The Peak Oil Policy and Peak Oil Action Plan can be downloaded from this site or from Maribyrnong Council's site.

Maribyrnong Council's Peak Oil Policy first outlines the concepts, situation, and existing reactions. The policy follows:

• "Council acknowledges that Peak Oil is a Serious Risk to Council and Community.
• Council commits to the Oil Depletion Protocol with a commitment to a 3% reduction in oil use per year in Councils operations starting from the 2008/09 financial year.
• Council will commit to a reduction target for oil of 50% reduction by 2025
• Council will set a target of 1.5% increase per year of Eco-buy purchasing of green products.
• Council commits to develop an annual action plan that directly address both the long term transition (gradual 3% decline in oil supply per year) and the oil shocks scenarios."

The Peak Oil Action Plan is an excellent document, describing different paths of action that can be taken in scenarios that had been delineated in the policy document. Includes time frames and resources required. A sample of the criteria for "contingency plans," with their example, is instructive:

"The main crisis management action is the development of a contingency plan that sets out a series of directions to take based on the type of scenario that is being considered.

The contingency plan will have a series of actions that will be based on a trigger, for example petrol prices reaching a predetermined amount.

The contingency plan will need to determine which activities need further work in order for them to be possible once the trigger point is reached.

For example; the development of a local currency, in the oil shocks/ disintegration scenario. This action is contingent on oil price and other indices. A local currency gives credits to people for goods or services they provide to their community, free of charge. This credit can then be spent on goods and services that are provided by other volunteers or local businesses that are part of the scheme. In an extreme disintegration scenario, large numbers of workers may
not be able to travel to work, unemployment rates in the community are likely to be high, and the economy will be in recession. This is likely to have a negative impact on Councils revenue from rates and external grants. Council’s ability to adequately provide essential community services would be affected. In such a scenario, triggers such as oil price, absentee levels of Council staff and the percentage of bad debts (rates revenue), would indicate that the breakdown of community services as they are traditionally structured is extremely likely. These indicators would trigger a local currency and community volunteer program to step in and fill the breach.

In order for the action to be triggered, some previous planning around the types of community services that would be included in the scheme, how volunteers would be co-ordinated and how the local currency would work would need to be thought out beforehand. As we get closer to the trigger point, more planning work would be required to work out the finer details of the contingency plan."