Peak Oil- what it is and how it will impact your life

Re: Peak Oil; what it is and how it will impact your life

I'm not saying it isn't going to happen, I just think the powers to be are capitalizing on it before it rears its ugly head.

 

Re: Peak Oil; what it is and how it will impact your life

A good article. The positive side of peak oil. It is a book reiew.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aabdwFGiKH1E

　
If You Hated Gasoline at $4 a Gallon, Imagine It at $20
　
Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- As U.S. gasoline prices spurted last year to more than $4 a gallon, Americans shuddered.
Presidential candidates called for a gas-tax "holiday." Sales of SUVs plunged. Commuters rediscovered trains, buses and bikes. Americans drove 100 billion fewer miles in the 12 months through October 2008 than they did a year before.

That was just a glimpse of things to come, says Christopher Steiner in "$20 Per Gallon," a surprisingly upbeat look at how rising gasoline prices "will change our lives for the better."

From the outset, Steiner dismisses the tiresome debate about whether oil production will really peak, plateau and decline. Even Boone Pickens, who made a fortune on oil and gas, says we must learn to live with peak oil.

With supplies of cheap, easy-to-extract oil dwindling and demand expected to rise in lockstep with the planet’s growing middle class, prices in the long haul can only go up, as economist Jeff Rubin argues in his book, "Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller."

"$20 Per Gallon" takes peak oil as a given. "This book is the next step in the conversation," Steiner says.
And a fun discussion it is, as the author lays out how everyday life might look as gasoline prices climb ever higher. In place of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, Steiner gives us Chapter $6 and Chapter $8, leading up by $2 increments to a $20 Epilogue. Gimmicks don’t usually appeal to me; this one works.

We often overlook the fact, Steiner says, that the price of oil affects much more than just the cost of filling up your Audi Q7.
"It’s the bricks in your walls, the plastic in your refrigerator, the asphalt on your roads, the shingles on your roof, the synthetic rubber in your ball," he writes with characteristic bounce.

Food to Bridges
Since the entire economy runs on oil, Steiner weaves together themes ranging from the future of the automobile to the sustainability of our food network.
He did his homework. A civil engineer and staff writer at Forbes magazine, he interviewed people -- from economists to airline pilots -- who have calculated how oil at various prices will change where we live, how we travel and what we eat.

He rides shotgun in UPS package trucks that run on batteries or energy stored in pressurized tanks of hydraulic fluid. He watches workers swarm over the scaffolding surrounding a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the first commercial plane with a fuselage and wings made mainly of plastic composites to reduce weight and conserve fuel. He travels to a factory on the Iowa prairie where corn will be turned into biodegradable plastic.

Battery Swap
Elsewhere, Steiner explains how a former SAP AG executive founded Better Place, a company that wants to be "the Exxon Mobil of the electric car world." Drivers would buy the cars without batteries and pay Better Place a monthly fee to supply the juice. When you’re running low, just pull into a Better Place depot that will swap in a fully charged battery.

So what will happen as gasoline prices tick ever higher? Here’s a smattering of Steiner’s predictions:

At $6 a gallon, Americans will embrace diesel engines.

At $8, many airlines will shut down, leaving Southwest Airlines Co. and JetBlue Airways Corp. as the dominant domestic carriers.

At $10, car ownership rates will plummet.

At $12, suburbs will start becoming ghost towns.

At $14, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will die; its business model is built on cheap oil.

At $18, Americans might get what Europeans have enjoyed for years: high-speed trains.

And as the price creeps up to $20 a gallon, the U.S. may finally frame a comprehensive energy plan.

Purer Air
Far from hurling us into a new Dark Age, high oil prices will usher in a cleaner, safer future, Steiner argues. Like Rubin, he imagines lost jobs returning to U.S. shores and pictures us breathing purer air and eating healthier, locally grown food. Though he gets a bit too utopian and speculative for my taste, he does offer evidence that technology already exists to effect such changes.

Steiner is good at explaining how things work and seeding the text with interesting facts: Did you know that garbage trucks get an average of 2.8 miles per gallon? And he’s realistic about how hard it will be to end our love affair with cars and planes.

"People will cling to their steering wheels and their airline seats until their fingers are pried off by sheer financial behest," he writes.

"$20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better" is from Grand Central in the U.S. (275 pages, $24.99).

 

Re: Peak Oil; what it is and how it will impact your life

When oil gets back to $150 a barrel and gas to $5 a gallon you will know who to blame. And it won't be those all powerful master manipulators at the oil companies.







Wyoming Range won't be used for oil and natural gas drilling, BLM says
The federal Bureau of Land Management has banned oil and natural gas drilling in the Wyoming Range, state BLM Director Don Simpson announced. Energy firms bought 23 leases on 24,000 acres of the land, but the agency delayed issuing the leases when conservationists voiced opposition. Congress approved a bill this year that blocks new oil and gas leases on 1.2 million acres of the range, but it did not nullify current leases. Newsday (Long Island, N.Y.)/The Associated Press (8/24)


API study: Climate bill could significantly reduce U.S. output by 2030
The climate-change bill, which would put a price on carbon emissions, could lead to a 17% decline in U.S. fuel production by 2030, according to a study commissioned by API. Average output could fall to 12 million barrels a day from the current level of about 14.5 million barrels per day, and the country could turn to foreign sources for 19.4% of refined oil to compensate for the shortfall. Without the restrictions of the measure, domestic production would climb to an average of 16.4 million barrels a day by 2030, the study found. The Wall Street Journal (8/24)

 

Re: Peak Oil; what it is and how it will impact your life

Oil Alternatives


<CENTER><TABLE dir=ltr border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=3 width=172><TBODY><TR><TD bgColor=#ffffff vAlign=center>　</TD></TR><TR><TD bgColor=#000080 vAlign=center>August 26, 2009

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If folks thought this recession has been a doozy, they may want to consider the one that could hit in a decade as the demand for oil permanently exceeds production.

The International Energy Agency says in a report that the 800 biggest fields around the world that comprise three-quarters of all reserves have already hit peak. Moreover, the pace of the decline in production is about twice that of what it was in 2007. That means that the so-called peak oil theory whereby global oil demand meets declining production is 10 years away, all according to the agency's chief economist Fatih Birol.

In an interview with the British newspaper The Independent, he says that the production at existing sites is down 6.7 percent a year. That's compared to 3.7 percent in 2007. If the bleeding were to stop, he says that the world would need the equivalent of four more Saudi Arabias. He adds that a reasonable mind could conclude that oil will surpass $200 barrel by 2020 and consumers will pay $5 a gallon.

"One day we will run out of oil, it is not today or tomorrow, but one day we will run out of oil and we have to leave oil before oil leaves us, and we have to prepare ourselves for that day," Dr. Birol was quoted as saying. "The earlier we start, the better, because all of our economic and social system is based on oil, so to change from that will take a lot of time and a lot of money and we should take this issue very seriously."

Critics counter that peak oil is decades away. In the intervening years, technologies will improve while oil-based substitutes will be developed. Canada's tar sands, for example, are plentiful and thought by some to be a viable alternative to Middle Eastern oil.

But environmentalists are warning that the reliance on oil sands is unsound. The extraction of those resources consumes a lot of water and energy and only compounds the issue of global warming. In fact, the International Energy Agency's 2008 World Energy Outlook says that the world is trending toward higher temperatures and as such advocates green energy solutions and conservation -- not more oil production.

While the Obama administration does not have an official position on the peak oil theory, it is nonetheless inclined to propose the positions offered by the energy agency. Toward that end, it is pushing higher fuel efficiency standards and the development of green energy alternatives, chiefly those that would be geared toward the transport sector.

"It will be especially important because the global economy will still be very fragile, very vulnerable," Birol told The Independent. "Many people think there will be a recovery in a few years' time but it will be a slow recovery and a fragile recovery and we will have the risk that the recovery will be strangled with higher oil prices."

Global Lifeblood
Oil is clearly the lifeblood of international commerce. As supplies dwindle and as demand rises, prices go up. Countries will therefore be competing for a shorter supply of oil. For the United States that's a big problem: It has 2 percent of the world's reserves, consumes 25 percent of its oil and imports two-thirds of the oil it uses.

The U.S. Department of Energy predicts the peak will occur in 2037. But in a report on the subject, it says that nearly all of the largest oil fields have been discovered and that production is past its prime in some areas. As such, the cost to find new discoveries is getting expensive. But the "rollover" at the peak to lower levels of production is likely to be gradual and not a sharp point capable of being broadcast at the time.

Robert Esser, director of global oil and gas resources for Boston-based Cambridge Energy Research Associates, disagrees with the peak oil theorists. He says that the world is not running out of oil anytime soon, if ever. His group envisions an "undulating plateau" in two to four decades. The current model to determine "peak oil" is flawed, he adds, and fails to incorporate technological, economic and regulatory evolutions.

He especially disputes the thinking that says global production will top off in the coming years, noting that his firm's analysis shows a substantial build-up of liquid capacity in the same time frame. An increasing share of oil supplies will come from non-traditional sources that include oil sands and from ultra-deep water. Indeed, he projects that world oil production capacity has the potential to rise from 84 million barrels per day now to as much as 108 million barrels by 2015.

"Peak Oil theory is garbage as far as we're concerned," says Esser, in an interview with Business Week online.
Times and technologies will change. But the fact remains that the unmitigated demand for oil can't continue forever and particularly with declining current oil supplies. That's why a host of reputable sources say that the peak oil theory is real, although their estimates vary as to when it will happen. Some say that it is too late. The International Energy Agency says it will occur in 10 years. Others say it will take decades.

The answer therefore is not to ignore the problem; rather, it is to confront it head on by forming a collaborative effort between the public and private sectors and allocating the financial resources to expand the portfolio of green fuel options. It will be a complex and expensive solution. But that course will ultimately seem penny wise when compared to the consequences from an oil-starved world.

 

Re: Peak Oil; what it is and how it will impact your life

Interesting

 

Re: Peak Oil; what it is and how it will impact your life

We are indeed the SA of coal. Like the Saudis have good and plenty oil, we have good and plenty coal, higher grade than is found around the rest of the world. We are not the only ones fouling our nest with coal production and use. I'd guess that on a ton for ton basis, we are less messy than, say, India. We just use a hell of a lot of it.

And yes, the Nazis had a perfectly good, tho' inefficient way to make motor fuels of coal. That was developed after the southern oil fields were taken out of the play by the Allies toward the mid to end of the war when the Nazis were sorta pulling back to protect the "homeland" as a part of their end game. (The Soviets were rolling him up like a snot ball.) Hitler refused to acknowledge he was losing land and directed his generals to waste manpower to save the fuel sources. They didn't, had not enough manpower to do it. (IIRC my history, the oil fields were an early target of Hitler's, and he did take them, then lost them later on.)

I'd make a small wager that there is none of that coal to liquid fuel hardware remaining, or even that we hauled it out like we did with the jet and rocket science related stuff. We knew then that there were ways to make motor fuels from coal, but petroleum was readily available and appeared endless at that time. We have had the technology for some while, but it is also pretty inefficient and "dirty" in the sense of messing things up with waste product.

I'd also wager that the politicians don't give a rat's sphincter about it these days. Coal is a dirty word. What interests me is developing a method of generating a clean coal to gas process to supplement the natural gas that we have in abundance to go with the coal. This is totally ignored at policy level these days, much to my (and Minuteman's) distress.

 

Re: Peak Oil; what it is and how it will impact your life

Guess new depths are going to pay out???
I thought it was all drying up?
BP taps vast pool of crude in deepest oil well

<cite> AP – <abbr title="2009-09-02T18:19:53-0700" class="recenttimedate">8 mins ago</abbr> </cite>
<!-- end .hd --> <cite>AP</cite>
NEW YORK - Nearly seven miles below the Gulf of Mexico, oil company BP has tapped into a vast pool of crude after digging the deepest oil well in the world. The Tiber Prospect is expected to rank among the largest petroleum discoveries in the United States, potentially producing half as much crude in a day as Alaska's famous North Slope oil field.

 

Re: Peak Oil; what it is and how it will impact your life

It's a good play and will help to spur activity in the Gulf but you have to put it into perspective.


The company's chief of exploration on Wednesday estimated that the Tiber deposit holds between 4 billion and 6 billion barrels of oil equivalent, which includes natural gas. That would be enough to satisfy U.S. demand for crude for nearly one year. But BP does not yet know how much it can extract.


It's basically a dime sized drop in a bucket with a half dollar sized hole in it.

And these ultra deep wells are also ultra expensive to drill. If oil gets back up to $150 a barrel these types of wells would become profitable to drill.

Peak oil is not about running out of oil. It's about running out of cheap oil.

 

Re: Peak Oil; what it is and how it will impact your life

why didn't you say so..... lol that I can get behind...lol

 

Re: Peak Oil; what it is and how it will impact your life

I keep telling folks to take these reserve figures with a grain of salt. They are notoriously overinflated for a lot of reasons.


Oil is running out faster than IEA data show, official says
An official of the International Energy Agency said the world is much closer to running out of oil than the agency's statistics had shown. Under pressure from the U.S., the IEA distorted statistics to show that more oil would be available, the unidentified whistle-blower said. "The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120 million barrels a day by 2030, although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116 million and then 105 million last year," the source said. "The 120 million figure always was nonsense, but even today's number is much higher than can be justified, and the IEA knows this." The revelations come just one day before the agency issues its World Economic Outlook. The Guardian (London) (11/9)

 

Re: Peak Oil; what it is and how it will impact your life

More about the above article.


Have government agencies been attempting to hide Peak Oil for fear of setting off a financial panic?

　

Posted by Matt Savinar, November 15th, 2009​

In November 2009, the UK Guardian reported that two insiders at the International Energy Agency (the agency tasked with figuring out how much oil is left in the ground) informed the paper that the agency has intentionally been covering up this crisis for fear of setting off a panic (emphasis added):
The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the International Energy Agency who claims [the agency] has been deliberately underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying.
The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.
A bit later in the article:
"Many inside the organisation believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90m to 95m barrels a day would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further.
A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organisation was that it was "imperative not to anger the Americans" but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. "We have [already] entered the ‘peak oil’ zone. I think that the situation is really bad," he added. Source
A few days later, the Guardian published a follow up to the above article:
This all seemed pretty gigantic news to me but . . . did it cause headlines around the world? No, no, no.
The fear is that panicky markets can cause enormous damage – panic-buying that prompts fights over resources, which in turn could lead to power cuts in some places and other such mayhem. But so far in facing this huge challenge, our political/economic system seems unable to cope with reality. We are forced to carry on living in an illusion that we have so much time to adapt to post-oil that we don't even need to be thinking much about what a world without plentiful oil would look like. Reality has become too dangerous.Source
In his column for the Guardian, author George Monbiot wrote as follows:
Last week two whistleblowers from the International Energy Agency alleged that it has deliberately upgraded its estimate of the world's oil supplies in order not to frighten the markets. Three days later, a paper published by researchers at Uppsala University in Sweden showed that the IEA's forecasts must be wrong, because it assumes a rate of extraction that appears to be impossible. The agency's assessment of the state of global oil supplies is beginning to look as reliable as Alan Greenspan's blandishments about the health of the financial markets.
If the whistleblowers are right, we should be stockpiling ammunition. If we are taken by surprise, if we have failed to replace oil before the supply peaks then crashes, the global economy is stuffed. Source
Robert L. Hirsch was the lead author of a seminal report on Peak Oil written for the US Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (DOE, NETL) and released in early 2005. In a 2009 interview with EV World, he explained the degree to which he and other were pressured by people high up in the agency to no longer talk about or work on Peak Oil:
Hirsch: When the people at the DOE saw the final report, it shocked them, even though they could see what was coming. . . Management really didn't know what to do with it because it was so shocking and the implications were so significant. Finally, the director decided that she would sign off on it because she was retiring and couldn't be hurt, or so I was told.
Question: Under pressure from whom?
Hirsch: From people in the hierarchy of the DOE. This was true in both Republican and Democrat administrations. There is, I think, ample evidence, and some people in DOE have gone so far as to say it specifically, that people in the hierarchy of DOE, under both administrations, understood that there was a problem and suppressed work in the area. Under President Bush, we were not only able to do the first study but also a follow-on study that looked at mitigation. After that, visibility apparently got so high that NETL was told to stop any further work on peak oil. Source

 

Re: Peak Oil; what it is and how it will impact your life

Staving off peak oil or slowing its arrival if possible is a concern for all of us. Costs to do so are going up, obviously, and here are some reasons why.

http://online.wsj.com/video/search-...hip/15A154D1-53A6-468D-A992-C2B5A70E8B8C.html

 

Re: Peak Oil; what it is and how it will impact your life

Recent thinking. Points to peak oil being delayed as demand for energy drops and shifts to other resources, and recovery increases with advanced techniques.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34770285/ns/business-oil_and_energy/