How Realistic is EIA's US Domestic Oil Supply and Demand Forecast?
Posted by Gail the Actuary on April 7, 2008 - 10:05am
I was invited to a blogger's conference call on April 1, hosted by the American Petroleum Institute (API). We were told that each blogger would be allowed to ask one question of Peter Robertson, Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Chevron Corporation. The material we were provided in advance was the written statement of Mr. Robertson, prepared for the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. It included a number of charts, including this one:
My question was, "How realistic is EIA's Chart 5 scenario? If you look at Chart 5, it looks like there is no need to conserve."
This was the discussion:
03:35 MS. TVERBERG: I was looking at the charts that you sent out earlier today with various projections of things. If you look at Chart 5: U.S. Domestic Oil Supply and Demand, if you look at it, it basically says that including imports, the total amount of oil available will continue to go up through 2025, and that the amount that the U.S. will produce including enhanced oil recovery and new discoveries will go up. I mean, this pretty much gives the view that you don’t need to conserve because there’s plenty of oil that’s going to be available. How realistic do you think this scenario that the EIA has put together is?
04:21 MR. ROBERTSON: Well, I mean, you know, of course this doesn’t – this is the U.S. So –
MS. TVERBERG: Well, this is the U.S., right.
04:28 MR. ROBERTSON: This is the U.S. so this says that we’re going to have to import, you know, about the same amount of oil, according to this case and the next 20 years, and the real problem is, you know, is that available to be imported? I mean, everybody else in the world is obviously competing for that 11.5 million barrels as well. So you know, what is going to happen to prices during this period and how tight is the rest of the world going to be?
So I mean, I think the point of this chart was really to make a point about U.S. We need – there are existing crude and – this is oil now, this is not gas, so this is just what’s going to be needed – oil, this is really almost a transportation fuel chart because the main thing that oil is used for –, not the only thing, but the main thing it’s used for is transportation fuels. And so far, we have difficulty substituting something for transportation fuels.
So this is sort of an oil chart, but what it says is that look how important our existing oil production is in the United States and look how it declines unless we do additional exploration and we get some new technology and we, you know, we get some areas where we can explore and all of these things, because the biofuels – and the biofuels part of this chart is what – you know, is the – what happened in the energy bill last year, so that’s – and you can see the impact of that. It’s still – it’s important, but it’s still not going to change the position.
05:50 So even after all this, even if we do – if we’re able to keep the existing crude production flat – which we haven’t done for many, many, many years – you know, as you guys know where it was nine million barrels a day about 20 years ago, now we’re about five million barrels a day in the U.S. You know, and that – that sort of trend line is besides a blip here, probably from the Gulf of Mexico. You know, the trend line has sort of been down for a long time. So we’re going to have hard work just keeping this flat. It says that, you know, we’re still going to have to import a lot of oil, and that’s the problem. And the opportunity is to shrink that amount of oil that we import, because we are going to be competing with the rest of the world for it, and who knows what the price of it will be.
John Felmy, API's Chief Economist, then pointed out what is easy to miss. EIA's top line is really an estimate of demand. Demand is estimated based on an economic model that includes the desired level of economic growth together with a growth in efficiency equal to what it has been in the past -- about 1.6% per year, plus the expected impact of the new fuel economy requirements from the 2007 legislation. Thus, Chart 5 does have some efficiency growth built into it, but even including the efficiency gains, it is indicating an increase in expected oil consumption.
EIA determines expected imports by subtracting its estimate of the amount of oil the US will produce from its estimate of future demand. This produces the 11.5 million barrels a day of oil imports it shows as expected for 2025. The EIA makes the assumption that someone, somewhere, will have oil available to export, when it is needed.
I never really got an answer regarding how realistic Mr. Robertson thought this scenario was. Clearly he thought the forecast for US oil production was a stretch, and import costs would be high. Mr. Robertson's prepared charts did not include EIA's estimates of the future cost of oil, but the EIA 2008 Energy Outlook Report shows them to be as follows:
It sounded like neither Mr. Robertson nor Mr. Felmy had much confidence in these cost estimates.
Conference Call Information
There were a total of six bloggers on the conference call:
Margot Gerritsen - Smart Energy
Dave Schuler - Outside the Beltway
Geoff Styles - Energy Outlook
Gail Tverberg - The Oil Drum
Brian Westenhaus - New Energy and Fuel
Carter Wood - Shopfloor.org
In additional there as Peter Robertson, from Chevron; John Felmy, chief economist at API, and Jane Van Ryan, host from API. Ms. Ryan has tried recently inviting more liberal bloggers, but has not succeeded in getting any to participate.
The transcript of the call can be found here. The audio version of the call can be found here.
Other Questions
Carter Wood said that the low dollar had been a boon to companies doing exports, and wondered what Chevon's position was on the level of the dollar. Mr. Robertson said that Chevron wanted the dollar higher, so that oil wouldn't be so expensive for customers.
Geoff Styles wondered if there were any areas of agreement, where the industry and government might work together. Mr. Robertson indicated improved energy efficiency was one such area. Another was allowing more drilling in restricted areas. A third was raising people's view of the industry so that they view it as an important industry, doing high tech things, so that young people will be attracted to studying to be geologists and engineers.
Margot Gerritsen commented on the current lack of funding by the Department of Energy on oil and gas projects of all kinds, such as enhanced oil recovery and research on improved methods for unconventional gas and oil recovery. Mr. Robertson said that the industry was paying a lot of money in royalties and fees, and that at least a little of that is set aside for research under the recent energy bill. Ms.Gerritsen observed that fashions in funding change, and now the money is going to carbon sequestration and renewable fuels.
Brain Westenhaus asked about how decisions were made for allocating capital among the various different choices, such as renewables, enhanced oil recovery and new drilling. Mr. Robertson said that they evaluate and are involved with a lot of different projects. Historically, oil has had the best return for stockholders. Renewables are mostly not too far along, are expensive for the purchaser, and hard to scale up. It is often difficult to get permitting for oil and gas processing facilities in the United States. This can force the company to build facilities overseas instead.
Changing the Conventional Wisdom
In Mr. Robetson's prepared statement, he closes with a section he calls "Changing the Conventional Wisdom", in which he lays out what action steps he thinks are necessary. This is a shortened version of those steps.
First, we need to value energy as a precious resource. Energy efficiency is the most immediate and important action that each of us can take to contribute to rising energy prices. The United States must become a nation of energy savers.
Second, I would urge you to be sensitive to the issue of scale and timeframe. I hope that I have been able to demonstrate Chevron’s commitment to the development of alternative sources of energy. This is an ambitious undertaking and one that we are embracing. But the scale of the energy system means that despite our combined efforts, renewables will meet less than 10 percent of demand in 2030, according to EIA estimates. We must continue to bring traditional energy supplies to market, even as we are developing alternatives sources of energy.
Third, on the supply side, we need your help to open up the 85 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf that is now off limits to environmentally responsible oil and gas exploration and development. We cannot expect other countries to expand their resource development to meet America’s needs when our government limits development at home.
Finally, I would encourage careful evaluation of policies that can lead to unintended consequences and create inefficiencies in the gasoline supply system. Today we have 17 “boutique” fuel requirements across the country, requiring us to blend unique gasoline products for different states and different localities. More requirements on fuels are being added through renewable fuel mandates and proposed climate policies.
Comments
Whether or not Mr. Robertson and Chevron believe in peak oil, I think Mr. Robertson approaches are reasonable ones. I don't think that anyone would disagree with energy efficiency. It is hard to see how alternative fuels will scale up in a short time frame, and nearly everyone can agree that having a having too many fuel types is a problem.
I personally think that drilling at home is a far better solution than pointing fingers at someone overseas, and accusing them of not pumping as much oil as they are able to. I think blaming the National Oil Companies is all too easy a solution, and I am glad Chevron did not take this route.
I know many people are opposed to opening up the outer continental shelf to drilling. With the long lead times involved, it will take many years - quite possibly ten - before any oil can be produced, and many years after that before all of the oil is removed. As a comparison, it become economically attractive to drill in the North Sea in the mid-1970s, and we are still producing oil and gas there now.
I know a lot of people think we should save this oil and gas for future generations, but it seems to me that producing this oil very much depends on having the required infrastructure in place - things like roads, pipelines, the electrical grid, trained engineers, and companies set up to handle all of the logistics involved. It seems to me that if we wait too long, we may never be able to produce this oil and natural gas. I doubt that the quantity makes a difference from a climate change point of view.
If we wait too long, the quantities of oil and gas in pipelines will drop below the minimum operating level, or pipelines will fall into disrepair, so they cannot be used. Road surfaces may not be adequately maintained to bring necessary equipment to desired locations. Equipment such as helicopters needed for production may no longer by available. Trained personnel may be hard to find. We need to be planning thirty or more years ahead, and things can change a lot in that time.
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In a footnote (pg 82) in the "EIA's Annual Energy Outlook for 1998(pdf)", they acknowledged their oil supply estimates were based on "nontechnical considerations that support domestic supply growth to the levels necessary to meet projected demand levels". Basically that that Supply was estimated to grow enough to match the Demand estimates!
Are you saying they are back to that reverse cornucopia engineering???
I think it is "never left it". The assumption is made that OPEC with all their (fake) reserves will come up with the supply somewhere.
If this is true, then the EIA appears to be making a gross error as the decreasing EROI on future energy, which implies usable energy will be much lower than produced energy, cannot have been accounted for by the modestly increased production shown.
If the EIA assumes the total available amount is infinite, there is still plenty, no matter how low the EROI.
There is no evidence the EIA, IEA, CERA, Woods Mackenzie, IHS Energy, or any of the other major energy forecasting agencies have ever incorporated the concept of net energy (or limits to non-energy inputs) into their forecasts. There is a SERIOUS lack of understanding of the interdependency of the main fossil fuels, and the increasing energy costs of each. (e.g. if natural gas is the main energy input into oil production, what happens to oil production when there are natural gas shortages or price spikes, in ANY O/G producing region?? Just like we have discovered systemic risk in the financial sector, there is systemic risk in the fossil fuels sector, as increasing amounts of electricity, natural gas, and liquid fuels are all required to find and deliver the other two.
Corporations have really not yet begun to look at how resource limitations to growth will impact the economic assumptions underlying the existing paradigm, (with the tiny exception of carbon trading). I don't mean to be overly critical of the energy industry because we are all guilty - but the ecological concepts of limits, externalities and biophysical economics are going to explode into public awareness first in the energy sector.
How can this be?
From my graduate economics textbook:
Because the 'rules' that governed the first half of oil were 'made up' under conditions of plenty, and the same 'formulas' will not work when basic goods become more scarce. But economics wasn't designed with its own demise built in - there is no natural transition to 'something else' built into the discipline - only continued growth and utility for more. The practitioners of modern Walrasian welfare economics just assume that resource shortages will be met by technology and new substitutes. A graph of US oil production shows pretty clearly that price and technology did little to change the production profile, and we are more dependent than ever on liquid fuel to supply basic goods.
Every major corporation and government entity has high level and well paid economists repeating the false rationales underpinning modern economics - which even if you ignore the now countless examples disproving the demand side assumptions of humans as rational actors, you are still left with basing economic decisions on fiat money, which is ultimately an abstraction that has worth because we say it does. Economists are not trained in biophysical principles. I sense that just now, finally, some of them are starting to scratch their heads wondering where all these resource needs for water, natural gas, oil, food, etc are going to come from - but concepts like net energy, sadly, will likely remain in obscurity/academia until they can be analyzed in the rear view mirror, e.g. history.
Here is a recent Scientific American article with an interesting take on the false foundations of neoclassical economics, "The Economist Has No Clothes
Obviously a state of fright is due to emerge when Black Swan economics comes to the fore.
I imagine somthing like (with a nod to YPM):
"Humphrey, why did our estimate of production costs for coal to 2030 show a flat or declining cost when in reality we are paying five times that amount to get the coal out of the ground and keep our economy running?"
'Well that's because our model was -in a word- "Bolllocks"'
"I see, so what's plan 'B'?"
"May I recommend the Carribean?"
"You don't think Hampshire?"
"No Prime Minister..."
Nick.
"The strategy the economists used was as simple as it was absurd—they substituted economic variables for physical ones. Utility (a measure of economic well-being) took the place of energy; the sum of utility and expenditure replaced potential and kinetic energy. A number of well-known mathematicians and physicists told the economists that there was absolutely no basis for making these substitutions. But the economists ignored such criticisms and proceeded to claim that they had transformed their field of study into a rigorously mathematical scientific discipline."
Oh my, what medieval garbage.
There's more of that what Nate already posted above:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3129#comment-254607
Modern market fundamentalist mainstream economic theory does not attempt to reconcile for the fact that the theory is not physics or reality based.
The economists of aforementioned inclination really do believe that markets will 'solve all' - so to speak. In this sense they are acting on faith not scientific reason.
Of course, there are economists thinking long and hard about this issue, but they are neither market fundamentalists in the common sens of the word nor mainstream.
Forget economists... go with what actuaries say; actuaries use REAL math (they have to... or else they'd be out of a REAL job).
LOL! I think we do tend to look closer at what the numbers really say, though.
Meanwhile nature continues to fight back at the ever increasing onslaught of human population growth.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/04/07/brazil.dengue/index.html
And somewhere on the edge of the Mongolian Desert in a little lab a group of rougue scientist has just read the latest posts on TOD and have decided to speed up their research efforts to gave nature a little help. They have seen the writing on the wall and have realized that the world can no longer tolerate the western civilization. They have embarked on the only course for salvation, engineering lethal organisms for quick deployment into major western cities. Yeah, it may be science fiction, but not much more so than trying to maintain BAU by drilling for oil.
Actually, every time I have looked at our 24 hour site statistics, there is always ONE IP addy near Ulan Bator, Mongolia...perhaps it is said rogue scientist...;-)
The EIA 2 year price estimates since 2002 were off by 38% to 60%.
Top five net oil exports (EIA for 2005 & 2006, my estimate for 2007, Total Liquids):
2005: 23.5 mbpd
2006: 22.7
2007: 21.7 (Est.)
This is an average decline of 900,000 bpd per year. These net export declines tend to be approximately linear, i.e., approximately a fixed volume per year, which is an accelerating decline rate. In any case, if we divide 23.5 by 0.9, we get 26 years, which puts the top five at zero in 2031, which is also the middle case in the Khebab/Brown paper on the top five.
Our middle case is that it will take all of the net oil exports from Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway, Iran and the UAE in 2016 to meet current US net oil import demand.
My recurring question for the EIA, API, ExxonMobil, et al:
Texas peaked in 1972, and we have seen a long term decline rate of -4%year. The North Sea peaked in 1999, and we have seen a decline rate of -4.5%/year (C+C in both cases). Both regions were developed by private companies, using the best available technology, with virtually no restrictions on drilling. If oil companies can't reverse the long term declines in these two regions, why would they be able to reverse the conventional declines anywhere in the world? Note that oil prices went up about ten-fold from 1972 to 1980, and oil prices went up about four-fold from 1999 to 2007.
In post peak conventional regions, it appears that Increased Drilling + Higher Oil Prices = Lower Crude Oil Production
BTW, some estimates of combined net exports from Venezuela and Canada--the two largest sources of proven nonconventional oil in the Western Hemisphere--show a decline in net exports from December, 2006 to December, 2007.
WT -- as others have noted in response to this discussion, it seems that some lipservice is paid to conservation and developing alternative energy sources, but the focus on new domestic drilling seems to be touted as the vital element of any energy plan.
Is that a fair assessment of the main discussion that Gail participated in?
Does that seem to be a fair assessment of the energy policy we need to implement -- more domestic drilling everywhere we can, and then development of alternative energy sources, alternative transportation options, and other conservation efforts?
I myself think that we need to do everything possible at once, but special priority must be given to conservation, as we will not be able to develop new oil and gas resources fast enough to cope with a sudden crisi, and will not even be able to cope with declining imports without a great deal of conservation.
Finally, I think that conservation fits in well with addressing the parallel problem of Global climate Change -- even better than adding new alternative sources and better than more drilling.
Conservation is the closest thing to a silver bullet that we have, and yet is the least emphasized in too many discussions.
Chevron really is talking about conservation, and I think conservation has to be a major part of whatever combination of things we decide to do.
One of the points I was trying to make is that if governments / oil corporations continue to put out this nonsense, no one will get the idea that conservation is really needed.
Conservation can only be applied to domestic energy supplies. If we conserve by cutting back on only imports, they just be consumed somewhere else, such as China and India.
It would make sense to using existing imports to change the infrastructure (ie more rail, more nuclear, more energy efficient homes and businesses). However there is a catch-22. If the US came out tommorow and announced it was starting a mitigation program for depleting energy resources, so will the rest of the world. With in weeks, every energy exporter (oil, coal, uranium, natural gas) would announce drastic production cuts as exporters choose to conserve there remaining reserves, thus the world loses its ability to begin mitigation programs. Should such a scenerio play out, it would almost certainly cause another world war. If an industrialed power faces a staving population, it doesn't have very much to lose by going to war to obtain resources for its survival.
I think that conservation just makes the available oil go farther. 100% of what is available will be used regardless.
I think this may even be true for coal, although it isn't as portable. If we don't build coal-fired electric plants, someone overseas will. I understand our coal exports are up this year. I'm not saying that I think that this is right--just that that is the way it is.
Conservation does more than make the oil go farther. Rather than tell people to conserve because we are running out, if we ground behavioural change in ultimately selfish (Darwinian) rationales, that we can be HAPPIER and healthier by using less energy, then it makes our society (or whosever CHOOSES an active powerdown strategy) more resilient once/if there are forced reductions in supply. Yes, that means the Chinese will use a greater % of the remaining oil. But a) we will be better off having restructured so that we are not as dependent on liquid fuels and b)if we're successful China might look to us as a role model. They certainly have so far..."To Get Rich is Glorious..",etc.
Hmmm. I'm trying to imagine any circumstance that would prevent humanity from transferring all the available carbon in the ground into the atmosphere.
If we reduce the demand that keeps the price lower... sustaining consumption.
If we raise the price that lowers the demand... but creates vested interests (governments with tax revenues) that will support extraction and use.
If we actually face industrial or civillizational collapse... global depression... that might temporarally slow the transfer from ground to atmosphere.... but with the massive reduction in demand, oil/coal/gas prices will plunge, supporting eventual carbon based economic recovery.
It's hard to imagine how we'd reach a condition where there were huge carbon pools in the ground that we did not use to extract energy from and dump into the air. Poverty is too cruel. Energy is too attractive. Global warming a problem of the commons, not of the individual country or person.
It seems like a true Malthusian dilemma.... we must eat and reproduce up to the limits of the system. Jared Diamond likes to point to some island cultures that managed to self limit. But these were small face to face cultures by and large. There would have to be a kind of global solidarity that said "we recognize that there is a giant "food" source in the ground (fossil fuels), and that if we eat it (extract its energy) and dump it into the air, we all die.
But that fossil fuel will always sit there (if we do not consume it) tempting nations with the energy riches it offers. Is humankind capable of dieting? Probably not unless everyone agrees to the same diet, and everyone feels that his/her nation has an equal chance at life and comfort. Otherwise it will just be a mad rat scramble to the top of the jar, everyone stepping over everyone to get the last bits of energy.
Maybe if alternative energy systems could actually be cheaper we could remove the incentive to extract every last bit of fossil fuel and dump it into the atmosphere.... and maybe that will get easier to do as we slide down the slope of oil production and costs increase.
Hi Tech,
This is true, and yet seems a little sad (once I read it over):
re: "It would make sense to using existing imports to change the infrastructure (ie more rail, more nuclear, more energy efficient homes and businesses)."
If we (US) use the imports for infrastructure change without telling exporters why we are doing so...I don't know, just sad, really. They (like everyone) deserves the truth.
There is the option to begin these changes and offer to...share any insights or technology or whatever (methods? principles?) - then at least there's a little balm for the conscience.
re: "If the US came out tomorrow and announced it was starting a mitigation program for depleting energy resources, so will the rest of the world."
As well it should - the rest of the world should also begin mitigation.
I'm not so sure your summary really describes the situation.
We have the overwhelming dominance - (can someone characterize it in quantitative terms? Or, am I mistaken in what I say?) - of the multinational corporations. AKA "Global-ization" - (as it is so benignly termed).
These multinationals are really non-state - or, I should say - *"supra-state"*, actors.
They are the ones who have to "lose" or "change" if there is to be meaningful "re-localization".
They could also (in theory) decide to change ahead of time - ahead of being forced to, and/or participating in and/or being victimized by - the crash.
Likewise,
re: "With in weeks, every energy exporter (oil, coal, uranium, natural gas) would announce drastic production cuts as exporters choose to conserve there remaining reserves, thus the world loses its ability to begin mitigation programs."
A couple of points:
1) What about this: Let's assume every energy exporter already knows the score.
Don't you think this is a possibility? i.e., the entities/persons closest to the scene of the energy businesses know the score.
And they are not making these drastic cuts (intentionally) now. Are they?
2) The same logic of mitigation fairness or ethics would hold for exporters - i.e., they *should* use resources to mitigate, while at the same time helping the rest of the world mitigate.
re: "If an industrialized power faces a staving population, it doesn't have very much to lose by going to war to obtain resources for its survival."
Didn't Steiglitz's book show that the energy (if we can equate it in some rough way to money) cost of the US invasion of Iraq cost more than the gained control of oil?
(Or, again, am I mistaken about this?)
The opposite is true - the industrialized power has very much to lose.
Which doesn't mean it won't make the attempt.
But it does mean that the logic of the situation does not support the attempt.
Conservation can only be applied to domestic energy supplies. If we conserve by cutting back on only imports, they just be consumed somewhere else, such as China and India.
If we banned imports from China and India we would give them the incentive to do a lot more conserving.
Anytime conservation is discussed, one things needs to be first and foremost - population growth. If it doesn't stop, conservation is futile. If it reserves, it becomes a great conservation in itself. United States population in 1970 - 200 million. United States population today. 304 million. United States population in 2050 - projected to be 450 million.
Conservation can only be applied to domestic energy supplies. If we conserve by cutting back on only imports, they just be consumed somewhere else, such as China and India.
If we banned imports from China and India and Mexico we would give them the incentive to do a lot more conserving. Imports would also include people. Some people would give a knee-jerk reaction that this policy would be an economic disaster. Let's try it first and see. I think that America having to make stuff again would be quite beneficial. And I think workers would benefit most of all.
Anytime conservation is discussed, one thing needs to be first and foremost - population growth. If it doesn't stop, conservation is wasted. If it reverses, it becomes a great conservation in itself. United States population in 1970 - 200 million. United States population today. 304 million. United States population in 2050 - projected to be 450 million.
I agree conservation should be the first step in reducing energy needs, if you can live as well using less energy, what is the downside? I had hoped the Minnesota CO2 reduction legislation passed recently would give a major boost to conservation programs but from a building codes standpoint, I see no efficiency improvements for the foreseeable future. This a great opportunity lost im my opinion.
Seems the only viable option at this point is electrification of transportation. The efficiency improvements range from 100 mpg to 1000 mpg depending on the technology.
Right on. But it better be one frantic transition that includes conversion kits to rip the engines out of old cars and replace them with electric motors and batteries.
Changing over a transportation infrastructure is no easy task, not by any means.
I third that sentiment. Nuclear electric is the way to go.
Or millions of noisy windmills on our roofs if you must have them.
Whatever it takes, out with gas tanks, in with batteries.
I'd love to fill my Silverado with ion syrup.
So you favor drilling the outer continental shelf, do you? What about ANWR? You favor more pipelines, roads, compressor stations, etc, uglifying the landscape? How about drilling in Congressionally designated Wilderness Areas? How would you like a pumpjack in your own front yard? A compressor next door? Sheesh Gail, I just lost a lot of respect for your opinion.. :(
If it means a soft crash into a new post carbon era, then yes. We can use that energy to set up the next era calmly with less disruption to society. They question you need to ask yourself is would you rather see a nastly crash where you, your family and your neighbours are freezing to death, starving, or fighting over bits of food.
I don't know about the particulars of ANWR - what exactly are the issues. Is the expected EROEI greater than 1.0, once all of the infrastructure that would be required is considered? What are the real environmental issues?
I think it is likely that many of the people in the world today will either starve or freeze to death. We need to weigh the benefits against the costs - environmental and otherwise.
I agree. And I also think that the more frantic the efforts to maintain BAU (such as drilling the outer shelves) for just a few years more, the harder the crash is going to be. Investing in infrastructure in order to extract those few remaining hundreds of millions of barrels is self-defeating. That infrastructure is going to be nothing but rusting junk in the future. Spending $$$ on it now is futile. The $$$ could be much better spent on something useful.
I live in a region where a declining natural gas deposit is being exploited for all it's worth. Unlike most of the rest of the nation, property values are increasing here. But the boom won't last. The heyday of the basin was in the 1950s & '60s. As a sign of the decline compressor stations are going up everywhere. They're noisy and the industry has no qualms about putting them right next to where people live. Court cases are invariably ruled against the land owners. Roads & pipelines run everywhere. The natural beauty of the entire region is ruined by extractive activity. The irony is that I heat with wood. I don't care how much oil is under ANWR; I DON'T want to see it drilled, period. And I don't want to see rigs lining the edge of the continental shelves. They're ugly, they're prone to spills. It seems to me that you value BAU above all else.
And I'll tell you something else. My wife is a data analyst for Williams Field Service. When they do their "close out" at the end of the month, 20 to 30% of the meters have been malfunctioning. Cows rub against them, people steal the PV panels, batteries run down, meters are vandalized (one was recently pipe bombed), techs don't set them right, etc. During close out, analysts "make up" data for the malfunctioning meters, based on past mean data. They have to; it's their job. The point is that a good percentage (up to 1/3) of the data you are so fond of is bogus. Garbage in, garbage out. If you trust the data industry reports, and make projections based on it, you're just wasting your time.
I'm glad the meter readers are at least trying to make an estimate. That is about all that we can ask.
With respect to drilling in the outer continental shelf, I guess what I am saying is that we really don't have a choice between now and later. It is now or never. If never is the choice, it makes the downslope even worse than it would be otherwise.
I disagree. The longer the plunge over the precipice is postponed, the steeper the downslope is going to be. To enter into precipitant decline today would make it more of a slide than a freefall plunge. My real objection, tho, is that the more reduced carbon remains in the ground, the less severe climate change will be and the better chance ecosystems will have of adapting rather than collapsing. It should be never, not now.
Ditto
I have recently come to the conclusion that the only organizations in the world engaged in reasonable energy policy are the National Oil Companies (NOCs). As everyone on TOD probably recognizes, the consequence of increased investment in oil production and use of our last easily accessed in ground resources will be a slight increase in maximal oil production and a much more rapid drop (assuming constant reserves). Some graphs:
http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2005/11/can-we-delay-peak-by-upping-ext...
Leaving these resources in ground for later use, if necessary, will flatten the curve. What part of maintaining BAU while initiating a much steeper decline seems sane?
Further, if the 99% of climate scientists who believe global warming is real and dangerous are correct, we will done what we can to limit this threat. See arguments for a supply side solution to global warming:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3763
We are not victims but our children will be.
I think we should shift all energy resource development to alternatives now. We need to shift away from oil dependency with all available means.
I would also contend that the continental oil shelves will probably not add too much new oil. The dispersive discovery model suggests that we have simply run out of new places to find oil. In other words, we would have known if substantial deposits are in the waiting based on probing on a statistical basis.
This is obviously false, Gail. You seem to be assuming a crash of crashes, a la Kunstler, but even I don't assume the world will never recover from whatever depths we fall to. We may end up back in the 1800's for a while, but we will eventually get back to the 21st century and go beyond.It is just a matter of when. Those people in that time will need resources. It would be a good idea to husband some of them.
Cheers
DD, four hurricanes, Ivan, Dennis, Katrina and Rita plowed through the largest offshore oil field in the world in just two years and not one drop was spilled, so your assessment of "prone to spills" is just not correct. Complete platforms were uprooted and washed away...found adrift days later... without spills. Far more oil is dumped into the ocean from washing out the bilges of tankers than from spills from offshore wells. There was a time when safety shut off valves were not installed in offshore wells but those days are gone forever.
That being said it simply don't matter what you want, when oil is $200 or $300 a barrel and higher, when gasoline cost $10 a gallon if you can find any, the people of America will DEMAND that ANWR be drilled, and the politicians will listen to them or be voted out of office. People will demand that all the offshore oil possible oil fields be opened and the government will listen to their demands. People will demand nuclear power and they will get it. And your objections will be nothing more than pissing into the wind.
I am not saying I am for or against drilling in ANWR or offshore, I am saying that my opinion simply will make no difference whatsoever and neither will yours or Gail's. And the idea that you or Gail can propose something that will save the world is absurd. What you should do is prepare yourself and your family for the coming catastrophe.....as best you can. At least that is something you CAN do that will make a difference, for you and your family but not for the whole world.
Railing about ANWR and offshore drilling may be popular today but in ten years it will get you nothing but sticks and stones thrown in your direction. Environmentalism is a little like philanthropy. It comes easy if you have wealth and a full stomach but when jobs start disappearing by the millions per week and people start starving, environmentalists will be few and far between.
Ron Patterson
Agreed, nicely put Ron.
very well said Ron, and reluctantly I must agree ... this is how we are assembled
These are delusions people. There is no vast reserve lurking offshore or any other desolated place, as the dispersive discovery model shows. You can believe in wishes or you can believe in statistics.
I recall all too well oil from a leaking Pemex platform washing ashore on South Padre Island. Perhaps safety shutoff valves are more reliable today than in the past but that can change when declining returns on investments (EROI if you will) motivate cutbacks on component quality and maintainence. If environmentalism goes out the window, as you say it will in the coming economic environment, who's to insist that safety shutoff valves and other spill preventative equipment will continue to be installed?
I know. It doesn't keep me from objecting anyhow.
The world doesn't need saving. The collision of a Mars sized bolide that tore loose the moon didn't even bust up the Ocean Planet. Whatever happened at the end-Permian couldn't even wipe the biotic slate clean. I'd like to "save" some of the current biodiversity and my opinions are primarily based on that mandate. But the best way to preserve biodiversity is via the ecocidal ape's prompt extinction. I'd like for at least my kids and grandkid to live out their natural lives. After that, I could care less.
My position gets sticks and stones thrown at me now. Especially in this redneck region where I live. I iust don't care.
I tell people that I am against drilling in areas currently off limits because I think we should save it for our children. In face to face converstaions,a few people have agreed with me and no one has argued against my thinking. I tell them that our generation has proven so wasteful that we do not deserve more. The image of the overweight American driving a 12 mpg vehicle to the corner store comes to mind.
We can bring renewables on faster than nuclear. But I do think that nuclear will certainly be part of the picture.
Overall, I think there's going to be a huge scramble for energy of all kinds. Though I don't think many here feel that ANWAR and the outer continental shelf will do much more than buy us a little time. I just think we need to keep in mind that any solution to this problem will be built on the back of nuclear, solar, wind, and other renewables plus an electrified transportation system. If we have any chance of keeping order in tact we'll need to conserve as well. I do like Simmons telecommuting proposal. Should work for certain jobs.
One point to make, I think less environmentalists will be starving. We're the ones who already have gardens, seeds, non chemical local farms, and efficient transport.
Cheers.
Amen Ron, This is the theme I have believed for some time. Rhetoric is easy but when it is your ox being gored attitudes change. Look at the dismal failure Kyoto is. Rhetoric vs. action.
Look also at the polls conducted in the San Francisco bay area ( not exactly redneck country) in Dec of 2000 and March of 2001. Same Question, same number of respondents. Different answers!
Question- Are you in favor of expanding nuclear power for electricity production?
Results- Dec. 23% for expansion.
March 57% for expansion
Why? They were two months into the blackouts. As Charles Colson ( Nixon era) had on his wall, "When you've got em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow". Good luck at logically moving your agenda when the masses are restless.
Same with global warming, short of societal breakdown, if it is a positive eroi hydrocarbon, we will use it until it is gone, period. This is not doomerism, it is reality.
"I think it is likely that many of the people in the world today will either starve or freeze to death." "I agree."
"The natural beauty of the entire region is ruined by extractive activity. The irony is that I heat with wood. I don't care how much oil is under ANWR; I DON'T want to see it drilled, period."
Incredible. Absolutely incredible.
Do you seriously believe that in a future world so far gone that you expect many to "starve and freeze to death", that anyone will have the resources to enjoy, or even care about, an airy yuppie conceit like the "natural beauty" of an insignificant, bleak, frozen, remote coastal plain in Alaska that almost no one can afford to visit even today, when we still have relatively cheap fuel and relatively good social order? Who will have the resources to give the proverbial rat's behind about the US coastal tourist "industry" and the dead-end garbage mcjobs it currently "provides", when there will be hardly any tourists? And do you really expect to magically be able to enjoy the "natural beauty" of your own area, wherever it is, in splendid isolation, with no interference from migration and social disorder? Who are you kidding? Oh, and that wood you burn is there only because most people have been able to use fossil fuel instead, else it would all have been gone long before you were even born.
In the real world, people will do as best they can, which may prove to be rather badly. That probably means they will use up whatever hydrocarbons turn out to be accessible, whether James Hansen likes it or not. Cuba will drill off the Florida coast whether the Florida tourist "industry" likes it or not. ANWR, the Continental Shelf, and so on, will likely be mined or drilled as well. Everyone will make pious noises, but very few will actually commit suicide in the name of vague abstractions like "global warming" or the alleged "natural beauty" of remote places they can never see.
Deal with it: the world mostly muddles along. The information in these pages may or may not help it muddle along a little better. But the notion of a global 'we' diving into a grandiose (and impoverishing) social-engineering project, as if the world were a giant canvas for USSR-style Socialist Realist art, is merely a fantasy indulged in by professors who have melded with their ivory towers. And projects like that almost always come to a bad end in any event.
Oh, and for those who think we ought magically to live in a pristine world with next to no human impact, the time to have acted was probably when the population hit 500 million. Or maybe 100 million or even fewer. But it's waaaay too late now.
PaulS writes:
Beautifully put. For tragic realism, you can't beat the best of the TOD's bloggers.
No.
Not true. Most of the wood I burn is Siberian elm & Russian olive (who won the Cold War, anyway?) that is <10 yrs old, grown on my paid for property. I cut it fairly young so I don't have to split it, and some genets I've cut >once over the years.
Agreed.
PaulS, you DO have a way with words! :)
I've said several times in here that K for humans sans fossil fuel inputs is in the vicinity of .5 billion. Again we agree.
What ought to be & what one expects to happen aren't always the same.
I guess this is the typical anthropocentric view. If humans can't enjoy it, it's worth nothing.
Many people don't understand that you can preserve nature for natures sake.
But how should you make money with that attitude, eh.
Of course, it is unrealistic to think that we will spare a single spot on the map, if its exploitation can yield a minimal profit, but many things that are proposed here on TOD are just as unrealistic, though that doesn't make them any less desirable.
Practically by definition. Worth is an anthropocentric notion to begin with; you can't take it out of the context of intelligent lifeforms or there is nothing left capable of comprehension and the notion becomes meaningless.
This quote clearly betrays that it is you who places worth on ANWR because of your philosphy on preserving nature.
If humans were the only intelligent beings on this planet, you might be correct, but this assumption is hardly the truth, so I didn't take the word "worth" out of the context of intelligent lifeforms. There are likely many animals out there who'd say that it would be worth to preserve ANWR.
I cannot see how the notion that nature can be preserved for the sake of itself doesn't allow me to see a personal value in its preservation.
You see, the whole point of my comment was that many think that something that cannot be exploited by man isn't worth to be preserved, because they assume it isn't worth anything. This might be true, if the only way you measure value is by the amount of money you can squeeze out of anything, but this is a very limited view I'd say, and a fatal one, I might add.
What PaulS said was: "Do you seriously believe that in a future world so far gone that you expect many to "starve and freeze to death", that anyone will have the resources to enjoy (...) a coastal plain in Alaska"
How I read this is the following: Humans won't enjoy this place, so there's no point of preserving it.
And this point of view is antrhopocentric, because it assumes that nature has only any purpose if we can use it in some way. This view leaves out the fact that, even if humans don't find a way to exploit it, nature has a purpose for all its non-human inhabitants.
There doesn't seem to be any "purpose" in nature. The universe appears to be completely ateleological. The concepts of "worth" & "value" indeed exist only in the human imagination. They are probably the wrong terms to employ here. Yet I basically agree with you. Even if humans were extinct, sunlight would still have utility ("worth") for the maintenance of ecosystem function and the biodiversity that depends on it.
Well, let me put it this way: Nature might have not a purpose by and for itself, but it has a purpose for those who are dependent on it to live, at least as long as they live.
There might be a lack of conceptual clarity in these words, but I think everyone knows what is meant.
And if the concepts of worth and value only exist in the human imagination is open for debate. I wouldn't be so sure about that, at least if we go beyond the meaning of monetary value.
There are likely many animals out there who'd say that it would be worth to preserve ANWR.
And this sort of unintelligible nonsense is precisely the nub of the irreconcilable philosophical issue. Nothing out there has ever "said" anything, except perhaps in some invented sense of "said" so absurdly broad as to hold that a rung doorbell is "saying" something. There's nothing out there to say anything, nothing but the same old soulless motile stomachs with teeth at the end that have been masticating each other for at least the last 650 million years: "During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are being slowly devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease." (Dawkins)
Nor is there any "purpose" had by "nature", nor, more importantly, any "nature" out there to "have a purpose". Nor, by the same token, any possible point of view to be held in this corner of the universe but an "anthropocentric" one. The soil and rocks don't hold points of view, they just sit there. The plants and motile stomachs don't hold points of view, they just blindly follow their genetic programming according to the circumstances - and even the metaphor, "blindly follow", really gives them far too much credit. No, there's one place and one place only to find points of view.
So, while the remark about anthropocentrism seems to have been intended as one of those self-evident politically-correct conversation stoppers, there's absolutely nothing available in this corner of universe for it to connect to.
Are you implying that you think humans have "souls"? Do you think that humans are something more than "soulless motile stomachs with teeth"?
Just because it cannot talk as you talk, it doesn't mean doesn't mean that it has neither desires nor anything to say. That you have clearly no understanding what animals are, besides your descartian and thus completely absurd, ideas, nor the ability to recognize that animals are actually telling you a lot, if you want to see, is not my fault. It just shows how utterly narrow-minded man is in his perception.
And what makes you any different from those "soulless motile stomachs"? Your soul? You reasoning brain? Your empathically crippled mind?
Come on, you know what I meant when I said this:
"This view leaves out the fact that, even if humans don't find a way to exploit it, nature has a purpose for all its non-human inhabitants."
Those beings living in ANWR would definitely prefer it to be preserved. After all they are living there, so it has a purpose for them. Just like your keyboard has a purpose for you, when you hack in your mind-boggling nonsense.
And why should I believe this? Because you say so? Because animals can't have a point of view? You certainly can proof your point here, until then, I will stay with what I have perceived myself.
Sorry, but this is exactly the bullshit that I'd expect from someone with a mind that is completely wired to believe that man, and only man, is able to use his brain for more than executing instinct induced stimuli. Whatever makes you believe this, I don't know, but it has surely nothing to do with reality.
Your self-delusion might work fine for you, but you have to come up with something better to convince me.
No, my intention was to show that your point of view is completely anthropocentric, and you are admitting that it is.
I take it, by these absolute statements, you consider yourself the most intelligent being on the planet then? Do you have free-will? Do I? Personally I think I'm pre-determined to call you a fool.
The problem with doing all that drilling now is that it protects the illusion that we can continue with business as usual. We should only allow drilling basically everywhere after the crisis is widely recognized and the frantic effort to reduce our energy consumption is well underway. Until then we need to work to precipitate the crisis that brings awareness to the masses and the powers that be.
Mark Folsom
Regarding drilling in ANWR, the continental shelf and some of the last natural places on this continent, Gail wrote: "...We need to weigh the benefits against the costs - environmental and otherwise." Surely you jest! Cost/benefit analysis of environmental degradation at this stage of the game? The heart of nature is vastly more complex than the simple human mind. If you're unable or unwilling to be an advocate of the necessity of paradigm change NOW, then please step to the back of the line. The Raymomds, Lays amd Bushes of the world have more than adequate representation to achieve their unjust ends.
The "heart of nature"? ??? Indecipherable mythical mystical magical twaddle, belonging perhaps in a back room of a museum of primitive Stone Age life.
I haven't taken a long look at the outer continental shelf n more than a decade. I think the median US non-fisherman- outer-continental-shelf- to- Friends-rerun- viewing ratio is way under one percent.
RE: a pumpjack in my front yard. If it pays the bills, I'll deal with it.
Ask the ghost of Henry David Thoreau how many people he thought would choose to live on treeless paved roads with an internal combustion automobile-to-adult ratio of roughly one. People choose to live in New York City, Chicago, LA, Detroit. Its expensive to live in the city. They fight to get in and stay in.
I'm gonna jump in to Gails defense. Most TOD readers know that the relief we get from reducing drilling restrictions and Nuclear power are not large enough to allow a continuance of BAU -especially for any nontrivial length of time. In short we know these are silver BBs. Same for realistic expectations of conservation and renewables. What I fear is the coming political shitstorm, as the people discover that their lives cannot continue as expected. A concerted effort will be made to blame liberals, and wacky environmentalist. As Joe Sixpack is not very innumerate, the fact that the prohibited actions (such as drilling & Nukes etc.) are actually silver BBs -not silver bullets will be lost in the propaganda broadside. Only by diffusing the issue ahead of time, by allowing some additional drilling & Nuke expansion do we IMHO have any real hope of defeating this sort of dangerous propaganda attack. So yes, these are not very good BBs, and we have to be careful that Joe Sixpack can't interpret them to mean BAU is gonna work just fine.
I've been trying to raise this issue with the environmentalists. But so far they don't want to hear it. Oh well I've only been trying for a few months, I will continue with the effort.
Gail…thanks for the time and effort in putting together your contribution, today, and in the past. While I agree with the importance of your summation and think that before our [the U.S] energy deficits are satisfied that we will have drilled the outer banks and every other oil-promising piece of real estate that our country has to offer, I think the focus should be on increasing efficiency, and then increasing it again, and again, and again. For one thing it’s scalable. For instance had our President stood up and suggested the following, our citizenry would already be prepared, if not materially, somewhat so, psychologically. Had he said, because surely, he knew, and knows that crude plus condensate is not rising: “there’s a chance that gas prices will rise, what with the added competition for crude oil in the International arena and for geopolitical reasons, I suggest that your second car be a gas sipper.” That alone might have begun to prepare the public that something is in the wind and that energy conservation measures are in order. I have to laugh, I live in Arizona, where towns are spaced far apart, yet so many people buy these enormous pickup trucks that are far from thrifty in terms of gasoline, and so we have this State where people are running to the store in the truck to pick up a loaf of bread and spending as much on gas to get there as they are on the product! It’s amusing. So, drill away, but unless efficiency, and continued efficiency, [as is customarily applied in the business world], becomes our mantra, the drilling is for naught.
I agree with darwinsdog. Your advocacy of exploitation of the last dregs of oil to keep this mess moving another nanosecond in geologic time indicates an inability on your part to appreciate the big picture. It is apparent that you're motivated more by the career-to-be-made on the issue of peak oil rather than by recognizing and advocating the best solutions for the planet in the long run.
It is an unfortunate conclusion reached by Gail, I agree. However, I would call it acceptance. When looking around at the society we have built, we KNOW we are losing energy supplies year over year. We also know that conservation, conservation, and alternatives are an absolute must. To avoid a collapse that none of us can quite fathom, we need to slow the loss of energy. I don't want an oil derrick in my front yard, but I allow one to assist in the big picture.
Even coupling drilling in new locations and biofuels, and the "other" category, Energy prices are going up.
They are going to double again, and again, and again. People are waking up to this, I am hearing more people come to the realization that heating and cooling 3000 square feet is overkill for 3 people. More people are trading in their trucks for at least smaller ones that get close to twice the mileage. In fact, at Chevrolet, a full size was in the paper the other day for $15,000, that is less than their base model Colorado. They can't give these trucks away.
One additional thing our government can do is change the way emissions are measured or dealt with. The Smart car, here in America, gets about 40mpg. If you look in the UK website, it gets around 60 mpg (Yes that is converted from km).
I do not know enough about this, but I know the UK measures CO2 output in grams per mile. I'm guessing that the U.S. Measures it in grams per gallon burned. I bet if you did the math, the UK would emit less for the same distance traveled.
You are making the assumption that such measures will keep this society functioning. It won't. At best it will provide only 10% relief. Population and society growth will quickly consume that. You can only conserve so far before it hits the tipping point and throws the economy into a tailspin. The question must be asked, will using the last of the oil to make the crash softer be more environmentally damaging or having society in free fall with people chopping every tree they can find down to heat and cook, kill every wild animal they can hunt for food, or be killing each other dwindling resources?
jrwakefield, you are assuming that the last of the extractable oil will somehow be allocated toward "softening the landing". I don't see evidence of this. It seems apparent that all available petroleum will simply be burnt in a desperation to preserve BAU. And then the last of the trees will indeed be chopped down, etc. NOW is the time to be changing direction, not later. If we cannot do it now, with near maximum oil production in our hands, we cannot do it at all. To advocate anything less than changing now is not a solution at all.
Well said, dunewalker. As Bob Shaw more than rhetorically points out, we humans seem not to be smarter than yeast in a petri dish, and it seems likely that virtually everything will be 'burnt in a desperation to preserve BAU' - the oil, the coal, the furniture, the helicopter money, the trees... all of which will indeed, (I'm sorry to say, Gail, for I normally highly value your insights) substantially impact climate change. For those who haven't seen it, I highly recommend, "What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire", for a comprehesive look at how these issues interplay.
Clifman, your link is broken.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_a_Way_to_Go:_Life_at_the_End_of_Empire or http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com/ was probably what he was aiming to link to
Aside from population, BAU is a major reason I am a doomer. I would ask the TOD readership how many are actually moving away from BAU? How many have actually installed any kind of alternative energy system (PV, microhydro/wind, solar water heating)? How many are growing at least some of their food? How many can provide their own heat and water? How many have moved out of harm's way? How many are preparing for a non-energy intensive career or at least adding to their personal skill set? ETC., etc., etc.
I've lived in the boondocks for a long time and my experience is that people are totally naive as to how long it takes to actually accomplish some of this stuff. A number of years go I wrote a post for another forum outlining the time and actions to establish a half way functional homestead based upon my experience and that of others. The time line was seven years. I don't know if the link still works but it could be found at http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/printthread.php?t=72776
Now, I grant that most people aren't going to run out and try to build a homestead but what is clear is that one cannot wait until the handwriting is on the wall to take SOME kind of serious action. All of these efforts to forestall what is coming from peak energy are only going to make matters worse IMO.
Todd
BTW, why isn't Ecotopia ever mentioned as at least a framework for thinking about a different future?
I would ask the TOD readership how many are actually moving away from BAU? How many have actually installed any kind of alternative energy system (PV, microhydro/wind, solar water heating)? How many are growing at least some of their food? How many can provide their own heat and water? How many have moved out of harm's way? How many are preparing for a non-energy intensive career or at least adding to their personal skill set?
We've built an energy efficient passive solar home primarily powered by PV (we turn off all non-essential items, keep the American 'way of life' to a minimum). Will install solar hot water this year. Both cars are hybrids, though I've been vanpooling last 6 years. Next project starting in 3 weeks will be 80% telecommuting (have educated a VP on PO). Have a garden with 18 12' x 3'raised beds and over 40 young fruit and nut trees, planting more this year (walnuts and black huckleberry). Scavenged firewood (not hard to find, especially after a windstorm) normally provides most of the non-solar heat. Difficult to measure 'out of harms way' but we are moderately so. Am looking to transition back into a renewable energy career (passive solar design, PV and solar DHW integration, others).
It takes a long term vision, an incremental implementation plan, and stick-to-it-iveness. Would be in the garden double-digging now except for the rain (and keeping an eye on a ewe in labor out the side window with the binoculars while online here).
Hi Will,
Thanks for responding. I wish people could share our (and a few other TODers I know) experience. It very much concerns me that it appears that so few posters, in the year and a half or so I've been visiting and posting on TOD, are actually "doing it." It almost seems as if they somehow expect a miracle that will obviate the need for change.
Lots of contracts contain a "time is of the essence" clause. This is especially true as peak everything occurs. Time is running out to take action.
Todd
Todd, I've been a fan of your thinking and your posts - ( bought most of the books you've recommended - even the expensive ones).
We have bantied about the idea of having "TOD Campfire" night, or something similar, once a week, where TOD readers could articulate, via a series of guest posts, what specifically they are doing on an individual level to prepare/change about their energy usage. Its a problem of resources and time - we are just too stretched. If you would like to kick off such a series, with a information based sketch of what you or someone you know has accomplished, I know of several other people that might follow with similar posts -
And I agree that time is our most important asset.
Nate,
I'D BE MORE THAN GLAD TO HELP, POST, WHATEVER. What I don't know is what I am supposed to do to initiate it. My email is detzel at mcn dot org. Perhaps one of TPTB could contact me so we can see what my part would be and where they expect it to go.
Thanks for the nice words!
Todd
Really don't post here much anymore, but I have to echo Nate's comment. Todd is the real deal; you can't start from scratch on survival issues and get up to speed immediately, much like you can't replace the car fleet in less than 15 years.
In the meantime peakoil.com has the Today I made / bought / learnt .... (for a post oil world) thread, began July 19, 2004 and up to 142 pages. The Planning Topic Index covers most anything you'd care to name in the way of preps; I've been listening to the thread on home heating and can't imagine improving on the quality and volume of information.
If you ask me forums are superior to blogs for narrow focus subjects like this which benefit from updating.
Will, you write:
The reason firewood is currently 'not hard to find' is that energy is still reasonably cheap, and so not many people are looking for firewood.
Once the proverbial hits the fan, firewood will be as hard to find as $10 notes on the pavement.
If you want firewood after peak, you'll have to buy a forest first.
Plus guard dogs, fencing, and a shoot-to-kill policy against trepassers.
Since I'm being abnormally chatty today, I will point out that firewood is already the primary fuel source for over 2 billion people worldwide.
Source:A Forest Journey: The Story of Wood and Civilization, Perlin, Josh,; Countrymen Press 2005
Once the proverbial hits the fan, firewood will be as hard to find as $10 notes on the pavement.
All too true. That's why I have some acreage and am counting on a number of the trees on the property and other's I'm planting. Black locust has many good attributes for firewood (fast growing, good BTU content) though requires more in-the-field chainsaw sharpening.
... and what, exactly, are you going to power your chainsaw with?
FWIW, my wife and I have been gradually building a transition for PO over the last 15 years, though ironically we've only been PO aware for the last 2 years or so. It just seemed a sensible and "right" thing to do.
We have a 10 acre property that's mostly paid off. A big dam up the back that we've dug deeper, good clay-based soil that we've put a lot of work into enriching organically. Lots of water tanks catching rainfall off pretty much every roof on the property. No solar yet, but finances permitting its not too far away. We grow a lot of our own vegetables and are starting on amaranth for grain.
We planted hundreds of sheoaks and silky oaks - tough, fast-growing trees with softish timber that are easy to cut & that dry and burn well. They're getting big enough now to start harvesting. We picked up a 2-man crosscut saw for $50 on ebay a while back, and own (and are still trying to master) a range of manual tools like scythes. Its no good being hooked on modern machinery when PO will render it useless.
We're probably nowhere near as advanced preparations or skills-wise as Todd is, but we're much better placed than 99% of people I know. The few who know what we're doing (mostly family) think we're insane. I totally agree with Todd though - getting setup on some agricultural property to create a sustainable existence takes a lot of time.
... and what, exactly, are you going to power your chainsaw with?
Excellent question: a chainsaw uses a very small amount of gasoline/oil compared to the amount of BTUs I harvest in firewood. PO is not going to be a complete free-fall off the cliff, though certainly there are any number of scenarios. I also have a 2-man cross cut saw picked up at a yard sale a couple of years ago which will be the eventual firewood tool. Learning to sharpen it is a skill (along with the sharpening tools) worth picking up now, though.
I also have a scythe (American style) and a number of other hand tools, including woodworking tools. I am getting tugged into the direction of picking up an Austrian scythe.
I highly recommend the Small Farmer's Journal for those wanting to take up a low carbon agricultural lifestyle. While much of it is devoted to work horse techniques, the rest of it is great small farm practice and lore.
It seems we're pretty much on the same page Will :)
Here's another place to check regarding European scythes.
Btw I've noticed other comments in this thread to the effect of "why economize on burning oil, because it'll only end up being used by someone else". If the goal is to conserve fossil fuels then yes, that's right. If the goal though is to learn the manual skills we'll need to live in the future I feel its better to start the transition away from FF reliance now.
I'm a college student, and I joined the enivronmental organization at my school and have been very active in that. The group wants to get solar pannels put up, but I'm trying to get more efficency measures going first (they have a better ROI), including electric flourecent ballasts to replace magnetic ones (saves 20%-30% of the electricity, can get up to 20% ROI/year), getting low-flow showerheads/faucet aerators, etc, then going on to solar hot water (currently cheaper, not getting too much cheaper), and then PV (as this is getting cheaper, if we do everything else first, by the time we get to PV, we can get more for the same price).
I've also started to make improvements to my house whenever I'm home. Over winter break, I put insulation on the hot water pipes (was going to get a thermal blanket for my boiler, but it had asbestos (I think) on it, so I wasn't going to even look at it funny), got a heat redirector for my dryer, and put weatherstriping/sweeps on two doors, plus calked the frame of another. Me and my dad also took Amtrak up to my uncle's house in upstate NY instead of driving. When I got back in spring break, I put a 1 liter water bottle in one of my toilets (saves 1 liter of water per flush, still flushes just fine), got CFLs, and ordered a seltzer machine (my family consumes a copious amount of seltzer), as well as remving excess weight from my parents' cars. When I come back for summer vacation, I hope to convince my dad to get a new boiler (as you might have been able to tell from the asbestos story, it's an oil burner in excess of 30 years old), try to convince my dad to get more insulation for the attic, make sure my parents' tires are inflated, get low-flow showerheads, etc.
Also, on good news, my dad has started to take the bus when possible to go to the beach, which saves a 10 mile round-trip. If you think about it, we pay for public transportation one way or another, and if we don't pay for it through fares, we pay for it in our tax dollars.
Too many people who care about the environment only complain, hoping the government can take care of the problem. Changing our energy future starts in the home. We can't expect everybody else to change their ways until we change our own ways.
Todd wrote: "I would ask the TOD readership how many are actually moving away from BAU?"
We all obviously are products of the oil age and have burnt more than our share of fossil fuels. What I and some others are doing is drawing a line in our psychological sand. We got to where we are now with the aid of oil. We are now preparing ourselves to venture into the future, however short that may be, with a diminishing reliance on that oil crutch. I'm willing to use the plastic pipe, manufactured lumber, nails, motor vehicles, whatever I've accumulated from the age of oil. But, I'm going to use only what's already on the shelf instead of demanding more, from here on out. As far as food & gasoline, on which I'm still dependent upon the system in place, the acceptance of peak oil at a personal level means I'm constantly tightening the screws, driving less, buying less food, turning to my own abilities to grow and produce my own. Every additional day that the local gas station and grocery store remain open is a reprieve from the inevitable future. Maybe Timothy Leary was right after all: "Tune in, turn on, drop out".
Hi Dunewalker,
First of all, I hope you got my much delayed email. It was kind of short and, actually, I'd sooner talk on the phone. Anyway...
You know, we're all in the same position of grabbing what we can to establish our long term goals. I know I have over a half a mile of PVC and poly pipe in the ground. And, my PV system wouldn't exist without all those FFs.
I've spent a lot of years looking at how I use resources and I've come to the conclusion that I don't give a crap. Here's why: I haven't had a vacation in over 30 years. I don't eat out and we buy little processed food. I keep vehicles forever and the ones we have, except the 1990 Dodge one ton 4x4 I bought a few months ago to replace a 1987 Mazada 4x4, get excellent mileage. And, even the Dodge is used as a ranch truck. I mostly wear used clothes. I buy quality that will last, e.g., I have two chainsaws that are 30 years old and still run although I don't use them much...the new ones "have more power!" With the exception of An Inconvenient Truth, I haven't been to a movie in around 28 years (The closet movie house is 30 miles each way.) We stopped getting TV years ago but we do watch some of our old tapes and a few DVDs.
My point in all this is that I try not to waste resources for frivolous things. I'm into enduring value. I'm certainly not into status. So, from my perspective, the real "doers" should buy whatever they need. Does this make sense?
Todd
Hi Todd,
I've worked hard to reduce our household energy use and dependency upon fossil fuels to the greatest extent possible; there's not much opportunity left on that front. We're a two vehicle household and neither vehicle is terribly fuel efficient -- one being a 3.5 litre V6 and the other a 5.7 litre HEMI V8 -- but we're within easy walking distance of everything we need and so they sit in the garage largely unused. I work from home and average less than 50 km per month and my partner comes in at roughly twice that.
Due to a largely unfavourable climate and shading issues, there's very little in the way of solar potential. That said, I do heat my laundry water during the summer months with a simple garden hose rolled out on the back patio. To extend this practice into the spring and fall, I plan to build a small home-made solar panel fashioned after a grow box -- a basic 2x4 frame, plywood back, a garden hose to be coiled inside, a glass cover and handles to facilitate easy movement so that it can be tucked away when not in use. The savings are rather modest (e.g., 40-litres per load x 12 loads per month x 40C temperature lift = 22.3 kWh/month), but the personal satisfaction I can derive from this makes it all worthwhile.
I'm also going to redeem some credit card points for a portable BergHOFF induction hob.
See: http://www.berghoffworldwide.com/Templates/Catalogus/ProductDetail.aspx?...
This will allow me to eliminate a large chunk of our remaining propane consumption (between the gas dryer and range cook top, we use about 7 litres per month). Induction cookers are said to be 90 per cent efficient in terms of their heat transfer whereas a gas burner is generally considered to be 50 to 55 per cent.
Cheers,
Paul
Sadly, even in this there are "above ground factors." For example, I have researched sustainable farming, hydroponics, aquaculture, passive solar building, home-made power sources, microhydro, etc., even down to trying to design a simple generator that anyone could replicate. The problem? Money. My wife and I actually have the funds, theoretically, to do this if we take the DIY approach where we can and use professionals where we must. However, I live in Korea and Korean family culture is vastly different. The parents are still very much the matriarch/patriarch making it very difficult to speak in opposition and be taken seriously. They were born into and/or grew up during the Korean Economic Miracle and can't imagine hard work might not be enough.
They think PO and AGW are not immediate problems - if they ever will be. Even when they consider short-term extreme problems, they simply assume hard work will take care of it. Those funds? A chunk of them are intertwined with my wife's family's finances and they just don't see the need nor wisdom of liquidating assets to reinvest in sustainable living.
So, we are left hoping like hell TS doesn't HTF for 2 to 5 more years so we can build our bank account high enough to transition.
I am not hopeful.
Cheers
If you have some older family members around from WWII maybe you should talk to them about the Japanese occupation then peak oil. My wifes family is in Taiwan and they remember well the early years after the war.
I suspect the same holds for your wifes relatives they just don't want to talk about it.
But I fond that if I started with that then framed peak oil as similar that they caught on real quick.
M-in-L and F-in-L both in their 60's. Rather than seeing potentially how hard it can be, they believe anything can be done if you just work hard enough. The Korean Miracle proves this is true.
It's like telling every kid in a class, "All of you can grow up to be President!" False. "Any of you can grow up to be president!" True (at a theoretical level). "Hard work will save us." False. "Hard work can save us." True.
With a population density of about 480/sq.km. (241 acres). In terms of arable land, that number drops to 45 acres per 480 people, or about 10.6 people per acre. How much space do we need per person under the most successful and dense sustainable methods of farming? 4,000 sq ft? These numbers are right at that minimum. This means with perfect conditions, perfect harvests every year, land use and food growing density maxed out coupled with perfect cooperation among the people, Korea will be able to feed itself. Any variation and people will go hungry and/or starve.
By comparison, the US has 31/sq.km, or 15 times the space per person.
Aigoo....
BTW, this is another of those non-linear elements that is gonna wreak havoc with PO and AGW transitions: with such densities, mustn't we expect massive disruptions to these societies if anything approaching the worst case scenarios happen? Mightn't these have ripple effects on neighbors and trading partners?
Cheers
Well said.
A frequent rejoinder to your argument follows the line, "if I/we don't burn it, some else will, and I therefore will have made a pointless sacrifice". This retort often invokes some version of 'Jevon's Paradox'. But the rejoinder misses the mark. The early, voluntary, adopters of a 'conservation' or 'reduction in dependency' strategy take the lead on the learning curve. What is gained is knowledge internalized by experience. It is impossible to diminish the significance to our species of 'know-how'.
As a general rule, it is never to early to adopt a 'live with less' strategy. Conversely, it easily becomes too late to take up moderation.
Since others were making unachievable solutions to save humanity, I'd thought I'd add one myself. Agreed it is pie in the sky. I think it is much more likely that Ron P. is going to be correct.
Hi
Just as an aside I think a quick check will confirm that the European Smart and the US Smart have different engines (source Wikipedia). Could be because the Mercedes diesel didn't meet emmissions
Neven
Any ugly coalition of environmentalists, unions, US auto companines, and safety fanatics has conspired to keep small cars out of the US through regulations. I have seen reports that it cost GM $100 million to bring the Opel Astra into the US even though they made almost no changes to the actual car. I see no reason that a car which meets european requirements shouldn't have all US requirements waived.
Our emissions laws, which measure emissions per gallon, penalize inexpensive cars since small engines require emissions control equipment which is just as expensive as large vehicles. Trucks actually have relaxed requirements making the relatively cheaper.
Safety equipment and testing has made small cars heavier and more expensive. Air bags and crash testing are expensive and effect small cars disproportionatly.
My suggestions for a rapid improvement in US milage:
1) Waive all testing and unique requirements for cars that meet european or Japanese regulations.
2) Put in place an alternative set of emissions requirements that are based on emissions per mile.
3) Tie liability insurance to the driver rather than the car. This makes it cheaper buy a high MPG commuter vehicle if you also sometimes need a larger vehicle.
4) Waive vehicle registration fees and taxes for high MPG vehicles. Again makes it easier to buy a commuter vehicle.
American consumers will buy smaller and more efficient vehicles, when confronted with high gas prices, if they are availble. Today, they have been largely regulated out of existance.
That would also (more) rapidly kill US Auto Manufacturing. I mean I agree that they have bought this upon themselves (and I fully expect Ford to fall over this year) but changes like this need to be phased in. Smarter people than me have posted here the psychology behind the self delusional life that North Americans live, though I'm not as doomer as most, yes the US is going to creak and erode, but you are starting from such a high consumption level that there are so many lifestyle changes that available at little cost that there is time. If the Kunstlerian collapse of the suburbs occurs then look for signs such as the rise of the extended family, car pooling, rationalization of consumption (no more Scandinavian beaver cheese).
Neven MacEwan (in NZ)
Hi Neven - I agree with this
but when things along these lines start to happen it will spawn an array of other dommino effects which will be hard to predict. Short : Society will have to differ between important tasks and NOT so important tasks. The shoemaker will be back .... the stockbrokers will be far and wide between.
Western society should pray for some lead time to make this happen in a orderly manner ...:-)
Hi
When you say Western society you probably mean the US, Canada and the UK, the rest of the world never stopped producing
Neven
Gail, thank you for using your time to attend the call and to report on it for us.
I think your question was spot on and of course the only authentic answer that could be given is, "It's not realistic at all," which is precisely what you were driving at. Unfortunately, the response you received is almost incoherent to me and is a slog even to read.
It's worth reposting Richard Heinberg's idea of resilient communities. In that concept, everything must be examined in the context of a post peak world. I'd like to have a conversation about everything post peak — even the possibility of more drilling to determine if it can contribute to an overall plan to handle Energy Descent.
Resilient Communities: A Guide to Disaster Management
http://www.richardheinberg.com/museletter/192
-André
I think Peter Robertson was prepared to answer the question "What do you think about peak oil?" but was almost speechless when it came to my question. It was easier to show this with the transcript than to say he was at a loss for words.
This was the first real question of the call, and practically the only one that couldn't be answered with a nice public relations type answer.
Gail,
Thanks for asking the tough question, so few people do this when given the opportunity.
I know many of us cringe to see you advocate drilling in the coastal areas currently off limits, but I applaud your courage in stating this flat out.
I do disagree, as I am one who hopes industrial civilization fails while there is still some life in other species to recover and repopulate the earth, but I am not sanguine about what that would mean for our populace.
Congratulations on your honesty. We need to confront this issue realistically.
I agree. The majority of environmentalists (of which I consider myself one), don't understand the magnitude of the energy straits we are in. To advocate no more oil drilling and zero environmental impact from energy production is naive. The vast majority of environmental/climate organizations in DC are utopian dreamers and do not understand the core principles of energy resource depletion. Once one delves into the linkages between energy and the environment, it becomes painfully obvious that some very difficult decisions are going to have to be made. Thats one reason we are doing TOD - to get a common level of understanding among different groups so people don't freak out when hard questions are brought up.
I for one, am shocked that EIA still uses the 'supply will meet demand model'. I had thought they swept that under the rug and used some aggregate of independent supply forecasts (in effect, CERA). But CERA at least bases projections on geology, even though they misconstrue energy economics, and flow rates with productive capacity.
It may be naive to expect that the PTB will listen but it's not naive to advocate for what's right. Isn't one of your quotes in the upper righthand corner of the webpage to the effect that it takes real courage to fight for what's right even tho you're probably going to lose the fight? Why post that quote if you don't believe in it yourself?
Practice what you preach. Grow some nads, Nate & Gail!
a)I DO practice what I preach, a greater % every month. I use a fraction of the energy I used to and grew 40% of my own food this past year - the majority of my footprint is from flying around to conferences about resource depletion. I've rationalized the present value of that is worth it. But I'm not ready to say civilization is doomed and we should just all get 50 lb sacks of rice and bullets and wait for natures enema. There are still CHANCES to change course - until I've done my best at thinking/changing/improving those options, I'm not going to assume the worst. There are many ways to powerdown that don't end with the same conclusions you've presumably come to.
b)Have you read any of my posts on evolutionary psychology and human behaviour? and how we need to address these problems from the demand side and stop obsessing about the ticky-tacky details about when energy will peak and how big the decline will be. An accurate energy balance sheet is a detail we need to know but the real prize is changing the consumption paradigm.
c)This site is much more than me. I didn't choose any of those quotes in top right. Though some are very good - the cats in a sack is a particularly good one.
d)Until/unless you become 'unanonymous', you really shouldn't criticize anyone who has been writing publicly about these important issues, which appear to some as borderline heretical, using our real names.
e)My 'nads have grown quite large enough thank you. And for someone named 'darwinsdog', you should understand the biological challenges involved for someone named Gail to 'grow nads'.
f)you are a new (and very frequent) poster here. Obviously smart and likely well intentioned. Rather than shoot down peoples comments with your elder and scholarly wisdom to get your debate/dopamine fixes, please contribute to the discussions by helping us understand what is and isn't possible or what we should or shouldn't do regarding our energy future from the perspective of your particular areas of expertise, whatever they are. To state that EROI is always negative because of the 2nd law is either disingenuous and distracting, or you don't understand EROI.
(Go)nads = testes & ovaries.
Well done. A concise and information laden post.
Almost worse, the vast majority do not understand the core principle of relative risk, e.g. between coal-fired plants and nuclear power stations, or between natural and synthetic toxins, or between a part-per-trillion pollutant and a volcanic eruption. Remember all that data-dredging crap about Alar, dioxins, asbestos, all those alleged leukemia 'clusters' in the vicinity of nuclear plants etc. etc.?
And, as you say, most of them are know-nothings when it comes to energy matters.
Here are the latest scores for 'climate change' versus 'peak oil' in The Guardian online:
Climate change: 10898 hits
peak oil: 77 hits
There's still a long way to go.
The U.S. military is clearly concerned about the future availability of the liquid fuels needed for its operations. As these fuels become more critically scarce, can we not expect components of the U.S. citizenry and government to move ultimately toward exploitation of all the previously untapped petroleum resources regardless of the potential for harm to ecological or tourism resources, if for no other reason than to maintain military effectiveness? I agree with others in thinking that almost every conceivable fossil fuel resource will eventually be utilized, whether that occurs over the next century or the next millennium. The connection of liquid fossil fuels to military might can be expected to ensure this outcome. The quality of life for the civilian population over the coming decades will depend upon the way that issues related to population, energy conservation, and conversion to non-fossil fuel energy sources are handled. However, I find it inconceivable that a path will not ultimately be made for the exploitation of fossil fuels so that the military can continue to function. Once issues of patriotism and national preservation come into play, these considerations will undoubtedly trump other, previously effective, rationales for delaying the exploitation of remaining fossil fuel resources.
Another very informative post - thanks Gail!
The EIA cannot be trusted for accurate projections relating to oil!
In early 2004 they projected oil to slowly climb to $35 per barrel by the year 2025 (story from www.energybulletin.net in April 2004). By the summer of 2004 price was already $35. They have made numerous projections about growing world oil production and ALL have been wrong!
My strongest objections to EIA forecast for oil production in US are the "other*" and "enhanced oil recovery" in the chart at top. The "other*" is nearly 2 mbpd and would be 10% of total supply by 2025. What is this and where does it come from? And likewise with the "enhanced" part which will grow from nothing now (but don't we use a lot of enhancement techinques already?) to around 3 mbpd.
My view on this chart is that US oil production will continue its decline even counting these "other" productions and leave us with around 6 or 7 mbpd by 2025. Biofuels, just as Robertson said, won't scale to the amounts in the graph. Imports are subjected to ELM and will decline from current 12.5 mbpd to likely 8 mbpd by 2025. Total oil available - maybe only 14 mbpd.
Get ready for a 1/3 drop in liquid fuels available to the US in the next 17 years!
I believe that a big piece of the other is "processing gain". This is the increase in volume (but not BTUs) that we get by processing the oil. Over half of this processing gain is on imported oil. If the imported oil goes away, or gets refined elsewhere and then we import it, we lose this credit. Whether or not it ever meant much is something else.
Thirty something years ago, drilling in the North Slope was just what we needed to solve our oil problem. That was the time to be thinking and planning for a "soft" landing. Now we are told we need to drill in the OCS to help "solve" our oil problem. Our problem hasn't been solved and it won't be solved if we keep putting off all the the things we need to do and all the investments we need to make. If the oil companies won't make the necessary investments, let us tax them heavily and use those proceeds for consevation and renewable energy. Which is exactly what was tried in the house. But noooo. The oil companies need that money to buy back their stock, pay enormous salaries, pay dividends, and invest in a future which will only, at best, slightly postpone the inevitable crash. At least if we make the right investments away from fossil fuels, we will have a chance to be in a position to survive a post carbon world, not flourish perhaps, but survive.
From now on, it all makes a difference. It is not just about the carbon that will be emitted by that extra oil in the OCS but the alternatives that could be brought forth if we quit pretending that we will ever be able to make more than a small dent in domestic production. It is not just the carbon in the oil but the carbon in the coal that will be emitted because we didn't make a transition to an efficient, conserving society that maximizes low or no carbon renewable energy.
Exactly. We've heard this line many times before..."If we can just drill in this one area, we can buy ourselves the necessary time to initiate a major change in our infrastructure and economic system and prepare for a soft landing." Except when we do drill, the new supplies just end up feeding business as usual rather than being actually used to act as a lifeboat or power a transition. And then our economy is that much farther up the oil curve, and the drop-off will be that much steeper and that much more catastrophic. I know that we've made some dents in the business-as-usual mindset, but until there is a wholesale paradigm shift across our whole society (in a way that includes not just a conservation consciousness, but a conscious, voluntary, wholesale self-limiting of reproduction and an abandonment of the conspicuous consumption social ethic), I don't want to feed the fire any more than it is now, even if that produces immense pain (partial dieoff) in the short term...because we will just be setting ourselves up for an even bigger, more painful dieoff in the near future if we feed the fire any more. We need to put out the fire first.
Just think, which scenario would you rather have:
1. The U.S. peaks in the '70s. The oil industry wants to drill in Alaska, but Congress won't allow any of it. U.S. production declines to 3 mbpd. Energy prices in the U.S. skyrocket, and severe economic hardship ensues, which motivates people (consumers, developers, planners) to gradually abandon automobile-suburb-centric lifestyles and operations in favor of more efficient arrangements. Come 2008, U.S. society has bounced back through gradual adaptation. People are generally happy, healthy, prosperous, economically secure, etc. Except the differences are that there are millions of miles of new electrified rail infrastructure, tens of thousands of windmills and CSP plants dotting the landscape, Americans live in 2000 sq. ft. homes rather than 3500 sq. ft. homes, CAFE standards are raised to 45 mpg, and due to financial hardship, there has been less immigration and less population growth, giving the U.S. a population of 250 million.
2. What actually happened (Alaska getting drilled for oil, incentives for change getting postponed, bad habits and infrastructure getting even more entrenched, the fire getting fed even more, and even less oil leftover to power a real transition once TSHTF and a mass paradigm shift occurs).
Which society is in a better position? The first one, obviously.
No more drilling until a mass paradigm shift occurs (and you know and I know that a mass paradigm shift has not occurred yet. We'll recognized it when it really comes, trust me. It will be an obvious, earth-shattering societal development that will transform our entire economic and social system). If a mass paradigm shift never occurs, well, that sucks, but we will still be better off than if we had fed the fire even more, because we will have not as far to fall on the downslope.
Good posts tstreet & Comradez. You guys "get it." Gail & Nate still have a ways to go...
Excellent question, Gail, and insightful writeup. To address some of his points;
Absolutely. And as transportation is mentioned as the main consumption sector, CAFE standards really to be much higher than a paltry 35mpg by 2020. Toyota has been making 5 passenger Prius that achieve 55 mpg (48 per the new aggressive-driver EPA standard) for years now, which save $1400/yr compared to a similar Ford Taurus (or $14,000 over 10 years); Volkswagen will be coming out with a 200+ mpg two seater car; there is no reason that Detroit engineering can't keep up with the best, unless they simply want to continue attempting to greenwash.
While the EIA has a poor track record in estimates, this appears to refer to biofuels, and a meager 10% probably is the maximum that could be produced for the US market, given the current unfolding food crisis.
Only after CAFE is raised to at least 50 mpg by 2020, if not sooner and/or higher mpg. Plug-in hybrids mpg estimates would need to treat electricity from a charging source as oil-equivalent energy to avoid BAU energy hogs that overburden the electrical grid infrastructure. This is but one small step by which "The United States must become a nation of energy savers".
Right on Will. Need to step away from BAU before digging into ANWR and OCS. Until we start using what we have more wisely, I do not support ANWR or OCS drilling. Dropped my gasoline use 60% by buying a Prius. This multiplied many times, plus a multitude of other steps, are the first order of business.
Bud (BTW I do not have a problem with getting oil from ANWR and OCS as long as it is part of a reasonable comprehensive energy policy)
We don't need CAFE regulations. Higher gas prices will create the demand. Our government needs to get out of the way and let those cars be built and imported.
We don't need CAFE regulations. Higher gas prices will create the demand.
I've seen this standard 'free markets will correct themselves optimally' concept before, but in this instance, an entire infrastructure, vehicle fleet, and literally 'way of life' are dependent on cheap oil. The time it takes to design, prototype, build all the factory tooling, and actually produce a new car is at least 5 years, and then to change over the auto fleet takes roughly 18 years, exceedingly far too long to respond to a PO market signal.
I highly recommend to you the DoE report by Robert Hirsch entitled, " PEAKING OF WORLD OIL PRODUCTION:IMPACTS, MITIGATION, & RISK MANAGEMENT";
Does anyone else think this guy seems a little scared?
If you are talking about Mr. “if-you know-Robertson” … then agreed
It was like listening to a 3rd- grader trying to explain the shop-owner how all those lollipops suddenly appeared down his pockets …
Thumbs up for this summary Gail, I had a tough time reading Robertson’s replies to your smart question.
Yes. Cheers to Gail for this excellent job!
Quite honestly, I've never seen such an incoherent statement in my life. That's saying a lot since I was a police officer for three years. This guy is guilty of stupidity and he knows it. His half-hearted tap dance has turned into verbal blundering.
On the other hand, it does very little to inspire confidence... Quite the opposite.
I assure you Mr. Robertson is anything but stupid. His wet-ware was working furiously in those precious seconds to come up with an answer that was factually accurate but wouldn't be politically or corporately 'inaccurate'. I imagine his right brain came up with 5 or 6 such answers but they were all vetoed by the left before reaching Brocas area and ultimately, his mouth.
I don't think Gails question uncovered stupidity - on the contrary - it uncovered intelligence and awareness...
And I'm not sure its been mentioned yet on this thread - but kudos to Chevron for being willing to subject themselves to blogger questions. I don't think any in corporate america have the answers to what we face - but having more accurate (as opposed to completely inaccurate) information is a step in the right direction.
Firstly and yes, kudos to Mr. Robertson and Chevron for entering the discussion on energy in regards to our common future.
Let’s keep IQ out of this for a second. IMO Robertson found himself already painted into a corner when Gail’s question fell. It was not possible for him to cough up any standard answer b/c there are too many unanswerable questions knit to the diagram he’s put their logo on - BUT STILL THEY MADE THE CHART... hmmm....- On the contrary he would have given a flawless reply ... (and most likely, no meeting concerning this issue at all? )
When I see that chart on top, it’s like adding up all the most prosperous scenarios for all possible outcomes for the whole wide world in the years up till 2025, alternatively US gets it all. No war & happy motoring to all, all sorts of bubbles gone and a pinky sky … e.g. nothing to see skip onward in your life..
There are two (or more) kinds of IQ, the regular one with patterns and shapes … and then there is Societal IQ (social responsibility or moral).
I’d say Robertson clearly struggled with his own consciousness, in his answer. (my 2 cents)
Yeah, that's how I read his seeming incoherency. He was trying to think on his feet - how to answer the question in a way that wouldn't open him up to criticism over the facts yet wouldn't get him in trouble w/ his higher-ups. Robertson may be intelligent but he isn't very honest or honorable.
For me at least this paper simply reinforces the view that technical advances have played a critical role in maintaining the rate of oil production. The pressure to open up closed areas is because our depletion rate is much higher now than in the past. Without the continuous addition of new regions to drill we could well suffer a collapse in US production.
If you look at US production.
http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/3087
And in the above graph the last few years we have left the production implied by the Hubbert curve.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak_theory
and below.
You can see two instances of technical methods pulling real production off the hubbert curve. At the peak itself and recently with high prices. Technical enhancement via a accelerated drilling campaign and more advanced extraction methods does not care about hubberts peak for the most part since it simply results in higher depletion levels.
However we can get a rough estimate of how long these methods work by noting that the last time this happened we managed to over extract about 0.5 GB a year for about 5-10 years and that we seem to have done about the same so a 20-30% enhancement of production in exchange for higher depletion rates. In fact you can see the effects of new technology developed through the 1990's giving a platuae and final drop despite the low oil prices of the period. So if you use my advanced extraction assumption and the high state of depletion my prediction is that US production will drop by 30% over the next two years.
Thus instead of the graph we see in this paper we will go from 5mbd now to 3.5 mbpd by about the end of 2009 or down about 1.5mpd. This short term view is of course effected by fields coming online esp thunderhorse which will help some but your still probably talking about close to a 1mbpd drop in production just to get back on the HL curve exactly as happened at peak.
To mimic Matt Simmons we have a nosedive in the Gulf. The positive aspect of this is that if I'm right I really think US production will be the first to falter with KSA a close second. In both cases we should have some advance warning that depletion effects have finally caught up with us and a region will move quickly downward back on or below the HL curve. Another area of interest is the North Sea but it seems to have been extracted pretty much as fast as possible so its not clear that a technical boost is possible. However in all cases you have continuous enhancement of technology over timer that leads to a steady overall increase in depletion rates this dies not show up as anomalies in production but makes the overall curve fatter causing a over estimation of the underlying URR. So on top of the visible changes you probably have and additional 20-30% correction factor that becomes important as you slide off the plateau.
So I actually estimate that real production would fall below HL projection by 20-30%
so instead of ending at 3.5 and being back on curve we have a chance of falling to 2.5. Or a 50% reduction in production once depletion reaches some level say 70-90%.
So considering that the model seems to imply that we have increased extraction rates and thus depletion by 50% over that last few decades. It makes sense that once these methods can no longer result in enhanced production it will fall quickly to about 50% of todays levels. Finally current estimates of reserve levels are off by 20-30% or even higher because of the systematic error introduced by enhanced technologies.
Thus instead of us being at about 50-60% URR we are actually at 70-90% URR inline with the 80-90% world water cut levels.
Maximum Power Principle in all its glory! Odum said it should be Fourth Law of thermodynamics...
Forget the Gaussian curve - lets put in hundreds of horizontal oil contacts and borrow as much from the second half of the curve as we can. Someone else will make up the difference when the time comes or some new energy source will come along. Let's get the money while we can.....
Of course, if EVERYONE has followed this strategy, the 2nd half of the distribution will show a steep decline rate indeed....
Correct and its very closely correlated if you will with the concept of EROI. For the last several decades by spending money or investing in technology we got much higher returns for the investment. However what this has done is cause the same shift in the EROI curve such that the oil left to extract will be exponentially harder to extract.
I agree underlying both concepts is the maximum power principle. It probably also is what underlies the creaming curves for exploration. And even more esoteric but similar yields for chemical reactions. Its generally easy to go from a 60% yield in a reaction to 70% exponentially harder to go to 80% and over 90% begins to approach infinity.
I think most people have assumed that EROI would decline fairly slowly but what I'm saying is it actually quickly approaches negative infinity. This is another way to look at what I'm trying to say and your exactly right its all underpinned by the maximum power principle.
If a non-linear feedback form existed for complex systems it would be called the law of collapse. So you can see that the maximum power law has a more complex form that applies to complex systems collapse.
In information theory I guess it would be considered something like a type of computer virus that randomly deletes information leading to a loss cascade. Its all the same.
The nonlinear feedback form does exist for living complex systems, and we are all readily acquainted with it. We call the Law of Collapse, "death".
But the Law of Collapse in and of itself does not mean the end of the world, now does it? The vast majority of our ancestors are dead, but we are still here. And when we are gone, our progeny will still be here. And when they are gone, their successors will remain ... IF AND ONLY IF the complexity of the overall system is manageable, sustainable, self-organized, and provides renewal.
The complexity of a herd of elephants and of the singular elephant itself adheres to this. As does the forest and the single tree.
As does the tribal model and individual human. As do the trillions of individual living cells that make up the organs of our brains, stomachs, lymph nodes, skin, muscles, etc., which all rely on the system as a whole to keep an individual human functioning.
The complexity of our civilization is like none of these examples. It continually creates ever-new problems, short-circuits evolutionary processes, and understanding all of the myriad complexities is beyond human intellectual ability - unmanageable.
It continually requires more growth to solve the problems created by previous growth - unsustainable.
It relies on durable hierarchy like governments, media, law, and corporations - not self-organized.
And while we do produce more people, the renewal of the human species comes at massive cost to the rest of the ecosystem upon which we're dependent, in the form of pollution, global climate change, and mass extinctions - destructive, depleting, and non-renewing.
We will need Something New or at least Something Else to take the place of this system as a whole. Otherwise this system will eventually drive our species to extinction with no evolutionary successors.
Then again, maybe that's why we're here - to serve as a bad example to the rest of the burgeoning sentient species on the planet.
I think we are here as and experiment in how individual intelligence converts to increased group intelligence. I.e the sum is greater than the parts.
However so far I think its been a failure. However ecosystems with less intelligence are far more successful. Not that they don't collapse periodically collapse is part of the system but they respond generally with specialization and complexity in the face of collapse with new species given a chance to take over old and new niches.
We have generally done the opposite simplifying the system as we approach the carrying capacity. I think the fact we have eliminated most forms of collapse from our society is the real problem thats leading to a bigger and bigger collapse. If the system was diverse and allowed to progress naturally it would suffer mini collapses in general with only drastic events resulting in widespread collapse. But even then we would have a lot of information on all the approaches that did not work under the old conditions and hints to what might work under the new.
If you look at past extinctions what stands out is what survived with complexity you have most of the solution handed to you. You know what failed and what is still working.
Humanity has lost this capability.
Yes, yes, yes. Except it isn't humanity that lost this capability, it's civilization, and civilization is not humanity. We may, however, have soiled the pool for all parties involved, civilized and savage.
For example, when the system cracks, when it starts to shut down, I shudder to think of how disease and disease vectors will gain the upper hand and sweep across the globe.
During the Great Depression most of the deer where illegally poached. I'm sure as oil gets scarce trees will be cut down in a unsustainable manner. The point is that even people living marginally and pretty much at a level that many consider sustainable on this board will be forced into unsustainable and eventually destructive practices as the oil runs out. So thats why I say its a humanity problem not a civilization problem. Since these types of collapses have happen across human civilizations many quite different from our own.
http://www.endangeredspecieshandbook.org/madagascar_preserving.php
I'm all for creating a sustainable civilization I just am a bit more pessimistic since I think humanity will eventually have to evolve a bit more before this happens. From the really big picture perspective intelligence/technology have just recently evolved on this planet so we probably have a long way to go before we become intelligent as a collective/species.
What will we be like in a million years ?
I think if we keep technology we will eventually modify our own genome to remove or need to destroy our surroundings. If we don't we probably will de-evolve to a less intelligent species or more likely several filling niches we have destroyed. So I think this intelligence experiment either ends with a species that begins to direct its own evolution or its scrapped. Intermediate forms like us are not viable in the long term IMHO.
So to succeed it looks to me that we have to start taking longer and longer term views if our civilizations and actions starting with decades thence to hundreds and then thousands of years. I think once we have successful planned thousand year long projects then we are probably going to succeed. Moving from that level to a million years is probably not a big leap. I think the key is that you need to somehow have plans survive multiple powers of the lifetime of individual members of a group.
Right now the only example we have is religions which manage to last into the 1,000 year range. Although they meet the 1,000 year criteria its not clear yet that they are actually good in general. But they do show we have the ability to carry some concepts for this long albeit reduced to primitive religions that often use hatred as a critical part of their success. I'm hoping we can do much better in the coming centuries. We really have not had sustainable transmission of information/knowledge across generations for all that long (if we have it now) so we will see.
Regarding the Outer Continental Shelf, just how much oil are we talking about here? It doesn't seem that there is a solid estimate for what additional production we might expect if the restrictions are removed.
Don't ask how much is in any one place; instead look at the trend in discoveries overall. This basically describes a process governed by somewhat random probes into samples across the entire earth. As the samples become more complete and coverage therefore in, then the statistics say that new discoveries will be less and less frequent. See the "Dispersive Discovery" model for a description of the math model:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2712
Wow this honestly scares the living hell out of me. They are implying foreign imports are going to be immune not only to peak oil, but also to rising domestic consumption. They are implying 30 billion gallons of ethanol bio-fuels by 2025, which all of us here know the ethanol problems related to food prices and EROI, which should cause an increase in import demand on it's own due to the low EROI. There also naively gambling the future in assuming we will flatten out our domestic production. The declining EROI factor alone is going to require much larger amounts of energy to maintain the same net energy. There are so many problems with this graph I am at a loss for words. I would not be surprised to see us clinging to around 12.5 or less mbpd of by 2025 if you try an un-fudge the graph.
All I can see is hyper-inflationary depression that would make Argentina 99 look like a cakewalk, with these type of official statements. It's terribly disturbing.
-Crews
Drill off the coast of Florida? I have read that the tourist industry doesn't want oil drilling there.
From 2006: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13573049/
Drilling in ANWR? It was made a nature refuge in 1960 for a reason. Now, that we are in oil extraction decline, we should open it up to pump more oil for somebody's Hummer? Seems like somebody has been seduced by Big Oil. Big Oil continues to obfuscate the finiteness of oil. The public doesn't think we have an oil extraction problem at all. Many things have to happen, like Big Oil advertising that we need massive conservation, before I would think opening up ANWR may be good idea.
great discussion, thanks for starting it Gail.
My question regarding the ocs and anwar is, aren't these deposits all ready accounted for in usgs papers or our best estimates of urr? In other words, don't all of our charts and graphs assume these will be exploited?
I think there are probably in current totals, and they don't amount to a whole lot.
USGS numbers seems to be biased high, especially on undiscovered resources, so I would take their estimate as an upper bound for what is available. According to the USGS, the total amount of oil remaining is about 100 billion barrels on the OCS. This is about 3 years of world use, or 13 years of US use. There is also some natural gas.
MYTH. CHARTS AND JUDGING THE FUTURE BY USING THE MOST IDIOTIC OPTIONS AS GUIDE
Glad you reprinted this fascinating chart:
http://www.theoildrum.com/files/figure_1.gif
If you accept the ideas implied in this chart, it is basically saying that any alternative energy program will have to be done as an altruistic exercise, because it will not be able to compete on price with conventional fossil fuel energy. This chart and what it implies has done more damage to the alternative energy industry than most can imagine, coming from an official source as it does. Do not for one moment believe that bankers and the investment community are not familiar with it.
The goal is still as it has always been to marginalize the possibility of alternatives:
“But the scale of the energy system means that despite our combined efforts, renewables will meet less than 10 percent of demand in 2030, according to EIA, I would urge you to be sensitive to the issue of scale and timeframe. I hope that I have been able to demonstrate Chevron’s commitment to the development of alternative sources of energy. This is an ambitious undertaking and one that we are embracing. But the scale of the energy system means that despite our combined efforts, renewables will meet less than 10 percent of demand in 2030, according to EIA estimates. We must continue to bring traditional energy supplies to market, even as we are developing alternatives sources of energy.”
So in the discussion by the EIA and the myriad posts by drummers, we once again see the ongoing campaign whether intentional or not to marginalize any possibility of fossil fuel alternatives. Of course, . Chevron covers with “I hope that I have been able to demonstrate Chevron’s commitment to the development of alternative sources of energy.”
What Chevron refers to as alternatives are basically “fuel switching” operations, from oil to natural gas to coal to liquids to gas to liquids to tar sands to shale oil, on and on and on, death by 1000 conversions. The true renewables are still seen as non scalable. If we assume that, as Mr. Robinson says “renewables will meet less than 10 percent of demand in 2030”, an estimate that virtually no one at The Oil Drum, including Gail, even bothered to question, then the battle is over. We (the people of the world) have lost.
On the consumption side, the EIA shows a relatively flat consumption line in the U.S. into the future. They of course have history on their side on this one:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/25opec/sld007.htm
The above chart often comes as a shock to those who have been taught that the U.S. growth in energy consumption was horrific in our profligate growth throughout the 1990’s.
Per capita growth consumption is also a bit of a revealation: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/25opec/sld008.htm
It should be noted that these charts cover a time of growth in both the size and number o new homes, economic growth, and in the size and weight of vehicles throughout the period:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/25opec/sld012.htm
So what did change in reducing oil consumption? Share of homes heated with oil:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/25opec/sld013.htm
And in one of the most staggering drops in oil use in the oil age, share of electric power generated by oil:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/25opec/sld014.htm
Despite what some believe, oil per se no longer “fuels” the economy. Oil does however fuel transportation. Discussion of oil consumption is essentially a discussion of transportation consumption, and in one of the most astute remarks made by Mr. Robertson of Chevron he said as much… “oil, this is really almost a transportation fuel chart because the main thing that oil is used for –, not the only thing, but the main thing it’s used for is transportation fuels. And so far, we have difficulty substituting something for transportation fuels.”
So we are back at square one: We need viable substitutes for oil in transportation, but everyone agrees that no substitute to oil is viable, at least if you listen to the oil industry.
One wonders how many million words, books, predictions of complete and utter catastrophe and how much crying and gnashing of the teeth can be built upon such a simply formulated problem.
In the last twenty years, arguably two of the largest developments in transportation has been the SUV and ethanol fuel. Hybrids are still declared as non viable and non scalable by the dark earthers, even though the first generation of gas electric hybrid cars are beginning to now leave the highway and head for the junk heap, worn out from a decade of use. Astounding, but of course there were those who were saying that heavier than air flight was impossible a year after the Wright Brothers flew. The good news is that the internet did not exist to give them a forum for their views.
SUV’S and ethanol…it demonstrates the propensity of humans to choose the most idiotic of all possible options available, and then argue that the impossibility of sustaining the most idiotic of all possible solutions is a sure sign of impending doom.
Roger Conner Jr
RC
Oil use has increased over the years. In 1950, we were using about 6 mbd and today we are using about 21 mbd. Oil hasn't become less important, it has become more important to our society. We have more roads, more planes, more trucks, more food, more, more, more, that depend on oil.
A person in my family lost a job at a bankrupt airline this last week. No economist can predict what a sustained price of 100 dollar oil is going to do to the US economy. We could be in very deep trouble right now and we haven't had a global decline set in, yet.
goghgoner said,
"Oil use has increased over the years. In 1950, we were using about 6 mbd and today we are using about 21 mbd. Oil hasn't become less important, it has become more important to our society."
I agree absolutely with your first point, and have reason to doubt your second. On your first point, oil use has indeed increased over the years, I would not argue otherwise for one second. However, there is a widespread perception that oil use nationally and oil use per person skyrocketed in the "era of greed" of the 1990's when economic activity was so strong. This is clearly not true. The link between economic growth and oil consumption is more complex than some would have us believe.
On your second point,"Oil hasn't become less important, it has become more important to our society."
I have serious reason to doubt that. This does not mean that conventional fossil fuels are any less important, as much of the oil consumption in electric power production and home heating was substituted by using natural gas instead. But our energy base is more varied now than it once was, with the glaring exception of transportation. Coal, oil, natural gas, propane, nuclear power and even some renewables all work in the American economy in various ways. However, to demonstrate how poorly the renewables have been recieved, we actually were producing less power by renewable as percent of the total economy in 1997 than we were in the mid 1970's per the EIA!
On the economy, sorry to hear about your relative being made unemployed, however, we have just dismissed 35 employees where I work, and it has nothing to do with energy. We are in the information and data research industry, all computer and telephone based work. However, much of our data analysis is being farmed out to India by way of the internet, where they can process it and ship it back the next morning at a far cheaper price. The link between economics, technology and energy is also much more complex than many presume.
But in one way, oil consumption in America is simpler than some may think. It's about transportation. We keep arguing about things like asphalt production, whether the Americans should be buying giant screen TV's, organic gardens, and the acceptable size of homes...we draw our lance and fence with mice while the bull tramples us. We bleed America to death, draining trillions out of the economy to feed the raging bull that is devouring the great bulk of the oil consumed in the world. It's about TRANSPORTATION.
RC
Another way to say it is that 'transportation has become more important to our society over the past few decades'. e.g. local/regional modes of production of basic goods now depend wholly or partially on inputs that are transported. So transportation, for most of us, is 7/8 of the enchilada of life.
I just read that the 2010/11 GM Volt will offer "40miles on a single charge equivalent to 150mpg level performance..."
Another post in the last week stated that the US electrical capacity did not needt o be upgraded to cope with the energy demands of PHEVs.
If you are worried that you will lose your "Enchilada", start saving up for a PHEV now!
(Transport costs to the store will simply be passed on to you the consumer -i.e. food costs, etc. will rise. Grow more stuff @ home, potatoes, tomotoes, its not rocket science is it?)
Nick.
Anyone interested in finding out more about the Volt should wander on over to: http://gm-volt.com/
Pete
http://auto.moldova.org/stiri/eng/23043/
So it seems GM is managing the expectation for the Volt to get around 50mpg equivalent. Since the all-electric range is 40 miles, 150/60 = x/(60-40)
Sure, let's all sit around and marvel at the beauty of ANWR, someplace that 99.99% of all Americans have never seen, and never will see, and can't place it on a map, while we all freeze, starve, or otherwise cease to exist. The oil companies are in business to make profit by finding and producing oil, not wind or solar, or other pie in the sky save the planet alternate energy sources. As the exporting countries own economies grow, and the net available oil for export is reduced, we had better be finding and producing our own energy resources as quickly as possible in an attempt to make up for these lost forever imported barrels. This country runs on oil, and everything you see, taste, or touch, is impacted by oil and the ancillary products from oil. I don't see any wind or solar delivering my food, clothes, building supplies, or any other day to day staples. Do I own oil stocks, you bet, as does most here either directly or indirectly. This country wasn't built by people sitting around hugging trees and communing with the beavers and the elk. I don't care if a few square miles or hundreds of square miles of ANWR, or any other God forsaken place is explored for oil.
But it's probably too late anyway. The politically correct crowd appears to be in control, as we spiral downward and marvel at the beauty of ANWR, the west coast of Florida, the east coast, the west coast, and pristine beauty of Martha's Vineyard where no one wants to look at wind generators!!!
Niether ANWR nor offshore drilling is going to change peak and the effects thereof by more than a couple years, maximum. IOW, it's a waste of resources to even bother.
What energy is extracted will not affect price in any significant way, but will continue to enrich the oil companies.
The burning of those resources *will* impact our future ability to live on this planet.
All in all, a really pointless exercise in self-abuse.
Cheers
The global oil shortfall in the decade after peak oil dwarfs ANWR or any other oil resource I have seen examined. It's not even worth considering on the scale of shortfall we face. Some say oil has peaked already. Robert Hirsch finds the most current and authoritative research predicts peak global oil production between 2008 and 2018 “Giant Oil Fields – Highway to Oil”, dissertation, F. Robelius, Uppsala University, 2007.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070330100802.htm and
http://www.peakoil.net/GiantOilFields.html
February 29 in Congressional testimony Hirsch reported that Charlie Maxwell, "the dean of world oil analysts", predicted “gasoline at $12-15 per gallon within a few years”.
http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/File/Commdocs/hearings/2008/Ene...
When will peak oil production start down the back side of the slope? It will be too soon, based on how long it will take to transform our economies and how little we are doing toward that great task. Ground solar and wind are both intermittent and we have no way to store utility scale energy quantities economically. The best choice is Space Solar Power, which is clean, baseload (99% capacity factor, compared to typical baseload plants of 90%) and inexhaustible. No other energy alternative can provide the MASSIVE quantities of such power we require. This is not to minimize the massive task of energy transformation facing us - chiefly moving away from fossil fuels for transportation to electric/hybrid drives. Conservation & efficiency improvements can help, but they are entirely inadequate to the true task.
The challenging, but very doable technical work of SSP, however, pales beside the political/educational communication and time required to overcome our fossil fuel energy establishment and rebuild our energy infrastructure:
http://www.sspi.gatech.edu
Don't store them: global grid.
Cheers
I was shocked to see Heinberg said a similar thing in a recent presentation. Not only that, but that he sees this as a bottom up process, as I do.
According to ABB's "Technical Description of HVDC" a typical 1000 MW rated cable with crossection 2200 mm2 HVDC DC conductor at 300 KV will drop 27-33 KVolts in voltage over 1000 km. Basically you will loose all your power to waste heat over 10,000 km.
http://www.abb.com/cawp/gad02181/b09f92e68fb0b314c12571c3002e9080.aspx
AC Losses are far higher than DC transmission cables.
If you go to superconducting cable that requires active maintenance of liquid nitrogen temperatures through the entire length. No one has a clue to how to do that economically for 20,000 km.
Beyond that when the sun is over the Pacific you have no power to put in the "global grid".
Beyond that the US and many other countries will not agree to an "extension cord" running through the half dozen most active terrorist countries in the world.
You were joking, right?
So build off-raod tankers. Done. Next!
Smaller bore pipelines. Done. Next!
I keep telling you all massively distributed networks...
If you pay them, they will come.
Such companies exist. Transition is such an issue?
I doubt that the quantity makes a difference from a climate change point of view.
This is just barmy, Gail. How can you say this given the events and revelations of the last 14 months? Not only do we need to eliminate carbon production, we need to go in reverse! How can it possibly be concluded using the fossil fuels that still exist means little or nothing? You have to be discounting that research, ignoring that research, or completely disagree with it. I am shocked.
Are you in the camp that says PO is so overwhelmingly important that AGW cannot be considered at this time?
Cheers
Does anyone really see much demand for gasoline at $5 a gallon? How about $10 or $20 a gallon? I don't. The demand equation doesn't consider the transition to PHEV's and electric vehicles that will happen when gas gets too expensive. Plug-in hybrids will make a huge dent in demand. We should be more concerned about how our electricity will be generated. All that coal in the ground will be very tempting to use.
"All that coal in the ground will be very tempting to use."
Tempting yes, but not as easy as many seem to think. The trasport infrastructure for coal is already maxed out, and the industry suffers from labor shortages now. Just as with oil, we are having to go deeper and into more difficult to reach places to find and extract coal.
We are not even discussing as of this moment the environmental issues becoming a larger factor, issues aside from carbon release. While Al Gore goes into rhetorical spasms about a glacier at the North pole, the damage of mountaintop removal extraction of coal, in which thousands and thousands of acres of some of the most biodiverse forests right here in the U.S. (areas that many Americans can actually reach and visit) are simply blown to bits are ignored by Gore and many greens, even though they occur a couple of hours drive behind Gore's "green" mansion, in Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia.
There has been much discussion over the last few days on TOD concerning EROEI and solar energy for electric power production, Concentrating Mirror Solar as well as PV.
There has also been discussion of EROEI. The trend for solar has been improved EROEI, while the trend for coal, like all fossil fuels is toward declining EROEI. At some point, the paths are bound to intersect. Science and time are on the side of the renewables.
Lastly, do not dismiss the possibility of a carbon tax. World pressure is simmering for such a carbon penelty. The U.S. would ignore this pressure, if not for the fact that we are increasingly dependent on foreign money.
With a carbon tax, it's game, set, match, coal becomes as rare in it's use in the modern economy as peat.
(P.S. Don't ignore me this time you guys, I told you what was going to happen to the price of Diesel compared to gasoline...when will you learn I know what I'm doing... :-)
RC
That's interesting RC. Maybe peak coal isn't as far away as most folks think. Still,alternative electricity is a lot easier to tackle than alternative liquid fuels. Ethanol and biofuels compete with food. Windmills and solar panels don't. People can be pretty damn creative when push comes to shove. The U.S. added 5000 megawatts of wind power last year. A drop in the bucket. Just a third of the increased electrical demand. But,we'll do better this year. And next year. And the year after that...
When oil hits $250 per gallon the public isn't going to want to hear about carbon taxes. They will instead clamor for coal-to-liquid.
When, exactly, are you expecting the more severe effects of PO to manifest?
Cheers
Oil will always be available ccpo....for a price. Over a dozen countries have had riots over the increased cost of food and fuel so far this year. Prices will continue to rise,and fewer and fewer people will be able to eat healthy or heat their homes. The poorest countries will implode. Think Liberia. China and India are kegs of dynamite that can blow at any time. Two billion people making subsistence wages aren't going to be happy when food and fuel double in price...again. The next five years will be one forest fire after another. Western countries will fare better than most. But,only because we can afford more.
More severe than what? Than what's going on right now? Next week, then.
not much demand at $5 a gallon ROTFLOL.
gasoline/petrol/diesel is already nearly $10 in much of Europe and I don't see many horse drawn carts but plenty of Mercs and Beamers:-) What i do see is many people complaining about the price of fuel and others saying they will keep driving their cars at any cost.
Personally I would be happy to see $20, it might reduce the traffic jams then I would drive more and maybe buy a Ferrari:-) Since i only drive about 4,000 km per year it is a small percentage of my income.
You guys recognize that he's full of beans, as is the EIA, and IEA; but, he says that biofuels/alternatives can offer only 10% in twenty years, and you take it as GOSPEL? Sheesh.
We're already doing 6% of gasoline with ethanol, will be doing 7% by year's end, and we haven't even gotten started yet. Sorry to pee on your pity-fest, folks; but, your apocalypse ain't coming.
But, THIS STUFF
http://domesticfuel.com/2008/04/06/cellulosic-ethanol-fueled-vette-makes...
will Never Work!
By the way, the cost of food, according to the CPI, was up 4.5% this year.
We'll slowly start bringing some of our surplus 150 Million Acres into production. Brazil has about that many acres lying fallow. Don't even think about Africa. We're, finally, entering into a game they can play.
Oil will slowly go away, and we won't even miss it.
Of course, If we can get 1/10th the square acres under solar that we are trying to put under corn, we could power a grid based world with no carbon release, no soil erosion, and no ongoing natural gas consumption through massive use of fertilizer (why do ethanol supporters not like to talk about the nat gas consumption?, well except at congressional hearings when they admit, reluctantly that without cheap natural gas imputs the ethanol program is dead), and with solar and grid based plug hybrids we avoid the crisis of conscious that comes with starving the poorest nations in the world to feed cars and trucks. (Really, ethanol is not only a technical error it is a moral one, and will be seen as an atrocity (in the poor nations, it already is)
As it it's not enough that ethanol production is already driving food prices through the roof, the rising consumption of natural gas is now making it more and more expensive to heat homes.
The devil's bargain is an incredible one. Folks, you may not be able to heat your house, you may not be able to afford to eat, but you WILL be able to afford to drive! The miracle of ethanol just keeps on giving! :-)
RC
Look, I'm all for Solar. As fast as possible, wherever possible. There's a large tax credit for Hybrid Vehicles. Great. But, we can do a lot of ethanol, Right Now. Liquid fuels also have an advantage if you have to drive long distances, or are working on the farm. If you truly believe that we have a crisis coming very soon, then you have to start looking at what you can do NOW!
Hyperbole sells newspapers, but it's not very useful in a "Scientific" debate. Corn is STILL $0.11/lb. It still goes to feed cattle for wealthy people to eat (not to feed poor Africaners.) We still Exported over 2 Billion Bushels THIS YEAR.
Let me use the number 35,000 btus of nat gas in a gallon of ethanol (many manufacturers, as I have linked, are below this; but, I don't want to get into a peeing match with RR over a difference that is, really of little importance.) I can put this 35,000 btus of nat gas in the tank of my Saab Biopower and go 36 Miles. Where else can I get this type of bargain?
A lot of ethanol refineries are transitioning away from nat gas toward biomass (a transition that will, almost surely, intensify,) But, in the meantime, we're getting a pretty good return on this resource.
And, as I posted above, Food was up 4.5% this year. Not exactly "Exploding."
Thoughtfulness, folks; not Hyperbole.
what was the water usage for all that ethanol production? What are the atrizine levels in ground water in IA, MN, WI, IL, etc.? How big is the hypoxia zone growing in the GOM due to excess nitrogen runoff? Can ethanol growth keep up with crude oil depletion? and if so, what are the environmental costs? No hyperbole, just questions.
Nate, it takes about 3, to 4 gallons of water to refine a gallon of ethanol. I've read that it takes somewhere over forty to produce a gallon of gasoline, and 150 gallons to print your Sunday Newspaper. I don't know anything about atrazine. I'm assuming it's not too bad or we would have been hearing more about it. As for the dead zone: Jeez, there's an awful lot of stuff that goes into the Big Muddy. Runoff from Cities, Industry, etc. That dead zone phenomena certainly needs more study; but, I'm not sure we should send our people into starvation over it just yet.
Look, I'm not saying we shouldn't be cognizant (and protective) of our environment: I'm just saying that I'm a little suspicious of those that weren't concerned when we were planting 90 million acres of corn to be used as Vietnamese Hog Feed, but are suddenly hyper-concerned when that crop is going to help get me to my job in an affordable manner.
The National Academy of Science recently had a report on the Implications of Biofuel Production for United States Water Production"
From the peer reviewed paper:
Nate, water usage is complicated business. I'm not downplaying it; I'm just saying it can be demogogued, easily, by those with an axe to grind. I'm not saying you are one, such, just that some people that write books are.
It's generally accepted that refineries use about 1600 gallons of water to refine a barrel of oil. However, Definitions are tricky. Some is "Consumptive" use, which means the water is released back into the atmosphere through evaporation, and there's the process whereby the water is contaminated, cleaned up, somewhat, and released back into a river, lake, ocean, etc.
Also, keep in mind that only 15% of all corn is irrigated. Also, keep in mind that a significant amount of that water returns to the aquifer. An acre of corn in Neb transpires about 300,000 gallons of water into the atmosphere which, like as not, ends up growing corn in Mn, or Wisconsin. 150 bu/acre x 56 lbs/bu x 10% water weight = 840 lbs, or 100 gallons actually leave the field - And, it's consumed, largely, by livestock to produce your steak.
Again, I'm NOT saying that we shouldn't, and won't, be looking, more, and more, at things like "Drip" irrigation, etc in the future; BUT, I get really suspicious when people who paid no attention to the irrigated corn that went into Hog Feed for China all of a sudden get Very, Very Concerned when that corn takes me to work.
The authors of the National Academy report are a who's who of water experts in US.
1600 gallons of water to refine 1 barrel of oil? Generally accepted? Link?
USGS good enough?
http://ct.water.usgs.gov/education/trivia.htm
Nate, if you don't like this link you can get about a dozen by googling: "how much water to refine a barrel of gasoline?"
I don't trust USGS on oil so I guess I am suspect on that water 'trivia' as well, especially since I've personally done some work on this issue. I agree there is a wide disparity on water used in refining, but most of the numbers I've seen are between .3 and 10, one to 2 orders of magnitude less than for ethanol. Here are two:
http://domesticfuel.com/2008/03/17/putting-water-use-in-perspective/
http://i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2007/03/water-usage-in-oil-refinery.html
My colleagues have a paper in review called Burning Water - EROWI - Energy Return on Water Invested, showing how the world is going to be water limited in 68% of countries (by population) to use ANY extra water for biofuels by 2025.
You are correct about being careful between consumptive and withdrawal uses.
And what happens during drought year?
Nate, it IS interesting, the discrepancy that's always given between the amount used to "Refine Gasoline," and the amount that's given to "Refine a Barrel of Oil." I know for nuthin on oil refining; But, could they, possibly, be bringing forward the Water that's injected into the wells - kinda like the water for irrigation is brought forward in the ethanol calculations? Just a random thought.
As for Drought? I would guess that a farmer that was already doing some irrigating would do more, but a farmer in Iowa, or Mn that wasn't set up to irrigate would just get a smaller crop.
Again, I'm not making light of the water issue; but I don't think much will be done until the general public becomes aware that a problem is developing. At that time I would imagine that mitigating strategies would be put in place. Keep the phrase "Drip Irrigation" in the back of your head. I know it sounds farfetched to think that big Nebraska Corn Farms could be irrigated this way, but I would have bet a gazillion dollars against the sorry sand farms I grew up on ever being leveled by laser guided equipment, too; And I would have been Dead Wrong.
One more time: I don't believe for a minute that the U.S. Could, or Should be producing 100% of their Transportation Energy through Bio means in Twenty years, or a hundred years. I'm just saying it's here, NOW; and, we need a solution, NOW. All the other technologies will do their part when their time comes. Some sooner, Some, "Much" Later.
They use salt water for injection wells in a lot of places. Bio-fuels are not a solution at all, there wont be enough of it in terms of scale ever.
It's generally accepted that refineries use about 1600 gallons of water to refine a barrel of oil.
No, it isn't. In fact, as Nate linked to below, I published the publicly available water usage as well as how much oil we refined during that period at my former refinery in Montana. Note that this was the only source of water we used, and that reflected the entire barrel of oil. Also, because this is make-up water, all of those losses (evaporation, etc.) are reflected. So you are way, way off. Then again, that is consistent with a pattern that has been far less than objective.
Where those big numbers come from is that some refineries pull water out of a lake, run it through heat exchangers, and send it right back to the lake. The only thing that happens to this water is that it goes back in a few degrees warmer - and the more water that is run through the lower the temperature change. But people who like to exaggerate (or just don't really understand the issue) will say that 1600 gallons were used, ignoring the fact that the 1600 gallons were put right back. But that's not the way most refineries are run.
Since sunlight is "free" and including it as an input into EROEI analysis is "distracting" and "isn't helpful," why not say the same thing about water? After all, it's solar energy that powers the hydrological cycle. If you can rationalize to yourself the exclusion of solar inputs into fuel (fossil or bio-) production, you can just as well arbitrarily decide to ignore water.
water is not part of EROEI analysis
Hyperbole sells newspapers, but it's not very useful in a "Scientific" debate.
I can't help but note the irony between that statement, and this one:
Let me use the number 35,000 btus of nat gas in a gallon of ethanol (many manufacturers, as I have linked, are below this; but, I don't want to get into a peeing match with RR over a difference that is, really of little importance.)
It's not a peeing match to point out that your number has been fabricated. You initially said 30,000 BTUs, and claimed that was for the entire process - from raising the corn to finished ethanol. I asked you multiple times for a reference, and you finally gave me an unverified claim from someone trying to sell their technology - and that was only for the ethanol factory piece. It did not include any of the substantial inputs for the corn farming piece.
So while my numbers are from actual surveys of ethanol plants and commercial corn farms - you don't accept them because you don't like them. You prefer to have unverified evidence that supports your point over a much more rigorous analysis (yet still by a pro-ethanol organization) that doesn't. We call that cherry-picking your evidence, and it doesn't do much for building your credibility.
Horse Hockey! You've never actually GIVEN A NAME. I Did. Corn Plus. Siouxland. Poet Chancellors. Poet Voyager at Emmetsburg. etc.
I gave a Government figure (okay, it was 18 and change, not 1600) and you dispute it. I give actual tests by Universities, and you claim the college kids, and professors rigged the tests. I give an SAE paper, and you say you think it's wrong. I give the actual numbers from CARB, and you refer to a couple of individual locations which you never get around to identifying.
You don't like my figure of 8 gallons of fuel/acre to raise corn? I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll google "How many gallons of diesel to grow an acre of corn?" I'll betcha a dollar to a donut the U.N. cite will pop in the top 5 articles. Wanna bet? Let's try it.
I found This right off the bat. Not exactly what I was looking for, but, since you have referenced this particular work before I can live with it.
http://www.cleanairchoice.org/fuels/Net%20Energy%20Balance.pdf
I won't take his plant figures because it's from 2001, and a lot of efficiencies have been added since then; but farming hasn't changed all that much.
So, let's take their 49,753 for average inputs for farm, fertilizer, and seed, multiply it by .60 (the amount of livestock-feeding potential that's lost,) and divide that by 2.8 gal/bu and, voila, we get 10,661 btus per gallon. Add in 24,000 processing from Siouxland (this is probably pretty representative of Poet's plants, I guess) and we get 34,661.
If we used Corn Plus' 13,000 we would have to adjust the inputs to 68% of 49,773 (they lose 20% of their distillers grains in the process) for a total of 13,000 plus 12,087 for a total of 25,087. Oh, and this is before we get into fractionation, and microwave drying, not to mention burning cobs, lignin, and stover.
Anyway, g'night. My work is done, here. For the night, anyway. :)
Horse Hockey! You've never actually GIVEN A NAME. I Did. Corn Plus. Siouxland. Poet Chancellors. Poet Voyager at Emmetsburg. etc.
LOL! I never gave a name? I cited the USDA studies. The actual plant surveys. You know, of actual operating plants. Not a claim by this or that ethanol concern whose public perception has taken a beating recently. No, what I cited was loads better than what you have cited (in fact, one of your cites said "we think our energy consumption..."). Right. Anyway, you kept saying "Poet says..." I never saw you cite anything. I saw you link to one article, and that's the one where they were trying to sell technology.
I gave a Government figure (okay, it was 18 and change, not 1600) and you dispute it.
I don't even know what that refers to. Government figure for what?
I give actual tests by Universities, and you claim the college kids, and professors rigged the tests.
You were a liar the first time you said this, and you are a liar now. If your case is good, why the need to lie about what was said? I suppose your lies give you comfort, but they waste my time. What I pointed out - and what is true - is that the ethanol lobby commissioned the tests. I also suggested that I would wait for independent confirmation. I don't suppose this would have been your position had Big Oil commissioned the tests and found just the opposite. Would you have accepted those conclusions? Of course you wouldn't, but then again you have shown yourself to be a man who shamelessly embraces double-standards.
You don't like my figure of 8 gallons of fuel/acre to raise corn?
Outrageous strawman alert.
So, let's take their 49,753 for average inputs for farm, fertilizer, and seed, multiply it by .60....
The massaging of the numbers never ceases. The USDA studies have already factored that in by allocating the energy inputs. But hey, if it makes ethanol look better to double-count or come up with your own methodology....
If we used Corn Plus' 13,000...
Did it ever occur to you that if your claims were true, these guys would be printing money? I mean, if I could take 25,000 BTUs and turn it into 75,000 BTUs, then I would use part of my output to run my plant and insulate me from high energy costs, and I would simply take over the fuel market. The problem is that your numbers have been stretched to beyond recognition.
You see, that's the credibility problem you now have. Everyone can see the mental acrobatics you are doing to stretch the case for corn ethanol. For you, claims are facts when they support your point. Peer-reviewed papers are bunk when they don't. Your agenda is transparent. And I really think the need for my time here to debunk you is near an end, because 1). You have been exposed; and 2). I don't like debating people who have a habit of lying and thus force me to correct those lies.
Think of ethanol as inducing starvation that reduces road crowding.
You mean *this* CPI? http://www.shadowstats.com/imgs/sgs_cpi_home.gif?m=Feb08b
“This was our first race running cellulosic E85 ethanol, and we had great performance and great fuel efficiency,” Gavin said.
Given that there is very little cellulosic ethanol actually available for purchase (and what is available is made at an EROEI much lower than 1), I wonder if he either made a misstatement (that is a quote from the driver) and actually equated cellulosic with "renewable" or "green." If not, I wonder where they got the ethanol. I don't know that there is any available within a thousand miles of Florida.
Do you know the source of the ethanol?
We're already doing 6% of gasoline with ethanol, will be doing 7% by year's end, and we haven't even gotten started yet.
By volume. Not by energy content, and certainly not by net energy. I presume you have noticed that gasoline demand didn't fall by 6%. It has been relatively flat in just the past year, but I suspect that's had a lot more to do with high gasoline prices.
Robert, I'm pretty sure they've got a contract with that outfit up in Wyoming. KP Processors.
We've been over this before; but, you've got to admit that when operated in a newer car, at ten, to thirty percent blends, ethanol is pretty close to gasoline in efficiency.
Also, you'll take note of the fact that refinery runs are way down. 82% this last week. When the ethanol is added at the end of the pipe (the blender) it's figured in as gasoline sales, which keeps the "Sales" figures up, even though we're using less actual gasoline. At least, that's the way I understand it.
It's actually "KL Process Design Group", not "KP Processors"
the car story is confirmed here:
http://www.klprocess.com/Press%20Releases/WBE_031408.html
home page is here:
http://www.klprocess.com/
John, Thank You. I have a horrible time with that name (even when I've been up for awhile.) I should Never type anything before noon. :)
Robert, I'm pretty sure they've got a contract with that outfit up in Wyoming. KP Processors.
OK, good PR, but bad energy return. EROEI of the whole process, given that it is coming from Wyoming, is probably less than 0.5. But it is interesting.
We've been over this before; but, you've got to admit that when operated in a newer car, at ten, to thirty percent blends, ethanol is pretty close to gasoline in efficiency.
We have been over this. My opinion has not changed since we discussed it last week. Those studies - paid for by the ethanol lobby - need to be confirmed by an independent 3rd party. I think most people would think that's a reasonable request, but you have been quite willing to run with the results.
Also, you'll take note of the fact that refinery runs are way down. 82% this last week. When the ethanol is added at the end of the pipe (the blender) it's figured in as gasoline sales, which keeps the "Sales" figures up, even though we're using less actual gasoline.
The reason refinery runs are down is because imports were so strong - not because of ethanol. Our gasoline imports were running a million barrels a day [Edit: Not "above normal", which I originally wrote in my haste] - far above ethanol production. As far as how ethanol is calculated, most of it is in the blending components category. But it isn't easy to sort it all out. I had to get some information from the EIA before it was all clear. (I would expound some more, but I have to run to a dinner meeting - right now).
Sorry Gail, as much as I totally like your other statements, you cannot be serious here. While Peak Oil might be more pressing, climate change has the potential (I am not saying it will, but there is definitely the risk) to wipe most of humankind and many ecosystems off this planet's face.
No country's FF resources alone will make a marked difference "from a climate change point of view". It is all country's resources summed up that threaten to push us over the brink.
So the last thing we need is to produce more FF. The only sustainable way forward is
- to use less in total (very easy in the US and even in Europe which already uses half the energy per capita),
- to employ higher (total) efficiency technology to make this possible without a too big loss in standard of living
- to persue a renewable energy crash program (how many wind turbines and solar panels could have been built for the 1-2 trillion $ cost of the unneccessary Iraq war?).
Everything else is demonstrable hogwash.
We don't need to buy time with drilling for more oil, we need to start acting decidedly on the basis of existing technology. Energy research is fine, but we already have all the technology we need to make huge strides forward (solar panels, wind turbines, super efficient building insulation, combined heat and power, high efficiency electric motors and transformers, batteries, etc.pp.). Merely waiting for more energy research to provide the silver bullet will let us miss the bus.
Cheers,
Davidyson
Breaking news, you heard it here...
I am watching the news given below on TV, on a moring show called Agribusiness Today, broadcast out of Evansville Indiana so I have no link:
As I am watching, they are showing film of recent Department of Agriculture testimony before Congress. The testimony involved a rather large jump in upcoming production of soybean which has caught the grain markets by surprise.
The reason given is the lower amount of fertilizer required for soybean compared to Return on Investment when compared to corn. Fertilizer prices have been climbing strongly due to the high price of natural gas.
Thus, corn planted is expected to be flat, despite the high prices for corn. Demand however will be very high, for food in the U.S., as feed for livestock, as export grain to other nations and as feedstock for ethanol. The ethanol mandates from the federal government are beginning to have real bite now, and discussion on the Agribusiness Today program was that Congress is feeling increasing pressure to roll back these mandates given the very noticable increase in food prices seen recently.
If natural gas climbs any higher, the grain farmers will look to the crops requiring the lowest fertilizer needed per return on investment, which could squeeze corn production considerably below what is needed to make the ethanol mandates and create food and feed. This could have a large enough effect on food and meat prices to drive food inflation to crisis levels and make it completely impossible to make the federal ethanol mandates as they are currently required.
This game is very much afoot and changing almost hourly.
RC
I love the smell of non-linearity in the morning!
Cheers
There are few problems with this graph:
(1) The existing crude+ngl production is shown flat since 2005 then rise and then start falling after 2012. The problems in this part are:
(i) We know for sure that crude production in usa is falling at rate of approx 2% since 1971. Natural gas production in north america is also in decline i think, even if not in decline its not increasing enough to compensate for decline in crude production, is it?
(ii) The statement that crude+ngl production will rise till 2012 is very very doubtful.
(2) When crude+ngl production is showed to decline after 2012 all of this decline is showed to be more than compensated by enhanced recovery methods and new discoveries. I never saw this happening elsewhere. When a country is in decline it is in decline, technology and discoveries of small wells can at best slow the decline but can't reverse it. When you fall your parachute can slow the rate of fall but can't reverse it.
(3) This problem is with "other" part which is defined as "refining process gains and other liquids". I am not sure what the term "other liquids" mean here but I am sure that "refining process gains" is at constant rate and do not increase with time. The line below the "other" line is almost as much in 2005 as in 2025 but the "other" line get significantly thicker, how can that be?
(4) The green line of bio fuel production get very very thick after 2010 as compare to what it was in 2007. Ethanol and other green fuels crops can be increased but not that much. Also the current rise in green fuel crops have triggered a high increase in food prices every where in world. I can take my country Pakistan as an example, we have milk climbing to Rs. 40 per liter from Rs. 34, wheat Rs. 35 from Rs. 12 and so on. Its interesting to see how much high food price world economy can absorb before breaking up.
(5) Usa's oil demand is shown to be same in 2025 as it was in 2005. The positive population growth rate of usa show a different story. More people means more oil consumption unless eia is expecting a significant fall in living standard.
I suspect that the conservationists may have misunderstood human nature. There can never be any conservation as long as increased consumption brings increased profits.
No government or Industry representative can ever publicly say that Oil is running out.
In addition the world is now way past any oil exporter conserving or reducing its exports to save them for future internal use.
All wars are about access to resources. Do we really think that the US will sit in the dark when all the Mickey Mouse countries start hoarding oil.
It would be consistent with Super Power policy to already have a US master plan for the take over of any or all oil fields on the planet.
The only negotiable items on the agenda will be how the big boys will divide up the booty. The arbitrary division of Africa amoung the Nineteenth Century Super Powers being a prime example.
We could realistically expect a new "Super Patriots Act" to declare it illegal for any country (other than the US) to hoard oil, and make it punishable by confiscation of all hoarded oil, plus a fine of another 50% of known reserves.
To my interpretation, the US's latest total prohibition against any country dealing with Iranian banks under the "Patriot Act" should frighten us all. We should start worrying about For Whom the Bell Tolls, before it tolls for us.
We are heading into very serious times, which history tells us, can usually turn nasty very quickly.
What exactly do you mean by "mickey mouse" over here mr mickey mouse?
Reindeer,oil exporting countries not only keep plenty for their own consumers,they heavily subsidize it as well. Gas in Venezuela is .11 a gallon. That wouldn't be possible without oil exports. Saddam sold us more oil than Iraq does today. He even gave us discounts other countries didn't receive. It's true there wouldn't have been a war if Iraq didn't have oil. Without oil,Saddam wouldn't have been a threat to anyone.
If every oil exporting country stopped selling oil tomorrow,it would just force us to go electric that much quicker. This American is ready for the challenge....are you?
Cudos to you Gail for your efforts with the EIA. Unfortunately all the Govt. agencies seem to be on the same page - the rosey one. No matter what happens, the outlook is always peachy. Even in Iraq the best face is put on a very tenuous and difficult situation. Oil is of course no different.
Peak Oil is just pure sense.
Populations grow, consume too much, then struggle to meet demand.
The issue, especially pertaining to overpopulation, is discussed here: http://www.corrupt.org/act/interviews/john_feeney
Gail - my question to Fig 5 would have been:
"Do you know that you are bat shit crazy?"
€
No worries Euan, according to "reputable" sources I have seen, fractures in the Bakken Shale, with virtually zero matrix permeability, are going to yield recovery factors approaching 100% of Original Oil In Place.
While most of us got a good chuckle, some of our newer readers might not detect the satirical nuance in your last post. On a more serious note, any idea what range of Bakken recovery factors you guess are most likely? 3%, 5%, 10%, higher?
Small Oil Company Strikes Black Gold
Publication: Associated Press
Date:4/06/08
A tiny oil and gas company based in Dallas, Texas that has working interests in Gulf Coast and Mid-Continent areas yield a millions of barrels or more of oil, the Associated Press reported.
Geologists are calling it a great find – one of the few large onshore discoverys in at least 15 years .35 million to 65 million barrels of oil. Located in a region of complex geology long abandoned for exploration by major oil companies. It’s turning out to contain high-quality oil.
With the secret not out just yet , industry players expect a very high bidding war to break out at the Gulf Coast and Mid-Continent areas. At today’s oil prices the discovery will bring Millions of dollars to this small based Dallas, Texas company. Although the discovery is still playing out, the oil will take some time to recover. In the mean time a Big major oil company has offerd to step up to the plate to help with the recover in a joint team effort. This small based oil company can also find its self in the bidding war between Big oil companys to take full control of the company.
It has to be this company Ignis Petroleum Group (IGPG)
New Member for: 48 min 49 sec
Let's all take our "winnings" from our prior investments in Pacific Ethanol--which was also recommended--and use it to buy some of these "hot" oil company stocks.
I just saw a piece on C-span singing the praises of EIA as the go to guys on energy. Industry professionals stated how much they relied on EIA for data and forecasts--that the hallmark of the agency was staff integrity. Some data is not fitting together.
Hi wisdomfrompakistan,
Strangely, I am not American nor live there. George's ears look pretty big to me.'
I guess Pakistan has not yet opened its first Disneyland. It may not be long. Maybe Pinocchio noses are the fashion this year.
Re: EIA Supply Forecasts
All is explained in my ASPO-USA column
The EIA's Simple Model of a Complex World, published June 13, 2007
Their outlook is always demand-driven.
-- Dave
well then its not 99% worthless, its 100% worthless.
After rereading this, I am beginning to wonder if API/Chevron are smart like foxes, gradually leaking out via blogs (instead of government making some dramatic proclamation) that we are really in deep doo-doo wrt to liquid fuels.
p.s. Euan that made me laugh - you SHOULD be on those API conference calls, but I doubt you'll be invited....;-)
In the conference was the following:
"Ms.Gerritsen observed that fashions in funding change, and now the money is going to carbon sequestration and renewable fuels."
I just note that eg. http://www.theoildrum.com/tag/eor , In the oil production industry CO2 Sequestration and Enhanced Oil Recovery are terms used interchangeably. The Oil production industry stands to benefit hugely from CO2 capture and sequestration, and even more if there are payments involved for sequestering the CO2.
this from Turbomachinery International, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5385/is_200609/ai_n21399751
"A MARKET MECHANISM IS NEEDED TO ROUTE CARBON EMISSIONS FROM POWER PLANTS TOWARDS ENHANCED OIL RECOVERY -- ... I'm learning some new terms here but conventional methods can extract 30% - 50% of the Original oil In Place (OOIP). Effective CO2 injection can deliver an additional 8% - 15% of the OOIP. (Figure 2 shows the projection for the Weyburn, Canada, project and illustrates the impact). "
I personally think we should sort of avoid getting sucked into paying oil producers extra money to "capture" CO2 they would have purchased using incomes from present exhorbitant prices anyway. Google "CO2 shortage EOR" or anything similar.