Peak Oil Faithful Dealt Another Blow

[ParanoiA]

I don't really care about peak oil. I know I probably should, but I'm ready for it all to come crashing down. I think it's necessary before we truly harness alternative fuels. Necessity is the mother of invention, and I wonder if that goes for change as well.

 

America is way to capitalist, hence way to biased to money, to admit peak oil whether or not it is a reality in the near future. We won't take alternative fuels seriously until it bites us on the ass. Mainly because big oil is going to hold on to the oil illusion as long as possible - at the expense of anybody and everybody - no doubt about that.

[bascule]

Peak Oil Man, I grow weary of responding to you.

 

To start with, can you knock off the composition fallacies?

 

But how do they know this? Numbers that OPEC supply them, not by any independent verification. The optimists (Guy Caruso) count on a DOUBLING of Saudi Capacity by 2020.

 

Citing of 3rd party sources:

 

Without any press conferences, grand announcements, or hyperbolic advertising campaigns, the Exxon Mobil Corporation, one of the world's largest publicly owned petroleum companies, has quietly joined the ranks of those who are predicting an impending plateau in non-OPEC oil production. Their report, The Outlook for Energy: A 2030 View, forecasts a peak in just five years.

 

What you're looking for is here:

 

http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/Citizenship/Imports/EnergyOutlook05/index_full.html

 

And finally, the continuing barage of FUD. You're presenting far more editorial than actual information.

 

Fear:

Neither the USGS, CERA, EIA or IEA are allowed to view OPEC data. There is no oil cop! There is no authoritative branch of any of the organisations above that are allowed to send in geologists to study Saudia Arabia... at least to the ABC's premier science show Catalyst and permier "a current affairs program", 4 Corners.

 

The entire world (other than OPEC) is about to peak according to Exxon Mobile (a "late peak" optimist.)

 

Uncertainty:

The entire world outside of OPEC has no idea what is REALLY going on in OPEC...

 

How do “we” (the west, the IEA, EIA, USGS, CERA, any of the big oil agencies) know what OPEC is doing, and in particular, Saudi Arabia?

 

How do any of our energy agencies know what is happening in Saudi Arabia?

 

How many oil producing countries are there?

How many have already, historically, verifiably peaked?

And what is the so called "Carter Doctrine", and what could it lead to?

 

Doubt:

 

I'm skeptical that they can bail them out, especially when their former head of exploration tells the New York Times that there's only another 5mbd increase possible. Yet you "believe" them — even when their current head says they can meet our needs for another 50 years!!!!!!! (Can someone please tell me what a 2% growth annually accumulating on 84 mbd is after 50 years? That's what Saudi Arabia says they can meet! See 4 Corners.)

 

Basically what they are asking us to do is to trust them. And frankly on something that’s the lifeblood of our civilization and the way we live, to trust somebody who won’t allow any audits is extremely risky. I personally don’t believe the numbers that are out there.

 

Pull out the relevant facts you wish to present, and stop relying on uncertainty to make your point. The approach of juxtaposing fact with an open ended yet skewed question (or questions) is one used by conspiracy theorists to justify their position. This approach shields you from actually having to justify those statements, because they're framed in the form of questions.

 

This is a classical case of the shifting the burden of proof fallacy. You clearly believe OPEC is misrepresenting their numbers. Fine. Stop shifting the burden of proof onto me and asking me to show how they aren't. You're the one making the claim. You have to justify it.

 

Furthermore, I say again: you are wrong that oil production in non-OPEC countries has peaked. Oil shale deposits in Colorado and neighboring areas of Utah and Wyoming are estimated to contain 800 billion recoverable barrels, three times larger than Saudi Arabia's proven reserves of conventional crude, and the equivalent of 40 years of U.S. oil consumption.

 

Several companies are working on methods to extract oil from oil shale, particularly Shell with their in situ conversion process, which they claim has a 3.5:1 positive energy balance. You can read about it here:

 

http://www.rand.org/news/press.05/08.31.html

[bascule]

Okay Peak Oil man, I already told you about this, but let's go through the story again.

 

I used to live in Grand Junction, Colorado. During the '80s Exxon started the Colony Oil Project, in which they planned to convert oil shale using the exact method you outlined above. During that time there was an enormous boom in Grand Junction, with the prospect of oil dollars being funneled through a nearby project and Grand Junction being the place where all of those oil dollars would be spent by all of the workers needed for an elaborate operation where shale is mined, pulverized, and the oil extracted. An oil refinery was constructed to process the anticipated extract, and housing projects went up everywhere to house the influx of workers. Exxon began donating money to the local schools, and everyone was giddy over the entire prospect.

 

Eventually, Exxon did a cost-benefit analysis, and determined that the project was not going to be profitable. They pulled out. The local economy collapsed, and all those new houses remained empty. The oil refinery shut down. Things looked grim.

 

The Shell showed up a few years ago. What they offered was something very, very different from what Exxon had in mind. Shell's plan, in situ conversion, tapped the hundreds of natural gas wells in the same area to cook the oil directly out of the shale. It was a radically different approach which required substantially fewer workers, bringing down costs while also offering an extremely positive energy input:energy output ratio (3.5:1)

 

Only time will tell if in situ conversion will work. Right now they're testing the process to determine if their projections are accurate. They've been cooking the oil shale for a little over a year now, and anticipate the oil will begin to flow in the next few years. Will it work? Only time will tell.

 

Still, your dire predictions don't account for any of this. What if in situ conversion is successful and Shell is able to tap an estimated 800 billion barrels of oil that sit right here in North America?

 

Things like this are why static analysis doesn't work. You assume that newly discovered oil will simply continue to decrease while demand only continues to increase.

 

As oil grows increasily expensive the market will seek alternatives, and the growth in oil demand you see now will begin to peter out. This is the "s-curve", an economic pattern you see in virtually every market where previous patterns of growth eventually taper off as intrinsic limits are reached.

 

So, really, that's the crux of my argument. There are sources of oil (undiscovered deep sea oil fields, oil shale) which aren't being counted in your present estimates, which will become increasingly cheaper to discover and tap as technology improves. As the cost of oil increases, demand will taper off in the s-curve pattern.

 

So, again, there's the same answer I've given you over and over: the problem will be solved by a combination of technology which allows us to tap sources of oil which don't even figure into your projections, and market forces which gradually moves us towards alternatives as the cost rises with a shifting supply/demand curve. You're attempting to forecast based on present market trends which, of course, are based on a continually increasing oil supply, with the only basis of your arguments being a trend of decreasing oil discoveries. My argument is that technology will reverse this trend, to where the pattern we see is one of fluctuation and not the smooth decrease that static analysis predicts.

[bascule]

The shale oil simply will not come online as we need it to keep the world prices down, the Hirsch report looked specifically at alternative fossil fuels and found they would take 20 years to scale up.

 

Did it predict them all? What was their rationale? Their methodology? Do you believe they overlooked anything? A lot of things? Is oil even going to peak in the next 20 years? Clearly you think so... but that's because you think newly discovered and undiscovered supplies of liquid oil won't be usable in time. Deep sea oil fields are hard to get at, but do you really think we've discovered them all (after all, that was the point of this thread), and why do you pretend they simply don't exist?

 

Even the Australian Senate Committee concluded that there was no "silver bullet" at the time of writing.

 

Duh. The solutions to large problems are always multifaceted conglomerates of microsolutions which add up to a global supply?

 

How about converting coal into diesel? Biofuels? Converting natural gas into petroleum? And, of course, oil shale. None of these are "silver bullets", but what about ALL of these solutions, and ones I haven't listed because I don't know about them, and ones we haven't even thought of yet COMBINED? Will they equal a solution? You say no, I say yes.

 

The oil sands and oil shales will come online for the prosperity of their local communities, but I'm afraid that according to the Hirsch report, it's all far too little, far too late.

 

Well you heard it here first folks: they've unequivocably predicted the future and there is no solution whatsoever. Oh wait, appeal to authority...

 

Whine whine whine...

 

Sorry Peak Oil Man... I can't share your pessamistic outlook on the situation. As more money becomes available to solve the problem, the solutions will be more creative, and will includes ones that haven't yet been predicted by any of the projections you cite in your gloom and doom analysis.

 

Technology and market forces will solve the problem. You don't think so because you have absolutely no reliance on human innovation whatsoever. You're predicting a static future based on conditions unchanging from the present. This methodology is flawed. The market will force humanity to innovate. Solutions will be found. System will transition and evolve. A multitude of solutions are in the pipe already, you just think they're all unworkable.

 

And therein lies the problem of trying to predict the future without accounting for things which will change from the present...

[CPL.Luke]

^agreed bascule

 

however, if when oil prices get to be above say... $3.50 in the US the government starts to subsidize them (like they do with almost every other industry), then the s-curve won't happen and there will be a peak oil crisis. This is the danger I see in peak oil, if we have weak leaders when the price of oil starts to rise because their isn't enough supply, and they start to subsidize then the traditional economic factors that motivate change don't apply and there could be a truely catastrophic energy crisis in the world, because wen production does peak none of the alternatives will have come to market as there wasn't asufficient economic motivator for them to be developed.

 

inaccurate reserve reporting in the mideast and around the world can have the same effect, if other countries artificially keep their prices low than the supply of oil can be dramatically cut short, or one of the mideast oil suppliers could come out tomorrow and say they misjudged there oil reserves and they actually have about 1/4 of what they say they do.

 

While a truly free economy would take care of the oil problem on its own with both grace and efficiency, we are not living in a free global economy and you can't rely on the economy to take care of its own problems

[Ophiolite]

I'm just a simple person, trained as a geologist, so what do I know?

I spent the first decade and a half of my career intimately involved in oil exploration projects, so what do I know?

I've spent another decade and a half directly involved in drilling and production activities, so what do I know?

I live and work in the European capital of oil, and friends and acquaintances tend to hold positions within oil companies, so what do I know?

 

Well obviously anything I know is purely anecdotal, and emotionally biased, and can be safely ignored.

 

This is all I know: Peak Oil Man is essentially correct; Bascule and PanGloss are displaying the self deluding acts of rationalisation I expect to see practiced by creationists.

 

I am not about to present supporting data for this view: Peak Oil Man has done a superlative job of that. I don't expect to convert Bascule or Pangloss: they are so buried in the certainty of their rightness it has the taste of righteousness. I do hope that my brief post may encourage a few others to re-examine their opinion on this matter.

[ParanoiA]

Ok, I have a question. This depression you speak of...I'm assuming this would be a global thing right? I mean, all developed countries use it, so I would assume everyone would suffer equally.

 

Or, is it theorized that perhaps some of America's enemies would use the event to strike us?

 

Or, do we have enough in reserves that our military could defend us full scale?

[Pangloss]

And yet, OPEC has cut oil production, not because we've peaked, but because demand is down (as reflected by the falling price). The end is not nigh, the sky has not fallen, and Peak Oil Man continues to insist that his speculations are undeniable fact.

 

This thread was hijacked by a fanatic to spout unsupportable claims and boost the ratings of his fanatical web site. People can pray at the Altar of Hope for the End of Western Civilization on HIS web site if they wish. I'm not going to allow this nonsense to continue here.