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The IV International Workshop on Oil and Gas Depletion, that is held at Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon on the 19th and 20th May, 2005, is the fourth annual meeting promoted by ASPO, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas, with the organizing support of Geophysics Centre of Évora. Previous meetings were held at the University of Uppsala in 2002, Institut Français du Pétrole, Paris in 2003, and Bundesanstatt fur Geowissenschaften und Roshtoffe, Berlin in 2004. In this fourth annual edition, the core topics chosen for our works are: • Reality in Oil Exporting Countries: The Supply Limits • Impacts of Depletion in Oil Importing Countries: The Demand Pressure • How-Much Regular Oil and Non-Conventional Oil: Utopia versus Reality • The Case for Political Action: The Depletion Protocol • The World Past Peak Oil Age From Uppsala to Lisbon, the public perception of the serious threat impending on humankind as a result of the growing scarcity of fossil fuels has increased. And national and international authorities have slowly but perceptibly admitted and changed their discourse on the problematic availability of the energy required to run the world economy. But political consequences have not yet been addressed straightforwardly – when political action is ever increasingly urgent for putting in place the economical and social changes and technological infrastructure required for preserving wellbeing if not survival itself. For this reason, in this fourth edition of ASPO's annual meetings we called upon members of the political community to share their views on how political action might be taken at the required international level. As the starting point of this debate we have the Depletion Protocol - first proposed by Colin Campbell 10 years ago at a conference in London. It has surfaced in various guises since, named the Uppsala Protocol in 2002, on the occasion of the First International ASPO's Workshop, later also referred to as the Rimini Protocol. The organizers of this Workshop welcome all participants and thank all speakers who kindly accepted to contribute to this event and those participants who also offered their contributions. They thank Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Partex – Oil and Gas, for generously hosting this event and offering the valuable sponsorship which makes it possible. Thanks are also due to the staff of the Geophysics Centre of Évora and University of Évora who, along the past few months, has worked in preparation of the conditions to hold this event now and who, together with the staff of Gulbenkian Foundation, are making it through. The Organizing Committee May 2005