Is peak oil a fraud? from "Does it matter if global warming is a fraud?"

[Pyrotex]

Before the 27 year ban? Haven't exploration and recovery technology improved since then?

Improved? Yes. How much? Not that much. We are still basically dependent on the instruments and computers developed in the 1970's and 80's.* Sure, they've been enhanced some and our resolution is better now, but the cost/benefit ratio began to get steep quite a while ago. If we spend twice as much on better computers, we might be able to find oil pockets that are way too deep to drill, or way too small to be profitable. See the problem?

 

If there were any pockets of oil still out there the size of Prudho Bay, 1980's technology would have been entirely sufficient to find them.

 

* In 1975, I got up close and personal with the Texas Instruments Super Computer in Dallas, Texas, developed specifically for analyzing underland and underwater sonic reflection data. At that time, TI was the leader in oil exploration technology. They bragged that the TISC could find oil pockets at or below the limit of drillability for that day.

[Eclipse Now]

Hydrocarbons are energy dense, it's a very efficient transportation fuel.

Yes, there's a lot of heat energy stored in oil. And then we go and burn the oil and try and turn that into forward motion, and something to do with the laws of thermodynamics says that we lose heaps of energy in the process. :naughty: So when only about 10% of that oil energy actually gets to the wheels, how is that efficient?

 

SCIAM recently had an article about getting the world off fossil fuels and onto renewables over the next 20 to 30 years.

 

Powering a Green Planet: Sustainable Energy, Made Interactive: Scientific American

 

Page 3 of this online presentation shows that under normal assumptions for economic growth (which I contest due to the Great Depression peak oil may cause), by 2030 the world will need 16.9 TW of energy supply.

 

Using largely electric transport and other energy efficiencies, these authors believe that we could reduce that to 11.5 TW of energy supply, which is less than today's energy requirements!

 

OK, if you think we are running out of oil, can you name any other mineral resources that have ever run out? Is there a precedent for peak oil? Please understand, I'm excluding biological resources (so called renewables) because I admit ambergris is far scarcer these days.

Well, I could, but there's no need and that would be off topic. Peak oil is a "Geology 101" subject taught in universities and is a historical fact for many countries.

 

(Late edit: Sorry, I meant to include this...)

BrianG and others: here is an interactive map showing which country has already peaked (in red) and hover your mouse over and it will show when.

 

This map is amazing!

 

Just left-click on your mouse to zoom in to a region (like Europe) and hover around looking at the details of when the country peaked, how much oil it was producing at peak, and how much oil it produces now.

David Strahan | Interactive Oil Depletion Atlas

 

Here's an interesting quote from Chevron. (Yes, an oil company). They are discussing the vast range of oil production studies. Today we use about 86 million barrels, and using 80 million barrels (a day) by 2030 is wildly over-optimistic, but I'll get to that later. My point is this is an OIL COMPANY quoting this. Then they mention 120mbd, which must be a projection made by the International Energy Agency. These guys use economic models, not geological models based on resource. Their argument goes something like this... "The economy will have grown, therefore oil supply MUST also grow by then." They don't bother with little details like how much oil there is in the ground. ;)

 

So here's the quote from Chevron.

There is uncertainty about the level at which the oil resource base will be able to supply growing oil demand – estimates place production of oil in 2030 in the wide range of 80 to 120 million barrels per day.4

willyoujoinus.com - Energy Issues - Fossil Fuels

[Eclipse Now]

I just noticed Germany has a typo and looks like it is producing more now than when it peaked (impossible by definition). CLICK on Germany and it will take you to the historical output graphs.

[BrianG]

This is a photo I took in March of 1991:

 

 

 

 

When the Kuwait oil fields were set alight by Saddam Hussein, the fires didn't peak and fade, they were extinguished. Kuwait's Oil Production is rising.

 

When has a mineral resource ever peaked? People have been mining gold for thousands of years, it hasn't peaked: http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/gold.pdf .

[freeztar]

When has a mineral resource ever peaked? People have been mining gold for thousands of years, it hasn't peaked: http://minerals.usgs.gov/ds/2005/140/gold.pdf .

 

When has human population ever peaked?

 

Do you believe there is a point at which demand exceeds supply?

[BrianG]

Human ingenuity, and human evil has exceeded all bounds. Supply and demand are in equilibrium when the market selects a price. Government interference in markets can create "a point at which demand exceeds supply", that's why they ration.

 

 

That's me above, in front of a fire as big as a house. Hello, everybody:wave2:

[freeztar]

Government interference in markets can create "a point at which demand exceeds supply", that's why they ration.

Correct.

Another cause of supply/demand imbalance is lack of supply. Nothing lasts forever. No rations in the world can support an insatiable demand with no supply.

[Zythryn]

Brian, unless you believe there is an infinite supply of oil, you must admit that technically there is a limit to supply.

The main question is HOW MUCH oil is there.

Just because the oil doesn't burn out while you are watching it doesn't mean there isn't an end to it.

Many oil fields have gone into decline. They can't pull out as much oil as they used to without using more expensive techniques (and many can't get as much oil even using more expensive techniques).

 

The big question is are we going to reach a peak oil production this decade, next decade, the one after that, etc.

[BrianG]

Zythryn has a good point, what do we mean by peak oil? I see it as the imminent end of increased production, within a decade. We should decide on a definition, if we want a debate (or argument).

[Boerseun]

When the Kuwait oil fields were set alight by Saddam Hussein, the fires didn't peak and fade, they were extinguished.

How on earth is that relevant? Of course they were extinguished: people hate the idea of lighting a finite resource for no particular purpose. It seems as if you intentionally keep missing the point, Brian.

When has a mineral resource ever peaked? People have been mining gold for thousands of years, it hasn't peaked

It has peaked in South Africa, the biggest gold producer in the history of Planet Earth. There are plenty of rich gold-bearing veins left, the only problem is that it is now more expensive to get to them than what they are worth. We're currently mining to depths of more than 4½kms, which is about the limits of what gold can be profitably extracted. That is "Peak Gold". And the very same argument applies to oil. If it takes you more than one barrel of oil to extract one barrel of oil, then there is no way for you to extract the stuff on a profitable basis, regardless of the size of the reserve. All the oil you're getting out will have to go to powering your operation, and you'll still have to import oil from other sources to make up the difference. That's Peak Oil, Brian, and it is hitting more fields than new fields are being discovered. Failing to see this directly (and negatively) address the density of synapses in any given skull. Do you understand, Brian?

[Eclipse Now]

Oil legend Marion King Hubbert

M. King Hubbert - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Hubbert is most well-known for his studies on the capacities of oil fields and natural gas reserves. He predicted that, for any given geographical area, from an individual oil field to the planet as a whole, the rate of petroleum production of the reserve over time would resemble a bell curve. Based on his theory, he presented a paper to the 1956 meeting of the American Petroleum Institute in San Antonio, Texas, which predicted that overall petroleum production would peak in the United States between the late 1960s and the early 1970s.[4] At first his prediction received much criticism, for the most part because many other predictions of oil capacity had been made over the preceding half century, but these had been based purely on reserve and production, data rather than past discovery trends, and had proven false.[5] Hubbert became famous when this prediction proved correct in 1970.

 

How did he do it? Simple... you have to FIND oil before you can BURN it. He knew American oil discovery had peaked back in the 30's and that American production (for a number of historical reasons) was about 40 years behind discovery.

 

This is why my previous question to you... which you totally ignored for a week by the way... is so important. Remember me asking you this?

 

Please tell us how global discovery of oil is doing? Is it on an upward trend? Or has it reached a plateau? Or, heaven forbid, has it already peaked and discovery is starting to decline? Is there a discovery trend, and if so, how strong is it... up, level, or down, and how long has the trend been that way?

 

With all the serious, serious money at big oil's disposal, and all those deep-sea drilling rigs, and all that industry speciality, check out this graph compiled from official oil sources:

 

 

Note, the big peaks across the top read like a "Who's who" of the major oil finds worldwide.

 

Note, oil discovery peaked in 1965, 45 years ago.

 

Note, we are now burning it 6 times faster than we are finding it.

 

Note, geologists independent of big oil companies like Exxon mobile are free to speak without fear of compromising future promotions, and most predict world oil production will peak in the next 5 to 10 years, roughly 50 years after world discovery peaked.

 

And governments are just ignoring this.

 

Oooooooooooooooooooops!

[Buffy]

There are plenty of rich gold-bearing veins left, the only problem is that it is now more expensive to get to them than what they are worth.

:)

 

An oil expert I heard once explained that peak oil is like eating a bowl of oatmeal: it's not that you "run out" of oatmeal--there's always some down in the bottom of the bowl--but you have to work harder and harder with your spoon to get less and less.

 

I believe that that is a really complex and convoluted concept and some people may have extreme difficulty in comprehending it.

 

Security is when everything is settled, when nothing can happen to you; security is the denial of life, :phones:

Buffy

[Eclipse Now]

My favourite analogy is getting coke out of a McDonald's drink cup full of ice, or even an ice-cone or slurpy. The first half is the 'easy coke', but then you're down to sucking out less coke and more watery icey stuff as the liquids are gone.

 

The ABC Science show Catalyst showed a pump working on a smaller field that was 7 years past its peak. They were pumping in so much water down into the rocks to keep the pressure up that the stuff they extracted was 99% and 1% oil... it looked like a weak tea.

 

Catalyst: Real Oil Crisis - ABC TV Science

[maikeru]

Eclipse Now, linking to a post I wrote briefly on Peak Oil in another thread (and maybe it'd have found a nice home here). :)

 

http://hypography.com/forums/287515-post103.html

 

Don't claim to be an expert in Peak Oil, but I'm convinced enough of its reality.

[BrianG]

 

 

I guess the owners of this ship aren't worried about peak oil. Airlines are still ordering fossil fueled aircraft: KAL orders five Boeing 747-8 passenger aircraft

 

I'm betting we have more than fifty years of increasing oil production. I hope we reach peak climate change mitigation this winter.

[CraigD]

Zythryn has a good point, what do we mean by peak oil? I see it as the imminent end of increased production, within a decade. We should decide on a definition, if we want a debate (or argument).

I think this definition,

Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline.

from Peak oil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, is the one we should adopt, although I find it slightly technically troubles by its use of the term “terminal decline”. Terminal decline implies that production will never exceed the peak, while as long as some reserves exist, who can say that at some time in the future, for reasons we can’t currently predict, production might briefly exceed it?

 

This quibble aside, the important essence of the meaning of peak oil is that

• it’s a particular point in time – that is, a specific date – not a theory or political position
  
• it refers to net world petroleum extraction, not to a particular oilfield, nation, or region.
  
• it refers to petroleum extraction – that is, getting liquid crude oil out of the ground – not producing equivalent petroleum products through “unconventional oil production” techniques such as oil sands and oil shale extraction, and coal and gas conversion.
  
• it can be caused by any or several of many factors, not just the depletion of practically extractable reserves, such “political factors” such as nations with large proven reserves exporting less than they can to increase price, and how long they profit substantially from it.
  

Various estimates as to this date – peak oil - have been made. Some state that peak oil has already occurred, some that it will not occur for as long as a century, most that it will occur within the next ten years. IMHO, all these estimates should be considered skeptically, due to the unpredictability of the political factors that can cause peak oil.

If it takes you more than one barrel of oil to extract one barrel of oil, then there is no way for you to extract the stuff on a profitable basis, regardless of the size of the reserve.

Although I agree that actually burning more oil than you extract is a losing proposition, it’s important, I think, to note that using more energy to extract oil than burning the oil will produce may not be, because stored energy in the form of petroleum fuels can be many times more valuable than the same energy in another form, such as available electric line power. This is mostly because petroleum fuels have high energy density, are easy to handle, and many important machines, especially aircraft, can use no other kind of fuel without major and costly modification.

 

Hence, even if it takes a hundred joules of electric energy to extract the petroleum to produce 1 joule of kerosene, it can be profitable to do so if you must have kerosene to fly a fleet of commercial aircraft that generate more revenue than the cost of the petroleum rights, electricity, refining, fuel transport, and other operational costs.

 

I find niche fuel consumers like aviation informative to discussions of petroleum fuel. Right now, for instance, if I must get a physical parcel from where I sit near Washington, DC, USA to an office in Tokyo, Japan by 5:00 PM 12 Jan, the only way to do it is fly it on a jet airplane (well, technically there are a few propeller aircraft that could do it, but none that I can find on the ground right now at BWI airport, and most of those turboprops burning the same fuel as a jet). If my fortunes depend critically on that package getting there on time, the kerosene to fuel that airplane is very valuable to me.

 

As best I can tell, the only short term practical replacement for petroleum-derived jet fuel are near equivalent fuels derived from biological sources such as oil from genetically engineered algae (know at present by various names, my favorite being “algaeoleum”). Both the production and use of such fuels are at present in the experimental phase (for example, see GFI HOME).

 

:) Rather than making me pessimistic that high-power, high-energy density-requiring applications such as aviation will become prohibitively expensive in a post peak oil world – I prediction I’ve found commonplace in discussions with advocates of “green” technology” – emerging technologies such as GFI and make me optimistic human society will be able to continue such activities with non-petroleum-based equivalent fuels.

 

“Algaeoleum” is “peak-proof” – it’s almost completely renewable, requiring only algae, nitrogen+phosperous fertilizer (derivable from sewage), some sort of bioreactor system, and an energy source, such as sunlight.

 

Though addressing a different topic than peak oil, as a fuel source, it’s carbon neutral, producing it removes almost exactly the same amount of carbon from the atmosphere as burning it produces.

[Eclipse Now]

A long post to BrianG and then to CraigD.

 

BrianG,

I voted your post number #32 down, as it lacks any scientific reference or data and merely contains your opinion and assertion. This is a science thread, not just a political forum where you can assert whatever you like.

 

On the matters you attempted to raise, shipping uses the foulest, most highly sulfuric oil that is on the market and will not be affected by peak oil for a long time yet. Airlines, on the other hand, may be unaffordable to you and I within 5 to 10 years! Airlines may become the exclusive transport means of the incredibly rich or the politician.

 

The fact that they are upgrading their fleets just shows their CEO's are ignorant of the very real geological constraints against oil production, or their 'belief' that the magic elixir will arrive just tin time. Anyway, the beliefs of Airline CEO's are besides the point, we are after the majority opinion of the world's geologists, not someone running an airline.

 

Can you please try again, especially considering the world's discovery V consumption rate? thanks.

 

CraigD

You make some very good points and I like some of your definitions. I have one semantic quibble though. You wrote:

 

it refers to net world petroleum extraction, not to a particular oilfield, nation, or region.

 

I would say "It refers to net world petroleum extraction which is often calculated as a result of adding together the peaking trends in particular oilfields, nations, and oil producing regions".

 

Various estimates as to this date – peak oil - have been made. Some state that peak oil has already occurred, some that it will not occur for as long as a century, most that it will occur within the next ten years. IMHO, all these estimates should be considered skeptically, due to the unpredictability of the political factors that can cause peak oil.

I'd rule out political surprises (such as a war in Iran affecting world oil production and prices) because the whole point of this discussion is geological constraints, not political. EG: The geology of oil hasn't changed from when oil was nearing $150 a barrel, but the GFC crashed the demand and so the price dropped. So let's distinguish between 'peak oil' as defined by future historians looking back on the various political and market pricing definitions, and focus on the discussion of when we can most logically predict peak oil occuring due to geological constraints.

 

When we do that, we can see that there is a very clear and present danger of permanently worsening liquid fuel rationing, and it mystifies me that we do not hear "peak oil" as frequently as we hear "global warming" as a reason for reinventing how we design our transport systems, city designs, and agriculture.

 

I enjoyed your comments on electricity inputs into oil production. I have previously pointed out the importance of ERoEI, or Energy Returned over Energy Invested. I said that "If you are after a banana you might pay $4, or $20, or $200 for a banana if you REALLY wanted it, but the one thing you would never pay is 2 bananas" to illustrate that when it costs more oil to produce than the oil you are getting, you pack up your shop and go home.

 

You countered by discussing electricity inputs instead, which is fair enough. To paraphrase, "Yes, but you might pay 2 oranges for a banana", and there are already examples of where that happens. You might even pay 5 oranges if you really want a banana! Hey, it's a free market.

 

But the thing that really bugs me is when some peak oil Denialists say, "WOAH! Just LOOK at all the oil in that there shale oil! Wow, it's like 5 Saudi Arabia's... what are you peak oil guys worried about!?"

 

As you have helpfully defined above — it refers to petroleum extraction – that is, getting liquid crude oil out of the ground – not producing equivalent petroleum products through “unconventional oil production”.

 

All I wanted to highlight is WHY it doesn't refer to alternative oils. Sweet crude oil is far, far cheaper and FASTER to produce than shale oil, and I don't know if shale oil will ever be economical to produce as a liquid fuel because of all the nuclear reactors they'd probably have to build to run the project! That is, you might pay 2 oranges for a banana, but would you really pay 200? Energy isn't free, and so just saying nuclear power could run shale oil production ignores the fact that those nukes have to be paid for at the bowser. And that ain't gonna be pretty!

 

Lastly, “Algaeoleum” may be a niche energy market but the discussions I've seen indicate:

1. It's going to be expensive

2. It's probably going to be far too little too late, and not scale up to the 22 million barrels a day of oil that the USA needs let alone the 86 mbd the world uses

3. Fertilisers and water inputs are also limits on the growth of this energy source and are costs that must be accounted for. I'm not saying they are impossible to overcome, just that other things such as Electric Vehicles may in fact be cheaper for the domestic car market (especially when combined with a quick battery-swap program such as Better Place).

4. So why do liquid fuels have to supply all our transport needs when only 10% of that energy gets to the wheels? Why not electric cars and then save the “Algaeoleum” for the Airlines? It may just keep us flying jets, if we are very, very lucky, but I'm pessimistic that it will scale to 1000 bathtubs a second!

(The amount of oil we burn worldwide!)

 

Regards,

Eclipse