Do you know what the term "Peak Oil" means?

[brainshrub]

If you do, answer accordingly. If you don't, do a Google search and get educated.

[frank frankly]

1. check out fromthewilderness.com for great info on this

and many other things...

[number6]

2. yes, but by the time its really a big problem..

I'll be dead, however it will be a very serious problem for
the next generation...

[Minstrel Boy]

3. Yes, and it'll be upon us long before 2040.

It could be happening now. We probably won't know until after it's happened, when we're on the otherside of the curve. And it won't feel like a gentle slope.



Read all about it:

"The Peak of World Oil Production and the Road to the Olduvai Gorge" by Richard Duncan
http://www.oilcrisis.com/duncan/olduvai2000.htm

"The Bush/Cheney Energy Strategy: Implications for US Foreign and Military Policy" (paper prepared for the Second Annual Meeting of the Association for Study of Peak Oil, May 26-27 2003, by Michael T. Klare)
http://www.peakoil.net/iwood2003/paper/KlarePaper.doc (pdf file)

"The Coming Crisis: Blackouts, Energy Policy and the New War" by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, http://world.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/238/

"The peak of global petroleum production: the reason for Bush's world war"
http://www.oilempire.us/peakoil.html

[frank frankly]

13. MB, you are awesome

printed and will read tonight!

[Minstrel Boy]

16. If you read them tonight

don't count on getting any sleep! :) The "Olduvai Gorge" theory is particularly chilling. I'm not sure I'm as pessimistic as Dr Duncan, but I am persuaded things are going to get quite grim, and faster than most people realize.

The Peak Oil Association paper on the Bush/Cheney Energy Strategy is a great piece for contextualizing White House military adventurism. There is a simple method to all their madness.

[MrPrax]

41. Good post...

Your chart confirms the low figure of 2010 to the max. of 2040.

Good links...I don't think people understand the gravity of this situation...they think only gas for cars.
Two industries that will have an increasing priority on the 'black gold' are the military and the plastic industry in that order...
People are out to lunch to think all that oil is going to be made available for their cars...that market is finished

[dreissig]

4. Cheap Oil Is a Right

[brainshrub]

5. I am pleasantly surprised so many DUers know what this means.

Up to now, I thought I was the only one. I was getting ready to be fitted with a tinfoil hat.

My gf thinks I'm crazy. :tinfoilhat:

[SahaleArm]

17. It's still a theory.

Oil is a scarce resource so it's invetable we will hit the peak. We'll find out the answer when it runs out.

[Jacobin]

29. Not at all

You miss the point. It's not "when it runs out". It'll never "run out" because there is always some left in a reservoir, it just gets super expensive to remove it....when a well becomes non-commercial.

Peak oil in the US WAS reached in the 1970's. That was the time when oil production "peaked" in this country and has been going down ever since and will continue to go down because the "elephants" have all been found and only the smaller and more expensive reservoirs are being produced.

World oil production WILL peak at some point, debated by geologists at from 2015 to 2040. NO geologist debates WHETHER it will happen. It is only a matter of when. When production begins to decline (after the peak...get it?), prices will zoom skyward and everything we use it for (plastics, fertilizer, fuel, etc etc) will become expensive. IF we are not prepared with alternative fuel sources, our economy and our civilization will radically change and for the worse.

Alternative energy is not some tree hugging, kinda neat, maybe someday thing to do. It is critical that we start now.

One reason I like Dean.

[gasperc]

34. not runs out but demand runs faster than supply

with China's demand booming this will continue to put pressure on how fast supply can be brought to market. By not improving efficiency we are accelerating when peak oil will hit the wall and this will show up with spiking oil prices.

[Hell Hath No Fury]

6. Hubert's Peak...

If I remember correctly it is theorized that we are already on the downside of that peak, with nowhere to go but down.

Yes, it is a scary thought and adds light to the reasons for our little "adventure" over in the country that has the second largest oils reserves in the world.

[the_real_38]

38. fuckin' a..

... could be as early as next year.

[BeFree]

7. The US peaked in the 70's, right?

That's why we headed off for Alaska to pump other harder to reach sources. The easy oil has all but been totally pumped.

Life as we know it will cease to exist. Gone will be the thirty mile commutes. Gone will be the Sunday drives and the long driving vacations with the family. Airplane flights? History, except for the very richest. Offshore fishing trips? Only for the very richest.

The goods and produce from afar will cease being delivered on such a casual basis. The hop in the car and run to the corner store will be far too expensive to occur with the abandon that we now enjoy.

There will be no magic replacement for the power that we've enjoyed from that smelly liquid. Oh, some say technology will save us, but the truth is, we can't afford it. Yeah, we can go to the moon, but who can afford to? Just a few men have been there but it was so expensive no one has been back for years now.

Enjoy it while you can, folks. It ain't gonna be around forever.

[nannah]

8. globalization will come to a halt

it will no longer be profitable to ship goods to china to be made by cheap labor, so work will return to communities. food will need to be grown locally and organically. Chemical agriculture is very petroleum dependent for pesticides and fertilizers. organically farmed land will be very valuable as chemically farmed land loses it's nutrients and productivity.

also, china has emerged as a heavy consumer of oil adding a significant increase to existing world demand, so the figures presented at this years Peak Oil Conference may be conservative.

Another question I have is won't this blunt the military's ability to move people around the world? Not just the US military, but all military operations?

I think it is important to dialogue about how things will be different so we can make good decisions now.

[SahaleArm]

15. Or we'll find a more abundant, cleaner energy source.

Necessity will drive what happens.

[Az]

19. Oil is not just energy

Oil is plastics. Take a look around you and see what will go missing when we run out of oil.

[DUreader]

21. And Fertilizers. Got Food?

[SahaleArm]

25. I guess we'll have to find something different.

That's kind of the point of going through this whole exercise.

[Jacobin]

30. It has been found. Its hydrogen for fuel cells

but if we don't start going after perfecting the process, and figuring out the best way to extract it from water so its cheap and do that soon, we will be screwed.

[el_gato]

32. hydrogen is not a fuel source only a method of transfer

it takes energy to obtain hydrogen and as far as I can tell not with a net gain.

I don't think technology will save us.

[meow mix]

10. ez oil

seems the best description to me.
ez oil good.
(except for the part where u unearth it out of safe storage and actually burn it into the atmosphere)
crappy, harder to produce oil bad.

the latter means us looking around and wondering how the hell were gonna feed these billions of peoples. and shortly there being one of these same billions now ripping into each other.

[Minstrel Boy]

9. I think there's a saying in Saudi Arabia:

"My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a plane. His son will ride a camel."

[Demonaut]

11. DUMP[ YOUR SUV'S

Because they will be worthless in a few years, I drive a 4 cylinder porsche

[SahaleArm]

14. Porsche is a 6.

But I'll take a 4-banger as well.

[davekriss]

12. A petroleum geologist explains US war policy

A good thread on urban75 with many interesting insights and a bevy of useful links here:

http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=45251

I highly recommend a read, it's good from start to end. :)

[dbt]

18. Yeah, I know what it means!

And it explains everything about the Bush Family Evil Empire from the stolen election right up through (and especially) the War on Iraq!

:scared:
dbt

[Jacobin]

20. Highly recommend anyone interested in this subject read

The Hydrogen Economy. Discusses the problems and OPPORTUNITIES of Peak Oil. Europe is jumping on the opportunities to develope incredible alternative fuels, while we go back to the days of the buggy whip.

Our regressive policies will relegate this country to the dust bin of history in the next forty years.

Dean is big on this. Our only hope

[Kolesar]

22. No Peak Oil thread is complete without the dieoff link:

Read it and weep--literally! www.dieoff.org

[Rob in B_more]

23. Another Reson to eat local

I live on the east coast,I understand it takes 50 calories of fossil fuel to get a 5 calorie strawberry from California to my neighborhood food market.

With the dependence of this country on California agriculture we are going to regret big time bulldozing all of our local farms and orchards to make way for strip malls and subdivisions.

[amazona]

28. a very good point...

...although the way I heard it told, it was 400 calories to transport that 5 calorie strawberry.

I live in Louisiana, and there is no shortage of oil; indeed, people are complaining because their land isn't being drilled, so they get no royalties -- the land owner doesn't when to drill, the mineral rights holder (oil companies) decide this. The Gulf of Mexico is not being drilled, and people are out of work because of that. The problem is not an oil shortage; the problem is there is too much cheap oil. We never planned on having access to all that Russian oil, for example; there just turns out to be so much more reserves than anyone ever dreamed back when the first few cycles of "ono we're running out of oil" hysteria first began.

Nonetheless, I don't advocate waste because burning oil is changing our climate and putting entire ecosystems and even states or nations at risk of being destroyed. I like to grow my own calorie free foods like the culinary herbs, salad greens, herbal teas, and such. The only energy being spent to transport my parsley are the calories burned when I walk out my backdoor and snip off a few stalks.

[BeFree]

40. Oil in Louisiana

Is being left in the ground? Hey, those guys are pretty smart, eh?

After we get all the oil we can from everywhere else, we'll still have a bit off it right here at home, now won't we?

'Course yer gonna have to be pretty well off to afford it. Looks as if the elite are looking out to take care of their own... to hell with the rest of us.

amazona, we all wish you well, we really do. But if ya don't undertake studying what's really happening then you're gonna get left behind. And when the time comes, you'll be too shocked to be able to function and adapt. Get with the program and help us find ways to adapt. After all, we're all in this together.

[LifeDuringWartime]

33. good thing my county is mostly farms!

:(

[brainshrub]

24. kick

[amazona]

26. it's nothing to worry about

The hysteria about "peak oil" comes and goes in cycles. We were supposed to be out of oil in 1960. Then 1980. Then the year 2000. Somehow we keep finding more and more reserves. It always makes me laugh when someone posts something along the lines of, "We don't send aid to Africa because there's no oil there" or "We won't attack North Korea because there is no oil there." There is certainly oil in Africa, there are hardly touched reserves in North Korea, and there is pretty much wwwaaaaayyyyy more oil reserves on this planet than anyone ever dreamed ever existed back in the day.

If we're serious about doing anything about global warming and dangerous climate change, we'll switch over to other energy sources long before it would even be physically possible to pump out "all" the oil and gas. If we're not serious, it won't much matter in a few decades, because civilization will likely become an untenable situation. It won't be for lack of oil and gas, though. We are sitting on plenty right here in the Gulf of Mexico that we aren't even bothering to drill.

[Minstrel Boy]

31. not quite:

Somehow we keep finding more and more reserves

A graph of discoveries, which peaked in the 1960s:



A graph of actual and projected production:

[amazona]

36. so...twice as much oil will be produced in 2050 as in 1950 ?

No wonder I'm not worried about it. :-)

All I can say is, I live in an oil and gas area, and the problem we're having is under-exploitation with the resulting lack of income, jobs, etc. Your charts may be a little deceptive because there has been so little motive to search out new reserves in recent decades; we have too much oil on our hands as it is. In the last two decades, many exploration geophysicists have experienced prolonged periods of unemployment. The stuff simply isn't valuable enough to be worth paying people to look for it...pretty good indication that it's anything but rare. I personally know several petroleum engineers, geologists, and geophysicists who were laid off over the past couple decades and never worked in that field again. If something is rare and valuable, its price can usually be depended upon to keep up with inflation.... It seems occasionally we get a price bump and some drilling gets started but then the price falls again... all very frustrating.

It would be nice if oil was a bit scarcer. Oil and gas industry jobs are good jobs with good pay and benefits. Tourism, which is now our No. One industry, offers crummy jobs with crummy pay and benefits. But there is little point in investing in an engineering degree so you can have a good job for less than a year, as happened with one young petroleum engineer I know, who has not worked again. Another one was much more fortunate -- he was able to work for five whole years before being laid off and never finding "real" work again.

I think you are going to find that most people in the industry are much more concerned about cheap oil (which threatens careers and removes the motive for getting a technical education) than about maybe one day running out of oil hundreds of years from now.

If oil ever becomes rare, two things will happen: 1) they will hire people to start looking for it again, and 2) they will hire people to invent replacements. As we don't see either of these two things happening, I for one feel very confident that our reserves will out-last our ability to exploit them.

[Schmendrick54]

37. You are correct, but ...

If the chart is correct you will see that it predicts that global oil production in 2050 will be less than 1/3 of todays production. Doesn't this imply that there will be a drastic impact on the developed world during this period?

Please note that I believe you are right in your assessment of the Oil reserves near you. In the short term, as the price of oil climbs, it will become profitable (in terms of money AND energy) to exploit it, and business in your area will boom again. But those people looking for new oil will find oil which is less and less profitable (energy-wise) to exploit.

Notice that the time scales are shifted on the two charts. The predicted decline in oil discoveries has been happening for the last 20 years. You can argue that less oil is being discovered because we aren't looking hard enough, but I believe the opposite is true. We are continually getting better at finding oil which has been previously hidden. The problem is that the harder to find stuff tends to be more costly (energy-wise) to extract. Also, a large percentage of a growing world population wishes to take advantage of the benefits of fossil-fuel driven civilization.

The good news for folks in your area Amazona is that the oil extraction jobs will be back (I predict before 2010). The bad news is I predict those reserves will not last as long as you may think.

I hope I am wrong and your confidence is justified. Unfortunately, I find the scientific arguments in support of the Hubbert Peak theory pretty convincing.

Thanks for your contribution to this thread, Amazona. As someone who has no real experience in the oil-extraction business I value your comments, even if I disagree with you rconclusions (at this point - maybe you will change my mind!)

[Schmendrick54]

35. With all due respect,....

I humbly suggest you revisit your thinking in this area. The reputable science in this area has not changed in 20 years. The so-called "Hubbert Peak" is pretty well accepted, even by the oil companies. The key idea is this: a generation ago we spent the equivalent of 1 barrel of oil in enegry to extract 30 barrels of oil from the ground. Today we expend 1 barrel's worth of energy to extract 5 barrels. At some point in my adult children's lifetime (if not my own) that ratio will approach 1:1. When it takes one barrel of oil energy to extract a replacement barrel, the oil is effectively gone. It will not matter how "valuable" the oil is in dollars, the law of supply and demand is trumped by the laws of thermodynamics.

As far as predictions of running out of oil in 1960 or 1980, I do not know where you found those predicitions, but there is a well known book called "Limits to Growth" (1972) which is often cited as being full of dire and false predictions of scarcity of various raw materials. In fact, most of these so-called "false predictions" are nothing more than numbers extrapolated from tables in the book using clearly bogus assumptions (in other words, these "predictions" were created by the critics rather than the authors.)

I urge everyone to visit the site linked earlier (www.dieoff.org) for a comprehensive (if somewhat disorganized) presentation of the relevant science.

And to those who presume that we will be saved by switching to hydrogen, I fear you will also be disappointed. Hydrogen fuel cell technology may be a good technical solution for energy transfer and storage, but it is not an energy source. I would recommend the first half of "The Last Days of Ancient Sunlight" by Thom Hartmann as a good source for an understandable (to a non-engineer) description of the energy crisis we face (which is very real, but need not be a catastrophe)

And Amazona, I sincerely mean it when I say that no disrespect to you is intended by this post. If you can direct me to some site with a scientific refutation of the "Hubbert Peak" theory I would be happy to read it. I would love for my grandchildren to not have to deal with this.

[amazona]

39. well here's a tiny bit of reassurance anyway...

I've been out of the industry for many a moon, but I'm comfortable with my opinion that if a product is rare and valuable, the corporate entities will pay people to find and produce that product. The fact that they're not doing that, suggests to me that the product in question is much less valuable than we would all like to believe.

If it helps set your mind at ease, I just checked the U.S. production. The records start in 1954 and include an estimate for 2002.

In 1954, we had 511,000 oil wells in the U.S. producing 12.4 barrels per well per day. In 2002, we had 519,000 oil wells producing 11.2 barrels per well per day. At that rate of fall off in productivity, I don't think anyone's grandchildren need worry.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec5_7.pdf

This has come up before, and I'm not aware of a good place on the internet that discusses oil and gas issues in what I feel to be a clear-headed manner. I should either find one or create one, because I hate to see good people being what I believe is unnecessarily worried. The whole "dieoff.org" thing hits me wrong because I don't think people come up with good solutions from a position of fear.

[redqueen]

27. Research into Sustainability is what needs investment.

This gets zero attention... lip service at best from most.

One of the reasons I'm so wild about Kucinich. :)