Peak Oil

scarmani · Mon Apr 25, 2005 10:44 pm

It's old news by now, but by force of habit I feel compelled to offer up some typical alarmism and urge people to get educated and prepare. In my opinion the looming energy crisis and its consequences will be the single most important event in our lifetimes.

(The last few links go beyond describing the problem and discuss ways of dealing with the change.)

http://www.peakoil.net/
http://www.asponews.org/

http://www.peakoil.com/

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/

http://www.energybulletin.net/

http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/BreakingNews.html

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/

http://www.odac-info.org/

http://www.postcarbon.org/

http://www.communitysolution.org/

http://www.culturechange.org/

nyarlothotep · Tue Apr 26, 2005 1:22 am

world conflict will result over oil in the next 20 years.
Just look at the moevs being made by the two major consumers: the U>S. and China. Serious amounts of cash and other resources are being flung about to secure oil production and make allies/satillites of the major oil-producing countries.

Whats your view on biodeisel? The DOE put out a BIG ASS report a while abck......saying that the current energy consumption could be met using agricultural runoff for about 12 billion dollars less a year, as a renewable resource, no less.
I'ma get me a deisel soon Smile

Polverone · Tue Apr 26, 2005 10:43 am

http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/4/22/134835/319

Short article on peak oil followed by long discussion; useful because it brings together divergent opinions on the meaning of the end of cheap oil in one place. My view is that the end of cheap oil will bring about some serious changes, but that those preaching the Peak Oil Apocalypse the loudest are those that know the least about chemistry, energy production, economics, or anything else germane to the problem. Websites devoted to the topicl often give off a strong kook vibe.

The worry about Peak Oil reminds me a lot of the worry about the Y2K Bug. Yes, the basic problem (limited date-storage fields, limited oil supply) was/is real. No, you do not need to start stockpiling ammunition and contemplate becoming a subsistence farmer. Investing in energy-efficient appliances and not getting too attached to your cars may be a good idea, but you were doing that already to save money, right?

IndoleAmine · Dreamreader Deluxe

Oh - and how I got flamed back then at the hive for bringing up this topic..
Laughing

Sandmeyer · Tue Apr 26, 2005 7:21 pm

Most importantly, the modern banking and international monetary system is entirely dependent on a constantly increasing supply of oil.

Well, I better kill myself now, a life is no life without 'free trade' and 'competitive advantage'.

IndoleAmine · Dreamreader Deluxe

Its not specifically against free market economy - its just about its dependancy on availability of raw oil - and without doubt we run short of oil, slowly with time, and this is for sure a cause for concern - if you ask me..

scarmani · Wed Apr 27, 2005 2:36 pm

Polverone · Thu Apr 28, 2005 9:25 am

The linked PDF is a good read. It is far from alarmist. It estimates, for example, that US GDP would shrink by 1% if oil prices were to double and stay doubled for a sustained period. It also says that clean synthetic liquid hydrocarbon fuels can be produced from coal for $30-35 dollars per barrel, and known coal reserves are much larger than oil reserves. It contains many other interesting observations. The people who I would call Peak Oil Kooks, on the other hand, seem to believe that the world must descend into universal war, famine, and then pre-industrial civilization after oil production peaks.

Lief · Wed May 18, 2005 3:55 am

Canadian oil and gas trusts pay high dividends.

http://www.forbes.com/markets/free_forbes/2004/0906/206.html

http://www.forbes.com/columnists/investmentnewsletters/2005/03/16/cz_rl_0316soapbox_inl.html

sg43 · Wed May 18, 2005 9:37 am

SWIM has seen this site before, and is seriously considering getting a diesel car so he can brew up his own bio-diesel, Laughing

Actualy a productive way to use his chemistry skills. Twisted Evil

secret_squirrel · Wed May 18, 2005 11:09 am

Making a judgemnt about both the immenence and effect of oil peaking requires knowledge of economics, geology, process efficiencies, politics and psychology. No one knows enough about all these things to categorically state that oil declines wont cause potentially very painful effects. I don't think peak oil is the be all -end all of the worlds problems. That said, if you combine physical oil declines with shaky economies, human greed and tendency to battle over resources, then maybe you have something very dangerous that bears serious consideration.

IndoleAmine · Dreamreader Deluxe

And something to think about: why do you think all big automotive manufacturers are into developing fuel cell-driven cars? Maybe because there's no problem in using heaps of oil just for moving from A to B for example? Question

(and of course the US of A see the least problems with oil in general; they use up the greatest amnt. of oil per person/year and didn't even consider ratifying the Kyoto protocol...

"The Kyoto Protocol is an amendment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), an international treaty on global warming. It also reaffirms sections of the UNFCCC. Countries which ratify this protocol commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases, or engage in emissions trading if they maintain or increase emissions of these gases. A total of 141 countries have ratified the agreement. Notable exceptions include the United States and Australia.

The formal name of the agreement, which reaffirms sections of the UNFCCC, is the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [1] (http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1997/global.warming/stories/treaty/). It was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997, opened for signature on March 16, 1998, and closed on March 15, 1999. The agreement came into force on February 16, 2005 following ratification by Russia on November 18, 2004."

(see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_protocol)

"The United States, although a signatory to the protocol, has neither ratified nor withdrawn from the protocol. The protocol is non-binding over the United States unless ratified.

On June 25, 1997, before the Kyoto Protocol was to be negotiated, the U.S. Senate passed by a 95-0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution (S. Res. 9 Cool

, which stated the sense of the Senate was that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations or "would result in serious harm to the economy of the United States". Disregarding the Senate Resolution, on November 12, 1998, Vice President Al Gore symbolically signed the protocol. Aware of the Senate's view of the protocol, the Clinton Administration never submitted the protocol for ratification.

The Clinton Administration released an economic analysis in July 1998, prepared by the Council of Economic Advisors, which concluded that with emissions trading among the Annex B/Annex I countries, and participation of key developing countries in the "Clean Development Mechanism" — which grants the latter business-as-usual emissions rates through 2012 — the costs of implementing the Kyoto Protocol could be reduced as much as 60% from many estimates. Other economic analyses, however, prepared by the Congressional Budget Office and the Department of Energy Energy Information Administration (EIA), and others, demonstrated a potentially large decline in GDP from implementing the Protocol.

The current President, George W. Bush, has indicated that he does not intend to submit the treaty for ratification, not because he does not support the general idea, but because of the strain he believes the treaty would put on the economy; he emphasises the uncertainties he asserts are present in the climate change issue [9] (http://www.alternet.org/story/11054/). Furthermore, he is not happy with the details of the treaty. For example, he does not support the split between Annex I countries and others. Bush said of the treaty:

The world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases is China. Yet, China was entirely exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. This is a challenge that requires a 100 percent effort; ours, and the rest of the world's. America's unwillingness to embrace a flawed treaty should not be read by our friends and allies as any abdication of responsibility. To the contrary, my administration is committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change. Our approach must be consistent with the long-term goal of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.
China emits 2,893 million metric tons of CO2 per year (2.3 tons per capita). This compares to 5,410 million from the USA (20.1 tons per capita), and 3,171 million from the EU (8.5 tons per capita). China, currently exempted from the requirements of the protocol, has since ratified the Kyoto Protocol and is expected to become an Annex I country within the next decade (at which time it would no longer be exempted). The US Natural Resources Defense Council, stated in June 2001 that: "By switching from coal to cleaner energy sources, initiating energy efficiency programs, and restructuring its economy, China has reduced its carbon dioxide emissions 17 percent since 1997".

In June 2002, the American Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released the "Climate Action Report 2002". Some observers have interpreted this report as being supportive of the protocol, although the report itself does not explicitly endorse the protocol.

The prospect of the US staying outside the agreement influenced a number of other countries including Australia, Japan, and Canada to discuss whether they should ratify the agreement, putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage with the USA. While Japan and Canada ultimately decided to ratify the protocol, Australia's current government has said it will not ratify. Although the major opposition parties have committed to ratification if in a position to do so, Prime Minister Howard was reelected in the 2004 election so it seems unlikely that Australia will support the treaty in the near future."

...really sad...

scarmani · Sun May 29, 2005 12:05 pm

here's a pretty solid articl:
http://www.forbes.com/work/feeds/ap/2005/05/28/ap2063077.html

Associated Press
Experts: Petroleum May Be Nearing a Peak
05.28.2005, 02:16 PM

Could the petroleum joyride - cheap, abundant oil that has sent the global economy whizzing along with the pedal to the metal and the AC blasting for decades - be coming to an end?

Some observers of the oil industry think so. They predict that this year, maybe next - almost certainly by the end of the decade - the world's oil production, having grown exuberantly for more than a century, will peak and begin to decline.

And then it really will be all downhill. The price of oil will increase drastically. Major oil-consuming countries will experience crippling inflation, unemployment and economic instability. Princeton University geologist Kenneth S. Deffeyes predicts "a permanent state of oil shortage."

According to these experts, it will take a decade or more before conservation measures and new technologies can bridge the gap between supply and demand, and even then the situation will be touch and go.

None of this will affect vacation plans this summer - Americans can expect another season of beach weekends and road trips to Graceland relatively unimpeded by the cost of getting there. Though gas prices are up, they are expected to remain below $2.50 a gallon. Accounting for inflation, that's pretty comparable to what motorists paid for most of the 20th century; it only feels expensive because gasoline was unusually cheap between 1986 and 2003.

And there are many who doubt the doomsday scenario will ever come true. Most oil industry analysts think production will continue growing for at least another 30 years. By then, substitute energy sources will be available to ease the transition into a post-petroleum age.

"This is just silly," said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy and Economic Research in Winchester, Mass. "It's not like industrial civilization is going to come crashing down."

Where you stand on "peak oil," as parties to the debate call it, depends on which forces you consider dominant in controlling the oil markets. People who consider economic forces most important believe that prices are high right now mostly because of increased demand from China and other rapidly growing economies. But eventually, high prices should encourage consumers to use less and producers to pump more.

But Deffeyes and many other geologists counter that when it comes to oil, Mother Nature trumps Adam Smith. The way they see it, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Norway and other major producers are already pumping as fast as they can. The only way to increase production capacity is to discover more oil. Yet with a few exceptions, there just isn't much left out there to be discovered.

"The economists all think that if you show up at the cashier's cage with enough currency, God will put more oil in ground," Deffeyes said.

There will be warning signs before global oil production peaks, the bearers of bad news contend. Prices will rise dramatically and become increasingly volatile. With little or no excess production capacity, minor supply disruptions - political instability in Venezuela, hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico or labor unrest in Nigeria, for example - will send the oil markets into a tizzy. So will periodic admissions by oil companies and petroleum-rich nations that they have been overestimating their reserves.

Oil producers will grow flush with cash. And because the price of oil ultimately affects the cost of just about everything else in the economy, inflation will rear its ugly head.

Anybody who has been paying close attention to the news lately may feel a bit queasy at this stage. Could $5-a-gallon gas be right around the corner?

"The world has never seen anything like this before and so we just really don't know," said Robert L. Hirsch, an energy analyst at Science Applications International Corp., a Santa Monica, Calif., consulting firm.

Still, he added, "there's a number of really competent professionals that are very pessimistic."

The pessimism stems from a legendary episode in the history of petroleum geology. Back in 1956, a geologist named M. King Hubbert predicted that U.S. oil production would peak in 1970.

His superiors at Shell Oil were aghast. They even tried to persuade Hubbert not to speak publicly about his work. His peers, accustomed to decades of making impressive oil discoveries, were skeptical.

But Hubbert was right. U.S. oil production did peak in 1970, and it has declined steadily ever since. Even impressive discoveries such as Alaska's Prudhoe Bay, with 13 billion barrels in recoverable reserves, haven't been able to reverse that trend.

Hubbert started his analysis by gathering statistics on how much oil had been discovered and produced in the Lower 48 states, both onshore and off, between 1901 and 1956 (Alaska was still terra incognita to petroleum geologists 50 years ago). His data showed that the country's oil reserves had increased rapidly from 1901 until the 1930s, then more slowly after that.

When Hubbert graphed that pattern it looked very much like America's oil supply was about to peak. Soon, it appeared, America's petroleum reserves would reach an all-time maximum. And then they would begin to shrink as the oil companies extracted crude from the ground faster than geologists could find it.

That made sense. Hubbert knew some oil fields, especially the big ones, were easier to find than others. Those big finds would come first, and then the pace of discovery would decline as the remaining pool of oil resided in progressively smaller and more elusive deposits.

The production figures followed a similar pattern, but it looked like they would peak a few years later than reserves.

That made sense too. After all, oil can't be pumped out of the ground the instant it is discovered. Lease agreements have to be negotiated, wells drilled, pipelines built; the development process can take years.

When Hubbert extended the production curve into the future it looked like it would peak around 1970. Every year after that, America would pump less oil than it had the year before.

If that prognostication wasn't daring enough, Hubbert had yet another mathematical trick up his sleeve. Assuming that the reserves decline was going to be a mirror image of the rise, geologists would have found exactly half of the oil in the Lower 48 when the curve peaked. Doubling that number gave Hubbert the grand total of all recoverable oil under the continental United States: 170 billion barrels.

At first, critics objected to Hubbert's analysis, arguing that technological improvements in exploration and recovery would increase the amount of available oil.

They did, but not enough to extend production beyond the limits Hubbert had projected. Even if you throw in the unexpected discovery of oil in Alaska, America's petroleum production history has proceeded almost exactly as Hubbert predicted it would.

Critics claim that Hubbert simply got lucky.

"When it pretty much worked," Lynch said, "he decided, aha, it has to be a bell curve."

But many experts see no reason global oil production has to peak at all. It could plateau and then gradually fall as the economy converts to other forms of energy.

"Even in 30 to 40 years there's still going to be huge amounts of oil in the Middle East," said Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis.

A few years ago, geologists began applying Hubbert's methods to the entire world's oil production. Their analyses indicated that global oil production would peak some time during the first decade of the 21st century.

Deffeyes thinks the peak will be in late 2005 or early 2006. Houston investment banker Matthew Simmons puts it at 2007 to 2009. California Institute of Technology physicist David Goodstein, whose book "The End of Oil" was published last year, predicts it will arrive before 2010.

The exact date doesn't really matter, said Hirsch, because he believes it's already too late. In an analysis he did for the U.S. Department of Energy in February, Hirsch concluded that it will take more than a decade for the U.S. economy to adapt to declining oil production.

"You've got to do really big things in order to dent the problem. And if you're on the backside of the supply curve you're chasing the train after it's already left the station," he said.

For example, the median lifetime of an American automobile is 17 years. That means even if the government immediately mandated a drastic increase in fuel efficiency standards, the conservation benefits wouldn't fully take effect for almost two decades.

And though conservation would certainly be necessary in a crisis, it wouldn't be enough. Fully mitigating the sting of decreasing oil supplies would require developing alternate sources of energy - and not the kind that politicians and environmentalists wax rhapsodic about when they promise pollution-free hydrogen cars and too-cheap-to-meter solar power.

If oil supplies really do decline in the next few decades, America's energy survival will hinge on the last century's technology, not the next one's. Hirsch's report concludes that compensating for a long-term oil shortfall would require building a massive infrastructure to convert coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels into combustible liquids.

Proponents of coal liquefaction, which creates synthetic oil by heating coal in the presence of hydrogen gas, refer to the process as "clean coal" technology. It is clean, but only to the extent that the synthetic oil it produces burns cleaner than raw coal. Synthetic oil still produces carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse warming gas, during both production and combustion (though in some scenarios some of that pollution could be kept out of the atmosphere). And the coal that goes into the liquefaction process still has to be mined, which means tailing piles, acid runoff and other toxic ills.

And then there's the fact that nobody wants a "clean coal" plant in the backyard. Shifting to new forms of energy will require building new refineries, pipelines, transportation terminals and other infrastructure at a time when virtually every new project faces intense local opposition.

Energy analysts say coal liquefaction can produce synthetic oil at a cost of $32 a barrel, well below the $50 range where oil has been trading for the past year or so. But before they invest billions of dollars in coal liquefaction, investors want to be sure that oil prices will remain high.

Investors are similarly wary about tar sands and heavy oil deposits in Canada and Venezuela. Though they are too gooey to be pumped from the ground like conventional oil, engineers have developed ways of liquefying the deposits with injections of hot water and other means. Already, about 8 percent of Canada's oil production comes from tar sands.

Unfortunately, it costs energy to recover energy from tar sands. Most Canadian operations use natural gas to heat water for oil recovery; and like oil, natural gas has gotten dramatically more expensive in the past few years.

"The reality is, this thing is extremely complicated," Hirsch said. "My honest view is that anybody who tells you that they have a clear picture probably doesn't understand the problem."

______ _____ ____ ___ __ _

also, for some thought provoking commentary from an economist's point of view:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/GE26Dj02.html

I don't agree with a lot of it, but Liu makes some interesting points.

______ _____ ____ ___ __ _

I think the major solutions adopted for transportation and petrochemicals will involve coal-to-liquids and gas-to-liquids using the fischer tropsch process.

ethanol and biodiesel can also play a role.

then for applications which can use electricity: next-generation nuclear fission reactors, wind turbines, wave and tidal power, thin film photovoltaic, and solar thermal.

but i don't think any of these solutions can avert a severe shortage situation - they will just be stopgap responses.

coal and natural gas are both limited resources, and their depletion will be greatly accelerated if they are heavily used to substitute for liquid hydrocarbons. ethanol and biodiesel are NOTnet sources of energy - when the various inputs and efficiency factors are calculated, it takes approximately as much energy to create these fuels as they release when combusted. also there is not enough biomass or agricultural land to replace petroleum with ethanol or biodiesel.

renewable sources of electricity are wonderful, but cannot replace fluid hydrocarbon fuels in many of the most important applications for industrial civilization.

one last hope: www.blacklightpower.com ...definitely worth checking out, I was skeptical at first but there is definitely something to it.

zub · Sun May 29, 2005 7:21 pm

the blacklight site seems a bit fishy, with regards to the first law of thermdynamics.

i don't feel that miracles are necessary to evolve beyond the present state of relentless and aggressive stupidity.

we could cut our oil consumption in half overnite, if we had the will and/or the incentives...;without experiencing a return to hunter-gatherer lifestyles.

as it is today, we struggle our asses off to consume as much as possible.

check out "natural capatalism" by paul hawken and amory lovins.

we don't need to remain retarded just because our president is.

zub · Mon May 30, 2005 3:24 am

i should have added, in my scenario of optimism, that the president of the u.s. is in the oil business, as was the guy that he stole the election from (gore) as is the #1 terrorist dude (osama, etc)

rather than waiting for a well deserved rebuttal to my bodacius claim (50% reduction of oil consumption possible by tommorrow without significantly altering anything)
i add this commentary now, as if this site is about to dissapear at any moment; and/ or, i'm about to die/and /or get busted immediately, or sooner, if we had effective nazis in power:

i hold scarmani in the highest regard; knew him from the hive; not only is he a capable writer, he has a heart that is troubled, which is a sure sign of having a heart at all, given the present day circumstances..

the methodology of cutting energy consumption in half, by tommorrow, is similar to the methodology of chemists whom want their synthesis to yield 90% instead of 45%.... its a matter of honing in on wastefullness, 1%, in 50 seperate proceedures.

this is not how we are accustomed to think.
but it could bee.

i look forward to being challanged on what i suggest.
that would allow me an opportunity to illicit change without aggression.

btw, americans; consider the energy savings of having decided NOT to go to war in iraq....it was close; we could have nixed it....

zib out