What is your opinion of Peak Oil?

[Kylonicus]

Howdy, I have been off the forum for a gazillion years,

 

what do y'all think of Peak Oil?

 

Peak oil is essentially the idea that we will reach a point where half or over half our oil reserves will be depleted, and since the entire world runs off of oil, it will cause major problems.

 

This makes perfect sense, because we only have a limited supply of oil in the world, and it's used to service many functions, primarily as our main source of power.

 

What do y'all think of it?

[bascule]

There's been quite a few peak oil threads since you were gone, but unlike yours they were started by peak oil alarmists who were predicting horrible disaster scenarios like the entire socioeconomic grid collapsing becase it can't evolve fast enough to adapt.

 

And, well, there's my position... the grid basically has an immune system that works through a collective attention drawing process. When the problem of peak oil starts to hit home in the form of spiraling gas prices, people will take notice, demand a solution, and collectively we will bring it about. But for now, why worry? Is the really any reason to do anything about it now? Any preparation that if we don't perform immediately, will result in the inevitable collapse of the entire socioeconomic grid?

 

I don't think so at all. I think current market forces are holding back the uptake of alternatives to gasoline driven vehicles and that as the market oil market becomes unfavorable it will gradually shift away to the alternatives which will be ready to take oil's place when the market demands it.

[ecoli]

There's been quite a few peak oil threads since you were gone, but unlike yours they were started by peak oil alarmists who were predicting horrible disaster scenarios like the entire socioeconomic grid collapsing becase it can't evolve fast enough to adapt.

indeed...

 

And, well, there's my position... the grid basically has an immune system that works through a collective attention drawing process. When the problem of peak oil starts to hit home in the form of spiraling gas prices, people will take notice, demand a solution, and collectively we will bring it about. But for now, why worry? Is the really any reason to do anything about it now? Any preparation that if we don't perform immediately, will result in the inevitable collapse of the entire socioeconomic grid?

 

I don't think so at all. I think current market forces are holding back the uptake of alternatives to gasoline driven vehicles and that as the market oil market becomes unfavorable it will gradually shift away to the alternatives which will be ready to take oil's place when the market demands it.

 

I agree with you that this would probably happen. Except that in order for market forces to react, things will get worse (fuel shortages, sky-rocketing gas prices, etc.)

 

I believe that by heavily investing in alternative fuels today (actually we should have been doing this more since the early 90's) will help ease the transition once this "depression hits."

 

I've heard both sides of the argument, and I think both sides aren't listening to each other. Both sides are preaching extremes while, I think, that the middle of the road is actually true. I don't think we are currently doing enough to prepare for peak-oil. I think that the predictions of what's to come are exaggerated, but not so that we should ignore the potential problem and assume that market forces alone should deal with them... granted, I think that they can deal with them, but not without a rough ride.

[Kylonicus]

Thanks for y'all's input.

[joema]

what do y'all think of Peak Oil?

 

Various estimates place remaining conventional reserves at roughly 1 trillion to 1.7 trillion barrels. World consumption is about 30 billion barrels per year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves

 

At current consumption rates that would exhaust supplies in 30 to 50 years (assuming no peak, just straight consumption). Consumption increases at about 2-3% per year, so the remaining supply won't even last that long.

 

The peak theory is you don't have until oil runs out, but long before that production will decline, and the mis-match between demand and supply will grow ever more acute. Prices will skyrocket beyond anything we've ever experienced and never come back down.

 

It's likely some form of this will happen, but for three reasons it will probably be much less severe than some apocalyptic predictions:

 

(1) As prices go up, this impacts consumption. We already saw this during the 1973 and 1979 oil crises. No it's not pleasant, and yes it's an economic impact. But it's not an overnight thing; it will have a somewhat gradual onset. Things will adjust, consumption will moderate, cars will become more efficient based on economic incentive alone. Yes it's better to move proactively, but it ultimately will happen anyway.

 

(2) There are vast remaining nonconventional oil reserves -- tar sands and oil shale. Various estimates place these at 5-10 trillion barrels, far more than existing conventional oil. There are definitely issues with energy balance harvesting these (energy in vs energy out), and environmental issues.

 

The main reason nonconventional oil isn't used now is simple economics -- accessing them costs more than conventional oil. However whenever oil persistently stays over about $70/barrel, nonconventional oil becomes economically viable.

 

Actually the price of conventional oil today is high enough to make nonconventional sources viable. But during an oil price peak a few years ago, energy companies made huge investments in nonconventional sources, only to have oil prices crash, and left them with huge losses. Thus today they're not going to repeat that until they're absolutely positive oil will never drop below about $70 per barrel.

 

(3) Biofuels are theoretically scalable (economically and physically) to supplying all world transportation energy. This differs from solar/hydrogen or solar/wind where it's highly questionable they could economically or physically be scaled that large. However biofuels will not be vigorously pursued (at least in the US) until economic factors force that.

 

The good news is there's enough oil in nonconventional sources to last over 100 years at current consumption rates. The peak oil theory does not consider those, so it should really be revised.

 

More good news is nonconventional oil is largely located in the west, so that will permanently end the west's reliance on middle eastern oil with the attendant political, military and economic complications.

 

Other good news is biofuels (at least certain ones) can theoretically provide all needed transportation fuel in an economically viable manner, using existing distribution and vehicle technology.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodiesel

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

 

The bad news is the peak oil theory as stated (for conventional oil) is probably essentially correct, although the exact timing isn't that clear. There is uncertainty about how much is recoverable. There's further uncertainty about the achievable energy balance during extraction (energy in vs energy out). Also extracting nonconventional oil has major environmental problems. But so does burning trillions of gallons of gasoline and trillions of tons of coal PER YEAR, and we're doing that right now.

 

The other bad news is biofuels, nonventioan oil, etc. will likely not be vigorously pursued in a huge industrial manner until economic factors force this.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_sands

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale

[Icheb]

At current consumption rates that would exhaust supplies in 30 to 50 years (assuming no peak, just straight consumption).

Yeah, I've been hearing that very same estimate for as long as live now. Sounds strange, doesn't it?

 

A while ago I read an article on spiegel.de (online version of a very reputable german weekly) that we only used about 20 - 30% of all available oil until now. That together with the fact that current methods can't extract more than (I'm not that sure about this number) 50% of the oil in the ground convinces me of the fact that there is absolutely nothing to worry about.

If prices skyrocket it's more due to the fact that brokers let them skyrocket out of greed instead of due to an actual shortage like it was last year in August / September. Sure, the US had an actual shortage, but europe had no problems with oil supply, yet we paid a premium as well.

 

And those people in the oil industry don't want sky high oil prices either, because then funding for alternative energy sources starts to go up, which means they actually make less money.

 

I'm not going to lose any sleep over the hubbard's peak just yet.

[bascule]

joema, that has to be the best synopsis of the situation I've seen. Well done.

[DV8 2XL]

Props to joema, too

[Sisyphus]

Does anyone have any idea how much agriculture would have to be dedicated to producing biofuel for it to fully replace fossil fuels? Would we have enough to eat?

[DV8 2XL]

Estimates vary from thirty-percent of arable land at the low end to eighty-percent at the high end.

 

However as I reported in another thread:

 

In promoting biodiesel – as the European Union, the British and US governments and thousands of environmental campaigners do – you might imagine that you are creating a market for old chip fat, or rapeseed oil, or oil from algae grown in desert ponds. In reality you are creating a market for the most destructive crop on earth.

 

Last week, the chairman of Malaysia’s Federal Land Development Authority announced that he was about to build a new biodiesel plant(4). His was the ninth such decision in four months. Four new refineries are being built in Peninsula Malaysia, one in Sarawak and two in Rotterdam(5). Two foreign consortia – one German, one American – are setting up rival plants in Singapore(6). All of them will be making biodiesel from the same source: oil from palm trees.

 

“The demand for biodiesel,” the Malaysian Star reports, “will come from the European Community … This fresh demand … would, at the very least, take up most of Malaysia’s crude palm oil inventories”(7). Why? Because it’s cheaper than biodiesel made from any other crop.

 

In September, Friends of the Earth published a report about the impacts of palm oil production. “Between 1985 and 2000,” it found, “the development of oil-palm plantations was responsible for an estimated 87 per cent of deforestation in Malaysia”(8). In Sumatra and Borneo, some 4 million hectares of forest has been converted to palm farms. Now a further 6 million hectares is scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5m in Indonesia.

 

Almost all the remaining forest is at risk. Even the famous Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan is being ripped apart by oil planters. The orang-utan is likely to become extinct in the wild. Sumatran rhinos, tigers, gibbons, tapirs, proboscis monkeys and thousands of other species could go the same way. Thousands of indigenous people have been evicted from their lands, and some 500 Indonesians have been tortured when they tried to resist(9). The forest fires which every so often smother the region in smog are mostly started by the palm growers. The entire region is being turned into a gigantic vegetable oil field.

 

Before oil palms, which are small and scrubby, are planted, vast forest trees, containing a much greater store of carbon, must be felled and burnt. Having used up the drier lands, the plantations are now moving into the swamp forests, which grow on peat. When they’ve cut the trees, the planters drain the ground. As the peat dries it oxidises, releasing even more carbon dioxide than the trees. In terms of its impact on both the local and global environments, palm biodiesel is more destructive than crude oil from Nigeria. George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 6th December 2005

 

That is only one factor

[Sisyphus]

Well, that certainly highlights the problems with just letting the market take care of itself. Sure, there will be alternatives out of necessity, but who is to say the alternatives won't be even more shortsighted than fossil fuel consumption, and dig us into an even deeper hole? Even worse would be the switch to nonconventional oil sources, as it would destroy the immediate incentive to find renewable alternatives, and just let us become even more dependant on nonrenewables.

[bascule]

Does anyone have any idea how much agriculture would have to be dedicated to producing biofuel for it to fully replace fossil fuels? Would we have enough to eat?

 

I predict GMO crops can and will be used to solve both problems. We'll begin to breed and genetically engineer crops to increase starch content and thus maximize ethanol yields. At the same time we'll engineer food crops to increase yields as well. We can also engineer both to thrive in more inhospitable climates, increasing the amout of arable land.

[DV8 2XL]

But for what? To save the internal combustion engine? We can do better than that. I know that as a prime mover this is a reliable and mature technology but its time has come. Finding new ways to store electricity and switching electromotive prime movers is IMHO the route to take.

[joema]

Does anyone have any idea how much agriculture would have to be dedicated to producing biofuel for it to fully replace fossil fuels? Would we have enough to eat?

It varies widely based on biofuel yield per acre of the feedstock crop. The highest yield per acre is biodiesel from algae, which could be grown in hydroponic ponds in unused southwest US desert land.

 

Biodiesel required to provide 100% of US transporation energy: 141 billion gallons

Biodiesel from algae yield per acre:14,500 gallons per acre

Land area required: 15,000 square miles (38850 square km, or 9.6 million acres), roughly 1/8th of the Sonoran desert in southwest Arizona.

 

http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

 

Corn ethanol is considerably less efficient from a net energy balance and yield per acre standpoint.

 

Corn ethanol required to provide 100% of US transporation energy: 250 billion gallons (adjusting for lower energy content)

Corn ethanol yield per acre: 101 gallons per acre

Land area required: 3.8 million square miles (2.47 billion acres)

 

http://www.bioproducts-bioenergy.gov/pdfpresentations/Net%20Energy%20Balance%20of%20Corn%20Ethanol_Shapouri.ppt (PPT format)

 

Total US area including Alaska is just 3.5 million square miles, so it appears impossible to provide all US transporation energy from corn ethanol, simply because of insufficient fuel yield per acre.

 

Biodiesel from algae also has the advantages of better net energy balance, and could be located in non-arable land.

 

Biodiesel from soybeans or rapeseed has the same problem as corn ethanol -- low yield per acre.

 

I've seen various ethanol yields per bushel; I used 0.75 gallons per bushel, obtained from a USDA document. However even if it were 2 or 3 gallons per bushel, the required land area would still be much of the US.

[starbug1]

Would we have enough to eat?

 

Apart from our agriculture, don't forget our advancements in cloning meat.

 

 

http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,67175,00.html

[DV8 2XL]

Proposing the use of large-scale raceway ponds to cultivate microalgal on waste-water nutrients and then to anaerobically ferment the algal biomass to methane fuel is not new. However, major technical challenges have limited the practical application of this technology: the difficulties of maintaining selected algal species in large-scale production systems, the lower-than anticipated biomass productivity and methane yields, and the high costs of harvesting the algal biomass and of the overall process. I'm not sure from reading the first link that these issues have be solved for oil production from that feedstock as yet.

 

Again I don't think that the long term transportation fuel issue will be solved by staying in the Carnot-cycle box. We need to look at more radical solutions.

[bascule]

But for what? To save the internal combustion engine?

 

To keep from having to throw away all internal combusion engines on earth. We have an enormous infrastructure built around the internal combustion engine, and any source of energy which can leverage the existing infrastructure will have an advantage over something which seeks to replace it.

 

Think of the immense amount of energy which has gone into the production of every gas-driven machine on this planet. Think what an enormous waste it would be to simply throw all that away.

 

We can do better than that.

 

Yes, we can, but one step at a time. The point here is to find solutions that keep the grid from breaking down and human society from coming to a screeching halt. We can't retool our entire infrastructure overnight. It has to be a gradual, incremental process (the S-curve, as it were) in which the new paradigm works alongside the old one, slowly replacing it in a gradual transition.

 

I know that as a prime mover this is a reliable and mature technology but its time has come.

 

From the intuitive linear view of history I'd say it has another 20-30 years in it at least. From the exponential view I'd say by the time it'd really be practical to replace the internal combustion engine, we won't even need them. Nanomachines will have usurped all the roles that the ICE was intended for.

[joema]

...Again I don't think that the long term transportation fuel issue will be solved by staying in the Carnot-cycle box. We need to look at more radical solutions.

If you mean hydrogen/fuel cell vehicles, I don't see how that could work on a huge scale, because unlike petroleum hydrogen isn't an energy source -- it costs energy to make hydrogen. World transportation energy consumption is about 100 quadrillion BTUs (2.93E16 watt hours) per year. To provide that (or a large fraction) from most alternative sources is essentially impossible. Biodiesel from algae is at least mathematically capable of it. Corn ethanol or biodiesel from other sources is not, nor is solar/hydrogen or wind/hydrogen.

 

Many alternative sources and technologies work fine on a small experimental scale. But to have a meaningful impact they must be scalable to provide a significant percentage of US or world transporation energy need.

 

If you mean battery electric vehicles, the overall efficiency isn't any better than modern internal combustion engines. E.g, power plant generation efficiency 40%, transmission line efficiency 95%, charging efficiency 88%, vehicle efficiency 88%. This gives overall BEV energy efficiency of .4 * .95 * .88 = 33%

 

By contrast a modern diesel automotive ICE using common rail or piezoelectric injection has about 40% thermodynamic efficiency. Fuel production and processing is about 92% efficient, vehicle efficiency 88%, for an overall efficiency of about 32%, roughly the same as a BEV.

 

Another problem: even if BEVs use spare night generation capacity to recharge, it's not saving petroleum. The capacity is spare because the plants are throttled back at night. More nighttime demand to recharge BEVs necessitates burning more fossil fuels to service that.

 

There's also insufficient generation capacity to recharge a nation of BEVs. Total annual US gasoline energy consumption is 1.83E16 joules (5.63E15 watt hours). A 1 gigawatt power plant produces 8.76E12 watt hours per year. It would thus require about 642 new power plants to service that, or a combination of those plus using existing unused night capacity. In either case you'd be burning nearly as much fossil fuels in power plants as diesel cars would consume.

[DV8 2XL]

OK. BEVs, I can clearly remember a spokesperson for the battery industry stating in the early 70's that: 'no new chemistry is on the horizon, or likely to be discovered beyond what the state-of-the-art is now." (I paraphrase) Then came Li-ion cells, zinc air cells, and others. Now this doesn't apply directly to what you have said, but the lesson is clear.

 

Few electrical plants are run from petro-fuels and none need burn anything at all as there is a clean safe alternative in nuclear energy IF we can get our collective heads out of our butts and exploit some of the available designs that don't need enriched fuel and that produce a spent fuel stream that can be reprocessed by PYRO-A or PYRO-B and thus all but eliminate the flow of useless hot waste that current systems produce as well as being inherently proliferation resistant. Smaller, modular designs that could be type-approved, then centrally manufactured, shipped by rail to prepared sites and brought on line in a tenth the time it takes now. As it stands every time a new plant is undertaken in most of the world we have to re-invent the wheel by starting from scratch.

 

As for safety, consider this: aviation and its technical predecessor seafaring are not inherently safe, these are regimes that are terribly intolerant to error and sloppiness. They were both tamed by the application of strict procedure and disciplined execution backed up by inculcating a culture of responsibility. Notwithstanding the fact that engineering wasn't allowed to stand still and this too contributed to safer more reliable systems.

 

But what if...? goes the cry. Well what if? What if a hydro dam busts and floods a populated valley, what if a LNG ship blows up in harbour taking out half a city? All of the designs I'm referring to, fail down; that is the reactors shut themselves off if the drift out of norm. As for this algae scheme history is full of examples of cultures that have monocroped some plant and relied too much on it - guarantee me that some infection won't take this stuff down when we've got ten million acres of this stuff as the backbone of our transportation infrastructure - you can't.

[joema]

Few electrical plants are run from petro-fuels and none need burn anything at all as there is a clean safe alternative in nuclear energy

I meant most utility generation today is hydrocarbon fuels. Whether it's natural gas, coal or petroleum, it's still hydrocarbons. Of course from a supply standpoint there's plenty of coal for a long time.

 

Yes BEVs can be used much more widely, in fact the US national average commute distance is about 10 mi, so you don't even need new battery technologies for that. However if used in very large numbers they'd require new utility generation capacity.

 

But I doubt anybody wants 700 new coal (or nuclear) plants. In fact most people don't wany any new plants, they just want energy, which of course is impossible without new plants.

 

Yes new technology nuclear plants such as the Integral Fast Reactor can theoretically solve (1) energy supply problem (2) plutonium proliferation problem, (3) reactor safety problem, and (4) most of the radioactive waste problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor

 

However it seems unlikely they'll ever be built, and certainly not a huge numbers required to supplant hydrocarbon fuels or power a nation of BEVs.

 

My guess is we'll keep burning oil in internal combusion vehicles until oil permanently goes over $70-$80 per barrel. Then nonconventional oil sources (tar sands, oil shale) will be developed, and we'll just keep burning that. We (in the US) will probably pay $3-$5 per gallon, but some people pay that today. Environmental impact will be bad, but at least oil won't run out.

[DV8 2XL]

Well they may not be built in the U.S. or any other State that persists on maintaining the 'nuclear (weapons) option' because the current technology is just a fig-leaf to cover those programs. Then again it's likely that what you said in your last paragraph is probably the grim truth, but since we were speculating anyway...

[bascule]

Well, the solution is clear... collect solar energy on the moon and beam it back to earth with microwaves!

[Sayonara]

Don't forget that if forced to by a lack of conventional energy sources, the pertinent designers will find ways to make lighter and more energy efficient vehicles, to bring that 100 quadrillion BTU global transport energy cost down a bit.

 

Great posts btw joema.

[YT2095]

ya know, there`s alot to be said for the old Steam Engine as a prime mover, it doesn`t really care what fuel of how clean it is to work, you could scoop a bucket of this sand or shale oil up, drop a rag into it and light it and it would work Just as good as if you fed it the purest aviation fuel!

 

Fuel itself isn`t the problem, it`s the Specifics that our modern engines require that IS, next to steam, Deisel is probably the least "Picky" of the liquid fuel users.

 

and before anyone laughs at the idea of steam engines, oil, coal, gas and Nuclear power stations ALL use a variation of the steam engine!

[YT2095]

lol, actualy no, I`ve been married now for nearly 8 years, that was taken at my Daughters Christening in August, and rest assured that "Look" was only for a day, I soon went back to my everyday "Mad Max" Style later on

 

what got me thinking about steam was a mixture of things, I`ve modified an old kerosene heater to burn with a Blue flame now instead of the old yellow flame type by forcing air through a series of well placed 1/16`th holes and making a Flue type of design, I now get Much more heat for the same fuel used simply by burning Air!

secondly I`ve just bought a 1.2kw generator, OK, that Does use petrol, but if you look at the actual generator itself and ignore the engine part, it wouldn`t be too difficult at all to convert this to steam, now it wouldn`t be as portable BUT it would work quite nicely and be roughly twice the size, 2.4 horse power is perfectly acheivable with a modest sized engine, and it would take almost any fuel you could give it.

now made as a permanent fixture in a garden or whatever, with solar array(s) to preheat the water, it`s not only do-able but friendly on the old back pocket!

I also get a good 250w from my parafin heater now and can boil a litre of water in about 20 mins from 2c.

 

so the arg about having to refine all this sand and shale or even crude oil as fuel is practicaly Bypassed entirely, crude oil burns quite well without any treatment on its own, it only needs a wick and air