DrumBeat: July 8, 2006
Posted by threadbot on July 8, 2006 - 9:45am
Fears growing in wake of expected 50% cost increase at Shell oilsands plant
Bob Gillon, an energy analyst with John S Herold in Connecticut, said the Athabasca expansion would now cost six times what the original project did, on a daily flowing barrel basis."It's not a knock on Shell or this project, everybody's facing it," Gillon said in an interview Thursday.
"But my Lord in heaven. If you're talking about something that cost you six times as much as it did six or eight years ago, even with the move we've had in oil prices, we're getting these things back to where the economics . . . are going to get skinny in a hurry."
Drivers have to wait days to get their petrol shares, which range between 25 and 40 litres per week, and local authorities recently announced electricity cuts despite soaring temperatures.Kremlin ignores democracy to snatch oil from the wildernessIt is not uncommon for drivers in northern Iraq to hang around in queues for several days before they are told that there is no fuel left at the station. On July 6, in the northeastern Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, about 500 drivers who had waited for fuel for more than three days poured into the nearby streets, set tires on fire and blocked four main streets of the city.
Countries need to oil their wheels:
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in conjunction with the UN, published a major agricultural study last week.The Real Oil Crisis is a free, 13 minute video from ABC Australia:The study said that there are very few countries in the world that are able to produce biofuels that can compete on price with conventional fossil fuels. In fact, with the exception of Brazil, all countries are finding it very difficult to reduce their dependence on oil at all.
What would happen if the world were to start running out of oil? Conventional wisdom says we’ve got 30 years, but there’s a growing fear amongst petroleum experts it’s happening much sooner than we thought – that we are hitting the beginning of the end of oil now. So how soon will the oil run out, and can we stop our economy collapsing when it does? How prepared are we for the real oil crisis?From India... End Of Cheap Oil, The Global Energy Crisis And Climate Change:
The increase in oil prices has led to protests, which have moved to the center stage of Indian politics, displacing the protests against reservations in medical and engineering colleges.Energy agency voices doubts on Gazprom deliveries
The Indepedent has a vision of How a 'green' Britain should look in the year 2020
Update [2006-7-8 9:53:22 by Leanan]: Record oil price sets the scene for $200 next year
With many commentators now on holiday the record $75.78 oil price last week was almost ignored. Yet with the world economy still hot the scene is set for a powerful rally in oil prices and the equally inevitable price spike. So will we see oil hit $200 a barrel in 2007?
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
More on upcoming EVs in Joel Makower's "Who's Reviving the Electric Car? "
(I saw "Who Killed the Electric Car?" yesterday, my ramble is here)
I think the real key is lifetime cost competitivness. When we replaced my wife's '90 Geo Prizm in 2005, we considered a number of fuel efficient cars but opted for a used 2004 Toyota Corolla rather then a new Prius. The initial cost of the Prius was $6k more plus I assumed we'd have to replace the battery pack eventually since we keep cars forever. These costs added roughly $10k and given our driving distances made absolutely no economic sense.
I agree though, if you can use a smaller car, there's no reason to pay the hybrid premium. Go even smaller and save more, with a Chevy Aveo, Honda Fitt, Toyota Yaris, or Scion xA.
According to the EPA's shared (real-world) mileage database, the Yaris does the best with 37.7 mpg:
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/mpg/MPG.do?action=browseList
The only regret I have with my car is it's a fucking sedan. I really wanted a hatchback, but I was on a time/price crunch and couldn't find any used hatchbacks in my area. There's been a few times where I've had trouble fitting large irregularly shaped objects into the back.
How much does a liter cost you?
Onto a more general question. If the US were to overhaul its existing fleet of cars and trucks,(hypothetically of course) and convert to hybrids, how much would this affect the cost per liter and do we have the resources to allow such a shift?
You say "do we have resources" when it's pretty clear we overspend. Do we have resources for a new line of Chrysler Hemis? Apparently so.
Sorry for not being clear enough. What I meant by resources is the electricty used to charge the battery.
But to figure it, we'd need to know:
- adoption rate
- charge capacity
then we could calc out how many MW would need to be available each year.A lot depentptn how battery tech evolves in the next few years though.
"The construction of an average car consumes the energy equivalent of approximately 20 barrels of oil, which equates to 840 gallons, of oil. Ultimately, the construction of a car will consume an amount of fossil fuels equivalent to twice the car's final weight."
So, to replace the 225 million or so automobiles in the U.S., it would require approximately 225M*20bbl = 4.5 billion barrels of oil to replace all the existing cars, or about a half-year's-worth of consumption in the U.S.
Of course, to replace all the cars in the world, it would take even more oil...
And I'm sure I'm missing some energy inputs in this calculation.
At $20,000 a piece, all these new cars would cost people in the US about $4.5 trillion. I'm sure the auto manufacturers would be into this plan...
Those hybrid critics stacked the deck. They claimed, quite arbitrarily I thought, that a "car" lasts 100,000 miles while a "truck" lasts 250,000 miles. Those convenient assumptions lead to calculations showing a lower per-mile energy costs for a Hummer H3 than for a Toyota Prius.
Someone happened to report the real numbers:
To name just one other funny numeric business:
So, you've got a few hundred million conventional cars on the road, their R&D all amortized ... what happens when you force an R&D accounting on any new technology? Fewer units to divide by, and higher "costs" ... even if they'd really be paid over time by higher production.
If we weren't avoiding bad words today ....
So the 4% is good news and bad news. It makes "electric cars" (as some fraction of the replacement fleet) more possible, but it also makes them one of the "silver bbs" and not the "silver bullet"
Does this mean cars on U.S. roads average 25 years before going to the great death assembleges of vehicles known as junkyards?
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/02/us_vehicle_flee.html
Given how I like to affect an Aussie accent, I liked this variation of the old ValuJet joke:
Q: "A ValuJet plane tried to make a mission to Sydney (Australia) but they missed! What did one croc say to the other?"
A: "Put another Yank on the barbie, mate!"
I do know that the older a car is, the fewer miles it is driven. There is an inverse age/VMT correlation. I suppose old cars tend to sit there in a multi-car family, or in the garage of retirees. They become the "extra cars" but aren't scrapped as long as they keep up registration.
My recollection of the '70s is that the number of passengers per vehicle increased with more carpooling, ride sharing and hitchiking. However, my perspective could be warped by the fact that I was a student throughout that period.
Seriously, though, a medium-sized SUV usually sits 4 comfortably. With one person driving, the vehicle may get something like 18 mpg and 18 passenger mpg. Put 4 people in the vehicle, and you have 72 passenger mpg or about the same as two people each driving his or her own Corolla.
If we couls utilize our present SUV and mini-van fleet similarly, we'd save quite a bit of embodied energy. However, I think that gasoline prices would have to go much higher before too many folks would be all that interested.
That part of the Matt Savinars representation of PO I found a little bit biased.
During the last 10 years, a number of Life cycle analysis (LCA)"cradle to grave" have been made on different aspects on transport. The best of these take into account most of the objections I have seen on the Drum. So no need to guess- but rather critizise.
One of the better LCA's is this , made by the VW. It is in german- but the numbers are self explaining.
http://www.volkswagen-umwelt.de/_download/sachbilanz_golf_a4_deutsch.pdf
The Functional unit (the is 1 car driven 150.000 km (93.300 miles) The Primary energy ( energy at the source- oil well, coal mine, iron extraction- including end- of life- that is scrapping and recycling)- cost for 150.000 km is between 70 to 150 MWh. This value is cradle to grave- that is raw material extractiuon and production, production of the vehicle, use + maintenance of the vehichle 150.000 km and scrapping and recycling. As a rule of thumb 1 kilo car cost presently 4 kilo +/- 0.5 kilo oil to produce.
What you do is you pass needed laws that both allow for suicide facilitation and allowing suicide kits to be sold in drugstores. That way, as people finally give up during the "powerdown" they have an "out". If Cuba means anything, a powerdown will be nasty at best. North Korea is a powerdown at an approximate worst.
Of course, you want to discourage childbirth. Any powerdown scenario is going to be some ugly stuff.
No need to kill off billions--though Malthus was right, in the long run.
But wait a minute . . . in the long run, we're all dead, as John Maynard Keynes pointed out.
Note that the Roman Empire did not fall due to overpopulation--just the reverse!
Spending more on electrified rail systems, and urbane, mixed-use neighborhoods around rail stations, could eliminate the need for a lot of replacement cars in metropolitan areas -- and preserve a lot of greenbelt land that we will need for local food production.
Car-sharing is another option that is finally catching on in US cities. It is a membership service, where one can use a car from a nearby "pod" and pay only for the miles you drive. Each car serves a lot more people, and our local nonprofit car share organization found that a third of their members' households get rid of a car -- sometimes their only car, and sometimes an infrequently-used second car. Car share organizations also have pickup trucks and vans in the fleet, so folks who can usually get by with a small car but occasionally need to haul something big can use the larger vehicle only when they need the extra capacity.
I know, I know -- alternatives like these won't work for everyone or in every setting, but as we accelerate into peak oil and global climate change, we need to simultaneously embrace a broad range of effective strategies for sustainability.
Well said. These alternatives transport methods will obviously help, but the headwinds created by the desire of personal convenience and time savings of one-two person transport will oppose this shift. To what degree is hard to determine as fuel prices increase, but I expect to see an future explosion of bicycles, scooters, street-legalized quad ATVs, and motorcyles in places of urban sprawl [like my Asphalt Wonderland].
I have posted before about keeping your used pickup or SUV for the occasional hauling of large loads or 3 or more people [or when the weather is simply atrocious], but buying a used small scooter/ATV for one-two person commutes or errands. Bicycles best of all, of course. I presently feel this is the most cost-effective way to be prepared if gasoline suddenly spikes out of sight.
My eleven year old pickup is only worth maybe $2000-2500, but only has 115,000 miles on it-- many years of life left on it. My recently bought used 2004 scooter: only 1600 miles [yes, only sixteen hundred!]-- estimated lifetime virtually unlimited until gas prices rise so high that some punk shoots me while I wait at an intersection to then steal my little scoot.
As a plus, sparetime hauling stuff for cash has easily paid for all the pickup's running expenses, and provided me with beer money. A lot of people would rather pay someone than rent a U-Haul pickup to do it themselves. Phx has a lot of 'bling-bling' pickups and SUVs with very expensive aftermarket accessories; I call them an ornate 'chrome penis'-- the last thing they want to do is fill the storage area with manure or crushed desert rocks for landscaping.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
That might be true in many places where it doesn't snow but that is only a small portion of the US. Not only do I have to often put chains on all the wheels of my (small) 4x4 truck but we still do get snowed in for a few days and up to a couple of weeks every year. We had friends that got snowed in for 4 to 6 weeks this past winter.
Todd
I've been tracking my mileage, and generally get 5L/100KM... or about 54-55MPG.
I'm on holidays now... so we've been city driving... but I haven't filled my tank yet in the past 3 weeks, so I don't know my mileage yet. ;+)
gas is 113.9c/L here in my neck-o-the-woods (about $US3.50/Gal) Port Alberni, BC... on Vancouver Island
I drive a 250cc scooter (Honda Big Ruckus) I feed it 89 octane (1 up from regular) since it has a 10.25 /1 compression ratio and I get a little knock on steep hills on regular. This juice sells today for $1.10 CDN / L
I just did 475 km of highway driving over 3 days with a passenger riding all the time for $21 in fuel. Top speed is 115 km/hr which is as fast as I need to go IMO.
I won't say we don't care at all about gas price rises, but I think we are far from feeling a pinch considering our use pattern.
Does C$10/week include depreciation and wear and tear on your car ? Could you get lower insurance if you drove less (I do) ?
Would your bus costs be less with a monthly pass ?
Please consider using the bus "occasionally". Increased demand will ensure that the service is there when you need it.
Think "Islamic Republic of Arabia", among other future possibilities.
SUSTAINABLE DESIGN COMPETITION TO ACT AS CATALYST FOR GREEN, HEALTHY DESIGN AND REBUILDING OF NEW ORLEANS
UPDATE:OVER 2900 PRE-REGISTRATIONS RECEIVED
NEW ORLEANS , LA, MAY 24, 2006 - Global Green USA and design jury chairman Brad Pitt announced today the final details for The Sustainable Design Competition for New Orleans. The historic Holy Cross Neighborhood in the Lower Ninth Ward is the focus of Stage 1 of the competition. Global Green and Pitt announced on April 20 th they are teaming up to sponsor the competition to provide an opportunity for talented architects, urban planners, designers, ecologists and students to put forward a creative yet practical vision for New Orleans
http://www.globalgreen.org/press/releases/2006_05_24_orleans.htm
Auto-centric (less than the rest of the US, more than our "Old Urbanism"), ugly (just attended community planning meeting yesterday in Upper 9th Ward, 90% black, some vehement objections to plans "by people that don't know us", I was well received and will have some private meetings this coming week with my streetcar plans) and failing to understand the local climate, people and architecture.
Just have John Williams do it all (an ally of mine BTW and occasional lunch partner). I noted that he was one of two local consultants for this project, which impressed me.
I am going to submit my ideas for streetcars for North Rampart extended to St. Claude in the Upper & Lower 9th Ward and a a handicap accessible double (on a double shotgun site)
That just seems so weird and last-century to even be in print!
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060702/NEWS/607020392/1001/news
All that aside, one still has the problem of fixed costs. These are sunk costs, so they are not going to be considered unless the decision is to buy another car for a spouse or other family member.
Due to the fact that most people have a very distorted view of auto costs, all transit needs to be free.
Combine horribly crowded highways with bus lanes and free transit and we will start to get somewhere. Don't expand existing highways, but if you must, just add bus lanes, no car lanes.
When I used to work in Denver, I took a bus through Denver. All was wonderful until one got halfway through Denver. That is when the bus/high occupancy lane ended. Great! From there one, we had to sit in bumber to bumper traffic, making the bus just as slow as the damn cars. It was if they had designed the system to fail on purpose.
We lived engine free for 15 years, bicycles + transit only. But the tragic commons in which we live combined with the crappy transit we have here pushed us back into the hands of the car owning class.
Mobility in a Canadian winter in a region with poor transit and no car is quite a challenge at times.
>75% of the users of our local bus system are "captive" i.e. to young, old, or poor to own a car. Sad to say thats what keeps our system up. Hamilton Ont. not New York city and 3/4 of our municipal council thinks that "peak oil" is a "tinfoil hat" idea
I already reported that a coworker quit the job at my workplace due to the brutal cost of the commuting mission. It cost him $500/month i.e. 4 barrels of the gasoline a month.
As jobs get harder to find - and immigration continues - the wages will drop during the unintended "powerdown". It indeed is a Good Thing that I never had kids... for their sake!
I doubt the unemployed will be driving much at all. A car that sits uses no gas at all.
To add fuel to your statement, Most americans buy vehicles with credit. Whether its a recession created by PO, higher interest rates or the bursted housing bubble, there is 100% of a credit crunch in the future. Once it begins no one is going to lend them money to purchase a new vehicle anyway
My Honda Fitt (Jazz in Europe due to Fitt describing the Nordic slang word for female genitalia, oh well...), gives 19.2 km/l or 0.52 l/10 km or roughly 48 mpg.
In Europe Toyota has the very cheap (<14000 USD) Aygo, which gives 0.48 l/10 km or 53 mpg or so.
M
Thanks. We haven't gotten the Willits News in 20 years so I never know what's playing. Besides, I haven't been to a movie in about 25 years so I don't pay attention to that sort of thing. I might have to breakdown this time though. It would be my first time in a "multiplex" :-)
Todd
PS I emailed the Sustainable Laytonville group with L. Brown's site a few days ago but didn't cc you. I thought they might like to look at it before the big radio program and figured you had seen it on TOD when the link was first posted. All the big names will be at the conference in Italy and JB will act as the expert so I thought Brown's book would give them more insight and data.
I was driving around Radcliff KY the other day, just off Fort Knox Military Reservation, and I saw it....the queen of all cars...a couple of high school age kids were out motoring about in it....
http://www.flexnet.co.jp/mini/img/clubman1275gt.jpg
It looked to be about a 1968 model, still as clean as a pin, the RHD (Right hand drive) model, so it must have came over from England, and not been an export model.
Everytime I see one of the old original Mini's, I smile....how can you ask for anything more....all weather capability, park it anywhere, great fuel economy, low amount of consumption in it's construction, what could have inspired such a piece of work?
Of course, we know......inspiration was Europe before the extraction of Atlantic North Sea oil. Europe without the North Sea was at "peak" of a type in the 1960's, with consumption outstripping European production, which was non existant for all practical purposes.
Now, Europe is back on the hunt, and desperate for fuel. The North Sea is dropping like a stone on production, but the Europeans, like us, are spoiled to an ascending standard of living and consumption.
Look again at the Mini. With a CNG or LPG tank for fuel, and possibly hybrid hydraulic drive or battery electric hybrid, you may be seeing the look of the future. And it may be at the top of the "performance and size" range.
Roger Conner known to you as ThatsItImout
The new mini is way too big, fancy, and expensive. It's only in the last few years that I have come to realize how wonderful that mini was. We have a guy from G.B. in my little town who has a right hand mini. Would love to have that car.
How about a Stallion? Brutal acceleration, but better mileage than a hybrid, with A/C and heat to boot. Looks like a fun commuter vehicle for those unable to balance a scooter or motorcycle!
http://southwesttrikes.com/stallion.htm
http://www.kltv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4688235
http://motortrike.com/
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
If the Mini is the queen of all cars, then this is surely the king:
For those of us who are not natural electricians, Nikola Tesla was about the greatest. He ranks right up there with the greats like MR. Westinghouse and Tom Edison, two other natural electricians. It was Westinghouse that gave us the good ol' Alternating Current. Why? It's becuse of how you can use transformers to change voltages and currents. Step up the voltage, and you get to step up the transmission over the wires. Step it back down, and you make it halfway safe! :)
Westinghouse saw the potential for electricity and formed the Westinghouse Electric Company in 1884, later known as the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company. He obtained exclusive rights to Nikola Tesla's patents for a polyphase system of alternating current in 1888, persuading the inventor to join the Westinghouse Electric Company.
http://www.teslamotors.com/
but we know what a Lotus Elise looks like:
http://www.lotuscars.com/
"For the Middle East there would be a sudden influx of hundreds of billions of petro-dollars, and most likely hyperinflation, which is already appearing in certain economies. There would then be a further spike to the real estate markets, and local stock markets would boom again far more quickly than anyone might believe this summer."
I am not certain that I understand you. I THINK you mean that DOMESTIC demand in the Middle East is going up at 6% per year. O.K., hope I'm correct. Now, for the record, exactly which countries do you include in the "Middle East," which is a very slippery concept.
Total crude oil exports in Arab states reached USD 327 billion - OAPEC
Kuwait News Agency (KUNA) - 01/07/2006
Excerpt:
Regarding the oil and energy consumption in the Arab states, OAPEC said that the consumption increased by 5.6 percent reaching 8.1 million bpd in 2005 compared to 7.6 million bpd in 2004.
They still made a truck load of extra money though. There is no need to increase export volume when the price is going up so much.
Please.
So which OPEC countries are Arab? That would be Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.
"By 1982 the membership of the Organization has risen to eleven Arab oil exporting countries: Algeria (1970), Bahrain (1970), Egypt (1973), Iraq (1972), Kuwait (1968), Libya (1968), Qatar (1970), Saudi Arabia (1968), Syria (1972), Tunisia (1982) and United Arab Emirates (1970). In 1986, Tunisia submitted a request for withdrawal. The Ministerial Council deliberated the request and it was agreed to suspend Tunisia's rights and obligations in OAPEC, until such a time that Tunisia chooses to reactivate its membership."
But the list given is for 1982? Is the list exactly the same today? Possibly, but I see no way to check without doing about twenty minutes or more of Google searching myself.
My big point is that numbers are good--if we know what they mean. That means knowing what they include and what they exclude (and why).
"Demand" is a profoundly ambiguous term except when used by professional economists. Others, if they are wise will either learn exactly what economists mean by "demand" (No, it does not mean "production.") and "supply" or, better yet, avoid these ambiguous (in the hands of most noneconomists) terms.
The "Middle East" is a deeply ambiguous term. Does it include Turkey (Asia Minor)? Why or why not? Does it include Israel? Why or why not? And for the life of me, what is the bizarro reason for excluding Iran just because most of its people are non-Arab? To me this exclusion makes no sense at all.
Numbers and all facts, by themselves are MEANINGLESS.
I see a lot of the fallacy of misplaced precision on this site and bite my tongue (metaphorically) so as not to become a bothersome nag.
This was the source for my statement that oil consumption in the Middle East is going up at close to 6% per year.
This does not presumably include Iran, but given Iran's demographics, it's a pretty safe assumption that its rate of growth in demand is equal to or higher than the Arab countries in the Middle East.
My point is that oil production in the Middle East is flat to declining, while oil consumption is growing very fast.
And I fail to see why an increase in oil consumption from 7.6 mbpd to 8.1 mbpd requires any sophisticated understanding of economics.
If you talk about "The Middle East," how in the heck does Tunisia get in there, along with other N. African countries?
I suggest that the category of "Arab" countries is nearly meaningless in the context of Peak Oil.
Regions I understand.
Religion I understand.
Oil I'm learning about.
But what logic is there in throwing together a bunch of countries just because they consider themselves "Arab"?
Is Egypt on the list? Egypt is the largest Arab country.
I object to meaningless categories--but not to you, because you are one of the five best posters on this site.
Keep up the good work!
Thursday June 22, 1:00 pm ET
Subsidiary to Develop Algae-Based Biodiesel
Alternative Energy Resource to Supplement Petroleum-Based Fuels
PHOENIX--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 22, 2006--PetroSun Drilling Inc. (Pink Sheets: PSUD - News), an emerging provider of oilfield services to major and independent producers of oil and natural gas, announced today that the company has formed Algae BioFuels Inc. as a wholly owned subsidiary. Algae BioFuels will be engaged in the research and development of algae cultivation as an energy source in the production of biodiesel, an economically feasible and eco-friendly alternative to petroleum-based transportation fuels. The R&D and production facilities for Algae BioFuels will be based in Arizona and Australia.
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060622/20060622005586.html?.v=1
Shell is also having problems with cost management in Russia, not to mention their minor reserves overstatement, so Shell has much wider problems.
Western Oil Sands is part of the same project with Shell, but they also raised a lot of investor ire by making moves in Iraq.
Nexen and Canadian Natural Resources have oil sands projects in progress that they appear to be managing much better than Shell.
Encana is laying back on oil sands development because they recognized the cost pressures.
Or perhaps the other explanation about all those underdeveloped reserves when oil was at $20 will come to the fore? This implies that the current supply squeeze is a blip until these plentiful fields are brought online. Let me just say that Saudi Arabia's oil rig count has nearly tripled in the last two years. Something is afoot as they are obviously in a fervent mode of exploration. Will they produce the goods against what has been a flat production rate during this rig count boom? We'll know for sure in a year or two. Just remember many an oil producing country peaked on a high rig count as they desperately sought out the new oil that was simply not there.
http://newerainvestor.blogspot.com/2006/07/last-perfect-day.html
Oil rigs leaving Gulf of Mexico
This story actually pisses me off. Natural gas bills here (in Pittsburgh) are outrageous just as they were in Colorado where I lived before. HO and I have repeatly warned about our concerns about future natural gas supplies in North America.Generally, if you look at many family budgets, my view is that spread over a given year the increased natural gas price costs exceed the increased costs for transportation. This depends on many variables like geographical location, distance from work, etc.
And now these assholes are pulling up roots and leaving.
The rigs are going to Saudi waters, where they will produce more energy in any case. North American gas prices are just not high enough to keep them here.
Re: gas prices are just not high enough...
Well, they will be. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy
I suppose the "commonweal" will be taken care of - if ever - when the "commonwealth" as a whole eventually decides that the problems are bad enough to overcome the usual Congresscritter instinct for logrolling, i.e. regionally based beggar-thy-neighbor thievery. Maybe as part of a quid pro quo we could spare Florida and Louisiana - and everyone else - the many huge costs of massively subsidizing corn-based ethanol, which certainly appears to be a big-time loser in every important respect.
You've got to be joking! Commonweal? America?
These are corporations we're talking about here. They care about nothing except profit. They are soulless, nationless, uncaring, profit-maximizing machines. If throwing you under the bus will result in a few extra dollars of profit, then they will do so.
And by the way, natural gas prices are higher in the USA than anywhere else in the world.
in ss post
http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/7/3/21552/94892#more
his grahp says that aprox. may 01 the rig count in all opec countries was about 190. then in march03 the rig count was about 145. thats about 45 rigs in 22 mounths. can someone please explain. did these rigs actually go somewhere esle or just go offline
But they are often moved from country to country. Remember most are owned by companies that simply contract them out, along with their crews.
Land rigs and sea-going rigs are different animals entirely. Land rigs are cheap when compared to the tens of millions that even a single jack-up rig costs. Jack-up rigs don't just go away unless they get so run down that it is impossible to repair them.
But with $25 NG, we can build some more.
And $25 NG would have kept more here because oil companies with GoM prospects would have bid higher.
One good item. Oil rig leases will become a nice positive in our Balance of Trade.
Now we should see the price slowly climb back up.
Errr, before you call em assholes:
Much more often than not, the "logic" of capitalism and the responsibilities of corporations to their stockholders are invoked as some sort of magical incantation. Then the conversation just stops. All is well, the phenomena has been explained.
Can't homo sapiens do better than that?
The U.S. consumes 20.7 million barrels per day. If my calculations are correct, that means one Capitol-dome of oil will supply the U.S. for 24 minutes.
No matter how one wants to slice it, the reaction of "they are assholes for keeping energy I want to buy at a cheap price like I got yesterday" will continue to spread. The scape-goats will be other nations, individual corporations long before the money structure....
After 20 years of indoctrination, it is a given that capitalism is built on nothing but pure "logic". We homo sapiens cannot do better. We are not evolutionarily pre-programmed to do much better. You are what they taught you to be.
Capitalism is the most successfully-spread religion on this planet.
ALL REAL-WORLD CAPITALIST COUNTRIES are mixed economies. Can I shout louder?
Pure capitalism is merely and "ideal" or "polar" type and no real-world country any time or any place has even come close to realizing this ideal. And, I think that is good.
Grump.
state and free market decision making. For capitalism, competition between governments is essential. Private ownership is actually irrelevant; for example, the USSR still engaged in trade with other nations.
We also have centrally controlled economies in all sizes, almost all corporations are such and they often have the same kind of problems with inefficiencies as communist states. The main differences between large corporations and socialist states are probably that only a state can use nearly unlimited violence to stay togeather and it is much easier for a corporation to go bankrupt while a state can become North Korea and still survive as a bankrupt entity.
The closest thing to such a situation in the corporate world might be nearly bankrupticies of Japanese banks or soon of General Motors who are supported by the state since a true bankruptcy would disturb the lives of too manny people. On the other hand such support use resources that could have been used for other ends.
In Sweden we still remember such mistakes done during the 70:s when our very large shipbuilding industry and also the textile industry were supported with government money giving us a state debt that still lingers. The ship building industry of large ships is all but gone, only some repair facilities and now foreign owned production of steel submariens and composite stealth boats remain. Much of the supporting industry died. Some government money were invested in converting steel mills into speciality steel mills and I think some of it used old civil defence reserch into into low level alloy speciality steel made to lower the alloy material stockpiles we had back then. Those investments and research into technical use of textiles instead of clothing use have paid back handsomly in jobs and tax incomes.
The point is, what new can you do with what you have when times are bad for what you alread do?
The new things can be done both privately and by a state, both carry risks and the main risk with government investments might be that nobody can make as grand mistakes and follow thru with them then as a state. A local example is our governmnet controlled schooling system who overall have become worse for about 30 years as the same kind of people have tried with more of the same medicine to create the ideal free thinking equalized people who think in the same politically correct way. That project is comming to an end but now carries a momentum since most of the new teachers are brought up within this system wich curiously have resulted in non professional techers comming from other professions getting better results with their pupuils wich irritates our teacher unions and current governmet enough to surpress research into the matter. I think the main hinderance for correcting it being that a significant percentage of the population and politicians have their income from the established system and would also loose face if they had to accept that they are wrong.
I choosed this local example becouse it is slowly being corrected via market mechanisms. A right to start non government schools have been established and they get the same money per pupil as a state/municipiality school, it is equivalent to the school cheque system the US liberal party have been proposing for manny years if I am correctly informed. This has establised a true market for education in large towns where parents freely can choose between different schools run in different ways. This has locally changed the overall quality trend nicely supporting the capitalistic theory that competition is good. New schools are started and some goes under but most of the bad schoos are better then they were before the reform.
The number of social services that are run by municipialities over here is very large and there is also large differences in how they are run. The traditional way since the expansion of our socialist state is politically controlled local monopoly organizations taking care of elderly people, maintaining the streets and so on. There are now large variations in this, most of the care of elderly people in my home town is now done by roughly a dozen of competing companies and the old monopoly organization is steadily shrinking. Almost everybody including our local socialist party concider this good since the quality of care is the same or better while the cost is lower. Another nice thing for the local politician is that you only have to represent your customers and the use of their tax money and not also being the employer for those who produce the srevice.
The left wing local proposal for the election is to continue as it is while the right wing is to gradually move the buying decisions from a political board who puts out tenders to competing companies to the individuals choosing whom to care for them to make it into numerous personal micro decisions as in the successfull shool system and thus get even better competition to produce what each individual ask for instead of what the local government board requests in an about 5 cm thick specification.
It is either way financed with tax money but the later system would work better in a cash strapped poor peak oil future since it would integrate better with volonteer work, help by relatives and limited personal funds while our state can continue to guarantee that everybody (exept the insane who do not want help or people the system do not understand) can get basic care. Maintaining absolute levels and either/or choises is bad in a changing world but guaranteeing a reasonable basic level and a working infrastructure for adding to the basic level is doable with much less resources then those we have today. (Do I think after pondering this sitting on my chair, I have not done any proper research at all. :-( )
I know less about the large coproration world then the fairly small state in Sweden but it seems that also they often try to create markets within their organizations.
I could also tell about how this sometimes have failed within our state. The good thing with this is that it at least creates some instuitutional knowledge for the law making. My overall impression is that success or failure mostly depend on how true and good the competition is, the best measurment is how easy it is for a new person or company to enter the business and then it needs time. And good ideas can be postponed indefinately if they regard something that is conciderd to be ideologically important.
The suggestions for peak oil policy from all political parties use the free market as a tool to get things done and it has proven successfull in the ongoing work to get a better environment, save energy and compete on the world market where delivery and not political wishes matter.
It is the surrounding freely competing word who made the trend for true socialism in Sweden impossible. We were with our consensus culture headed for disaster when the generation of socilist politicians who had a background in real industry and farming culture were retired and replaced by theoretical socialists who wanted to build a true and proper system accoring to the theories.
Socialism is a broken system even if some people still believe in it but some parts still seem attractive and it can sneak up on you since it is comforting to be part of a very big socialistic organization that cant go bankrupt nearly regardless of how it performs, take a look at Nasa for instance. Descriptions in TOD and some other sources of some of the large corporations and socio political structures in USA do not seem especially captalistic in a free market way. You might have some of our problems withouth knowing that you have been infected with such thinking. But I am out on a limb here and can not realy provide you with usefull insights, as me again in 5 years or so.
The latest laugh over here is that the party chairman of our small left party who has argued for true communism has his 17 year daughter in a non public school in the same schooling system he has worked against politically in his whole career. Why? She is old enough to make her own choises... Probably correct and hopefully it well keep some communist voters from bothering with going to the election boxes. Good ideas tend to spread, the same is unfortunately true for some that overall are bad.
Btw I like and respect socialists and communists as long as they immediately try their theories by starting a small collective togeather with friends and live by their theories. No harm can come from that for the rest of us and they will learn a lot and if they succeed and figure out a system that works better then the one we have and thus outcompetes us in a non violent way we deserve it and it would be a free market competition, right?
One of my benchmarks for the goodness of a political idea is if it provides room for other ways of being and small socialistic collectives is a handy example. Its unreasonable for me to know what is best for all people but it ought to be good to make room for differences.
The U.S. public education system has problems very very similar to Sweden's--but ours are much worse and have the added problem of many very poor children and also minority groups that include many children who cannot speak English at all.
The teachers' unions must go.
That single condition is prerequisite to the survival of modern civilization, IMO.
We will probably have some benefit from living next to Finland who has kept and made better the kind of school system we had 30-40 years ago including better status for the teachers. Teacher status is one of the problems, it goes down when quality and leadership fails and that adds to the problem in a feedback loop.
What is your closest good examle in better schooling among the US states or neighbours? We have the probably US influenced "school cheque" free schools and our neighbour contry Finland. In how manny areas has this US idea been implemented? I have heard that home schooling is big and the Swedish examples of that can probably be counted on one hand, has it influenced school politics and quality in any way?
That statistic . . . . Laugh? Cry? Vomit? I don't know, but our public education is fine for the world of about 1940 or 1950--totally inadequate for today's world.
The private college that my two youngest children went to (Carleton) is one of the best in the U.S. The majority of students there went to very expensive private schools, because it is a real college where people are expected to be able to read and write and do college math and have at least three years of high-school hard science (such as honors chemistry or physics) even before they apply. I think only about one in twelve applicants is accepted now.
Rich people cannot buy their way into this college except by making sure that their very bright children have the most rigorous education available in elementary and high scool. Of course, graduates of places like Caleton become the successful business people, doctors, lawyers and scientists.
How much of that is 'the quality of the education' VS the social contacts made and therefore explotable in the future?
60% networking
30% sifting--only the brightest are admitted
10% further sifting, because only the diligent graduate
Also, you do learn (roughly, based on samples of my former students that I have kept in touch with) about three to five times as much during for years at an exclusive private college such as Carleton compared to, e.g. the University of Minnesota or the University of Wisconsin, both of which are pretty good as public universities go.
Note that private colleges have small classes and encourage their profs to teach with passion and excellence rather than publish a paper a year in a prestigeous journal. This last difference has an enormous impact on quality of education for undergraduates (but not for graduate students).
I live in an area where a substantial portion of the children either go to private schools or are home-schooled. The private school tradition in Chattanooga is well established and pre-dates racial integration in the South which gave it a big boost. The older private schools here were established to give the wealthier portion of the community a way of providing a primary/secondary education for their children which would prepare them for admission into the Ivy League colleges. Today a great many middle class parents still sacrifice a lot of money to send their children to these same private schools to give them a better foundation for college.
A second group of private schools in the area provide education that is faith-based. These schools are run by various religious denominations. The parents who send their children to these schools do not want them exposed to any 'heretical beliefs' that they might encounter in public schools or even the other private schools. Most people I know who home school their children do so for the same reason but do not have available a denominational school of their choice.
My personal opinion on this is that it increases social stratification on the one hand and helps fuel the religious conservatism that keeps our current administration in power on the other.
No, it works only where everyone is willing and able to obey a fair ruleset (usually requiring a neutral arbiter). What rules are fair, is another question. What you are trying to accomplish is also an important criterium before you're able to say whether something works: ruthless expansion or sustainability?
Again, what is the measure of success? North Korea still exists because they can stop their competitors from taking their territory.I think, and we agree on that, that decisions are best taken as decentralized as possible, to make them more efficient. That is an important principle in free trade as well as democracy. Capitalism and the parliamentary representative system are historical, real-world applications of these theoretical systems. They are often confused. Democracy, for example, means that those who are ruled take the decisions. For many practical and historical reasons that has become diluted into choosing representatives, human rights etc. This is an approximation of democracy, but not quite it. Capitalism requires the free flow of capital, not freedom of enterprise. In fact, those who are in business often try to restrict the freedom of enterprise by means of patents, monopolies, etc. Adam Smith's vision of free trade could work for independent citizens with their own business, but not faceless leviathan companies. Big business and big government are bad, and it should come as no surprise that they often are indistinguishable, and represented by the same persons.
Regarding the schools, I think any entrenched system is bad. Here in Belgium, everybody can start a school, but most schools are of Catholic signature and carry the same burden of conservatism and calcified educational mores you have witnessed in the Swedish state schools. The improvements you are seeing are partly thanks to the fact that there is a reform, not only the specific measures. I think that many of the problems of modern education stem from the contradictory goals of preparing children to become independent, able adults on one hand, and preparing children to become useful, obedient parts of the corporate economy and/or state bureaucracy on the other hand.
This effort has in turn become conservative in its own entrenchment.
The resent sadest part of this ideological effort were probably the disbandment of a national speciality school for multiple handicapped pupils such as those being both blind and deaf to distribute them among ordinary municipiality schools. The idea were that it is overall good for pupils to be exposed to all kinds of people and all schools should anyway be capable of handling all kind of pupils in a good way. Having a school for mutliple handicapped were a segregation and a lost opportunity to enforce the all-people -are-equal idea. That it were a disaster for multiple handcapped childrens quality of life and education were of no special concern, that criticism dident stop our current ruling sociliast party. There is still some teeth in their ideology when they want to make the best for the most...
Bull-tragedy shit!
There.
I've said it with brevity.
No it does not "work" (whatever that means) at ALL levels.
The over-fished fishies in the deep blue sea don't think "it" always works.
The defrauded workers of Enron don't think "it" always works.
The massive sheeple herd that is soon going to figure out that they have been had by Peak Oil are soon going to think "it" does not always work. Only if you are a devout religious follower of the Smithian belief can you conveniently wash away all the failures of a capitalist system and sing pure praise for its glory.
(And don't cast me as a commie. I never said I am. I understand that communism is a system far more susceptible to corruption, cronyism and collapse. Just wish I can think of a system better than current capitalism, but I can't. Makes my brain hurt.)
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0508-03.htm
It's always sad to things criticized as 'capitalist' outcomes, when they are shaped by 'non-market' players.
http://www.fishingnj.org/njnet14.htm
At least for now . . . .
Me, I keep my axes sharp and have many Swede saw blades and mauls and sledges and wedges for splitting wood, plus more than one acre of hardwood trees.
Where have you been?
The oil companies can't build rigs strong enough to take our new hurricanes on steroids that GW seems to be producing. The sooner we start to modify our usage behavior, the better. The only mechanism we have for that is price.
I would also remind you of something you already know. If we are going to survive in the future, the current structural economic system is going to have to change from a continuous growth model to a sustainable equilibrium model. Concerning this there is no choice.
See my other comments on this subject.
Seems to me that public forums were created for free speech.
The people who created this site own it, and they can set any rule they want.
Although I'm tempted to use profanity on many occasions, it tends to destroy credibility and make people look uneducated.
Since the point of this site is to give peak oil credibility, profanity seems counterproductive.
It ain't Sunday School.
Back to Leanan's opening post...
It would appear that the easy fixes are crumbling. Oil-sands have been referenced repeatedly by the MSM as our bazillion barrel solution. Now the costs are coming in many-fold higher.
One might ask... Whatever happened to journalistic due-diligence? Or straight forward accounting and financial due-diligence?
Carbon sequestration, our get-out-of-jail pass to burn coal, did not fare well in a recent ScienceNow story, linked elsewhere in this thread. This is much, much bigger problem for us than the oil-sands. We are that much closer to an intractable GHG problem now that electricity assumptions are compromised.
Then there's ethanol... at least, something to smile about. Perhaps when we're reduced to foot power, they will let us drink it.
The current solution set isn't impressive. It's almost as if the Invisible Hand is running into Intelligent Interference.
The people who swear the most are often (not always, perhaps not even usually) dumb.
Do you want to label yourself as too stupid or ignorant or careless to use formal English?
never done so myself.
Best,
Matt
"Profanity is the last refuge of the inarticulate asshole".
- Long insane conspiracy rants that go on page after page after page
- Lunatic fringe antisemitism that is totally off-topic and that seems to be coming out of mental institutions from unmedicated paranoid delusional patients--and again, it wastes time scrolling through all this worthless and irrelevant verbiage.
Can anything be done?I don't think the conspiracy theories are any worse than the mindless free market blather that passes for "economic analysis" on this site. Free markets are as much a belief in a neoplatonic fantasy of the global economy as conspiracy theories are a semi-false belief of another kind. The are old songs that people pull off the shelf from time to time to try and get their heads around the mysterious workings of the world...Conspiracy stories are one...the atomistic theories of the self-interested rational natural actor is another.
This site could well do with some of the other social sciences in addition to economics and evolutionary psychology (well, this last one is almost certainly a pseudo-social science). Hell, I'd even settle for some good old institutional economics, mixed in with some good old kinship theory (extended to elite family lineages of course). I think the conspiracy theories are filling a void that could be better filled from other, more informed, sources.
I know market's aren't really free but they serve the purpose. However free markets, or un-free markets for that matter, are not the problem.
Brevity is the soul of wit.
What both Morrison and Gray was saying was that what is happening we are doing to the world is not the fault of any institution or behavior problem, they are saying that it is in our genes. Others have made the same point, using a lot more words.
It's all about biology, social science has nothing to do with it.
All the things you think our genes make us do require social mediation and social structure.
So social sciences and behavioral sciences are appropriate.
Even tho I cringe when I call them Sciences.
Gad! How can you possibly come to that conclusion? If we affect the physical universe when we procreate, then we would affect the physical universe if we did anything. Years ago I heard this quoted: "You move a pebble on the beach, you set up a new pattern and you change the whole world.
Every aspect of human behavior is the result of nature and nurture. Only a blooming fool would suggest that any human behavior is the result of either all nature or all nurture.
Oh? Then what the hell would you call them?
Methinks some people simply do not understand the problem. Homo sapiens have not just taken over the world but we have dramatically overshot our niche. We have overshot so far that collapse is inevitable. And we just keep multiplying. Why? That is the question. And if you think trying to figure that one out is not science then.....
The final peroration of your post is something about overpopulation. Duh, did I mention procreation?
I don't get the fad for extending genetic determinism all kinds of places it won't go.
If you think what you post here is the result of some sort of genetic imperative: 1. I don't understand your thinking and I don't agree with you. 2. What I post would come from some similar imperative even while I contradict you.
The unique value of this site lies in the hard data from the quants; Stuart, Westexas, Robert Rapier, Khebab, etc. Suggest taking the liberal arts and social stuff to an appropriate forum at peakoil.com
And do you know why?
BTW, I yield to no one in the relevance, wit and value of my posts.
So there, take that you engineer!
Thank you.
Please be specific.
IMO you do not.
Let's quit and be friends.
But let's quit, by all means. I do appreciate your courtesy in polemic.
The feeling is mutual.
I like you.
Do you consider your lengthy whingeing about your declining standard of living to be relevant to Peak Oil?
And if so,
Why?
My standard of living and those of most of the people I know has gone up considerably during the past thirty years.
Why hasn't yours?
You say that the medical system in the U.S. has already crashed. Then why are we living much longer now than we did thirty or twenty years ago?
And did peak oil have anything to do with the increase in your malpractice premiums.
Those who live in glass houses should throw Nerf;-)
However, it's probably not very useful to demand that economic growth should stop (or nearly stop) and yet at the same time demand that natural gas and similar fuels should remain cheap. And it's surely impossible to fulfill both of those demands simultaneously as long as world population is still exploding.
So in the spirit of "let's be careful what we wish for", let's please sort out what we're wishing for here.
A lot of the thinking on TOD implicitly comes from a laissez-faire capitalist point of view. Under those conditions, pricing of scarce goods will rise to whatever the traffic will bear. If that's the way one wants the economy to work, that's OK. (Well, it's OK if you're in the upper eschelons-much less pleasant if you're a proletarian).
A society can make a choice about different mechanisms, though. If there is a feeling that old people should not freeze to death in their homes (as some do every winter), then it is perfectly possible to subsidise a certain level of natural gas consumption. In the future, if we have real shortages, it may be socially desirable to guarantee a minimum allotment of energy at an affordable price. This will not maximize profitability, but it would be humane and promote social cohesion.
I agree entirely that we should be careful what we wish for.
Well no, rigs usually drill for oil or gas.
In the North America, the split is about 4.5 to 1, gas rigs over oil rigs. In the rest of the world the split is about 3 to 1 oil rigs over gas rigs. But since North America has more rigs in operation than all the rest of the world combined, there are actually more rigs drilling for gas than oil.
http://www.bakerhughes.com/investor/rig/index.htm
World's in deep trouble, $75/barrel oil is now kind of normal, when will $100/barrel oil be the new price level? Lots of other bad news. I've got Jeffrey (Westexas) writing me e-mails about the sad state of Ghawar, Simmons is making stronger statements, the tar sand development is subject to radical inflation, the "oil shales" are many years away and last, but not least, my next door neighbor tells me she does not know how she will pay her natural gas bills this winter.
And people here are arguing over my use of a "profane" word. What is profane and what isn't? I mean it, what's an obscenity in such a context? My use of a word or the fact that my neighbor can't afford to heat her house?
sigh
I don't exactly know what a "sustainable equilibrium" economy would look like. It just seemed to be the right way to express it. If we can't continue exponential growth, then something else is required. I'm open to suggestions and environmentalists have done some work on this.
Look at Laherrere's and others work at Real Oil and Real Gasoline Prices before u panic...
The price is going up 'cuz it doesn't hurt yet.
James R. Schlesinger, the first US Dept. of Energy secretary, in 1977
Any percent GDP growth is not sustainable...
While I'm at it - always enjoy your posts, Don. In fact, whilst taking the evening constitutional with my sig ot last night, I was telling her how you remind me of her father. Not that you likely have much in common, just that you each exude a certain passionate individualism. But then perhaps there is a common thread - he was a Merchant Mariner.
One last thing - after hearing for some time of your love for sailing - (and what an offer you've made to us all!) - I was - shall we say - surprised to see the term 'sunfish' anywhere near you. I'd have thought you'd scoff at the only vessel I've ever even tried to sail. Perhaps I just missed the irony?
We all would like to have some models or ways of talking about "sustainable economies." But in order to get there there has to be an upper limit in terms of total energy. Yes, as Stuart has said some time in the past, actually an upper limit of energy production that takes into account efficiency gains. But, still some way of talking about an upper bound of some kind. For several hundred years now, there has been no upper limit for human society, so the world has developed many handy ways of talking about (imagining) a limitless world (see Freddy's perfect example below). It is my contention that we will not seriously begin to develop and widely disseminate ways of imagining sustainable economies until the global system begins to hit this upper limit (we may be at that point now, of course).
A sustainable economy with a diminishing upper limit is another story altogether. But still one in need of imagining. (That is beyond the as old as civilization itself doomsday blather that has currently filled this void).
Remember the recent Pepsi-Coke 'secret formula' espionage case in the news? Companies currently wage war peacefully through competition for consumers, but Foundation, in combo with the insurance companies, could bring company combat into the open.
Already, ins. cos. are refusing to write coverage for those living in hurricane prone areas. If ins. cos. understand Peakoil, and we have seen links on TOD that show they do, they can start refusing coverage to those firms most likely to suffer from detritus decline; the energy hurricane. This proactive policy, under the direction of supercomputer Foundation projections, can prematurely drive companies into bankruptcy thus streamlining energy flows and detritus savings.
For example, I think all TODers will agree that tanning salons and amusement theme parks will go postPeak bellyup; a predictive collapse. If the ins. cos. raise their premiums until they shutdown; a directed decline, this would be much faster than waiting for the customers to eventually desert them. No violence, and the energy savings can be directed to the more vital food & farming industries.
So now lets carry this example further. Remember the riots in LA, New Orleans, and elsewhere? Imagine postPeak, if the insurance compnies [again under Foundation direction], only offered financial protection to what is considered vital industries, and the police & Nat Guard where ordered to follow this designated plan.
You could have future riots where the cops could careless if you looted and burned a jewelry store, a tanning salon, an SUV dealership, a McDonalds, etc. But if you tried to loot & burn the local grocery store, bicycle shop, pharmacy, or any other postPeak business deemed vital--the police and NG shoot to kill EVERY TIME. No ifs, ands, or buts because the vital lifeboats must be saved.
Finally, the corporations themselves could go to full-on combat. I would expect the ins. cos. and the energy companies to joinup and have the most powerful armies and allies. Grocery stores [WalMart?] could torch any fast-food chain or restaurant nearby to consolidate their profit potential.
Putin's Russian Govt, in cooperation with Gazprom's monopolistic and predatory practices appears to be the leading edge of this corporate combat. Maybe they already have a Russian Foundation operating to research the predictive detritus collapse of Europe and proactively drive its decline. It would seem obvious if we recall Westexas's exporting depletion theory.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Not in the 1960s, not in the 1970s, not during Katrina
Our social capital is just too high.
OTOH, Six Flags does not want ot rebuild their theme park in New Orleans and wants out of their lease with the city.
Thxs for responding. Good for NOLA [I stand corrected]!
Do you see ins., world banks, & energy cos. hooking up with govts. as a possible method to drive appropriate decline [a loose federation of Foundation]? It seems obvious to me as a long-term profit maximizaton strategy. Little non-HELP businesses wouldn't stand a chance against these juggernauts as they economically imposed detritovore decline.
Recall the initial US invasion of Baghdad: soldiers protected the Iraqi Oil Ministry as the rest of the city was allowed to be looted. My guess is most Iraqi firms did not have any insurance to cover their losses. Another example of predictive collapse and directed decline?
Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
I think good common sense rather than "Foundation" overview will drive SOME good decisions. Perhaps with the same result except that the scope will be more limited.
Thxs for responding.
The ins. cos. driving safety changes on the Hubbert upslope is a very practical 'common sense' initiative, their refusal to provide hurricane insurance coverage in the NYC area, and other coastal areas, is a very practical 'common sense' initiative for the downslope side too. I surmise that if these ins. cos. were really thinking ahead for the long-term: they would be figuring out how to proactively drive people away from the sea-shore to help financially protect them from GW water level rise. The more fiscally whole people living safely inland, the more potential customers for the ins. cos. to extract future premiums from.
This would be typical Foundation planning as I interpret Asimov: nothing more than a gentle tug on the collective's genetic 'common sense' drives.
If properly genetically projected using Nature & Nuture interaction: common sense and Foundation planning should closely dovetail-- thus, it remains forever hidden to the casual observer. This was one of the basic requirements of Asimov's Foundations.
Recall fellow TODer TheLastSasquatch's idea that maybe we can learn to somehow 'trick' our natural genetic drives. This correlates closely with Asimov's astounding literary creation of "The Mule":
-------------
The Mule is a fictional character from Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series. One of the greatest conquerors the galaxy has ever seen, he is a telepath who has the ability to manipulate human emotions. This gives him the capacity to disrupt Seldon's plan by invalidating Seldon's assumption that human emotional responses to stimuli will remain the same.
The Mule established his empire incrementally, using past conquests to aid new ones: first by mentally converting a pirate band to his allegiance, then a whole planet, then the militarily powerful kingdom of Kalgan, then the Foundation (and imperial remnant). The Foundation, after the death of the Empire, was the sole supplier of nuclear weaponry in the galaxy, and using this asset the Mule began rapidly conquering surrounding territories, all of which lacked nuclear power.
---------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mule_%28Foundation%29
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
-Oil is a bargain at $74 a barrel!
-The tar sands are too expensive to develop, so there may be some natural gas left to ship south!
-Oil shales are many years away!
-Take a look at how far your breakfast travelled to be with you, and be grateful.
-At least you know what a Ghawar is, and you can probably prononunce it passably.
-If you have your health, you have everything.
-Some days are better than others.
Keep on rocking in the free world.
Meanwhile, I will keep on rockin' in the free world.
As a note to some others on this thread, when I use a word or phrase in a comment, and especially in my own posts, I have chosen that word or phrase because it strikes me as the language that best fits the message that I want to convey. Some sort of "intellectual laziness" does not figure into it. In this case, I was trying to express anger about and the crass nature of corporate solutions to our energy dilemma.
best, Dave
Leanan's point is worth considering. Libraries and schools often filter. I have a friend who works at a major energy company, his content is filtered. He cannot read TOD without his I.S. department getting knotted knickers. He sells energy. His input might be useful here.
Give it some more thought. Even carefully calculated use of profanity is not productive if it reduces readership.
And here's something to consider... Any thread here can be denied to this audience, meaning: libraries, schools, many, many businesses. It takes one word. By anyone.
I am concerned that resources like the Oil Drum get sequestered. The information here is not available from the MSM. A lot of it is topical and not available in periodicals or books. Peak Oil Sites, particularly this one, are unique in scope and coverage.
This thread is unavailable at my son's high school, or any other school in our system. It is also unavailable at our municipal library which has about 10 branches, serving 220,000 people.
Neither the high school (President's Excellence Award) or the library system, ranked within the top 100 in the U.S. for its circulation ratio are what I would call philosophically conservative, or budget constrained, free wireless access is supported. Sailorman will not name a book I cannot get within days.
The segment of our population that attends school or uses the libraries will not see Stuart's graphs, read his words, or PG's, or anyone else's. We are limiting the reach of this site and its information to private ISP accounts.
======Budget data from Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority for next fiscal year says :
MetroRail will require a subsidy of $ 119 million equal to 7.4 cents per passenger-mile. MetroBus will require a subsidy of $ 289 million equal to 64 cents a passenger-mile, Despite the much lower subsidy MetroRail will carry 1.6 BILLION passenger-miles but MetroBus with so much more funding will carry only 450 million.
We could not afford transit if we did not have MetroRail. As a matter of fact we would not need much transit if we did not have MetroRail. The area would be unlivable, MetroBus is not out of line, Its efficiency and effectiveness is at 101 % of the national average, Fairfax Connector bus service contracted out to low wage employees needs "only" 42 cents subsidy per passenger-mile, still almost six times as much as rail.
The politicians do not present it this way, They hide the bus losses to make it all look equal,
E d T e n n y s o n
Many of the other, less traveled bus routes either connect to the subway or run only during rush hour, like the monster line of buses moving north on I-395 in Virginia heaving for both D.C. and the close-in Metro stations at the Pentagon and Pentagon City Mall.
There is talk in Maryland of connecting some spokes of the Red, Green and Orange lines at stations just outside the District, like Bethesda, Silver Spring and New Carolton, which connects to Amtrak with a new Purple Line (that's actually supposed to be a Metro beltway) or dedicated high-speed bus service corridors.
The best way to cut costs on many bus lines in the end will probably be switching from completely diesel-spewing buses to hybrid electric or hybrid hydraulic drives and perhaps to smaller 20-person jitneys for lesser traveled routes and off-peak service on the more traveled lines.
There is a good review in Counterpunch.
Not really, The people that made those policies at GM are long gone. What's at stake isn't the jobs of a few GM executives, its the 10's of thousands or GM workers and even more retirees depending on their GM pension.
I find it disturbing when people promote that the collapse of a GM or other large company is a good thing and ignore the real ramifications. The lost of thousands of jobs and the pension benefits for company retirees. What will these people do when they lose thier jobs and pensions?
EAI Weekly Petroleum Status Report
Could this be the first year in a long time that oil prices cross the same price they did a year before?
We are at $75 now and no hurricanes yet.
Russia produced 39.65 million tons of oil in June. Converted to barrels per day, that comes to 9.633 million barrels per day. Russia and its former satellites, primarily those around the Caspian Sea, are keeping Peak Oil from being everything but glaringly apparent.
The EIA does not give oil production figures for the former Soviet satellites, they just lumped them in with "Other" after the Soviet breakup. So those "Other" figures are the ones I use, but that is okay because of all nations covered under "Other" only the former Soviet satellites are increasing in production to any appreciable amount. In fact, it is quite obvious that most all the others, like Denmark for instance, are in decline.
So since April of 2005, Russia plus Other has increased production from 14,644 kb/d to 15,703 kb/d, an increase of 1,059 kb/d or 6.7%. However during the exact same one year period, the rest of the world decreased in production by 1,227 kb/d from 69,118 kb/d to 57,891 kb/d. (All figures are crude + condensate, not all liquids.)
So the world minus the FSU peaked in April 2005 and has declined by just over 2% since that date. The FSU has not yet peaked. The question is now; "Can the FSU produce enough to offset the peak in the rest of the world?"
This is not to say that all other nations have peaked, as obviously all have not. However most other nations are in either decline of in the plateau stage. A very few, like Angola, Brazil, and a couple of others are still increasing production. However their output is not nearly enough to offset the decline in the rest of the world.
Russian oil production for first half of the year, plus June can be found at this URL.
http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/finances/26.html?id_issue=11545523
I wrote, in error:
That "69,118" kb/d figure is an obvious error. It should have been 59,118 kb/d. Sorry about that.
When a nation goes into a natural decline, they do not come back. Only countries that have had an unnatural decline have subsequently increased their production. These include the OPEC countries and the FSU after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Now everyone is producing flat out so you can just look at who's declining and who's still on the increase and get a good idea on exactly where we stand, peak oil wise. Most countries are in a natural decline. A few are at a plateau stage. A very few, Russia, Other, Angola, Brazil and perhaps China still have a bit of increasing to do.
But the forces of decline seem to be winning out over the forces of increase production. When you match those still increasing in production and wondering if they will overcome the decline in the rest of the world, you get the idea they are trying to climb a down escalator, and losing ground.
Don Send me e.mail, Maybe a joint venture on a writers page of free works, I have an artist friend that might like to join the effort.
The sky filled with chrisp chrip of frogs
The bats fly by, feeding
The lights blink horizon filled heat rises
Some red with warning
Dots of distance movement
Edges of dark outline the space
The pace of future streaming
When will the dark flow again
Stars of past shine down on future's heart
When will it all end and go dark
I ponder from my mountaion top
The age of man upon the land
When will only the small fires be back
Lite till moon rise then dark again
The lights their own life grow
Every night more and more the valley fill
When will the dark flow again
8 July 2006
Charles E. Owens Jr.
this is my second effort, the first got ate by computer cut and paste mistakes. Oh well, I speak a lot of my poems to people for one show only.
I think about one per week is exactly right. Perhaps as another commenter has suggested we could once a week have an open thread (Thursdays?) when literary efforts are welcomed. Then the persons who can only read and understand numbers will know to scroll rapidly;-)
Poets have the deepest truths. Physicists and philosophers both know that.
Case in point, Richard Feynman:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman
Pictured here playing the bongos:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Feynman-bongos.jpg
As I mentioned I will try to theme these toward the world of energy and how we live in this new changing world. I find the idea of fiction or poetry talking about what we are also talking about here in techinical terms as an ability to reach a wider audience. People fill their book shelves with fiction and future like writings, and lacing that with a bit of humor and poems and forward thinking, and forward looking stories about peak oil and these topics should go over well.
I write from 1 to 30 poems a week, I'll just gear a few in this direction and store them or create one on the fly, if others don't mind, I'll post one a week.
My guess is that you'll be able to get wit, originality, sincerity, aptness of thought and brevity plus punch into your poems.
Keep going.
Yeah, all my three poet friends are female. And except for me, most of their male friends are gay . . . or so it seems.
http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/Energy%20Conversation.pdf
It seems like most of the discussion at the time was with respect to the content of the speech - an 8% per year decline in Mid-East production, starting almost immediately. The other thing I got to thinking about is who that speech was to - the US Department of Defense. Can you imagine how the speech would make them feel? Matt Simons has more credibility than almost anyone else IMO.
Should we be telling our employers about what is happening? Why aren't the news media picking up on the story?
People desire to believe what they desire to be true.
Armed with this items it is possible to open the mind of part of the population.
I work with a lot of science and technology types, they tend to be open to a concept if you show them the data.
Someone posted a nice power point presentation about peak oil a while back. I emailed it to several people and it went over very well. Nobody has started building survival shelters, but they are open to ideas like gardens and permaculture. I even got my brother interested.
I'm not so sure about that. I'd keep my mouth shut if you want to keep your job. Of course, there may the possibility that subsconsciously you want to move on but can't find an out. In that case, warning people would probably get the job done.
Best,
Matt
Is blood for oil our national policy?
OIL IS CERTAINLY a major concern. If I was the President and gasoline hit $4+ a gallon, I do not think I would want the next election around the corner. This thought is political reality, not real reality!! Obviously global warming, GHG, and over-population is bigger than this.
Democracy and Capitalism and the Global Market (which is still booming Oldhippie - kudos go out to the Bellamy Brothers - see the last page of the ECONOMIST) should solve some tactical issues if it gives the poor unemployed in the 3rd world a job. If they decide to illegally enter the EU, our allies, there WILL be issues. That is why we went into Bosnia under Clinton - the EU did not want a million Muslim refugees "comin' on down."
Actually, at least at a tactical level versus a strategic level, ethanol has run its course for 2006 and early 2007 in the USA, barring a war with Iran. The economic pundits seem to think ethanol has become a speculators market and not a real market, and if you go to ande and look at the volume of stock trading over the last 12 months, it should be obvious. The MTBE issue has been met, and a bunch of ethanol is coming on stream (we/USA are now the biggest producer of it on the planet). Other than ADM, I would be careful with Ethanol stocks the next two years.
But I do not think we have hit peak oil yet, which may, I say may, put me in a minority at this site.
The USA military expends about 1.5% of the nation's oil use in the course of a year.
As a sidebar: railroads (Big Easy will love this) is fully maxed out in the stock market and do not expect higher returns/growing price this year into 2007. Just marginal increases.
[ Parent ]
For what it's worth I long gave up both trying to change nobody and trying to adjust.
Watch for Chicago's own Hoyle Brothers to make some nat'l country music news. See them and Devil In A Woodpile. live.
Lieutenant Colonel Dennis D. Tewksbury, U.S. Army War College, in "Preemptive energy security: an aggressive approach to meeting America's requirements."
I've tried to put the best face on it elsehwere, pointing out that the conclusions of that report stress non-military actions ... but there's no doubt that "literal war" is there in black and white.
Our genes are not our friends:
Jay Hanson [Dieoff_Q&A #6920 farewell message]
----------------------------
I see my worst fears unfolding in front of my face. The
world is headed to global nuclear war over energy resources. The animal didn't evolve to avoid war, it evolved to use war as a tactic to gain energy resources.
---------------------------
Simmons's presentation to the military is a natural genetic outgrowth towards the '3 Days of the Condor' scenario. Our military must soon decide between 'Nuke their Ass--I want Gas' or 'No Thanks--I like Empty Tanks'.
Asimov's Foundation concepts of predictive collapse and directed decline, properly applied, can greatly reduce the genetic tendency towards war by proactively opposing our natural inclinations. The military, if understanding that a global resource war is energetically pointless; a lose-lose for all, should instead be focusing on funding Earthmarines to protect those biosolars and their habitats from being overrun by detritovores.
Richard Rainwater's survival farm, among others, is just a sitting duck unless proactive protection is installed. The military should be developing plans that incorporate adaptation to detritus decline, not seeking to accelerate it.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
There was a rise of American militarism, but it was based in good part on "costless"(*) war. God help us, if Iraq had run its course on that basis we probably would be looking for "who's next?"
* - yes, I'm aware of the irony, deception, tragedy in that label
There is another circumstance in which, if it transpired, war is even more likely, in my opinion. The Carter Doctine (written by Zbiggie Brzezinski):
"Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."
It all depends on what you consider to be an "attempt to gain control" or " an outside force."
Note the difference between the old Carter era "outside force" designation and this scenario.
Nope. Once the cat is out of the bag, virtually every export will cut or end exports to preserve their remaining reserves. Unless you pre-maturely create a global panic, its best to keep this below the radar.
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/37152/story.htm
Shell Says Biofuels From Food Crops "Morally Inappropriate"
I don't know about you ... but I drank coffee this morning. That's a crop, with low nutrient value, grown in developing nations, displacing food for local consuption (?).
With energy it's not the same. We need on the order of 120 watts per person in food energy, and we use much of the world's potentially arable land to provide that alone. In the more developed world, we also use on the order of 6000 to 12000 watts per person of other (non-food) energy.
Now that's too simplistic, because there can be order-of-a-factor-of-two arguments over energy quality and the bounds of what "arable" might mean for, e.g., non-food grass crops. But let's set that small factor-of-two stuff aside and simply observe that it is easy to consume enough energy to starve the world's people to death countless times over, if we insist that general-use energy ought to come largely from agriculture. After all, we already do so even in the less developed parts of the world where general-energy consumption is just a few thousand watts.
The ratio of general-energy consumption to food-energy consumption is so enormous that this point ought to be blindingly obvious even without a detailed EROEI analysis of switchgrass, ethanol, biodiesel, plant stover, and so on. IIRC, you have pointed out that pretty much all of the accessible fossil fuel is likely eventually to be consumed, like it or not. This ratio is one reason why. And it is why an insistence that general-use energy ought to come largely from agriculture also makes one into a militant doomer virtually automatically. And it is why the self-imposed (by the regime and its supporters) conditions in Cuba are so utterly miserable that people are still willing to risk almost certain death to escape the place.
So I don't think we can lightly dismiss Shell's original point ad hominem, even if we think it happens, just by, ahem, sheer coincidence, to align with their pecuniary interests.
(It would only be ad hominem if I'd said Shell was smelly, or bad, or whatever, and said therefore don't believe them.)
This does not answer Paul's line of thinking. The assumption here is that fuel price will outpace food price. I do not think so! Not at the current world population size. This is a sure way to starve a vast number of the current world population. This I believe was Paul's point.
I get the tragedy of growing luxury crops for the rich while the poor starve, and I get that energy crops could extend this problem. It's just that I see it as ancient. I mean, something like the spice trade has been sending food from poor regions around the globe to the rich (or royal) for thousands of years.
If we are going to be guilty about buying Brazilian ethanol, why not about buying Brazilian sugar?
Take for example palm oil (from the West African Palm Oil tree grown in Malaysia). It can be used as a food, or as a fuel. It so happens, that there is a world wide shortage of cooking oils, and cooking oils happen to be quite a large chunk of the income of 70% of the world's population. The only time bio deisel can work, is as a bye product of the "French Fry" industry.
Also, contrary to much "conventional wisdom" fats, including "saturated" fats, are an essential part of the human diet. incl
Corn is a staple food -- like wheat. A family in a poor African country can live on corn (in fact, they do).
This is not the case with sugar cane or switch grass.
For the moment, it might also be true for some fuel crops in some limited areas - if you can trade the fuel for more food than you can grow. Since the population explosion has not stopped, even though there is much speculation that it may stop in a few decades, the tradeoff in most places will become ever more stark as time passes.
I'm not actually sold on an "end of civilisation" type scenario, but let's assume that's what'll happen. In that case, I assert that this is the best collapse to be at the cusp of - that given the choice between living through this collapse vs that of say, Rome, Easter Island, Egyptian FI period, Sumeria, Mayan etc it'd make sense to choose this one.
Why are we in a better position than previous civilisations that have collapsed?
- We don't have religion. Texts dating from the times these civilisations began to fall apart are often completely lacking in critical analysis or suggestions for mitigation; instead the whole disaster is simply blamed on the will of the Gods. We labour under no such illusions.
- We have a large, educated population. Never before in the history of man has there been such an enormous pool of brainpower that can (and will) be levelled at the problem.
- We have unparalleled communication abilities, allowing "amplification" of the power of that educated populace.
- We have further to fall before going splat. Our lives are lives of comparative luxury and there is a lot of slack that can disappear before we can no longer afford the essentials.
And now for some reasons why this might be the worst collapse:- We're a lot more dependent on the system than in previous times, and fewer of us can grow our own food/find our own fresh water. On the other hand that'll only be an issue in a serious, long term collapse.
- We're much bigger, of course
Thoughts?Not really.
I wouldn't want to raise a family at the blast site, but given a little time radiation levels will quickly fall to safe ranges. Or at the very least safe enough for the workers to get the job done before they die.
The intact reactors at Chernobyl continued to function as power plants long after it went boom. By the time we start nuking people for oil the situation will be so desperate that getting worker for the hot zone won't be a problem.
I don't know if it's still a practice in the nuclear power industry today, but quite a while back they used to employ unskilled workers as outside contractors to do simple tasks in hot areas. The purpose was to conserve the amount of exposure allowed to their own skilled employees so that their exposure could be expended on more important tasks.
Appropriately, these unskilled workers were known as 'sponges'. Typically, a sponge might earn good money by getting his yearly allowable radiation exposure in a short period time, say a week, doing simple maintenance type tasks.
Now, if one uses a little dark imagination, it's not too hard to conjure up scenarios in which desparately poor people (not just people below the current poverty line, but literally the wretched of the earth) would gladly exchange a few years of life expectancy working as 'super sponges' in order to feed their starving families. So, if conditions are right (read terrible), it will be no trouble at all getting people to work under horrific conditions.
I think one of the cruelest fantasies is this notion that human life is infinitely precious. (Of course mine is infinitely precious to me, and yours to you, but neither mine nor yours is infinitely precious to society in general.)
The fact of the matter is that human life is dirt cheap, and in some instances appears to even have negative value. Let's face it: people are expendable. And the more of them there are and the worse conditions become, the more expendable they will be.
Silver is a precious metal. People kill to get it.
However, my recollection was that median life expectency reached into the mid thirties--and miners started very young, as for example the ten-year-old kid shown on the feature.
Coal mining is worse on a global scale.
The local history writers might have sweetend the story for me but I get the impression that people even in the old times tried to be cautious within current knowledge and technology. Workers had a kind of ordered career from being child workers to worn out middle aged workers with efforts to make the work easier and safe wich essentially is the same thing as getting more total work out of the available people. And the manual skills of working a mine with hand power and wood burning and later hand drilling and powder and nitroglycerine blasting are valuble. Its dumb to neglect and wear out a valuble resource regardles if it is a worker or draft horse.
I do not get why for instance manny Chinese stone workers dont get the most basic and cheap precautions against silicosis wich would make them productive far longer and with less problems then now when they get silicosis after a few years. And there are all kinds of reports of primitive mining from thirld world countries with less organization then we have had here since mining activites stared to be recorder when we were dirt poor over here. I dont get why they dont do some smarter optmization out of selfish or caring reasons, both work, even at the same time!
It might have to do with local culture. The poorest, the mine workers, managers and mine owners went to the same church even if they had different benches. The difference in status were enourmous but they did meet each other.
PS: Please note, this was a sample of one. Do not generalize it to all South Americans.
We have quite often had an alliance between the farmers and the king against a fairly poor nobelity. The downside of this were an ability for total war mobilization that bled us white while trying to be a major european power but that were hundreds of years ago. There has been some tendency that if something major needs doing everybody is brought into doing it more or less volontarily. I dont know how much of this remains, nothing has stressed us much since WW2.
The circulation between classes got a major boost during the industrial revolution and also by our "people movement" associations with people starting all kinds of volontary societies, parties, non drinking lodges, churches and so on built on internal democracy, keeping each other company, and education with small libraries etc. I have found disturbing information about this trend from the industrial revolution being broken for about 30 years. The high taxation do no longer allow a regular worker to build up a small fortune and switch "class" upwards and most of the old "people movement" organizations has atrophied and lost their skill for general education of their members. Most of the successfull ones have for a long time been parts of our socialist party power structure and lost much of their soul in the process and become career paths for party member childern while living on old fortunes and established places in society. Those who built those organizations with volontary labour are probably rotating in their graves.
We had a formation of new "nobelity" after Gustav Adolphus victories but the next strong king made a "reduction" of these land assets back to the state to strenghten the state economy. Indeed in cooperation with the independant farmers.
I suspect that we soon will be due for another "reduction" in Sweden if times turn bad, this time of the bulging state buerocracy, overy sweet pension deals and so on. The problem is nowdays not who owns land but holding assets in an inproductive way and not honoring responsibility of caretaking the assets.
BTW, coots are some of my favorite birds. I've seen 400 or more at one time on White Bear Lake.
I've seen old coots but never a bitter one.
One of my alltime favorite books (and yes, relevant to Peak Oil and Global Warming and saving civilization) is COOT CLUB, by Arthur Ransome.
They are better books for adults than 98.1415% of the best seller list in e.g. the N.Y. Times.
Ransome (who by the way was a spy masquerading as a reporter in Russia during and after World War II. Believe it or not, he reported to John Maynard Keynes--spymaster and economist) was a sailor, a fisherman, a bird lover, and if we lived live as he advocated (mostly in wooden boats or in marshes watching birds) the world would be much better and we would all be much happier.
There are some excellent Ransome websites.
I'm rebuilding an old wooden boat that is a somewhat larger relative of the Amazon. It is named "Princess Abby," after my eldest granddaughter (the one who likes my comments on this site) who is learning to sail this summer.
Mostly I now sail a Boston Whaler Squall or on friends' big boats as cook.
I wouldn't want to raise a family at the blast site, but given a little time radiation levels will quickly fall to safe ranges. Or at the very least safe enough for the workers to get the job done before they die.
As you pointed out the radiation isn't all that important, especially in the desert where food and water that need to be imported anyway. However the real issue would be the lost of infrastructure. Even if neutron or gamma ray bombs were used to kill off the population wouldn't necessarily prevent the distruction of infrastructure required.
Since it took decades to build that infrastructure it will probably take many years to repair or replace it. During this time, the infrastructure that requires to manufacture parts back home would fail do to lack of energy. If the gov't was to ration domestic reserves for reconstruction efforts, it would still be faced with domestic issues, such as riots, high unemployment, explosion of drug abuse, etc. We also don't know what other nations might do to undermind the US's efforts to control Middle east energy reserves.
No matter what actions are taken, we will face a crisis.
The neutron bomb would be a perfect fit. Kill the people and leave the infrastructure intact.
I'm not advocating it as a strategy, just pointing out that it could be feasible.
I think the whole issue is how artificially high our population has grown - I say artificial in comparison to what it could be without the input of so much stored solar energy, and if we had to exist on sustainable energy inputs.
I try to only post on oil related topics but here i can't resist.
there's plenty of evidence dubwa is an insane jesus nut (apoligies to all offended) and soon to be a lame duck resident with nothing to lose. I'm a little worried
If you think of a group with the community you need to survive a collapse it's probably a religous community. The LDS in utah are perhaps the ultimate example.
It's fairly well established that church attendance goes up as the economy goes down. Think of the collapse as the ulimate down, I'm sure these religous groups will do just fine.
Of course doing fine means surviving instead of death in a collapse. I subscribe to the slow decline theory myself because I think humanity's ability to adapt is regularly under-estimated.
Moreover, tough times usually results in people turning to religion (or more extreme religion). I'm expecting evolutionists to be burned in the town square.
Unlike most previous collapses, we have nowhere to go. Tainter notes that collapse is typically accompanied by a roughly 90% drop in population. However, he was careful to say this did not mean those people died. They could have just moved elsewhere. (Well, except for Easter Island, I guess.)
I think our technology/communication will be good in the short term, but bad in the long term. Yes, it can mitigate the collapse. On the bad side, we can and will do a lot more damage to the environment than the Romans or Easter Islanders could ever dream of doing.
Religion is on the rise and interest in science is on the decline. We can see the rise of theorcacy in Muslim nations and even a growing interest here in the United States. New Scientist recently had a article about this. You can probably find it on thier website www.newscientist.com
>We have a large, educated population. Never before in the history of man has there been such an enormous pool of brainpower that can (and will) be levelled at the problem.
Actually the percentage of the global population with an education has been declining since the begging of the 20th Century. In the US, there has been a rapid decline in science and technical degrees into liberal arts and less useful degrees. The Peak of scientific discoveries was in the 1890's and the resources required to make newer discoveries has increased substantially and the technical discoveries become more and more complex and expensive.
>We have unparalleled communication abilities, allowing "amplification" of the power of that educated populace.
Unfortunately most of this communication ability has been turned to useless entertainment. For instance TV, console gaming, cell phones. which have deminished our ability to develop newer technology that would lead us to a path of sustainability.
>Our lives are lives of comparative luxury and there is a lot of slack that can disappear before we can no longer afford the essentials.
Empires and societies fall when they become complancent and addicted to luxuries.
>We're a lot more dependent on the system than in previous times, and fewer of us can grow our own food/find our own fresh water. On the other hand that'll only be an issue in a serious, long term collapse.
We also all have become extremely specialized in our skill sets. We know how to do a much limited set of task that makes us very efficient at accomplishing those tasks. But specialization has remove our ability to adapt to severe changes.
TechGuy,
I think you are hitting the nail square on with a carpenter's specialized precision.
But let me add some polish to your handiwork.
"Specialization" means that we each talk our own specialized talk.
Economists talk their freakonomics language.
Geologists rock to their metamorphic music.
Engineers equate in a mathematically precise domain of formulas.
Doctors medicate themselves with the Latin lingo.
Lawyers lubricate their froth with yet more res ipsa loquitor.
And because of all this specialized speech-making and because we lack a common framework: We cannot communicate boundary-crossing problems to each other. The collective "we" cannot see those of the problems that cannot be commonly communicated. They are trees falling in the forest to secluded sounds of their own type and therfore their falls do not make hardly a noise.
"Specialization" means that we leave gaps along the spectrum of infinite possibilities.
Not every specialized endeavor is a "profit making" one. Thus, some specializations are not taken up at all. It is the silent gaps between the loud and prominent peaks that will kill us. Sure we have lots of specialized doctors, lawyers, engineers and politicians. But where in this cacophony of profit taking does the asteroid spotter sit? Who is making sure that all the extinction level externalities are being carefully monitored? Who is building a prospective safety net for dealing with their inevitable comings? Hardly a soul. It is not a profitable enterprise.
Alas, "specialization" is not only the chain of highly tempered links that strongly lift our complex civilization to its current heights, it is also the missing link that will let us down.
Chaos in the world, just a few steps away.
Lentil soup is one of my specialties.
I make prize-winning bread from scratch.
Red cabbage and carrots find there way into a lot of my recipes.
Do you eat red meat? Do you like fish? Brown rice? Yams? White potatoes? Peas? Black beans? Garlic?
For a cook, the first and most important thing is to find out exactly what people like.
Then you think.
Next you plan.
Then you shop.
Where do you live again?
BTW, I'm learning to make my own beer and ale--good skills to have, no matter what.
You are invited. And Wimbi. And all the other geezers and grandmas. We can brag competitively about our grandchildren, which is great fun, then imbibe, then eat, then smoke pipes or fine cigars as we sip cognac or single-malt Scotch.
Life for me is good and getting better.
The remaining oil column of about 825' at Cantarell is thinning at the rate of about 300' per year. There were five projected decline rates. The most pessimistic was for about a 40% per year decline rate. I have seen recent reported production rates of 1.8 mbpd.
I've seen some reports on Ghawar that the original oil column of 1,300' has thinned to about 150' or so.
What puzzles me is that some people are confidently predict rising world oil production when the two largest producing fields are in such a state of advanced depletion.
The oil in these two giants is not dispersed around the reservoir. The oil is in rapidly thinning oil columns between water legs and gas caps. Key Point: Keeping the production rate up is the enemy of high recovery rates from this point forward.
BTW how does a column shrink? What are the causes that lead to the effect.(a climate joke)
The Oil column is the layer of oil that is trapped between the gas cap and the water below. When the Ghawar was originally tapped, there was 1300 feet of oil in the reserve. According to WestTexas's information much of the oil has been displaced with water. The water is injected into the reserve in order to maintain pressure required to extract oil from the reserve.
The bottom line is that most of the oil has been extracted and little time remains before the Ghawar is exhausted. The Ghawar produces about 4.4 Mb/d or about %5 of global production.
This month's commentary:
Again in the last month, spare capacity in global oil production of only 1-mbd has prevented avg contract prices to drift down to the $50/barrel vicinity as we expected. This season we have a seachange in the pricing components. Whereas 2005 and early 2006 saw concern over continued ME insurgency and a potential air raid over Iran to take out the uranium enriching facilities, that fear component is being replaced with very real issues in supply and demand. While high prices are no doubt causing very real demand destruction, global economies are strangely all firing on all cylinders at the moment and that harmony has created near historic real growth rates on the global scale of 4.9% (IMF figure). Add to that China's decision to expand its SPR and we could see these high prices for quite some time. Federal Reserve models indicate that the USA economy can handle $70/barrel oil prices for two years 'til a technical Recession would be at hand. In that respect, the graph below illustrates that avg contract prices are nudging the $65 mark.
Over 2005, an avg of 0.8-mbd went to stock builds as speculators gave up their positions. That speculation activity and consequent int'l stock building has substantially subsided. Global extraction of (all liquids) oil is growing on pace. Final figures for 2004 are 83.0-mbd and 84.1-mbd in 2005. A new quarterly production record was set in 2006Q1 of 84.77-mbd and a monthly record of 84.87 was set in January. Early figures indicate that a new monthly record may have been set in May (84.96-mbd). (all prod'n figures from IEA).
Freddy, I read the article at Trendlines with interest. They optimistically point out that Campbell missed his prediction because of Russia and non-conventional oil. Actually it was Russia, non-conventional oil had little to do with it. Russia was the reason that December 05, so far, has been the peak instead of May 05. And if December 05 turns out not to be the peak, it will be because of Russia. That is, will Russia bump the peak out one more time?
I keep an Excel data file on all nations. The vast majority of them are in a steady decline. Only a very few are still increasing. Russia, the category which the EIA calls "Other", Angola, Brazil and China, and that is about it. The rest are either in the plateau stage or in steep decline.
And Trendlines is saying, Russia, yah, yah, yah. To my way of thinking Freddy, they should be saying, "We are holding on by a shoestring called Russia." When Russia falters we are in deep do-do.
To my way of thinking, the folks at Trendlines should be deeply worried. Only Russia, and perhaps "Other" is keeping Peak Oil from being blatantly obvious to the world. They, along with everyone else should be worried, very worried.
I am betting that Peak Oil reached us in January. But I think we shall know in two months. In June Russia produced an average of 9,633,000 barrels per day, 263,000 barrels per day more than in April. Will that be enough to put another high bump in world oil production. I doubt it. The rest of the world is declining far too fast for Russia to prevent peak oil for much longer.
Actually I meant to say that I think December 2005 was the peak, not January. Sorry for the oversight.
Fortunately, Campbell saw the error of his ways and has realized since (with my prodding) that his reputation for providing good data outweighs his being blinded "by a cause". Altho we see new revised numbers about twice a year, Colin is building respect for his keeping the integrity of the database despite its effect on any hypothesis. I applaud that and him.
Whereas EIA seems to build its model of URR on probability and has been more correct, Campbell provides with a conservative albeit oft revised base to work from. Two very different strategies.
And because he collaborates much with Jean Laherrere of France, our Irish buddy will likely shortly increase his March2006 higher revision of Conventional URR (1.9-Tb) closer to the recent 2.15-Tb now being promoted by Laherrere. This may mean cause the Conventional Peak thought once to be in Y2k, then in 2005, then in 2004, and now back to 2005 ... to be pushed to 2007 in his next major revision. This ultimately pushes out the more important all liquids Peak to maybe 2012 from 2010 (whilst being 2019 in Laherrere's 4-Tb URR model).
Well no, I don't know where you read the EIA figures but if you go to their International Petroleum Monthly you will find that they have for
December 05: 85.023 mb/d
January 06: 84.690 mb/d.
That is "All Liquids" which includes ethanol, biodiesel, refinery process gain, propane, butane and god knows what else they will throw in there to get the figures up. For crude + condensate the figures are for
December 05: 74.347 mb/d
January 06: 73.858 mb/d.
Here is my source, where did you get yours?
Crude + Condensate: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t11c.xls
All Liquids: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t14.xls
Woah! 13-mbd of non conventional oil has come about? Since when? Where the hell is it? I know of the 1 mb/d from the Alabaster oil sands but where is the rest? Just what are you calling "non conventional oil" and where does the EIA report it? I am not sure but I think the tar sands crude is included in Crude + Condensate.
And this put Russia in the driver's seat. And they know it. And this is why they are bullying their neighbors on the prices they pay or will pay soon. And what a perfect time (in their minds) for them to be chair and host of the G-8 Summit in St. Petersburg.
http://en.g8russia.ru/
"This will be the first time that Russia will chair this respected international forum. I hope that the experience we have accumulated since joining the G8 will ensure respect for tradition and consolidation of our efforts. Russia, as the presiding country, regards it as its duty to give a fresh impetus to efforts to find solutions to key international problems in energy, education and healthcare."
Address by Russian President Vladimir Putin
to visitors to the official site of Russia's G8 Presidency in 2006."
Don't forget, Russians are very good at playing chess.
Russia should start living up to the demonic reputation that the NATO media gives it. Then the EU will be getting natural gas for a much higher price than the token $230, which is easily half of the current oil-tagged market price. At the same time Russia should reduce its oil exports from over six million barrels per day to under four. That will wipe out the remaining slack in the system and most likely lead to $100 per barrel price, which will mostly offset the export volume reduction when it comes to revenue.
Russia is engaging in fruitless NATO appeasement, it is time to start charging for abuse at the hands of sanctimonious NATO russophobes.
And it's highly likely that the four largest producing fields in the world are all declining. I suspect that both Ghawar and Cantarell are going to show severe declines this year.
Note that the recent declines in world crude oil production and Saudi oil production are consistent with predictions made in the following Energy Bulletin articles: http://www.energybulletin.net/news.php?author=jeffrey+brown&keywords=&cat=0&action=searc h
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20060707.COSIMP07/TPStory/National/columnists
It's unwise, Mr. Lougheed argues, to use natural gas, a relatively clean fuel, to produce the heat needed to extract relatively dirty oil from the bitumen. That gas should be used for other purposes, including perhaps building up a petrochemical industry. It's too valuable and clean to be used for the oil sands.
I don't think Lougheed still welds much influence with the Conservative party. The provincial government doesn't seem to be interested in tempering the boom at all, which will just make the inevitable bust all the harder. The real question is which will the province run short of first, water or natural gas?
http://www.financialsense.com/Experts/2006/Leggett.html
Are you ready for $5 gas? Stolen Elections & Oil Privatization in Mexico.
Even a short-lived disruption in Mexican production would be a huge since supply and demand in 2006 seem to be balanced on a knife's edge.
:-)
Based on what Simmons has written about Saudi Arabia, pressurization with water prematurly can damage the well. Is this also the case with gas pressurization?
At any rate C02 pushed into the reservoir will keep it pressurized and keep the C02 out of the atmosphere. And it will be much better than water flooding, because it will not cause coneing, which is when water cones up to the wellhead and you wind up pumping water instead of oil.
Look for super critical co2 its a excellent solvent.
I'm pretty sure at the pressures in a oil field your looking at co2 being a supercritical fluid or close to it.
Mike
CO2 is corrosive (but also acts a solvent), and water lowers the URR of the field. Natural gas can also be later recovered and used when the oil is exhausted. If Natural gas is unavailable, nitrogen or CO2 would be the prefered choices over water.
The Olds dropped from 10.5-Ltres/100km to 8.5-L/100km. Consistently. And we now leave a tad earlier whenever we can to drive slower and smell the roses (and see much more wildlife).
I'm a boomer and a stat guy and should have known that almost 20% savings were at hand. There are likely many others awaiting this surprise which bodes well for "some" conservation.
Hmmm... Typo or interesting choice of example case? Freud commented on these I think... ;-)
There was a time when I would have said you were right either way, but that was more than 15 years ago [Memo to self: Buy 12 long stems for upcoming anniversary]
But yes you are right, past, now, and in the future:
"The rich and the powerful set their banquet on a mountain of skulls, and pick their teeth with the bones of the poor" Anon.
Dr. Rajan Gupta of Los Alamos (Theory division head) &
Dr. Robert Hirsch (SAIC)
discussing energy challenges associated w/ PO/PNG and mitigation, respectively. This is a mainstream APS meeting, should be quite well attended by professional physicists, area wealthy retirees, and hopefully W&M students, most of whom in my experience have never thought about the issue. These two speakers should make quite an impression and I don't think that there will be any distracting parallel sessions. We'll try to record it as we did for these seminars.
This coming week, he will help review the 1700 responses to post some chosen ones. He stated that "survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there's an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy earth. He suggested space stations that could function independent of earth.
The link:
http://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/0.71346-0.html?tw=rss.index
On a personal level, I saw "An Inconvenient Truth" last night, and read this question in today's news. It will be interesting to see which answers he picks, to see what he's most concerned about.
Dave, its sometimes hard to get out of the right side of the bed, these days!
http://www.wired.com/news/wireservice/0,71346-0.html?tw=rss.index
One of Mike Hearn's points above.
Just because something "can" happen does not mean it "will" happen.
If you want to think of the pool of brainpower available from the 6.5 Billion homo-sap craniums now on this common Planet as being a "common" wealth, then the fact that they probably won't be rationally applied is the Tragedy of this Common Wealth.
Yes.