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

If they were merely supid, the law of averages would apply and they'd make half their "mistakes" in our favor.

 

Not merely stupid, but greedy and stupid.
In general, I agree with you FPG. We can't look at the machinations of those in power as being merely incidental to problems such as Peak Oil / economic meltdown, etc.

This is getting OT, but I had to post this as an example of greed and stupidity all rolled into one:

Did a Clever SEC Bait Goldman Sachs Into Compounding Its Legal Problems? -- Seeking Alpha

 

Not sure if anyone mentioned this, but a great documentary on peak oil.

Amazon.com: A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash: Abdul Samad Al-Awadi, Fadhil J. Al-Chalabi, Roscoe Bartlett, Robert Bottome: Video On Demand

 

Peak wood

Good article on peak resources:

Peak Wood: Nature Does Impose Limits | Miller-McCune Online

 

It's been a while since I posted in this thread, but I want to make a point that pretty clearly proves the whole peak oil "theory" beyond dispute:

(Remember, peak oil denotes the midpoint in production. By the time we reach peak, we've picked all the "low hanging fruit"...)

The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico pretty much proves we're at or perhaps a bit beyond peak - after all, we wouldn't drilling in 5000 feet of water if there was cheaper, easier and less risky oil to be had.

Actions always speak louder than words!

 

They are drilling in 5000 feet of water because the EPA forbids them from drilling in much more convenient places like dry land or shallow water where it would be 1000 times easier to contain an expulsion like the one in the gulf. Kind of ironic isn't it?

 

Any opinions on the Abiotic oil theory?

 

There is some credible evidence for abiotic oil, but from what I've read it replenishes VERY slowly - FAR too slow to be relevant to current liquid fuel demand.

 

That's what I was thinking. Doesn't really make a difference in our current scenario. So what if we could drill down 45000 feet to get to the crudest crude? We just saw what happens when we try!
And it won't impact supply very much.

 

No doubt that whatever costs are related to the spill and additional regulations that are imposed on ALL oil companies will be passed on to us - the consumer.

That will certainly help the economy. They're going to make their money one way or another.

Rourke

 

by definition, a business MUST pass on all its costs in order to survive. I have no problem with that. What frosts me is when government thugs step in and shake companies down for money, as in the $20 billion stolen from BP. It's obvious that BP is on the line for the costs. They said so. This $20B fund is just another theft by government - a slush fund which I expect will be used to pad the pockets of cronies more than to help people along the gulf coast.

In normal times, BP could have told the government to pound sand and relied on the rule of law. No more...

 

"<cite>AP – <abbr title="2010-06-17T14:54:54-0700" class="timedate">Thu Jun 17, 5:54 pm ET</abbr> </cite>
<cite></cite>
NEW YORK - BP holds enough oil in its reserves to single-handedly supply the United States for two years. It has little debt for a company of its size and makes more money than Apple and Google combined."

That's a very revealing quote. If a company the size or BP only has enough reserves to run the US for two years, that means they could supply the world for just 7 months before exhausting ALL reserves.

Gives you an idea how serious the situation really is...

​

 

We think we have problems looks like the Chi-coms have one of their own.

Large China Oil Spill Threatens Sea Life, Water

 

Oil will NEVER run out...And that's a fact! Russians proved it some 10 years ago. Oil is not coming from dinosaurs and other liquefied lifeforms, but is constantly created in the Earth's mantle...

 

Our aquifers replenish too, you know. But only an idiot would argue all is well when we're sucking the water out so much faster than the replenishment rate that water levels are dropping precipitously in most of the world's major aquifers.

You're talking about abiotic oil. And yes, it's real. BUT, as I said a few posts ago: "There is some credible evidence for abiotic oil, but from what I've read it replenishes VERY slowly - FAR too slow to be relevant to current liquid fuel demand." And that's the rub. Beyond oil fields and water aquifers, there are all sorts of natural processes that happen too slowly to matter much when you have seven billion humans who all want a hot shower in the morning, a car to drive to their nice city job and a choice of supermarkets and restaurants to shop in.

This conversation, and our predicament, have NOTHING to do with running OUT of oil. We don't need to run OUT to be in real trouble.

Oil production is collapsing in many of the giant fields around the world, and the new production coming online is not nearly enough to offset the decline in existing fields. There are several reasons for this, but the two biggies are that the new fields are significantly smaller, and most of the new fields have a much lower flow rate than the old collapsing giants.

This is a reflection of basic human nature at work - we always pick the low-hanging fruit first! The current lousy economy has reduced demand and thus masked this problem of declining production, but it's real, and we're trapped: If the world economy recovers significantly, demand will soon outstrip production (again) and the price will skyrocket (again) which will ruin the economy (again). And again and again and again, in what I hope will be a gradual return (rather than a fast crash) to a pre-oil era lifestyle for everyone left breathing here on earth.

I'm guessing you live in America. You should know that our oil production peaked in the early 70's and has declined ever since, and if you didn't know that you do now. We are so dependent on imported oil that you could park every private vehicle in the country and we'd still need to import some. (And, on the off chance you like to eat, that oil we'd still need to import is the oil that makes modern agribusiness possible.)

There is a lot of oil in the ground that we'll never extract. The reason it'll stay in the ground has nothing to do with money - it has to do with the energy required to extract it. This is called ER/EI - energy returned over energy invested. When the energy required to extract equals or surpasses what you get from the process, there's no point in it. In the real world, you need an ER/EI of 2:1 or better or you won't even have enough profit to pay your workers.

I live in Colorado, and have watched this firsthand for better than three decades. There are billions, perhaps even a few trillion barrels of shale oil deposits on the Western Slope. Technically, it's keragen, which is a precursor to crude oil that needs to be cooked to be usable. For over 30 years I've watched repeated efforts to produce oil from those deposits, all of which have failed. The resource is down there, in huge quantities, but ER/EI rules. Technology is unlikely to change the laws of thermodynamics, so don't count on EVER seeing large scale production from these deposits. (In a side note, the methods tried thus far have all been quite water-intensive. Even if you solve the ER/EI problem, which is highly unlikely, there just isn't sufficient water available to scale up.)

If you understand business at all, you can then analyze this from the perspective of an investor. You'll quickly see that the oil companies all acknowledge peak and decline in their actions. No one is building new refineries, and they would be if there were any expectation of increased production. Also, oil companies have spent far more on mergers and acquisitions than on exploration lately. That's telling us that the cheapest way to acquire reserves these days is to buy existing ones rather than go looking for new fields.

I'm not looking for an argument here - I just want to inform everyone about a serious near-term challenge for mankind. And, technically, you're right. We'll never run out of oil. But, you'll still get to watch people fight wars over it and starve to death from the lack of it as production continues to decline. (If you don't think oil has something to do with our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, you're delusional. You're already watching one of those wars!)

FYI, current world demand is about 85 million barrels PER DAY. A shortfall of just 5% would throw the world economy into a deep(er) depression, and a shortfall of 10% would be more than enough to collapse the Western economies.

You might start at the beginning of this thread and read the whole thing. You'll learn a lot, if you want to.

 

What? Was I too gentle or something?