To me it is easy to see what is happening.

Gasoline is embedded into the infrastructure. From the drilling to the refining to the distribution to the multitude of vehicles that require it. The costs to change now are prohibitive.

The thinking of the moguls? Tap the Middle East dry, then let them return to being camel riding nomads. When forced, convert the entire infrastructure to natural gas, or better yet, innovate a process to convert natural gas into room temperature liquid form to retain the current infrastructure.

Their final solution?

Melt the polar caps to expose massive quantities of methane. Grow giant oceanic algae farms as a supplement or additive. The algae will thrive in the CO2 rich atmosphere. The ocean, however, will become acidic, absorbing CO2 from the skies to become carbonic acid (a sea of soda pop).

Climate change? This is planetary engineering to guarantee their place in the economic pecking order.

Just speculating on this stuff in a ridiculous, sarcastic way. I am dead wrong, but I also believe that the big oil companies have several contingencies. They just don't want to reinvest in the infrastructure until they have to.

We will be pumping Carbon into the atmosphere far into the future.

Jessy169

(602 posts)

3. Peak Oil Demand is Already a Huge Problem

Reply to CK_John (Original post)

Wed Jul 17, 2013, 02:21 AM

Jul 2013

This article and other articles that can be linked to from the link below, AND the extensive comments and discussions between fairly knowledgeable and seemingly well-informed individuals might add to one's knowledge regarding peak oil:

Inadequate world oil supply isn’t exactly the problem. The issue is far more that the price of oil extraction is rising. The price of oil extraction is rising for a variety of reasons, an important one being that we extracted the easy to extract oil first, and what is left is more expensive to extract. Another issue is that oil exporters now have large populations that need to be kept fed and clothed, so they don’t revolt. This is a separate issue, that raises costs, even above the direct cost of extraction. There is no reason to believe that these costs will level off or fall, no matter how much oil the US produces using high-priced methods, such as fracking.

http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/04/11/peak-oil-demand-is-already-a-huge-problem/

Oil production worldwide has remained flat with minor exceptions for quite a while. In the meantime, demand is increasing exponentially as populations increase. Adding fracked oil to the mix will cause a slight bump in production, but it is just buying time, stalling the inevitable.

BTW, peak oil occurs when the cost of extracting oil makes it too expensive. That time will arrive long before "all the oil runs out". Some would argue that we are already there, and that the stalling economy we are experiencing in America with high unemployment is just the initial phase.

I personally think the 20 years is very optimistic, based on what I've read. More like 10 years, max, with a number of bumps on the road during that 10 years. It is going to be a rough ride.

Rickshaws or adult tricycles -- nah. I'm investing in a little plot of land, how-to-farm books and assorted accessories that will be needed to be self-sufficient.

One more link for the road: Inflation, Deflation, or Discontinuity? -- http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/07/01/inflation-deflation-or-discontinuity/#more-38307

BainsBane

(53,072 posts)

4. Shale has changed that

Reply to CK_John (Original post)

Wed Jul 17, 2013, 02:23 AM

Jul 2013

So they plan to frack the hell out of the earth.

FreeJoe

(1,039 posts)

6. Get Rich

Reply to CK_John (Original post)

Wed Jul 17, 2013, 07:11 AM

Jul 2013

If oil is really going to get a lot more expensive, you can get rich. You can buy and sell oil in the futures market. If you buy a bunch of oil for delivery in 2020 while it is cheap now, you can sell it later when it gets expensive and make a whole lot of money. You can buy it on margin and get a lot of oil for not a lot of money. If you are sure that prices are going to go up, it is easy money. The people that produce oil, buy oil in bulk, and speculate on the price of oil have concluded that oil prices will steadily decline to about 80% of their current price over the next 7 or 8 years. Since you know that they are wrong and that oil will be in short supply, this is a golden opportunity.

What could be wrong? It may be that people see demand declining as we move away from fossil fuels. Maybe they see the huge increase in natural gas supplies starting to take away some of the demand for oil. Perhaps they think that Shale Oil will increase the supply faster than demand will grow. The thing with markets is that it can be very hard to understand what they are "thinking" because they are really the amalgamation of the views of the participants.

My point for this post is not to say that the market is right and that you are wrong. It could definitely be the opposite. The futures markets have been spectacularly wrong plenty of times in the past. In my experience, however, they tend to be the most reliable predictors that we have, so I use them rather than "peak oil" theorists to indicate how demand and supply of oil will line up in the future.