol
• Interview with Campbell
• The end of cheap oil
• Rimini-Protocol with Introduction
• Uppsala-Protocol
• The Oil Drum: site including information pertaining to oil-depletion crises