Exxon & peak oil

[4dsc]

Tom Whipple does it again..

http://www.energybulletin.net/22129.html

Every now and again, a senior oil company executive speaks optimistically to some august gathering about all the oil that is left. This time the honor fell to Stephen Pryor, president of ExxonMobil Refining. Speaking to a conference in Houston, Mr. Pryor stridently asserted that "energy resources are adequate to sustain growth— we are not peak oil people." At the mention of the bogeyman, "peak oil," the reporter covering the speech, or at least his editor, felt impelled to add a few words of explanation: "proponents of peak oil argue that the world has already tapped most of the easy-to-find deposits and that the drop in supplies combined with ever-growing demand point toward inevitably higher prices that will eventually hamper global economic growth." Actually, the reporter did a nice job in capturing the essence of peak oil.

The speaker then backs up his assertion by saying that the world has thus far produced 1 trillion barrels of oil and that there are still 4 trillion left. The average listener is left with the impression that oil shortages are centuries or at worst lifetimes away.

Of course, based on what we currently know about he earth's oil resources, the "4 trillion barrels left" is really a stretch bordering on irresponsible. The first 2 trillion are supposed to be reserves of conventional oil. This number is based on a badly flawed US Geologic Survey study produced a few years back that attempted to estimate the world's remaining conventional oil resources.

The major flaw was the authors' assumption that existing and not-yet-discovered fields would eventually turn out to contain much more oil than originally estimated. While it was true many decades ago that the ultimate size of newly discovered oil fields was often seriously underestimated, modern geologic techniques have markedly reduced initial overestimates.

Someday soon it will be obvious to all that the "4 trillion barrels" of reserve exist only in the minds of Exxon speechwriters and not in the ground. To keep repeating this fable may be good for Exxon's stock and the morale of its employees, but it certainly is not helping America prepare for oil depletion.

[Sven77]

1. abiotic oil

sure we are running out, but not as quickly as these gloom and doomers would have you believe. the military fights to keep the oil offline and drive prices up. kyoto is just a global tax, does nothing to stop pollution or global warming.

[4dsc]

3. Abiotic oil??

All oil is abiotic. But what you are forgetting is that current oil fields took millions of years to form. So by your reasoning, we just deplete what we have and wait another million years!! More oil!!

Yes we are running out faster than you believe!! You are just in denial!!

[Dogmudgeon]

6. Abiotic vs. biotic

Abiotic oil in a nutshell (so to speak):

In this case, the words "biotic" and "abiotic" refer to two different processes of oil formation. Biotic oil comes from the decay of organic matter, probably mainly algae mats, over millions of years. Abiotic oil comes from deep-source methane which was never part of living organisms. Either source is converted under pressure to longer-chain alkanes, of which oil is comprised. (Methane (CH3), IIRC, is the simplest alkane.) The optimum depth for this is about 2000-10000 feet. Any deeper than 10000 feet or so, and the temperature breaks everything back down into methane.

The abiotic hypothesis was developed by Soviet scientists in the 1950s to explain refilling of some of the oil fields in southern Russia and Ukraine, and the anomalous isotope ratios found in some of the recovered oil. It is possible, even probable, that some oil is abiotic, but most of it shows clear evidence of having come from living things -- hence, "fossil fuel". Although the "strong form" of the hypothesis (that all oil is abiotic) is no longer accepted, the work was valuable, and led to advances in geology.

Recently the abiotic hypothesis has been adopted by some "Young Earth" theorists, basically religious Creationists, whose story is that God put a vast amount of oil in the Earth, and will release a lot more of it when Jesus comes back. Between the religious angle, and the "irony" of oil abundance, Conservatives like the abiotic oil hypothesis, though it must be stressed that the hypothesis isn't ideological.

There is also another hypothesis, that oil is produced by extremophile bacteria living deep in the Earth. There could potentially be a lot of this bacteria, enough to refill whole oil fields. The hypothesis was advanced by Thomas Gold, who also wrote a popular book called Deep Hot Biosphere. Like abiotic oil, Gold's theory is not widely accepted, but it's also not a crank theory, and is based on scientific discoveries of bacteria that thrive underground in high-temperature and high-pressure environments.

I've written this mainly from memory, so if anyone has better or more accurate information on the subjects, feel free to post corrections.

--p!

[Javaman]

5. Okay than answer me this batman...

oil was discovered in Titusville, PA in 1857. It was effectively tapped out in the early 20's. How come it hasn't refilled itself via your abiotic oil theory?

[Nihil]

8. Easy

You're not praying hard enough!

Gosh ... ye of little faith and all that ...

:-)

[buddysmellgood]

2. It's the "easy" part that kills it. Why pull oil from sand and other expensive

places when we can invest in solar, nuclear and geothermal. We have enough oil to help us transition. If we keep our head in the oil sands, we're doomed. Full spectrum solar will breakthrough in the next decade. We aren't going to need those asshats anymore.

[4dsc]

4. But are we making the transition??

Or are we just putting up a smoke screen?? I only hear one politician talking about peakoil and 99+ of American's probably haven't even heard of it. Thus we are not making transition away from oil as far I can see.. It business as usual..

[buddysmellgood]

7. We're not doing enough and we aren't doing what we are doing fast enough.

But, you would be surprised to see the number of big players in science, engineering and industry that do get it. There is a push for sustainability brewing. With congress in the right place, it could start to take off.