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

[Eclipse Now]

Hey, you rock! Thanks for remembering to post that here.

 

Good to see that this issue is still getting some exposure.

 

If it is 2014, what's your guesstimate as to how bad it will be? Bad, Recession, Very bad Recession, Depression, Greater Depression, Massive Societal and Economic Disruption (akin to a world war with people relocating away from suburban sprawl back into cities or out to farmlands, but without bullets being fired), or an all out nuclear exchange ending in a "Mad Max" event and complete breakdown of civilisation?

 

I think I'm still betting on a Greater Depression, but at least by the time my now 7 & 11 year old kids are in their 30's I think society should have adapted to a largely oil-free world. And that will have been a very interesting journey!

[richard tj]

It's a well known fact that oil production is currently peaking. Unfortuantely, for all you skeptical posters out there, you forgot to factor in population growth coupled with emerging developing countries- ie Chhina & India. Combine Peak oil production with population. gloal economic growth and you have a problem that increases at a far greater rate than you think! Demand will drive oil prices and mean that OPEC will have to rethink production rates. This could imply that peak oil has in fact already been reached.

[Eclipse Now]

And the price is still climbing, even after the GFC! Slowly but surely, where are we heading? $200 a barrel? $300 a barrel? Or will governments start rationing according to the IEA's "Liquid Fuels emergency act?"

[maikeru]

It's a well known fact that oil production is currently peaking. Unfortuantely, for all you skeptical posters out there, you forgot to factor in population growth coupled with emerging developing countries- ie Chhina & India. Combine Peak oil production with population. gloal economic growth and you have a problem that increases at a far greater rate than you think! Demand will drive oil prices and mean that OPEC will have to rethink production rates. This could imply that peak oil has in fact already been reached.

 

How well known is it if it's rarely discussed? I don't believe Peak Oil is mainstream yet. Well-known in science circles, but unknown in mainstream ones where most people reside.

 

The world continues business as usual. Tune in next week for the soap opera As the Oil Burns.

[Eclipse Now]

It is not mainstream in the community yet, but is starting to become mainstream with leaders.

 

UK Task Force on Peak Oil: Shortages by 2015

 

The first bombshell was actually dropped on February 10, when the UK Industry Task Force on Peak Oil and Energy Security issued a report called “The Oil Crunch: A wake-up call for the UK economy.” I only mentioned it in passing at the time, but it was a stern warning that “oil shortages, insecurity of supply and price volatility will destabilise economic, political, and social activity potentially by 2015.”

 

It only made the news because Sir Richard Branson personally endorsed it, but the fact that the task force comprised top UK executives and energy experts lent it enough weight to be rather widely circulated in the press.

 

The British government, including energy minister Lord Hunt, responded by staging a closed-door summit meeting with the taskforce on March 22. As the UK’s Guardian reported, the government intended to develop an action plan to contend with a near-term peak, and to “calm rising fears over peak oil.”

 

Veteran peak oil analyst and taskforce member Jeremy Leggett explained: “Government has gone from the BP position – ‘40 years of supply left, the price mechanism works, no need to worry’ – to ‘crikey’.” He urged the assembly to properly assess the risks of peak oil, and to immediately begin preparing for the end of globalization and an era of oil shortages in the West.

 

According to reports from attendees, the summit yielded some important conclusions:

 

* Peak oil is either here, or close enough.

* Prices will have to go higher as demand outstrips supply.

* Governments will be forced to intervene to maintain critical levels of oil supply, and limit volatility.

* Rationing measures may be unavoidable.

* Electrification of transport must be pursued in order to reduce demand.

* Communities will need to work quickly to reorganize around walking instead of driving, producing food and energy locally instead of importing, and generally try to reduce their need for oil.

 

However, the notion that peak oil will mean the end of economic growth, as I have argued, apparently fell on deaf ears. Still, the very fact that the government has engaged with the peak oil community and formed a parliamentary group to study the issue offers a sliver of hope that, at least in the UK, we’ll have some measure of consciousness about the issue and an idea of what to do about it as we drive off the peak oil cliff.

 

Kuwait Report: Peak by 2014

 

The next was a report that surfaced around March 12. Three authors from the College of Engineering and Petroleum at Kuwait University had applied advanced mathematics to reserve and production data for the top 47 oil producing countries using a multi-cycle Hubbert model, which demonstrated a much better fit to historical data than single-cycle Hubbert Curve analyses.

 

The model estimates the world’s ultimate crude oil production at 2140 billion barrels, with 1161 billion barrels remaining to produce as of the end of 2005. It forecast that world production would peak in 2014 around 79 mbpd. The annual depletion rate of world reserves was estimated to be around 2.1%.

 

The results weren’t really news to the peakists, for they matched up quite well with the models of Colin Campbell, Jean Laherrère and other analysts who have warned about peak oil since 1995. What made this report interesting was that first, it was from Kuwait, and second, it brought a new level of mathematical rigor to the study.

 

The model indicated that non-OPEC production peaked in 2006 at 39.6 mbpd. It forecasts that OPEC production will peak in 2026 at 53 mbpd, up from 31 mbpd in 2005, with the majority of the increase coming from Iraq, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. Then OPEC production is expected to decline to 29 mbpd by 2050.

 

Oxford Report: Reserves Exaggerated by One Third

 

On March 22, another bombshell exploded in the press as former UK chief scientist David King and researchers from Oxford University released a paper claiming that the world’s oil reserves had been “exaggerated by up to a third,” principally by OPEC.

 

Their “objective analysis” showed that conventional oil reserves stand at just 850-900 billion barrels, not the 1,150-1,350 billion barrels that are officially claimed by oil producers and accepted by the politically influenced IEA.

 

They anticipated that demand could outstrip supply by 2014-2015.

 

In a statement that sounded like a direct echo of what peak oil analysts like me have been saying for years, co-author Dr. Oliver Inderwildi remarked, “The belief that alternative fuels such as biofuels could mitigate oil supply shortages and eventually replace fossil fuels is a pie in the sky. Instead of relying on those silver bullet solutions, we have to make better use of the remaining resources by improving efficiency.”

 

Again, it was hardly a revelation. I detailed the “political reserves” additions of OPEC producers in 2007, when I was writing Profit from the Peak. But the fact that it was recognized widely in the press was a marked change from the past.

 

Officials Wake Up To Peak Oil, Part 1 | Energy Bulletin

[Buffy]

...and now the Department of Defense has jumped on the bandwagon...

 

The US military has warned that surplus oil production capacity could disappear within two years and there could be serious shortages by 2015 with a significant economic and political impact.

 

The energy crisis outlined in a Joint Operating Environment report from the US Joint Forces Command, comes as the price of petrol in Britain reaches record levels and the cost of crude is predicted to soon top $100 a barrel.

 

"By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day," says the report, which has a foreword by a senior commander, General James N Mattis.

 

It adds: "While it is difficult to predict precisely what economic, political, and strategic effects such a shortfall might produce, it surely would reduce the prospects for growth in both the developing and developed worlds. Such an economic slowdown would exacerbate other unresolved tensions, push fragile and failing states further down the path toward collapse, and perhaps have serious economic impact on both China and India."

 

The US military says its views cannot be taken as US government policy but admits they are meant to provide the Joint Forces with "an intellectual foundation upon which we will construct the concept to guide out future force developments."

 

...looks like our troops are just a bunch of damned Socialist, Fascist, America-haters...

 

When a thing is done, it's done. Don't look back. Look forward to your next objective, :hihi:

Buffy

[Pyrotex]

It's interesting what the military report does NOT say. If the availability of oil shrinks, then so does our military's ability to wage war or police actions. The insurgents and terrorists and religious fanatics only have to wait 20 or 30 years until we can no longer provide the massive amounts of fuel needed for helicopters, jets, tanks, trucks and air conditioning. The truth is, we cannot fight these wars in the Middle East, or Asia with just whatever weapons our troops can carry on their backs. Unless, of course, we are willing to accept the casualty rates that the British army suffered holding their empire together in the 19th Century.

[CraigD]

It's interesting what the military report does NOT say. If the availability of oil shrinks, then so does our military's ability to wage war or police actions. The insurgents and terrorists and religious fanatics only have to wait 20 or 30 years until we can no longer provide the massive amounts of fuel needed for helicopters, jets, tanks, trucks and air conditioning.

My guess is that this is because US military planners assume a couple of things ...

 

First, that the US military will have first access to the US oil supply. As the US military accounts for about 1% of US oil consumption, the US about 25% of the world oil consumption, this means that, were the US military to claim by force the world supply, the oil should last about 400 times as long as it would for the world as it currently consumes it – an eternity, in terms of military, or nearly any other kind of, planning. (sources: US military energy consumption- facts and figures | Energy Bulletin; Oil consumption by country. Definition, graph and map.)

 

Finally, that, for the US military, there is no real limit to much it can pay for any commodity. This has, as I see it, two major implications ...

 

One, that when peak oil occurs, and oil becomes too expensive for all other consumers, it will not be for the military. Recall that peak oil is not the actual exhaustion of all available petroleum, but the point at which its total production begins to decline. For a small cadre of consumers willing to pay an exorbitant price, oil will be available practically indefinitely.

 

Two, the high cost of alternative energy sources will not be prohibitively high for the military. Already, many US Navy surface vessels and all of its submarines use nuclear power, with smaller classes of ships being designed around nuclear power as existing ships obsolesce and are redesigned and replaced. Classes of vehicles and generators that can’t practically be converted to nuclear could be converted to renewable combustibles, such as biodiesel and jet fuel, that may never be affordable to non-military consumers, or producible in amounts more than a small fraction of current, petroleum-based equivalents.

 

The grim possibility that these assumption will every come to be realized is, I think, far from assured. Historically, the existence of a large permanent military in the US is fairly recent (ca 1950). Constitutionally, Congress can effectively eliminate most of the US military (it’s charged with maintaining a Navy in order to safeguard trade) at essentially any time, though practically, the dismantling of ”the military-industrial complex” (as departing US president Eisenhower put it in 1961) may be far more difficult than a naive reading of the US constitution suggests.

[Eclipse Now]

As an Australian observer (and idealist) of the US, I'd rather see the American military re-branded than shut down. Just think of the U2 video clip "The Saints are coming" which had stealth bombers and the full might of the US military helping out after Katrina.

 

Imagine the military being there to help ensure rations get through to communities isolated in the post-oil era. Imagine the military being there as an uber-FEMA organisation, ready to help the moment another global warming catastrophe strikes. Imagine them assisting with the inevitable relocation of American citizens, and rush-building emergency accommodation as various millions move back from the advancing seas. I hope I'm wrong, but I think that's what it may take to deal with the combined stresses of peak oil and global warming.

[Eclipse Now]

Hi all,

Professor Barry Brook of Adelaide university asked me to write a piece for his blog. This may be one of the clearest articles I’ve ever written on why the USGS is wrong on oil, who the main protagonists are arguing the USGS is wrong, and why we should trust the lifetime field geologists over the economically driven projections of the pencil-nosed accountants who wrote the USGS 2000 report that has filtered through our government agencies and misled the world on our most important resource!

 

Enjoy

 

http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/08/29/peak-oil-discussion/

[CraigD]

Professor Barry Brook of Adelaide university asked me to write a piece for his blog. This may be one of the clearest articles I’ve ever written on …

A nicely written article, as I’ve come to expect on BNC – congratulations and well done! :(

 

It’d be useful if you’d post some starting points for discussion, rather than just a link to the article – a gentle reminder that posts here at hypography should encourage discussion here, not siphon it off to another site, no matter how fine.

 

The only part that stuck an off-key note with my casual reading of it is

 

In 1956 M. King Hubbert

(wiki)

famously stood up at the American Petroleum Institute seminar, and predicted that within 14 or so years American oil would reach its maximum production or ‘peak’ and then begin to decline. Hubbert was laughed off the stage, as the American oil industry had pumped exponentially more oil every year for decades, with no end in site.

 

Yours is the first I’ve seen it claimed that Hubbert was “laughed off the stage” when he presented his now-famous Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels paper at the 3/1956 API meeting. Certainly, many were dismissive of his projections of a ca. 1970 peak in US oil production, but the image of a respected geoscientist invited to present a pre-submitted paper at a trade association meeting being driven from the stage by derisive laughter seems to me implausible. I don’t think it happened, and am unlikely to conclude it did without at least two corroborating contemporary sources. :QuestionM Such a claim, while lending strength to a narrative, can discredit its source. :Exclamati

 

I’m struck, when returning to the peak fossil fuel discussion after some time away, and to Hubbert’s seminal paper, with its emphasis on the importance of replacing fossil fuel consumption with nuclear fuel consumption, and the accuracy of its half-century old predictions about then-future nuclear power technology, and alarmed less by the imminence of fossil fuel production peaks than the nuclear power industry current inadequacy to replace fossil fuel power when these peaks occur.

[maikeru]

Hi all,

Professor Barry Brook of Adelaide university asked me to write a piece for his blog. This may be one of the clearest articles I’ve ever written on why the USGS is wrong on oil, who the main protagonists are arguing the USGS is wrong, and why we should trust the lifetime field geologists over the economically driven projections of the pencil-nosed accountants who wrote the USGS 2000 report that has filtered through our government agencies and misled the world on our most important resource!

 

Enjoy

 

http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/08/29/peak-oil-discussion/

 

Read it, enjoyed it, reminded me of what's to come. Good article, my friend.

[Eclipse Now]

A nicely written article, as I’ve come to expect on BNC – congratulations and well done! :)

 

It’d be useful if you’d post some starting points for discussion, rather than just a link to the article – a gentle reminder that posts here at hypography should encourage discussion here, not siphon it off to another site, no matter how fine.

Apologies!

 

Yours is the first I’ve seen it claimed that Hubbert was “laughed off the stage” when he presented his now-famous Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels paper at the 3/1956 API meeting. Certainly, many were dismissive of his projections of a ca. 1970 peak in US oil production, but the image of a respected geoscientist invited to present a pre-submitted paper at a trade association meeting being driven from the stage by derisive laughter seems to me implausible. I don’t think it happened, and am unlikely to conclude it did without at least two corroborating contemporary sources. ;) Such a claim, while lending strength to a narrative, can discredit its source.

Yes, in re-reading it that language was a bit more colourful than I intended. Hmm, I might have to clarify that "very few people took him seriously" (from End of Suburbia in 2004) had somehow grown to "laughed off the stage" in my memory. Human memories hey? I'm only 43! I'm too young for "senior's moments". :(

 

One thing I wanted to ask: Anyone ever watch "Crude, the incredible journey of oil" by the ABC's science unit?

 

http://www.abc.net.au/science/crude/

 

Part 2 covers peak oil, and at about 22 minutes in has one of the most staggering illustrations I've ever seen of the sheer volumes of oil we consume each year. It meant a lot to me, being a Sydney-sider. :D You can watch it free online at the link above, but it was worth seeing on my TV screen. Our local public library has a copy for hire. Check yours, as it is an interesting documentary.

[Eclipse Now]

This is a fairly major announcement by the US military!

 

“By 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10 million barrels per day,” says the report, which has a foreword by a senior commander, General James N Mattis.

 

This is the US military saying world output could have dropped by about an 8th in just 5 years. This is "Greater Depression" language.

 

I should have gone bush.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/apr/11/peak-oil-production-supply