 | Gas fields also deplete, but faster | The Oil Drum | Logging a well, does not mean a two by four between the eyes |  |
Open Thread
Posted by Stuart Staniford on November 20, 2005 - 7:43pm
Please report any supergiant fields discovered over the weekend (especially the abiotic ones)...
“I'd put my money on solar energy… I hope we don't have to wait til oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
—Thomas Edison, in conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone, March 1931
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My sister believes in peak oil. She went out and bought a hunting knife after I told her about it. o_O
My dad actually told me about oil depletion when I was a kid, and warned me about Malthus' Doom. I was a cornucopian when I was a kid, sure that technology would always save us (and sure I would be part of the solution, probably winning a Nobel Prize along the way ;-). Now it's kind of reversed. I fear the worst, but he doesn't seem too worried about it. Maybe he figures he won't have to worry about it, since he's almost 70 years old. Or maybe it's too depressing to consider at this point in his life, when he's living off his pension and has several medical issues typical of old age.
My mom beleives me, she's actually going to let me hook up some small 12volt mills on her property so i can start to figure that stuff out. She lives in the country and is my 'ace in the hole' for when the anarchy comes. ;)
My dad doesn't really know what to think, I made him watch The End of Suburbia and his only comment was 'That's just their opinion', and he wouldn't even read Twilight in the Desert. I'm sure he'll come to beleive more once he starts getting his heating bills this winter.
Most of my friends listen, and I think they understand it, but I dont think many of them think that it can happen. Although, atleast they think about me from time to time and send me nice cartoons for my desk like this one (its work safe) - http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/110305/ready-set-worry.gif
We have a little food co-op here that gets together monthly to order bulk. I've used this as an opportunity to talk and to pass around books on the subject.
My family hasn't been spectacularly involved in the issue, but they know about it and have not expressed any doubts. I have a niece (whom I showed End of Suburbia) who gave an oral presentation on peak oil in her college class.
The people I hang out with are all expressly liberal or Green. Many of us are cultural dropouts who are well prepared for whatever comes down the pike.
One friend has a sort of paganist camp. She invited me to speak on peak oil (I'm agnostic and have no interest in religions, pagan or otherwise). I sprang at the invite and was received very warmly.
A person in our coop has invited me to give a presentation on peak oil in her history class next semester. I've already talked to the professor about it and he seemed very interested.
Ironically enough, I've met a wall of indifference from our geology department (I work at the local Univ). I tried to stir something up, but their treatment was less than encouraging.
After having mild panic attacks by the forecast of blizzards this weekend, I found this intresting little peice on the met office website
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2005/pr20051121c.html
News release
Natural fluctuations can help predict climate change
21 November 2005
Predictions of future climate change have, until now, been based on simulations of the effects of increasing greenhouse gases. However, new results show we could learn more about climate in the next few decades by supplementing these with predictions of a natural climate cycle: the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation or AMO.
The AMO is a climate fluctuation which occurs over several decades, whose warm and cool phases can be traced back in global records dating from the 19th century. Its effects are centred on the North Atlantic Ocean, but it appears to influence many parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Scientists have previously found links with European and North American climate, drought in the semi-arid African Sahel region, and the frequency of Atlantic hurricanes. Indeed, the record 2005 hurricane season is part of the very active last decade associated with the current warm AMO phase.
To test whether the AMO is a permanent feature of our climate, Met Office scientists, with colleagues in the United States, examined a 1,400-year climate model calculation. They discovered that not only could the AMO be accurately simulated by their model, but that it is a genuine long-lived climate oscillation.
The Met Office team then tried to link the AMO to variations in the strength of the thermohaline circulation (THC) -- the global ocean circulation driven by differences in the density of sea water -- and found that the next AMO transition may bring natural THC weakening, adding to that projected to occur as a result of human-induced climate change.
A paper, soon to be published in the American Geophysical Union's journal Geophysical Research Letters, highlights these recent breakthroughs, and recommends that shifts in the AMO are taken into account in future climate change predictions.
I am careful about such "hot button" issues at work, where people have no choice but to be there with you & I don't want to be tiresome. Somehow PO is too close to politics, and therefore taboo. I have not yet figured why! I discussed it at length the other day with one of my co-workers who I know has an open mind - he's dealt with me on medical issues where I also have unconventional views (which he largely agrees with). His reaction was somewhat cool, but I know he will watch and digest what I said, and he may come back later if things seem to be going as I described. But most people think technology will save the day, if they think about it at all.
But I do sense a growing feeling of gloom about the future from a lot of people. For most it is un-quantified, but there nonetheless. People are worried and potentially very angry. I'm expecting to see some serious political manifestations of this soon, and I'm wondering if there is some way to channel this into doing something productive about energy conservation / alternate sources. I have no idea how. Perhaps if it is shown that the Iraq war really was about oil, you might not be looked at like you have a third eye when you talk about PO!
Were these open letters or did you actually send/email them to family and friends?
Some wrote email back saying I was over-reacting or that I had it backwards - prices go up and then people conserve as a result. Some others wrote very encouraging notes but didn't quite embrace the peak oil concept, but more general ideas about saving the environment. Mostly I got no reaction at all...
I immediately went into full doom and gloom mode and started trying to tell everybody we knew about it.
The reactions have ranged from belief with amazement to derision and anger.
It is a very difficult topic to approach and now I tend to be cautious about sharing it.
My opinion now is that I have told my immediate circle of family and friends and if they don't believe then that's up to them. I've done my bit, as it were. If they chose to ignore it, then that's their choice. But I do keep sending my immediate family little snippets of news via email (like last week's news of the Burgan field). I put "Peak Oil News" in the subject line so that they can delete it if they want to.
I put together a powerpoint presentation a couple of months ago that I presented at work one lunchtime. The few people that turned up were very sceptical, but a couple were genuinely interested. I also did the presentation one night in the school hall, but only three people turned up who were all sympathetic to the subject, so it was easy for me. If anyone would like a copy of my slides, I'd gladly email them to you. Send a request to duncan (at) clear dot net dot nz.
Obviously there's a reason for your question. Have you had great success telling people you know?
My biggest problem is reminding myself that Peak Oil is not just an intellectual exercise--that it's going to have a real impact on how I live my everyday life sometime in the near future. It's so easy to forget that.
People cannot handle any pain or even trivial inconvenience.
As part of a weekend PO exercise. I walked to the mall. I live on top of a large hill and the mall is nearly a mile way at the bottom of the hill. The road is very steep easy walking down. It even has a 3 ton vehicle limit. Coming up is another thing. I carried my groceries in a backpack up it. No car and I am in good physical condition as I walk every day for near an hour. When you take the car it's an easy few minutes drive with your foot on the brake. Coming up most cars have to change down to keep a consistent speed.
I can tell you my muscles and heart were heaving , so I can only imagine what it would be like for some one on the obsese side to do the same. Many of them were walking around the mall eating fried food and burgers.
My point is when the easy life is no longer easy, It will be easier to complain than change. Unfortunately it will take many by surprise.
Our way of life is so oilcentric, it is near impossible for many to think of. It is certainly not warm confortable or cheap. It involves hard work and hard choices.
Peak Oil
A Turning Point for Humanity
My family all think that science will save us. <sigh>
Rick DeZeeuw
"Death, Taxes, and
PEAK OIL."
"Oil will never run out."
"Cars don't pollute that bad."
The biggest problem with this is human psychology. People are not real good at dealing with very long term problems, especially when they are diffuse. Recall how hard it was for many people to accept that freons were destroying the ozone layer. Recall how people were in a panic to get flu shots last year and then as the peak of the flu season passed we wound up with unused vaccine. How do we ask people to prepare for a time in the indefinite future when we won't have cheap oil?
Another issue is that there is no obvious solution. Historically we've progressed from wood to coal to oil (and somewhat to nuclear). There is no step up available. The next step will be a huge change in how we organize our society. Since we've organized till now based on nearly free energy the change will be painful.
Right around the beginning of 2002 I finally had a computer again so my reading took the turn back to favorite subjects and bang!
I have stopped trying to warn my family, They either don't want to see the end ( to old and to set it our ways) or they think as a lot of folks I talk to that ( the world will solve it cause we have to, and look at the technology we have ).
We are all faced with the Status Quo. That chunk of human nature that says if it is not broken don't fix it. We refuse to see the drip in the tub because it has not run over the edge yet! All the while drip by drip we run up our water bills.
The Infeasibility of Rebuilding New Orleans
Can the land really drop 20-60 ft. due to extraction of natural gas?
By far the worst soil subsidence problems are caused when you have clay and you pump out all the fresh water so that salt water flows in. Clay that has fresh water is much less compact than clay that has salt water. When New Orleans and Venice pumped out the fresh water under the city, salt water flowed in and caused compaction.
This is the same problem with Coal Bed Methane depressurisation. To get the methane out you have to depressurise the coal by pumping out the water, which is usually salt. This turns the soil downstream into gumbo which the farmers do not appreciate.
http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/2005/preview4.html
A Sneak Preview - Part 4: Helicopter Commander
by Jim Puplava
www.financialsense.com
Storm Watch Update: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
November 18, 2005
Excerpt:
There would come a day that would be unlike any other day. There would be an event unlike any other event. It would precipitate a crisis unlike any other crisis before it. It would emerge out of nowhere at a time no one would expect. It would be an event that no one anticipated--a crisis the experts didn't foresee. It would be an exogenous event--a rogue wave.
When the crisis arrived it caught market participants by surprise. Its arrival was swift and unexpected. Losses hit every sector. The devastation was encyclopedic in its breadth and utterly cataclysmic in its destruction. A financial nuclear chain reaction had been set in motion that rippled across every market and reached into every corner of the globe. It shook the very foundations of the global financial system leaving fear and destruction in its wake.
Again with the technology will save the world!!
Friday OpenThread.
With the equivalent of over 4,000,000 BTU's of SunLight Energy falling on the average American roof each Sunny Day,I hearby Proclaim the Largest Energy Discovery this Weekend!Equivalent of 75 SuperTankers of oil if converted to Electric KWHR (1 KWHR=3814 BTU )for 100,000,000 American Houses.
And futhermore a Minor SuperGiant Field exists in the Attic of each of those Blessed Dwellings
A BTU reservoir of approx 400,000 (at temps up to 135 -165 deg F)literally Begs to be harvested for domestic household uses in each
attic.Raw conversion to Nat Gas would be worth
$4.80 or $15.73 (in KWHR @ $0.15)in Electricity per Sunny Day.
There's an interview with him here:
http://members.aol.com/leanan7/goodstein.htm
Basically, the problems come with scaling up and with the basics of thermodynamics. It takes a lot of energy to make solar panels and nuclear power plants, and you cannot achieve 100% efficiency due to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. Some of the sunlight that falls on your panel will be wasted due to this unavoidable inefficiency. Even if we covered every roof in America with solar panels, it wouldn't replace the energy we get from oil. And it would consume a lot of time and energy and resource to build that kind of massive infrastructure.
We should have started in the '70s, when we got our first warning. But we didn't, and it may be too late now.
Goodstein is both more optimistic and more pessimistic than most peak oilers. He thinks that if we start NOW and go all out, with everything we have - the national effort we put into WWII and the space program put together - we might be able build enough solar panels, wind turbines, and nuclear power plants to avoid catastrophe. (And it will have to be all three. One or two alone won't do it.)
But he also worries that if we take the easy route - burn more coal instead - we could tip the earth into "a condition incompatible with life" with a runaway "Venus effect."
Does anyone have know if it is in commercial production and how much energey it takes to comppress the air?
which compares well with the steam cars of the 1920s. Stationary compressed air systems are about 75% efficient so you would only get 12 lbs of air from a 1hp compressor each hour.
It is not obvious to me which is a more efficient means of usable energy storage: batteries or a tank of compressed air.
One inherent problem with the compressed air system is the energy losses due to the heat of compression when filling the storage tank. Another is the cooling of the compressed air as it is throttled through the engine, thus reducing its pressure and hence effectiveness. This, by the way, was a problem in air-driven torpedos of WW II vintage, many of which were equipped with alcohol-fired heaters to help maintain pressure of the air going through the turbines and thus extend the range of the torpedo.
Based on what I know about those torpedos, I'm a bit dubious about concept. A large torpedo weighed roughly about the same as a small car, had a high-pressure compressed air tank that took up about half the internal volume, yet only had a range of something considerably less than 10 miles (depending on speed).
Then of course we have the issue of driving around with a large tank of high-pressure compressed gas, which is capable of releasing a tremendous amount of destructive energy in the event of an accident.
Blocks of synchronized AC have become extremely large, partially in order to allow large areas to share much smaller amounts of excess capacity. However faults can propagate across the network extremely rapidly and can affect millions of people as on August 14th 2003. Transmission construction (and maintenance) hasn't kept pace with what the market reforms were trying to achieve because no one wants to carry the cost.
Where I live power supply is often stretched to the limit. There are regular conservation appeals and occasional emergency voltage reductions. Rotating blackouts would be the next step, although it hasn't come to that yet. The system is buried in stranded debt and the government continues to subsidize the price of power for poitical reasons. The private sector doesn't want to build new generation capacity for fear of political interference (justifiably based on previous experience). The public sector wants to build it, but can't realistically afford to do so.
The nuclear generating fleet is old and far less reliable than initially hoped. Every attempt to refurbish it turns into a black hole for public funds. The government - determined to retain centralized control - seeks to solve the problems by entangling the whole sector in even more red tape. Legislation covering renewables seems designed to provide a ceiling for renewable generation rather than a floor for fear of the loss of control inherent in distributed generation.
The problems experienced here are not unique to this area. The central station model requires huge plants capable of frequency management and expensive transmission capacity. It is becoming more and more difficult to afford to provide electricity in this manner, especially as a public service where differential costs of provision are not covered. The price of power is set to skyrocket at huge personal cost to many poorer people. Electricity here, and elsewhere, is a ticking time bomb of a political issue.
I suspect we may have hit peak electricity as well as peak oil and gas, rounding out the crisis of substitutability. A decentralized system based on local provision wouldn't be able to deliver power at anything like the same level, especially in outlying areas. Efficiency can do a lot to get demand down in order to make do with much less supply, at a price of course, but that wouldn't leave any spare capacity for switching to electricity from other energy sources.
I am not as optimistic, perhaps because I'm a transportation engineer with more practical, hands-on experience than a CalTech physicist likely has. We rolled so much of our post-WWII wealth into our cars and our highway system. An advantage we no longer have.
A lot of our roads and bridges were built under the Highway Act in the '50s and '60s. They were designed with 30 to 40 year lifespans. We figured we'd just build bigger and better ones when they wore out. It never occurred to us that money would ever be an issue in the future. You look at the old blueprints, and you can just see how good times were, and how limitless "progress" seemed back then. One job I worked on had these huge embankments built, in the middle of nowhere, with no function I could see. According to the blueprints, they were built with the idea that one day soon we'd be building a new bridge across the Hudson River. Well, 50 years later, people are still using the old bridge. Building a new bridge would be nigh impossible. (We put a park and ride lot on top of those embankments, in hopes of reducing traffic across the old bridge.)
Anyway...we haven't built like that since the '60s. Is it a coincidence that our infrastructure binge ended when we hit peak oil in 1970? Somehow, I doubt it.
When we built the Interstate system in the '50s, most of it was in the middle of nowhere. You look at the blueprints, and the survey markers are things like apple trees and Farmer Brown's chicken coop. The survey data was accurate to plus or minus 10 feet, because that was good enough.
Now, plus or minus 10 feet could mean the difference between taking someone's house or not. We don't have the wide open spaces to build roads any more. And it's become a huge PITA to maintain the roads we have, because we are so dependent on them. We've got twice the number of cars driving on the roads as we expected (mainly because women went to work), as well as trucks huger than anything the original designer ever imagined. So we can't close roads to rebuild them without causing massive traffic jams and ticking off the driving public.
A new fleet of nukes (with new transmission infrastructure because they can't be built near to centres of demand) will be unbelievably expensive to finance, but institutional inertia (sclerosis?) has set in and the powers that be can't seem to be able to contemplate another way of doing things. An insistence on tackling problems in the most expensive way possible is a large part of the affordability problem.
The rightwingers are griping that Clinton balanced the budget by "gutting the military." But now it's Rumsfeld who is trying to cut military spending. He was pushing to shrink the military even while Iraq was heating up. One of his ideas: force everyone in the military into combat positions, and have all the non-combat positions - cooks, clerks, etc. - filled by consultants. That way, we could hire and fire at will, and we wouldn't have to pay them veteran's benefits.
I got through college on an Air Force ROTC scholarship. I was supposed to serve 4 years after graduation. Instead, I (and everyone else in my class) got an honorary discharge. Why? The military couldn't afford to pay our salaries after the Reagan budget cuts.
The pellets are made from sawdust leftover from sawmills, so they really are a good use of something that would be landfill otherwise. But if demand for pellets exceeds the sawdust created, or if sawmill operations decline, prices will rise dramatically and some of us will have to burn something else.
Basicly we humans can change quickly but it remains to be seen whether our Institutions can change enough in time!
Engineers understand substitution effects. Scientists don't. Economists understand substitution effects but don't understand science, or technology, or engineering.
the amount of waste in this system is astronomicly and unbelievably uncoprehendable by the average soul
I suppose it's too much to hope for a spot on Larry King...
I think the lost GOM production may be enough. Some of it will never come back. Some is just delayed...but that's enough. People who are predicting that production will keep rising are betting that new projects coming online can make up for the decline of existing wells. If those new projects are delayed, that won't happen. Like Prudhoe Bay for U.S. production, they'll put a bump in the downslope, but won't be enough to raise production to a new peak.
As for Deffeyes...he was on TV fairly recently, still sticking with his Thanksgiving prediction.
It does not really matter if it is April 2005, Thanksgiving 2005 or even Labor Day, 2007. In terms of planning the peak is now, or at best tomorrow. For the third world countries the peak was yesterday... we should also thank them for providing us with several more years to guzzle around.
I find it more and more probable that a severe recession is around the corner and this will kill both the oil price and the search for alternatives.
just found this, let the panic buying begin! make sure to fill your tanks. plus some.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/
Cars and trucks can be battery powered.
Are we talking about refitting the entire aircraft fleet, military and civilian?
David
In practice they need to bee free of substances that can clog the pipes and they need to be able to lubricate the pumps and in some cases double as hydraulic fluid but I think that is fairly uncommon.
The biggest problem is to get enough volumes regularly delivered to enough airfield for it to be a workable. That gets easier if it is mixable and intrechangeable with regular jet kerosene.
Wonder if the future of air travel will be giant jumbo jets wich are fairly fuel efficient with feeder trafic to them by train and small fuel efficient turboprops.
This will be from an Australian perspective.
Its certainly one of the first steps about talking about PO here.
They should have the package in Broadband later in the week. It goes on TV. Thursday night.
Look forward to watching it.
If its any good I will email Stuart to put it up on the site.
of the Denver meeting?
Thanks
For example, when you install solar panels on your house, in the short term you are actually increasing instead of decreasing fossil fuel consumption due to the fact that it takes some time for the energy saved to equal the energy input assoicated with the manufacture and installation of the solar panels. The last time I looked (and that, admittedly, was quite a few years ago), this 'energy payback' period was several years, depending on the type of system and the assumptions one uses.
This is not to say that we shouldn't try to move toward alternative energy, but it underlines the fact that we must do so while there is still some slack in the fossil fuel situation so that we can make that increased investment in fossil fuel energy necessary for alternative energy systems to become a reality.
If we wait until the fossil fuel situation becomes truly dire, then it will be all but impossible to make the transition. The analogy is that of a person waiting till he's almost broke before he decides to go into a new business. Chances are he won't be able to do it. Or to put it in thermodynamic terms, we can't wait until the entropy of our system becomes too great to overcome.
The invisible hand, the intelligent design and Santa Claus killed that long time ago. It's none of my business, my problems are bigger... where to spend the holidays, for instance?
Willits getting attention for taking sustainability seriously
by Claudia Reed
The work of turning the Willits area into a community where necessities are produced and consumed locally has been attracting national attention:
- In June, participants at a national economic localization conference in Great Barrington, Mass. knew all about the Willits effort.
- In mid-August the Willits Economic LocaLization (WELL) group made the front page of the North Bay Bohemian under the banner Peakocolypse Now! a reference to the arrival of peak oil, the maximum amount that can be extracted affordably.
- At the end of August, an article on the subject in The Willits News was reprinted on the website of the national Energy Bulletin:
more...http://www.energybulletin.net/9502.html
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Bradford began this last Nov by holding public showings of "The End of Suburbia" several times. Layatonville began a few months later. We've both been holding town meetngs on at least a monthly basis.
I've also been able to convince other friends by burning and distributing EOS. Most effective. Also started a discussion thread on Silicon Investor which has changed a few minds.
How seriously is it taken here? Some folks (not the Rat) are starting to save acorns and are learning how to process them.
Rat
I have given up talking to people about oil unless an unusual set of circumstances arise to justify it. In my family, I am just considered crazy and obsessive compulsive about the topic. Maybe that is partly true. At work or elsewhere the danger of being judged a kook is too great. No one wants to hear bad news. Common human nature is to shoot the messenger and thus make the problem "go away".
Peak Oil is just one of numerous problems that threatens the exponentially growing human population. The Club of Rome was right in the 1970's and we all laughed at them. Well most of us did --simply because we did not understand what "doubling time" meant. And after all, "seeing is believing" --there was lots of empty land all around back then.
One of my favorite lines in Kevin Costner's movie, "Dances With Wolves" is where he says, "I want to see the frontier sir, before it is all gone." Kids born today have no concept of a time when ocean waters were clean and teaming with fish, the air was fresh and breathable, and you could run off to the "country" to find a quiet spot where the sound of an automobile or another human being was not to be heard.
We are now entering the last phase of the Petri dish experiment, where the population doubles once again, and the 49% empty dish becomes full to beyond capacity (to 102% of the sustaining space & resources being consumed by the doubled population; 51%x2=102%). Sad --and apparently unstoppable.
sheeples can make it on this strip of Asphalt
I'm kind of in agreement.
If you were to simply remove China from the face of the earth, many problems would disappear. Likewise, if you were to remove the US, other problems would disappear. But the reason that things would get better is population reduction and associated decline in resource demand. Whoever is left will grow to take up the slack, and then we would be right back where we are.
I think that Liebig may be right - it may be that we have to hit the resource wall and be forced into adjustment in spite of our larger brains.
Ethanol will work to replace gasoline, from economic and societal perspective. It's a straight ahead swap for a cleaner fuel. Biodiesel will also work. Solar concentrators will work. But without concurrent reduction in personal automobiles, nothing will work. Strapping any appreciable amount of additional electric demand on our current infrastructure will crash it. Energy prices rising will cripple the current working economies across the world in a very short period of time.
The problem isn't that we cannot switch to something else - it's that we cannot continue to consume as we do and switch to anything else. We are at the end of cheap energy, i.e. oil and natural gas.
It's going to have to be a fundamental shift. We will need to think about and use and save energy the same way we think about and use and save money today. Energy will be worth much more money to us in the near future, taking a much bigger slice of our economic wherewithall.
When it comes down to heating your home and cooking your dinner or driving the car, the car will rust in the garage. But IMO, it will have to come that far down in order to become the highest priority in the life of every American. Right now, our way of life is "non-negotiable", and that means we are driving towarss the recource depeltion wall at full throttle. A crash is inevitable.
If we don't act fast to mitigate the effects of peak oil (and we certainly aren't at the moment), there will be suffering. The suffering will occur mainly because we have high expectations without enough resources to fulfil them. Key deficits will occur in energy, jobs, personal money and corporate and government capital.
Without sufficient resources, either personal or corporate/government, how can we build the more efficient infrastructure we need? If we do get to the point of real suffering, it will be a lot harder to fix the causes of the suffering.
Jan 27,988
Feb 28,544
Mar 28,972
Apr 28,863
May 25,726
Jun 21,360
Jul 20,358
Aug 19,418
Sep 17,928
If these numbers are real, the output decline is astonishing. Anyone have any insight as to what's going on, or if I'm misreading something?
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/11/gm_to_close_9_f.html#more
Some folks just won't learn.
Suddenly, it's 1975!
There is currently a mild debate between the biological origin of petroleum and geologic or abiotic origins of petroleum. The accepted, mainstream idea that petroleum resulting from the pressurized decay of biological material over the last 250 million years has resulted in the discovery and extraction of nearly a trillion barrels of oil over the last 150 years. The contrarian's abiotic theory that oil has its origins from geologic processes happening deep within the earth, has resulted in the drilling of one very deep dry hole in Sweden plus the extraction of the same trillion barrels that the abiotic theorists say came from geological processes. Peak Oil is the theory proposed by M. King Hubbert in 1956 that the rate of oil production in a finite province will follow a bell-shaped curve, growing to a peak followed by somewhat a symmetric decline
In mathematics, one can prove or disprove certain theorems by throwing out an assumption and following its implications to their logical conclusion and see what falls out. In using this logical process, I hope to demonstrate that Peak Oil is not only supported equally well by the theory of biological origins and abiotic origins but will happen sooner under the theory of abiotic origins of petroleum.
Now, let's establish some assumptions that we can all agree on:
Assumption I. Under either abiotic or biological origins, it takes a long time to produce oil so let's assume that in 1850, when the oil industry began, there was approximately 2 Trillion barrels of oil in the ground between 7,000 and 15,000 feet deep where successful oil drilling normally occurs.
Assumption II. At some point in the distant past, no petroleum existed on the earth. In the case of biological origins, this Zero Point was around 250 million years ago when the plants and dinosaurs began to flourish and provide the biological material for the oil. In the case of abiotic origins, the zero point was about 4 billion years ago when the earth cooled and the geologic processes began that would eventually bring us to the point where we are now.
The two assumptions above would seem to be agreeable to both camps. The actual zero point for either one could be adjusted by a few hundred million years but whatever the assumed zero point would be, they would remain in the same neighborhood.
In a dynamic fluid system such as the petroleum system, there is a production rate and an extraction rate. Over the last 150 years, the extraction rate has followed a reasonably linear path from 0 to 80 million barrels per day. This would seem to imply the need for some difficult mathematics but let's move on to Assumption III and see it that is required.
Assumption III. The Production Rate for both Abiotic and Biologic have been relatively constant from the Zero Point to 1850 was constant and has continued to the present. In the case of Biologic Origins, this is probably not a valid assumption but for the purposes of this discussion and the time frames involved, it can hold. In the case of Abiotic Origins, the conditions for production have existed on a geologic time scale and can be assumed to have been steady state for most of the 4 billion years.
Now, let's compute those production rates.
Biologic Origins:
Production Rate = Barrels in 1850/Time of Production
2,000,000,000,000 barrels divided by 250,000,000 years
= 8.000 barrels/year
So, the rate of production for Biologic Origins is about 8,000 barrels a year. Now let's look at Abiotic Origins.
2,000,000,000,000 barrels divided by 4,000,000,000 years
= 500 barrels/year
Those are interesting numbers. Today, the world extracted 80, 000, 000 barrels of oil. That is 10,000 years of oil at the Biologic Production Rate but it is 160,000 years at the Abiotic Production Rate.
So, if the first three assumptions were correct, the theory of abiotic origins would predict a peak in oil production sooner than the theory of biologic origins. Interesting.
But wait, the proponents of the theory of abiotic origins say we will never reach a peak and there will be enough oil to last forever. Ok, so let's work with that. We will keep the first three assumptions but now add a fourth based on the claim by the Abiotic camp.
Assumption IV. The rate of production of Petroleum from Abiotic Origins is 80,000,000 barrels/day. Their claim is that we will never run out so since the production rate has been constant for a long time we can assume that the earth has been producing oil at this constant rate for about 4 billion years. Let's do that math and find out how much oil the earth has produced.
80,000,000 barrels/day times 365 days times 4,000,000,000 years
= 116,800,000,000,000,000,000 barrels of oil
That's quite a bit. It must weigh a lot. Let's do the math
116,800,000,000,000,000,000 barrels of oil times .125 tons/barrel
= 14,600,000,000,000,000,000 tons. That's 14.6 quintillion tons
That much oil must weigh a lot but based on Assumption IV, that is how much oil the earth has produced. Speaking of the earth, how much does it weigh?
Weight of the earth:
5.972 sextillion (5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000) metric tons
If you do the division, the crude oil in the earth now weighs ¼ of one percent of the earth's weight. Now, we have a problem. Carbon only makes up one-tenth of one-percent of the earth's crust and we just found out that there are 2 and a half times as much weight in crude oil produced from abiotic sources. So, it looks like the rate of production from Abiotic Origins can't be as high as 80 million barrels per day.
From the failure of Assumption IV, and the other logic we have we can make our conclusion. Even if the theory of abiotic origins is valid, the rate of oil production is lower than our rate of extraction. Logically, it is probably a lot lower than the rate of extraction because production in either case has been happening for a long time and left us with only 2 trillion barrels to start. So, we can conclude that it is irrelevant where oil came from. The rate of Oil Extraction will Peak and the time when that will occur will be sooner rather than later.
A copy of the transcript about peak oil from Australia. Thank goodness it's not about "Peak Fosters Beer"
Quite interesting transcript though. It sounds like the "sheitze" is about to hit the fan soon. Which brings me to the question of new technology. The guy is quoted saying that a 10% increase in new technology would bring about 600,000 to 800,000 extra barrels per day. I keep hearing that new technology will save us all and make us less dependant on oil. Even save the day!
But i've read transcripts here and from Matt Simmons saying that new technology has amounted to absolutely no increase in production.
So who's right? note I am still leaning towards Matts' comments.
http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1515141.htm