Elephant in the Living room-80% less oil than we thought

[Capn Sunshine]

The comparisons to terminolgy used when dealing with addictions and family denial seem apt here.

What started off minimized as a "fringe case nutball" analysis has now received more and more validation.

The shorthand for the concept is "Peak Oil". It means we will have passed the peak of new discoveries and are eating up what reserves we have left.

As far as I know, it is the incipient panic over this event driving the Bushco foreign policy in actuality. We MUST control the major oil source as it dwindles so that others may not have a chance to grow to the point where we have to give up some of our stash to them.

The good news: Global Greenhouse effect will not happen because we will run out of oil first.

World oil and gas 'running out'

LONDON, England -- Global warming will never bring a "doomsday scenario" a team of scientists says -- because oil and gas are running out much faster than thought.

The world's oil reserves are up to 80 percent less than predicted, a team from Sweden's University of Uppsala says. Production levels will peak in about 10 years' time, they say.

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/10/02/global.warming/index.html


More on peak oil:

http://energycrisis.org/de/lecture.html

[sexybomber]

1. eeeesh!

Too bad Albany isn't going to become a tropical, seaside paradise...

Maybe it's time for Smirk to make good on the hydrogen car stuff he said in the State of the Union last year.

[LifeDuringWartime]

7. i'd love it if albany became a tropical paradise

but seaside? id be under the ocean! eek!

[w4rma]

2. Ethanol can replace oil for use in combustion engines

It'll be way more expensive though. But, it will still create greenhouse gases.

[htuttle]

3. There's a lot of nasty greenhouse gases you DON'T get with ethanol, though

You don't get any sulfer dioxide from ethanol, for example. Mostly just CO2, I think.

[pschoeb]

19. Couldn't really run many cars on ethanol anyways

It takes roughly 11 acres of farmland to run one automible for a year, since our agricultural system is also dependant on the combustion engine as well as petrochemical fertilizer and pesticides. That means to run the farm equipment to grow 11 acres for an automible we would also have to grow at least an additional 11 acres for the farm equipment at minimum. There are 335.5 acres of prime farmland in the US, if all was used for ethanol(and we didn't eat, or feed livestock-so essentially starve) we would have enough to run only 15 million automobiles, currently the US uses 136 million automobiles(not counting semi trucks, busses and other commercial vehicles). Essentially any ethonal we could afford to make over food would probably be needed to run farm equipment so we could eat. I doubt that would amount to much greenhouse gasses. The real worry would be that we would start using coal in much larger quantities.

Patrick Schoeb

[theriverburns]

33. That 11 acres number overlooks hemp

Which according to old USDA estimates creates between 4 to 12 the volume of biomass necessary to create ethanol than does timber, corn or other grain by-products. And, since hemp grows quickly and on marginally fertile/irrigated lands and climates it offers an alternative to corn, timber or grain byproducts for fuel that outproduces all other bio-fuel resources by five to ten times--at todays technology. Your fifteen million vehicles becomes 130 million and since it is grown as a second crop we could still eat.

Why do you think the Republicans declared war on in in the first place?

[0rganism]

43. Hempmobile!

Traveled across the country a few years back, using hemp-based biodiesel. Not a half bad idea.

Now explain it to the DEA:
The Drug Enforcement Agency doesn’t agree. It makes no distinction between hemp and marijuana. “Hemp is marijuana,” says DEA spokeswoman Rogene Waite. http://www.globalhemp.com/News/2001/October/keep_your_foot.html

Dontcha love it? "Hemp is marijuana" -- nope, dead wrong. All marijuana is hemp, but only some hemp is marijuana. Nice to know she can cloud her thinking the old fashioned way, by being stupid.

[pschoeb]

53. It's not quite there yet

People are working on ethanol from lignocellulosic crops, and the theoretical fuel amount per acre would be much higher, but the techniques have not been perfected yet. You need to use cellulase which has it's own energy costs, the other older method is acid hydrolysis, which has costs as well, lots of water and stainless steel and of course acid products.

Miscanthus, hemp, switch grass or reed canary grass are all good in this regard, but again the technology is only now price competetive to corn ethanol(if corn ethanol wasn't susidized) but not yet into the large scale efficency when looking at all input resources(something people forget about, water is also key) because lignocellulosic crops require a saccharification step that starch ethanol does not. Also the fermentation step costs per acre will be higher, because of higher amount of fuel production, to put another way the energy cost of fermentation has a fixed cost per liter of ethanol produced regardless of source, and is the limiter for total energy efficiency. The solution is to use the lignin content of plants to burn for this energy, and looks promising.

It's also good to look at the most suitable local plant for lignocellulosic ethanol, as some of these do better than hemp in various climates. This is certainly exciting technology as all sorts of waste cellulose could be used, but it has certain limitations as well.

Growing hemp could be used right now to cut down on pesticide and fertilizer use, by substituting it for some cotton production, it could also be substituted for paper production.

Patrick Schoeb

[0rganism]

32. Sorry. Ethanol can't replace fossil fuels

With current agro methods, we'd need fuel to plant and harvest the raw vegetation which is then distilled into ethanol. By the time you've done all that, you'll be lucky if you get back more fuel than you put into the process. Even if it were somewhat efficient, it's unclear that there is enough arable land in North America to harvest -- purely for fuel, none going to food -- in order to entirely replace the demand for fossil fuels with ethanol.

[IrateCitizen]

4. One problem with the global warming analysis...

It is dependent on the assumption that what we are contributing to the atmosphere NOW is what is causing global warming. I have heard and read numerous other analyses that actually assume that the global warming we are experiencing now is actually the result of greenhouse gases that were put into the atmosphere as much as 100 years ago.

Even assuming that the lag is not nearly as far -- as little as 20-25 years -- it's still a pretty scary outlook. :scared:

[gristy]

5. This published "theory" was posted a couple days ago

Global Greenhouse effect will not happen because we will run out of oil first.

There is no merit to this claim whatsoever. The study completely neglected the effects of CO2 released through the burning of coal. And that's just for starters.

THIS THREATENS TO BECOME AN URBAN LEGEND

[alfredo]

6. Without oil, we will go back to coal and timber. disaster.

[Capn Sunshine]

24. Perhaps. But the part about running out is real enough.

[section321]

8. "Cheap" energy drives our economy.

Just look a graph relating oil prices and GDP growth. Oil prices rise and GDP growth slows.

If the Bushies know this (and if its true, they know it), it explains their actions very clearly. They would truly feel they were doing what is right for our country. They're securing the oil we will want and need when they have the opportunity.

Of course the englightened approach would be to acknowlegde the problem and focus our efforts on moving to alternative energy sources. Alternative energy sources are more expensive, but they won't be if the price of oil sky rockets. By investing now we could get ahead of the problem, instead we will spend our treasure fighting for what's left.

depressing.

[dkf]

16. Yup. Bushies know this and I think Clinton was in on it too.

I've often thought that this issue was the one thing understood by many in power that the masses just have no clue about. It is what made me suspicious of all the Dem senators/reps who voted for the Iraq war.

To me, this is the basis for the entire PNAC group, with a dab of I/P issues thrown in.

Am I off base here?

[pschoeb]

21. Thats because a gallon of gasoline can do the work of 117 man hours

or roughly two weeks of purely human powered work. Also cheap oil is required for global trade, some things would not be worth shipping long distances if there was no cheap way of doing so, and one would use local production or alternatives. Without cheap oil, cheap labor that is far from the point of sale also becomes less important.

Patrick Schoeb

[Nederland]

9. Flawed premises

From the link:

· Our lack of preparedness is itself amazing, given the importance of oil to our lives
· The warnings were rejected and discredited as if they were words of soothsayers and prophets.
· I myself have been called a Cassandra
· But the warnings were not prophecy
· It simply recognised two undeniable facts
· First: you have to find oil before you can produce it
· Second: production has to mirror discovery



This is an old argument and has been debunked many times before. The simple fact of the matter is that the second point, that production has to mirror discovery, is completely false. Discovery is dependant on demand and price. So long as the price of oil remains low enough to make discovery unprofitable, discovery will not occur. The reason the discovery has fallen off since the 1960's is due to one simple reason: OPEC.

Saudi Arabia can extract its plentiful oil reserves for less than $2 a barrel. This makes them the defacto controller of prices and in turn the attraction of new discovery. After all, no sensible person will dump a huge amount of money into discovering a new oil field when chances are the Saudis can simply undercut you once you get ramped up. They can and have kept prices hovering between a point where they maximize their profits and yet prevent expensive discovery operations from being undertaken. Simply put, they want oil to be expensive enough so that the make tons of money, but cheap enough so that no one bothers to go looking anywhere else. This is the real reason discovery has fallen off, not some imaginary end of oil resources.

[Brian Sweat]

10. I am very skeptical of this story.

World oil reserves are currently pegged at about 1,000 billion barrels. This article creates a false impression that there is less oil than believed by combining oil and natural gas as one figure, coming up with an amount the is five times greater than the amount actually believed to exists and then says there is 80 percent less.

[Capn Sunshine]

25. Read the second lecture

The point is, we used up 50% of our reserves in less than 100 years. It's the prospect of no new discoveries.

Lots of people here are quoting figures supplied BY the Petroleum industry. Denail is a powerful mechanism

I think the truth underlying this speculation is that any way you cut it, we need toplan for alternative sources NOW, not later.

And Hydrogen created by burning fossil fuels doesn't count.

[Yupster]

27. I'm skeptical too

First because I heard the same thing back in the mid-late seventies, and second because there's oil below everywhere. The question is just how cheaply it can be extracted. As our technology gets better we'll be able to extract it more cheaply and from many places where it is not currently cost-effective.

[hatrack]

11. For more in-depth information, check out ASPO's web site

ASPO = Association for the Study of Peak Oil

http://www.peakoil.net/

This is not a bunch of radical environmentalists. Its members include some of the most respected and experienced petroleum geologists and oil analysts in the world, including former heads of exploration and development for BP, Elf/Total/Fina and other oil majors, as well as academic geologists and analysts.

If you want to download any of the 2003 meeting proceedings or other documents on the site, click on the link for the item you want. A sign-in box will pop up, but all you have to do is hit "Cancel" and the document will load anyway.

It's very methodical and very interesting stuff, to say the least. If you read only one article, check out the one called "Transcript of Seminar by Matthew Simmons.

[Nederland]

14. Question

Would you include Dr. Colin Campell in this list of 'respected and experienced petroleum geologists'? <snicker...>

[hatrack]

15. Good ad hominem attack, Nederland - gosh, how could I be so deluded?

Do you have anything else? Do you have any data, any "refutations" of the fact that oil and gas reserves occur in certain isolated geological provinces in the planet's crust, and not in others?

Or do you intend to stand by the your statement that oil production has nothing to do with geology? So all it will take for a bounty of oil to flow from the red clay hills of Georgia, or in the Adirondack Mountains is a suitable increase in the price of oil? What a fascinating premise.

American domestic oil production peaked in 1970. Yet, strangely enough, in spite of your econo-magic pronouncements that dollars = oil, it has yet to recover, even though oil prices per barrel in the intervening 33 years have gone as high as $40 in unadjusted 1980 dollars.

In the mean time, production peaks for the following key oil provinces have come and gone:

Algeria - 1999
Syria - 1999
Egypt - 1993
Cameroon - 1985
Brunei - 1979
Australia - 2002
Norway - 2001
UK - 1999
Trinidad - 1977
Peru - 1981
Mexico - 1998
Qatar - 1973
FSU - 1987
Romania - 1976
Libya - 1969
Iran - 1973

Please note that these are peak dates for production of conventional oil and do not include heavy and extra-heavy oils, tar/bitumen or natural gas production.

As you assert, economic inputs are, of course, critical to oil production. No investment in exploration and development = no oil. But all the economic inputs in the world won't make oil flow from where it isn't - that is, beneath the surface of most of the planet. It doesn't matter if the price is $500 a barrel, it still won't make oil flow from test wells in eastern Iowa or Yorkshire.

[Nederland]

20. Dodging the Issues

I noticed how you dodged the question. Do you include Colin Cambell in your list of 'respected and experienced petroleum geologists'? I think its a reasonable question, given that he is the author of the report/presentation in the link don't you?

Its quite obvious why you are dodging the question, because you know as well as I do that Colin Campell is anything but a respected and experienced petroleum geologist. He is, in fact, a man who has been wrong about oil so many times the industry has lost count. The man simply has no credibility. The fact of the matter is this, when you have been wrong many many times in the past, logic demands that you go back to your theory and figure out why you were wrong. Colin Campell refuses to do this, but instead continues to spew out the same old trash science he has been peddling for a decade and a half. It is perfectly justfiable to question the opinions of a man who in 1989 wrote that "Shortages seem to be inevitable by the late 1990s, but knowledge of an impending supply shortfall may trigger an earlier price response." The mark of a good theory is its ability to accurately predict empirical events. In that respect, Colin Campell's theory of oil shortages is woefully lacking.

[hatrack]

23. "The mark of a good theory is its ability accurately predict . . . events"

So, I guess back in 1956, when M. King Hubbert accurately predicted the peak of oil production in the United States (the lower 48, that is) by or before 1972 (and was proven right in 1970), that would be the mark of a good theory, at least according to the definition you've assigned it here.

Of course, he was off by a few years, but I suppose that this happens occasionally to scientists and geologists who make predictions, as Campbell has. Does Campbell's error invalidate Hubbert's prediction or his modeling methods? Not if you accept the validity of Hubbert's predictive model, which was proven correct 33 years ago.

Better yet, let's look at one example of increased economic inputs failing to ressurrect oil production - in this case, in the Persian Gulf state of Oman.

From "A Realistic View of Long-Term Middle East Production Capacity", presented by A.M. Samsam Bakhtiari at the ASPO Second International Workshop on Oil Depletion (Rueil, France -- May 26/27, 2003)

EDIT

"Oman has been one of the great success stories of the past two decades. During the 1980s, Omani oil production gradually ramped up from 300,000 b/d to 700,000 b/d; then during the 1990s, it even rose to 960,000 b/d by 2000. Being outside OPEC's quota system, Oman could open its oil throttle full. And with the Royal Dutch/Shell company in control of the "Petroleum Development Oman" (PDO) -- a venture which controls roughly 94% of Omani oil output -- it was no surprise new records were set year after year.

Then, abruptly, at the dawn of the 21st century, everything seemed to unravel for Shell and PDO. Output began to plunge. Within two years PDO's black-oil production had dropped from 840,000 b/d to around 703,000 b/d (Shell's target for 2003). Interestingly all this happened as roughly half of proved Omani reserves have been produced, as Shell candidly admitted that "the decline . . . (was) partly because of a poor understanding of reservoirs."

Naturally, all stops were pulled out to reverse the production plunge. EOR techniques were applied: both gas injection at Fahud/Lekhwair (181,000 b/d) and At Natih as well as water injection at Saih Rawl. In addition, horizontal wells and under-balanced drilling took place -- among others at the Nimr and Saih Rawl fields. The application of advanced EOR and drilling technologies might allow for some plateauing, but the inevitable decline now seems irreversible. Especially when bearing in mind that Dr. Campbell's estimate of Oman's "yet-to-find" reserves' stands at only 1.6 bnb.

Put in a nutshell, the Oman oil story is a dire warning for all other Middle East producers. Oman's track-record had been excellent and nothing hinted to the dramatic reverses of the past two years. Moreover, the highly experienced Shell supermajor was always fully in charge, so there could be no excuse for inadequate technology or services. In due time, other Middle East producers could well follow down the same path -- although most have a larger array of giant and supergiant fields than Oman to rely on. The only exception could be Iraq."

This is available at the ASPO website, if you're willing to stop sneering and try reading some of the reports.

[Nederland]

29. Missing the Point

You are completely missing the point. The theory is flawed because it assumes there is a relationship to peak oil production and total availible oil resources. There is no such relationship. Oil production numbers rise and fall based upon the economics of the field, not the amount of oil in the field. This is the theory's fatal flaw. These people look at oil production numbers and pretend that they can deduce from that something about how much oil we have left. As history has irrefutably shown, it doesn't work that way.

[hatrack]

34. Thanks for not addressing the validity of Hubbert curve analysis

Well, then I guess the Black Giant and Spindletop (two of the largest lower-48 fields) aren't producing as they did back in the early 1930s and in 1901 (respectively) because of economics, not because diminishing pressure in the underground reservoirs and certainly not because we've pumped most of the available oil in those fields out of the ground.

Of course, both these fields were not only huge, but also economically easy to exploit, being close to railheads, seaports and pipelines. Low economic input resulted in high output, at least until the fields peaked.

And I guess the Prudhoe Bay Field has been falling off for the past 20 years because of economics, not because of diminishing pressure in the underground reservoirs, and certainly not because we've pumped most of the available oil out of Prudhoe (discovery - 1968, peak - 1984).

Of course, Prudhoe was not only huge, but also extremely difficult to exploit, being hundreds of miles from the nearest tanker terminal. High economic input was required here, but resulted in high output - at least until the field peaked.

Very different economics for these two different examples, but the results are the same - three very large and substantially depleted oil fields.

Tell you what, Nederland. You seem unable to accept the unpleasant facts that oil and gas form only under specific geological conditions in limited areas, that there is only so much oil in the ground, and that only so much of that oil is economically recoverable. Here's a couple of suggestions:

1. Get a good textbook on geology and read it

2. If the big words and graphs and numbers in the geology textbook prove to be too much, then go get Blanky, curl up in the corner and suck your thumb while reading "Atlas Shrugged" until Mr. Sandman says it's bedtime!

[Nederland]

37. Not listening

I did address it, you just weren't listening. I'll make is simple for you:

The Hubbert curve is irrelevant.

Clear enough? The fact that he can correctly predict peak production points is irrelevant because, as I has said three times now, peak production numbers bear no relation to the amount of oil a field has. You can correctly predict peak production numbers till you're blue in the face and it doesn't tell you jack shit about when the world is going to run out of oil.

[0rganism]

35. You're quite right, demand drives production

And as long as demand grows exponentially, we'll be producing all we can to meet that demand. Anything else would be unprofitable.

The production peak is reached when the price of extracting and delivering oil begins to affect price, hence demand, causing an exponential decrease in both use and production. Local maxima will result due to OPEC price setting or other geopolitics, but in the long run a high location/extraction/delivery cost will dominate.

Campbell's methodology is flawed to the extent that he tries to deduce a maximum from production numbers, which are clearly going to vary somewhat on the uphill side of the curve. There was a local dip, for instance, around 1975 when OPEC cut production for political reasons. One could easily mis-forecast a peak at that time, but the Alaska pipeline started compensating and supporting the growth of fuel demand.

Hubbert's theory is not flawed in this way, as it more generally predicts the results of exponential demand growth on a finite resource. Hubbert's theory is applied to USGS data in this context, which itself has been revised over the years but now indicates a peak by 2020. This is entirely consistent with the estimate given by the scientists in the article from the original thread post.

[Nederland]

40. Response

And as long as demand grows exponentially...

Demand does not grow exponentially. It is extremely dependant on price. If the price of oil get much higher, a wide variety of alternatives suddenly become competitive and will reduce demand for oil. In fact, we are already fast approaching the days that oil will be the best choice for creating energy. Its days are numbered, but it has nothing to do with 'running out of oil'.

The Stone Age did not end for lack of stones, and the Petroleum Age will not end for lack of oil.

[0rganism]

45. Sorry, exponential growth is exponential growth

Now do you want to argue with the fact that oil consumption grew exponentially (varying annual rates, but all fitting the exponential model) over the last century? It did, and production kept pace, which is why the price was favorable to sustaining growth. Price, supply, and demand are all linked inextricably. If the amount supplied were to be significantly less than the amount demanded to sustain growth, the price would rise, and the demand would necessarily fall as a result. This is how equilibrium will be maintained on the backside of the Hubbert curve.

Your argument, AFAICT, is that other fuels will soon become more cost-effective than oil, leading to a drop in consumption that precedes any hardwired limit to production. Is this an accurate summation?

[Nederland]

49. Yes

Your argument, AFAICT, is that other fuels will soon become more cost-effective than oil, leading to a drop in consumption that precedes any hardwired limit to production. Is this an accurate summation?

I hesitate with your use of the word 'fuels', because I don't think of a solar cell as a fuel even though it too is an alternative to oil, but basically, yes, this is my argument.

[0rganism]

57. What preparations have been undertaken for this transition?

The current infrastructure of this society requires a reliable and powerful automobile engine, internal combustion or otherwise. Have you any evidence whatsoever that anyone has taken steps on a large scale to provide automobile users with the synthetic fuel line tubing conversion kits necessary to convert to biodiesel? Have you seen lots of service stations providing drive-up battery chargers, or your neighbors putting flywheels in their cars to recharge the electric engine while going downhill? Have you seen many retail outlets for those much-touted hydrogen fuel cells?

I ask, because those forms of energy are going to have to step it up in the next decade, in order to avoid the crunches associated with natural limits on the fossil fuel supply, and I haven't seen ANY of it happening on an appreciable scale.

I'm afraid we're going to have to get a serious kick in the collective arse before we wake up to the need for developing these alternative resources.

[dpibel]

47. The Importance of Framing the Issues

Here's how I see this argument proceeding:

Doomsayer: We're gonna run out of oil! That will be a catastrophe!

Free Mareketeer: Once demand begins to outstrip supply, the price of oil will rise. Energy alternatives, which are now too expensive, will become competetive, and will replace oil. So we'll never run out of oil, you Chicken Little.

The problem is, the American way of life is not based on the existence of oil; it's based on the existence of cheap oil. It's not the disappearance, per se, of oil that will lead to catastrophe.

The free-market reassurance is limited to a statement that oil, as a substance, will always be with us. Note that the free market model doesn't posit a continuing supply of cheap energy. Quite the contrary: It specifically says that alternative energy will only come on line when the price of oil spikes.

Since we already have a large segment of our population just squeaking by, the assurance that there will always be energy, if only you could afford it, is pretty cold comfort.

The other problem with the free-market analysis is that it cleaves to the hypothetical world of eoconomics, where things and money are perfectly equivalent. So long as there's enough money, there will always be energy.

Which, I suppose, is true in a very narrow sense, and is comforting when you are convinced that you will be among those with a big enough pile of money.

But the other part of the energy problem, which gets short shrift in a "don't worry about oil, the market will provide" argument is that it takes energy to extract/distribute energy. As others have pointed out in this thread, imagining a world running on ethanol is all well and good, if you don't have to worry about growing any food.

None of this addresses the real issue, which is that the American way of life is entirely based on cheap energy. If the price of energy rises, it doesn't matter whether the energy is coming from oil, ethanol, hydrogen, or solar panels. Expensive energy is expensive energy, and expensive energy (to state the obvious) precludes a system based on cheap energy.

If your "stone age/petrol age" analogy is intended to let us know that the scientists will bail us out, I'd be interested in knowing what makes you think so. The last time the scientists offered us free electricity, it was going to come from nuclear power plants, and that hasn't worked out all that well. Sitting back and waiting for the scientists is a pretty hefty gamble.

I assume that's what you mean anyway, since I'm pretty sure that the technological move from stone to metal didn't result from a shortage of stones.

[Nederland]

51. Close, but not really

The free-market reassurance is limited to a statement that oil, as a substance, will always be with us. Note that the free market model doesn't posit a continuing supply of cheap energy. Quite the contrary: It specifically says that alternative energy will only come on line when the price of oil spikes.

This is close, but fails to take into account that the cost of alternate sources will drop considerably once their use become more widespread. For example, I see no reason why in the long run fuel cells would be more expensive to run than internal combustion engines. In fact, its reasonable to assume that once their use becomes more common, they will actually be cheaper simply because they are a more efficient means of converting energy.

[pschoeb]

55. All the replacements are much more complex

with all sorts of possible rate limiters to their use, for example fuel cells could be limited in their total energy production by platinum, that is, even with efficient platinum use, you might be able to only make so many fuel cells. Also the hydrogen sources for fuel cells are now, natural gas, petroleum, propane, coal gas, other sources would be ethanol. Obviously if oil/gas is expensive, fuel cell costs will rise as well unless you use non fossil fuel sources, the only sustainable source of hydrogen would be from gasification of biomass, ethanol, electrolysing water(energy intensive) which would require power from some other fuel(wind,solar,burning fuel,hydro) or from amonia decomposition. These have many rate limiters including productive land and water, the rate limiters of solar or wind power. If demand is higher than these rate limiters allow, the cost will still rise.

There are some new more energy efficient electrolysis techniques, but they still require water usage, which is already becoming a scarce resource, it uses a platinum electrode(adding to the fuel cell platinum requirement), and of course a solar cell which could have a rate limiter of silver in large scale use, besides others because this cell is not conventional and uses gallium indium phosphide, and gallium arsenide.

Oil refinement is comparitivly simpler(distilation) with vary few other possible scarce resources needed in any quantity. The only real rate limiter is the oil itself.

Patrick Schoeb

[Capn Sunshine]

26. how do you deduce that from what is happening around us?

It seems you really WANT to believe that DR. Campbell's prognosis is incorrect.

The fact that all oil we pump today is harder to extract and harder to crack means what if not shrinking supply? What about the third worlds growing demand?

One man is respected , another disdained. Does this affect the message?

If Oil was as easy to get as you imply, Iraq would be pumping 3bb barrels per day by now, wouldn't it?

[Nederland]

30. Response

I deduce these things from the fact that these same people have been saying that we will run out of oil in twenty years for more than forty years now. At some point you have to ask yourself why they keep getting it wrong.

[sleipnir]

12. It's all speculation

Who really knows?

I've heard peak oil will hit in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, etc. etc.

Everyone seems to have a differing prediction.

Also, I've read that up to 35% of the planet has yet to be "explored" for oil. Mostly due to remote locations, ie, Siberia, the Deep Pacific. Same article stated that the odds of lots more oil being found were quite good.

Who knows, I think that their is some deception going on, but I really don't think anyone, even BushCo knows for sure. That's why they aren't taking any chances.

[htuttle]

13. Who's not taking any chances?

Do you mean Bush and friends? Seems to me they've been taking some pretty HUGE chances -- and they are failing at them.

[JohnyCanuck]

18. Remote Locations Mean Higher Prices

Any large new reserves found in remote areas would be more expensive than regular oil to produce and ship to markets. That's exactly why those areas would not yet have been explored. It makes economic sense to get the cheap stuff out first before you start spending money (and more energy) on building and running long pipelines, expensive secondary recovery methods, dealing with harsh climate extremes and great ocean depths.

The point that the Peak Oilers are making is not that we will suddenly wake up one day without oil and gas, but at some point all the easily exploitable oil and fields with the best grades of oil will have peaked and the world will have to spend more and more money and energy to find and process the remainining oil.

Back in the mid 1950's M. King Hubbert was a geophysicist who studied resource depletion. He came up with a method of calculating and forecasting oil production peaks for oil wells and oil fields as well as countries. He predicted that the US oil production would peak by the 1970s and then go into decline. This production peak is now referred to as a Hubbert Peak in honor of the man who devoted much of his career to the scientific study of resource depletion. Many of his associates regarded him as being out to lunch when he forecast that the US production would peak by the 70's. At the time the US was the world's leading oil producer and it was unthinkable to many that in a mere 20 years oil production would have peaked and gone into a permanent decline. Yet his predictions were accurate and the US oil production did peak in the early 70's exactly as he forecasted.

The proponents of the Peak Oil theory are taking Hubbert's methods and applying them to the world oil reservers as a whole and coming up with a rather grim prediction that we are much nearer to the peak in world production than we might have been led to believe. Part of their reasoning is that they believe the figures for known world oil reserves have been overestimated, as the various oil producing countries have been overestimating their own reserves for financial and political reasons.

For a brief summary of the Hubbert Peak and the explanation as to why countries might have been overestimating reservers, see:

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/summary.htm

Matthew Simmons is an energy investment banker and the CEO of a firm controlling 56 billion in assets. He was a member of Dick Cheney's 2001 energy task force. Here's what he had to say in recent address to the Association For the Study of Peak Oil, meeting at the French Petroleum Institute:

The uh, I think basically that now, that peaking of oil will never be accurately predicted until after the fact. But the event will occur, and my analysis is leaning me more by the month, the worry that peaking is at hand; not years away. If it turns out I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. But if I'm right, the unforeseen consequences are devastating...But unfortunately the world has no Plan B if I'm right. The facts are too serious to ignore. Sadly the pessimist-optimist debate started too late."

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/061203_simmons.html

Also when considering the implications of Peak Oil, don't forget that our current factory farming methods require tremendous inputs of fossil hydrocarbons not just for heating barns and running tractors, harvesters and Farmer McDonald's pickup trucks, but also in the creation of fertilizers and pesticides. The fertilizers that are absolutely vital to making our corporate, mono-culture factory farming work are all made from Natural Gas, and North American Natural Gas is also in an increasingly tight supply situation and therefore not very viable as an alternative fuel to gasoline.

PURCHASING's monthly Business Survey for June finds buyers reporting supply problems, as well, because some chemical plants have curtailed production due to the high cost of natural gas. The fertilizer industry has been particularly hard hit, since natural gas accounts for 90% of the cost of ammonia, the building block for nitrogen fertilizers. Ammonia manufacturers are not faring any better, with factory closings also being reported.

Above Quote from Purchasing.com June 2003, the website of Purchasing Magazine.

http://www.manufacturing.net/pur/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA310916

I personally know someone who has spent an entire career working in the Canadian and international oil and gas industry and has reached senior management and executive positions within the industry. I asked him about this and he basically agreed that world peak oil production would occur within the next 20 to 25 years. Twenty years to peak is the optimistic number used by the Peak Oil theorists, the pessimistic view is that peak is occurring right now.

Edited to fix spelling and add a paragraph about the potential impact of Peak Oil on farming and our food supply.

[sleipnir]

52. Thanks for the info

Helpful, but if the amounts of oil reserves are either secret or have been lied about in the past, again, it seems to me we can only speculate as to when peak oil will occur. I agree with Simmon's belief that we won't know it until well after the fact, because of all the uncertainty and while some statistical modeling has been propsed on this thread, the base set is at best "approximate" and not entirely valid. Again, I believe that it will occur in probably the next 20 years, but I still feel that it's anyone's guess.

This whole thing seems to me like predicting earthquakes in LA, and we're all trying to say when the "Big One" will hit. Mostly guesses based on some known, but still rudementary scientific data. We know a "Big One" will hit soon, but no one can predict an absolute month or even year.

[JohnyCanuck]

59. The important point is planning should have started 30 years ago.

I agree no one can predict exactly when peak oil will hit with any degree of certainty, but the point is it will arrive and the more unprepared we are the worse off we will be in adapting to it. We have to force our politicians into making plans and speeding up research into how our industries and economies will adapt to Peak Oil. We have to be doing this NOW!!! Not 20 years from now when it suddenly becomes evident to everyone that peak ocurred 5 years previously. While there has been some moves to sustainable energy production and research into alternative energy sources, I think the resources we are devoting to this problem are just a drop in the bucket compared to what we need to be doing.

Unfortunately the worlds industrial powers still spend trillions on equiping their military forces and researching exotic weaponry such as space based missile shields and bunker busting nukes etc. supposedly to protect their citizens from potential threats while ignoring the threat that if we don't find ways to adapt our economies and truly start conserving our resource base, civilization is heading for the scrap heap. Orbiting killer satellites won't mean crap when the world's factory farmed, fossil fuel dependent, corporately driven agricultural base has collapsed in disaray and mobs are rioting for food.

It's like the guy that spends all his money on buying guns to protect his house and his family from burglars, but ignores the huge and growing cracks developing in the foundations. He might have an armory inside, but it won't be much help when his house collapses around him one night because the foundations finally gave out.

[0rganism]

31. Hardly. There are some very solid facts to work with.

For instance, if you want to see how long it takes for exponential growth to lead to a doubling, T=70y/AGP. If you have a steady 5% annual growth in fossil fuel use, in 70y/5=14y.

Also, at every doubling point, the amount used is more than the sum of all doublings that occured before. Practically speaking, this means that when oil consumption doubles, we use more in that doubling period than in all the time before we started counting.

OF COURSE we have 35% left to explore, and we'd damn well better be finding more oil, because we have to find a HUUUGE amount of oil (as much has been found pre-peak, in fact) just to get down the backside of the Hubbert curve on schedule.

Here's an example that might -- just might -- make it more clear to you. It's from Prof. Bartlett's excellent lecture on "Arithmetic, Population, and Energy", which I recommend you purchase or download post-haste.
---
Okay let's look now at what happens when we have steady growth in a finite environment. Bacteria grow by doubling. One bacterium divides to become two; the two divide to become four; the four divide to become eight, 16 and so on. Suppose we had bacteria that doubled that way every minute, and suppose we put that bacteria in an empty bottle at 11:00 in the morning and observed that the bottle was full at noon. Now there's our case of just ordinary steady growth. It has a doubling time of one minute, and it's in the finite environment of one bottle. Now let me ask you some questions. At what time was the bottle half full?

One minute before 12:00 - they double in number every minute. Now this is a characteristic of steady growth.

The second question. If you were an average bacterium in that bottle, at what time would you first realize that you were running out of space?

Well, let's look at the last minutes in the bottle. At 12 noon it's full, one minute before, it's half full; two minutes before, it's one-quarter full. Well, let me ask you - at five minutes before 12 when the bottle's only 3% full and is 97% open space just yearning for development, how many of you would realize that there was a problem?

Now in the ongoing controversy over growth in Boulder, someone wrote to the newspaper some years ago and said, "Look, there isn't any problem with population growth in Boulder because we've got 15 times as much open space as we've already used." So let me ask you what time WAS it in Boulder when the open space was 15 times the amount of space we'd already used? The answer is - it was 4 minutes before 12 in Boulder Valley.

Well, suppose that two minutes before 12, some of the bacteria realized that they were running out of space and they mounted a great search for a new bottle, and they searched offshore and on the outer continental shelf and the overthrust belt in the Arctic, and they found THREE new bottles! Now that's a COLOSSAL discovery! The discovery is three times the amount of resource they ever knew about! They now have 4 bottles' Before the discovery there was only one.

Now surely, this will make them self-sufficient, won't it? You know what the next question is - How long can the resource last as a result of this magnificent discovery? Well look at the score - at 12 noon, one bottle's filled; there are 3 to go. 12:01 - two bottles are filled; there are two to go, and at 12:02, all 4 are filled and that's the end of the line.

Now you don't need any more arithmetic than this to evaluate the absolutely contradictory statements you've heard and read from experts who tell us in one breath, "Oh, we can go on increasing our rates of consumption of fossil fuels," and in the next breath say, "Don't worry, we'll always be able to make the discovery of new resources we need to meet our requirements of that growth."
---
From a transcript of Prof. Bartlett's speach

[Nederland]

39. Flaw in the Argument

Oil != Living Space

As resources get scarcer, prices will go up and effect behavior. The world's oil is not like living space in your example. There are alternatives to oil, and as the price of oil rises those alternatives will become cost competative and take over.

The Stone Age did not end for lack of stones, and the Petroleum Age will not end for lack of oil.

[0rganism]

46. Flaw in yours

Stones != Oil

As demand drops, production will drop right along with it. If these alternatives are developed prior to the time where a physical limit to production drives up the price, then your version is possible.

The part in italics is your hypothetical assumption.

[Nederland]

48. Then its not a flaw

If these alternatives are developed prior to the time where a physical limit to production drives up the price, then your version is possible.

Numerous alternatives to oil already exist. What made you think they don't?

[JohnyCanuck]

54. It's the quality of the alternatives that's important.

The problem is that that oil is such an energy dense substance (i.e. contains a high quantity of easily recoverable energy per unit volume/mass) that it will be very difficult to replace it with alternatives even as the price rises. The oil in the ground that we have been using to date has been relatively easy for us to obtain. We haven't had to to do much work to get it out of the ground and to process it into energy rich substances like gasoline and diesel fuel.

Think of that oil in the ground like money in the bank that's been left to us by a rich daddy who is now deceased. We think it's great that we don't have to work for a living as we just withdraw money from our bank account as we feel the need to buy new houses, sports cars, cruise vacations, big screen TV's etc. Unfortunately we're not good money managers and we don't realize or care that our endowment is in a low interest bearing account and we are dipping into it without keeping proper accounting records.

Then one day we wake up and are shocked when the bank manager informs us that instead of having a million dollars in the account, there's only $50,000 left, enough to keep us going for a year maybe if we drastically cut back our jet set lifestyle and forget the high living. Once that $50,000 is gone it can be replaced with other sources of income, but the free ride is over. We'll have to work our ass off digging ditches, flipping burgers, adminstering networks, driving buses or whatever to obtain money to survive. It would be quite a shock to the individual accustomed to a free and easy, priveliged lifestyle to have to make that change. Humanity is now in the situation of the spoiled little rich kid who is just finding out that he has run through a good portion of his inheritance, can't afford his playboy lifestyle anymore and is gonna have to start really busting has tail to survive.

See this article:
http://www.gulland.ca/depletion/Endofroad.htm

>>>> Even a cursory survey of the economic developments of the past century and a half reveal the strong connection between oil and economic growth. The complexity and sophistication of the western economic system was built on a foundation of oil and it requires a huge leap of faith to believe that it can be maintained in the face of a substantial and prolonged decrease in the stability of that foundation. Assuming that a suitable replacement for oil were available, and assuming that western economies implemented full-force efforts to employ such alternatives, the chances for success would be slim, given the lead-times required. But alternatives are not up to the task. Most experts agree that a comprehensive exploitation of all forms of alternative energy would result in the production of only one third of the energy currently consumed in the US. Only thirteen percent of the US landmass is suitable for the development of wind turbines. Perhaps forty percent is usable by solar arrays and the rivers have been damned nearly to their total capacity. Wind energy is dependant, obviously, on the sporadic nature of the resource, an while advances have been made in the field, the ability of wind to provide consistent, wide-spread energy is still very limited. Photovoltaic energy is still nothing more than a dream. While it does work, the energy required to produce a photovoltaic cell exceeds the energy that the cell can recover over any reasonable amount (dozens of years) of time. Hydro-electric energy is clean and relatively cheap, but most of the usable dam sites have been used. The tar sands and oil shales of the US mid west are often touted as a plentiful future, once the price is high enough, but a critical review of the physics leads to a different conclusion. Walter Youngquist, of the Colorado School of Mines writes:

“Perhaps oil shale will eventually find a place in the world economy, but energy demands of blasting, transport, crushing, heating, adding hydrogen, and the safe disposal of huge quantities of waste material are large. There appears to be a positive net energy recovery from oil shale processing (Penner and Icerman, 1984), but it is low and does not compare with net energy from conventional oil well drilling.” (Youngquist 243)

While these “near oil” sources do exist, and may be usable, they do not offer the advantage of the high net energy that more traditional sources provide. Oil may indeed be available for alternative sources but not in the quantities or prices necessary to keep the world economy functioning at more than a fraction of its present level.

Further, for an alternative energy source to replace oil in a way that would guarantee a continuation of the present economic systems, it would have to share substantially all of the qualities of oil. Alternative forms of energy would need to be inexpensive to exploit, both in financial and thermodynamic terms. They would need to be easily stored and transported, and they would need to have the ability to be easily converted to many types of products. These are all properties of oil that western economies not only exploit, but also rely on to a degree that is not commonly appreciated by the general public. A tank of wind in one’s car is not particularly useful, and about the only other energy form that wind can be converted in to is electricity. Electric vehicles are feasible, but not yet practical (and without huge advances in battery technology may never be) and the cost of converting the world’s auto fleet to electricity would be immense. This single cost could be enough to bring western economies to their knees. And that conversion is only one of hundreds that will have to be made. <<<<

[0rganism]

56. Mere existence is not sufficient, they must be plentiful and cheap

You can put up all the straw men you like, but the sad fact is that our infrastructure is heavily dependent on easy, cheap, plentiful sources of fuel. Moving to a harder, more expensive, less plentiful fuel requires re-organizing on a vast scale. We have a serious problem insofar as modern agriculture relies on the use of fuel and land to harvest food. The global population of humans is growing exponentially, like it or not, and while we can certainly become more efficient in our use of recreational energy, people do require a certain minimum amount of food. Any less and they get really cranky after a while.

The post responding to yours earlier made some excellent critiques of various alternative energy sources, and I'll let you re-read that one in detail. But I think Bartlet sums up the "don't worry, we'll always have enough" attitude quite well, and will let him finish for me.
---
Now he (economist Julian Simon) had a book that was published by the Princeton University Press, and in that book, he's writing about oil from many sources including biomass, and he says, "Clearly there's no meaningful limit to this source except for the sun's energy," and he goes on to note that "even if our sun were not so vast as it is - there may well be other suns elsewhere."

Well, he's right! But the question is - would you base public policy in the U.S. today on the belief that if we ever need another sun, we'll be able to figure out how to bring one in?
---
http://www.kzpg.com/Lib/Pages/Articles/95-03-00__Bartlett_educates_speech

[bpilgrim]

58. thats what the flat earthers used to say as well - n/t

peace

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

17. Thank God coal is a clean burning fuel!

[davekriss]

22. I highly recommend...

I highly recommend this excellent thread on Urban75, started by the good Bernie Gunther: http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45251
It includes many great links and interesting discussion.

I quote from its start...

A petroleum geologist explains US war policy

In the article linked here, written prior to the US conquest of Iraq, the country possessing the second largest reserves remaining, Dr Colin Cambell, discusses the relationship between the geological characteristics of existing oil and gas reserves, especially their properties with respect to depletion, and the rising international tensions centred on the Middle East.

quote:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Future historians may look back and identify a degree of choreography in the present war on terror. At all events, the US is paying for troops to defend a Colombian export pipeline; it was implicated in a failed coup to depose the Venezuelan president, who was taking a tough line on oil; it has overthrown the government of Afghanistan on a proposed pipeline route; it has established military bases around the Caspian oilfields; and it threatens to invade Iraq, one of the last places left with substantial oil.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Together with other sources of information, some of which I'll link below a bleak overall picture starts to emerge.

<snip>

[0rganism]

28. Predicted by who? 10 years is right on schedule, according to USGS

Actually, there were several production models I've seen, the pessimistic one peaking in 2000, the optimistic in 2040, the normative around 2015-2020.

People like Prof. Bartlett of UC-Boulder have been lecturing on this topic for decades:

http://www.hawaii.gov/dbedt/ert/symposium/bartlett.pdf

This means we have to rewrite the book on modern agriculture, among other things.

[Andy_Stephenson]

36. Anything into oil

http://www.discover.com/may_03/featoil.html

[Capn Sunshine]

38. THAT IS SO COOL!

Turkey guts! LOL

[JohnyCanuck]

41. I don't see how this will be viable long term.

To make this economically viable and self sustaining over the long-term, it would mean that you have to recover all the energy you put into growing the turkeys (which also includes the energy and energy equivelant of the hydrocarbons uses in growing the plant crops for turkey feed) from the processing of the turkey guts into oil. In the end while you might recover some oil from the turkey guts, I doubt very much the amount of oil recovered will contain enough energy to equal the emount of energy that went into producing the turkey guts in the first placed.

The same applies to turning other manufactured products into oil. The process will not be self-sustaining. It's basic physics and is covered under the Laws of Thermodynamics. If they've discovered some as yet unknown method of overcoming the limitaions of the Laws of Thermodynamics, then I'd be looking for Star Trek warp drives and transporters to be just around the corner. Beam me up Scotty.

[opihimoimoi]

42. And here we are using oil for fun, sheer fun. soon the tractors planting

and harvesting our food will be idle while we tool around our dune buggys, atv's, and water jets.

Fun or Food?

No question here, its FUN, fuck food.

[TennesseeWalker]

44. "The Party's Over....Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Socities"

www.museletter.com

[Lindsay]

50. A southerner's contribution to the ethanol question -

kudzu!

[midnight armadillo]

60. The OTHER elephant in the room

Arguments like 'ethanol can only run 15 million cars' are inherently specious. The conversion to an economy based on energy scarcity will necessarily result in massive lifestyle changes...everyone with their own car may be a thing of the past.

[JohnyCanuck]

61. Too many people don't want to face lifestyle changes

Try telling your typical hummer driver that he will have to make a "lifestyle" change at some point down the road and give up his hummer. See how well it goes over.

I think there's still way, way too many people who are counting on not having to make any significant lifestyle changes. They think that it will just be a matter of replacing the gas guzzling SUV with a hybrid SUV for a few years, and then switching over to a fuel cell powered SUV for the commute to the 4000 sq foot, 2 car garage home in the suburbs on a 1 acre lot, and life will go on pretty much as usual.

We have to educate people why this isn't the case. Our governments are totally ignoring this issue, probably because it won't make them very popular when they start trying to explain to the electorate why everyone will have to adapt to the idea of not owning their own personal vehicle and why they will have to live in smaller houses or apartments that can be heated more efficiently in winter etc. Plus of course it means a complete overhaul of our economic system and I don't think they have even started to come to grips with what that entails. E.g. what are the workers at GM, Ford, and Chrysler going to work at when car assembly lines shut down. They can't all be re-employed making commuter trains and buses.

I just wish that more mainstream media and political parties will at least get the ball rolling on discussing these issues and raising public awareness so that as a society we can start thrashing out some of the issues. Instead a "let's not rock the boat" attitude seems to prevail.

We just had a provincial election here in Ontario. The incumbent Progressive Conservatives while paying some half hearted attention to energy conservation and alternative energy etc. were still playing up how they were going to expand the current highway system as a major plank in their platform. I heard one mention of Peak Oil in the entire campaign and that a passing reference by the leader of the Green Party during a TV interview on a newsmagazine show. However the concept of Peak Oil and its economic implications were not explored or expanded on at all during the interview.