PEAK OIL?: A new analysis published in Nature suggests that the era of easy oil may be over.
Image: © iStockphoto.com / Stephen Strathdee
-
The Best Science Writing Online 2012
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
Read More »
Despite major oil finds off Brazil's coast, new fields in North Dakota and ongoing increases in the conversion of tar sands to oil in Canada, fresh supplies of petroleum are only just enough to offset the production decline from older fields. At best, the world is now living off an oil plateau—roughly 75 million barrels of oil produced each and every day—since at least 2005, according to a new comment published in Nature on January 26. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) That is a year earlier than estimated by the International Energy Agency—an energy cartel for oil consuming nations.
To support our modern lifestyles—from cars to plastics—the world has used more than one trillion barrels of oil to date. Another trillion lie underground, waiting to be tapped. But given the locations of the remaining oil, getting the next trillion is likely to cost a lot more than the previous trillion. The "supply of cheap oil has plateaued," argues chemist David King, director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford and former chief scientific adviser to the U.K. government. "The global economy is severely knocked by oil prices of $100 per barrel or more, creating economic downturn and preventing economic recovery."
Nor do King and his co-author, oceanographer James Murray of the University of Washington in Seattle, hold out much hope for future discoveries. "The geologists know where the source rocks are and where the trap structures are," Murray notes. "If there was a prospect for a new giant oil field, I think it would have been found."
King and Murray based their conclusion on an analysis of oil data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Looking at use and production trends, the two note that since 2005 production has remained essentially unchanged whereas prices (a surrogate for demand) have fluctuated wildly. This suggests to the authors that there is no longer any spare capacity to respond to increases in demand, whether it results from political unrest that cuts supply, as in the case of Libya's political upheaval last year, or economic boom times in growing countries like China. "We are not running out of oil, but we are running out of oil that can be produced easily and cheaply," King and Murray wrote.
Other statistics, however, argue against a plateau. Oil company BP found in its most recent analysis that oil production was actually more than 82 million barrels per day in 2010, higher than the proposed plateau of 75 million. That difference may be the result of the increasing use of "unconventionals"—Canadian tar sands or the natural gas liquids co-produced with oil extraction. Rising production in the China, Nigeria, Russia and the U.S. also hints that technological improvements may allow greater production from existing fields than the new research suggests.
Plus, the price of oil may argue against any such plateau. Adjusted for inflation, today's $100 per barrel is roughly equivalent to prices in 1981, according to environmental scientist Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba. Smil also notes that in the last 20 years enough oil has been found to satisfy the demands of two new consumers—China and India—nations that now import more oil than is consumed by Germany and Japan.
Rights & Permissions
See what we're tweeting about
93 Comments
Add CommentMethanol and diesel from bacteria, algae, and/or the conversion of coal will likely more than keep up with declining crude oil reserves. Research for all of the above is in the pipeline, some are even going from experimental to small-scale commercial. As prices go up, the number of viable alternatives increase as well. We'll be burning liquid fuel in personal vehicles for quite a while yet, and the conversion at the consumer level won't be significant. Remember, only a few percent per year switching to alternative is all that's needed to match the decline in oil capacity. Oil prices will just hover around the new fuel production costs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe production losses have already been covered by new-wave sources. Production plateau is a function of global demand plateau in the recession. The knee-jerk jitters about supply was actually caused by the supply-flood of the 90s leading to gluttonous consumption technologies. Another 'energy crisis' is the leverage used by suppliers to browbeat legislators and environmental bodies.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBefore the tar pits of Venezuela are added to the equation, look for innovation, diversification, and consumption efficiencies. They'll balance the books faster than digging deeper for more pollution.
How many times will this prediction occur. Supposedly we were at this plateau in the 70s and should have run out by now.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is actually no way to know the total amount of oil available because new methods of extracting oil can be invented anytime as well as finding new locations as figure out how to drill further out to sea and deeper into the ground. Statistical analysis is ok for estimating something like how much oil is a specific location or guessing where it might be found but to declare we have used 1 trillion barrels and state there is 1 trillion more is an impossible measure.
This also creates the illusion that oil will run out negating some of the momentum in finding alternatives. Sounds backwards but thinking we have 50 years will cause people to just put off finding alternatives and worse what if oil does not run out. Yeah, I know most of you accept the fossil fuel theory without question but there is a theory that oil is a product of the heat and pressure in the mantle. Unlikely but if true then oil will never actually run out, which means the alternatives will never be invented. Unlikely theories aside, if the population believes we have decades of oil left, they will not be motivated to invent a new fuel.
"we could do with so much less oil—why should we panic about producing less"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSociety in general shouldn't, but if your livelihood depends on oil manufacturing you should certainly be worried. Especially considering our country's track record in helping displaced workers get into new types of jobs. No wonder every article here on reasons for us to reduce our dependence on oil gets so many highly emotional reactions.
Based on current reserve and production, like it or not, oil will be depleted in 60 years. We have little choice but to shift to electric cars and bicycles. The sooner we do it the better. Do it now it's good for the environment and your health.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you were to use "peak oil" theory as part of a nations energy strategy wouldn't you want to use more energy and not conserve at all? The idea would be to use as much cheap oil as possible to build and prepare your society for a time when it wouldn't be available.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou make a very good point about technology. The real thing that people do not know, for the most part, is that the recovery factor for oil is pretty low. If 40% of the oil in place (reserves) are produced that really good. It is possible through enhanced oil recovery to get as high as 60% and in oil shales the recovery is between 2 and 5%. The recovery factors for natural gas are higher but still not anywhere near 100% and therefore there is quite a bit of natural gas left behind as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince it costs more to produce the incremental oil over the primary recovery a lot of wells get shut in due to economic reasons and not because they stopped producing. As the cost of oil goes up then it is economic to spend more to get it and therefore more is available.
I have personally seen projects in the deep water gulf of mexico that were deemed uneconomic with over 1 billion plus barrels in place (probably something like 100 million barrels recoverable). These resources were left in the reservoir because after running economics money would be lost in attempting to produce the oil.
The short version is that we are not running out any time soon. However, as supplies decrease and production costs increase alternative forms of fuel will become economically attractive.
Of course some people will say that we've been here before but that's not true: as the article points out, there are likely no more supergiant oil fields to find. In the seventies, we still had Prudhoe Bay and Cantarell (and, far in the future, Kashagan).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you look at the math, it turns out that analyzing the decline rate of the supergiant oil fields, because they produce the majority of the world's oil, plus understanding the growth of oil in emerging markets, is that's needed to know our oil future.
The Uppsala Global Energy Systems Group shows that, if financing continues to be available, we will see a decline rate of 2% per year. This may not sound like much but it's enormous: it's a loss of 18.3% (1- (0.98^10)) in just one decade. There is no way any combination of efficiency, move to electricity, etc. can make up for that magnitude of decline.
But it gets worse because that decline is not shared proportionally. The oil producing nations satisfy internal demand first before selling the remainder to the rest of the world. So the 18.3% comes entirely from the 50% of the exported oil. In other words, it's roughly twice as bad for any oil importing country.
People really need to do the math. Once they do, they see how incredibly poor the situation actually is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"but there is a theory that oil is a product of the heat and pressure in the mantle."
As I recall, quite a few years ago there was an article in SA on "Deep Earth Gas"--the gist of which said that oil and gas reserves may be renewable (from below).
However, it did not give any indication of how rapid (or slow) that process might be.
Wow, Abiogenic Oil? Are you serious? It's no wonder you're a climate change denier then if you'll believe that tripe. Do you have to disregard EVERYTHING scientists and engineers agree on, or are you just here to throw molotov cocktails all over these boards?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this2 things:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. As a geologist, you should be calling BS on Abiogenic Oil theory that priddseren brought up. The fact that you didn't makes me very confused. I call out JamesDavis' crazy theories on these boards, so if you're sooooo interested in the facts straight on these issues (and sooooo worried about qualifications, etc.), why did you give priddseren a free pass?
2. The share of fossil fuel resources left in the ground for economic reasons is a proxy for the energy required to extract the resource itself. You should be familiar with the term EROEI, or Energy Returned on Energy Invested (if your qualifications are legit, that is!). As you deplete an oil field more and more, the pressure drops and it gets harder and harder to extract more oil. It's the law of diminishing returns. Running the numbers, oil extraction has seen its EROEI drop from 100 in the early 20th Century to below 10 currently. Tar Sands are definitely below 7 and probably around 4. Oil shale and coal-to-liquids are even lower, but might be around 5 if scaled up. Corn ethanol is slightly above 1, but only because its waste products can be used as animal feed.
My point is that eventually, for totally non-economic reasons, as conventional resources are used up, their EROEI drops steadily. Non-conventional extraction methods can extend things for a while, but eventually, it starts taking more and more energy to produce energy (with fossil fuels, that is).
We may leave %50 - %60 of an oil resource in the ground, but trying to extract more and more of it leaves us with less and less usable energy. Since individual fossil fuel reserves tend to surprise us when they run out, it is very risky to ignore the depletion issue and think everything is fine.
We should AT LEAST take away all tax breaxs for fossil fuel extraction and use the money to incentivise electric cars more and build up a charging infrastructure. It's WIN WIN WIN: we hedge our bets against oil shortages and price swings, we clean up our air and have lower medical bills / higher worker productivity / decreased premature mortality, AND we cease to distort the market in favor of fossil fuels! What's not to like?
What's wrong with our education system today that would make people think up this stuff? It just blows my mind...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is a lot of complacency here, though some comments seem to be closer to the mark.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe peak figure of 75 mbpd is probably including lease condensate. I understand that the peak figure for regular conventional oil is about 69 mbpd, and that is down to a few mbpd below that. Due to the plateau, "oil" now gets reported by lumping together anything that can provide some liquid hydrocarbons for our fuel intensive lifestyles including some that have an EROEI of close to, or less than 1, as someone pointed out. It also includes very energy variable liquids so that 10 or more mbpd is for liquids with less energy per barrel than regular conventional oil (e.g. ethanol is about 70% the energy of gasoline). Some of it is also double counting, as it takes a lot of oil energy to produce some of the other liquids (particularly biofuels), over the full lifecycle.
It's no surprise that economies world-wide can't return to meaningful economic growth. There isn't the energy available (to say nothing of other depleting resources) at prices that they are used to. As our economies are geared to growth, the lack of growth has dire consequences.
We can't just switch to alternatives or halve our energy intensity (which is misleading, anyway, due to globalisation). Electric cars take a lot of oil to build and renewable energy sources can't be scaled up to what oil supplies us (and what other fossil fuel sources, which will also peak, supplies us). Even if they could, the investment to do so would be many times current energy investments. It's not going to happen. We need other approaches but we've started 20 years too late (at least), so it's going to be very tough, despite all the optimistic noises we hear in these comments.
Politicized thinking is fantasy thinking. What bothers me is that we get so much propaganda which pretends to be mathematically precise and leads to opposite declarations of doom or endless prosperity. When are people going to realize we're being bamboozled by ideologies? We are in fact like primitives staring at a clay pot which has only an opening for a burning wick. We can't see or predict when the pot will empty of fuel. And we won't know until the last few seconds that the lamp will flicker and go out.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"We can't see or predict when the pot will empty of fuel. And we won't know until the last few seconds that the lamp will flicker and go out."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou were on track with the ideological thinking point but then got off track. It's true that there are margins of error but because we don't know the *exact* year oil will peak and decline doesn't mean that we can't come pretty close. That appears to be this decade. (You can safely ignore the people who say shale oil will come to the rescue. They don't have a clue of the problems in ramping up shale oil production.)
Every once in a while someone pops up to say that "such and such" is unknowable. That's a valid opinion. Just let the rest of us do the work of making our own and assessing others' oil production projections.
As we get closer to the peak, the numbers get more reliable. There is simply less time for technology do its wonders.
Here is where we are now: global production hasn't budged since 2004 despite prices that were unthinkable just ten years ago (!!).
The giant and supergiant oil fields determine our future because they make up 2/3 of all production. You can safely ignore virtually any field that is smaller than a giant — even in aggregate. That leaves about 500 fields in the world that need to be watched.
Examine the work by the Uppsala Global Energy Systems Group and you'll find the peer-reviewed papers that show that an increasing number of these fields are declining, year by year. They further show that, in a best case scenario, the decline rate will be 2% *per annum*. Don't be fooled by how small that number is. The removal of that much energy from the economy will break the finance system that we've created because there won't be the energy to pay back global debt, whether it's owned by businesses, governments or individuals (i.e. mortgages).
"Doom" isn't the appropriate word, in my view, but how about "a fracturing of the global financial system caused by declining oil production followed by political instability and regional wars for the rest of the century?"
During the 1970s oil crisis, a senior engineer from Shell told me that oil from coal put a ceiling on oil price. He pointed out that once oil got up to about (in those days) $35 per barrel, oil from coal become economic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut technology has changed since then. An Australian group, that started work in the 1980s, has developed a method of refining coal using hydrogen fluoride. They took that to pilot plant stage in the 1980s and it then died because the price of oil crashed. Now the idea has been revived. With this process, coal is refined to the degree where the ash content is less than 0.3%. The ash is dissolved by hydrogen fluoride and can be processed to recover heaps of valuable minerals. One estimate of the value of the minerals puts them at about $50 per tonne of coal.
The clean coal can be ground into a very fine powder and fed into a commercial gas turbine or a conventional diesel or petrol engine. So we could have combined cycle gas turbine power stations running on coal. This would immediately reduce carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal by about 30%. If the fuel is used in motor vehicles, then you would have a fuel tank that did not burn and explode in an accident.
It is a technology with the potential for changing the geopolitics of the world. Strangely, the Australian group have been struggling to find someone to provide the money to build a new pilot plant.
Coal production will peak in the next few decades. In the US, coal peaked over a decade ago, in terms of the energy content of produced coal (they are now going for lower quality reserves, just like oil). Coal isn't a solution and won't even mitigate the situation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen will people take of the blinkers and realise that this is a finite planet. A finite planet. We have to live within the annual budget provided by the sun-earth system, rather than pretending, though a short lived bonanza of high energy concentrated ancient sunlight (oil), that humans can get what they want at whatever rate they want it.
The party is over.
This really makes me laugh. As people have already stated President Carter did all of us a huge favor by releasing the huge comprehensive report by the Department of Energy and the CIA back in the 70's. Although it's hard to get a hold of that original report (hard but not impossible) we can easily see that the era of easy oil has been over for decades. The myth that super giant oil fields have been discovered since then and that we should have run out of oil since that report are just that myths. The data hasn't changed by a significant amount at all and have simply been oil company propaganda. Believe what you want but examining the original data released in the 70's is indisputable. I guarantee you a month from now the oil companies will claim this data is inaccurate as well. Having crunched that original data, set up pipelines, pumped and shipped oil for years as well as cleaned up the biggest spills and set-up the subsequent contingency plans I can tell you it's way past time we move to alternative technology. The perversely unyielding refusal to move to alternative technology is due solely to greed within the O&G corporate structure and is not only detrimental to this nations security but will ultimately allow other countries to leap frog ahead of us in power, success and wealth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen we truly get to peak oil with an ever increasing demand (mostly in East and South Asia) the price of oil will certainly rise very quickly. At least until it meets and just exceeds the price of competitive energy sources. The switch-over to those other sources will then take care of itself. No international global warming conferences, promising much but delivering nothing, will be required at all. By the way that will still leave us a an abundant supply of oil for petrochemicals. Nothing but good news.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"as the article points out, there are likely no more supergiant oil fields to find."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's the same kind of statement that was made 20 and 30 years ago ... because no included the Tar Sands. And no one today includes the Orinoco basin. And no one today includes large-scale shale-oil recovery.
The biosphere will be tainted with poison before the supply runs low.
Energy is humanity's bloodstream; without it nothing works for all of the world's populations. Similarly, my heart stopped for 10 minutes following a car accident in Kenya in 1980 as my forehead was being sutured while I was under a general anesthetic, leading my neurologist to declare that I, "should not expect to regain a normal life before 6 - 8 years"!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo me, that was a challenge; I got a job within 7 months and had staggered, walked and jogged more than 330 miles home from that job within 20 months. The interesting part is that my mind went to how the cars that were passing me might run after there was no more petroleum, and the designs that I sketched into the diary that I kept to improve my memory can be found in improved form at www.greenmillennium.eu entitled, "Building the World's first 100% Sustainable Global Infrastructure for the Provision of Energy, Food, Transportation, Jobs, etc. without Petroleum and the Production of Greenhouse Gases".
For the sake of the components of our genes, which have survived in different combinations and recombinations all the generations until their appearance in ourselves, we must develop such an infrastructure WELL BEFORE ALL THE PETROLEUM IS GONE!
With all the handicaps that I had to overcome, I am sure that you all can do better, and I challenge you to do just that!
Conversion of coal into liquid fuel substitute for oil is done through the Fischer-Tropsch process. It has been around since the 1940s. The Germans during World War II converted coal into liquid fuel. It is an old technology.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe reason why funding is problem for this technology is because it is expensive. Oil refining is still cheaper. Once we ran out of oil, compressed natural gas is cheaper than Fischer-Tropsch processing of coal.
outsidethebox, this is not outside the box thinking. The market will solve all problems. Remember that the price of oil was almost $150 per barrel in 2008. What happened? Alternatives weren't developed. Instead, we had a severe recession, from which we haven't yet recovered (if we ever will, since growth may no longer be possible, excepted in the fiddled official statistics). No, you can't rely on the market fixing this. Sustained high oil prices impact demand and drive the price down. Projects were cancelled or delayed following the price crash in late '08. We're in for a roller coaster ride.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the way, I haven't seen anything that suggests alternatives can safely or practically be scaled to what's needed to continue partying without oil/gas/coal. We have to make other arrangements.
"...the price of oil will certainly rise very quickly. At least until it meets and just exceeds the price of competitive energy sources..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt already is WAY ABOVE the price of competitive energy sources, namely Coal, Nuclear and NG. Still virtually nothing is being done to replace it because our politicians are in the pocket of Big Oil and do exactly what Big Oil wants, while doing some token greenwashing gestures like opposing the Keystone pipeline and throwing 100's of $billions down the sewer on Nutty Renewable Energy SCAMS.
By the time we run out of oil, natural gas will be well down the decline slope, so don't pin your hopes on that.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"That's the same kind of statement that was made 20 and 30 years ago ... because no included the Tar Sands. And no one today includes the Orinoco basin. And no one today includes large-scale shale-oil recovery."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's clear that you are very early in your understanding of the difference between liquid crude oil and what you are referring to. The annual production increase from the tar sands, in the best year, was about 200,000 bpd. Let's say virtually unlimited financing is available (certainly not assured), you still have the need for the Canadians to build a nuclear plant to provide the heat required to work with the bitumen (you do know they are maxed out with natural gas there, right?) and they have to find more fresh water, somehow (you do know how much water they are drawing from the Athabasca River, right?).
No, the tar sands will only be a small contribution. Perhaps it will increase to 5mb/d — that's all the Canadian Ministry of Natural Resources thinks it can reach, as well as the EIA. So forget that as a savior.
As for the other two areas, they have major, major problems as well. But based on your unfamiliarity with the tar sands, I would guess that you haven't researched enough yet to be acquainted with those problems, which I encourage you to do.
When you've gone through every region you'll eventually get to the point I have: prepare for declining oil production because no combination of the remaining oil will make up for the decline of the liquid sources we are using now.
But you can make your life easier first by Googling "Giant oil field decline rates and their influence on world oil production." Then read the rest of their papers and you'll get an excellent view of oil's future.
As the global oil price trends up, natural gas prices are trending down.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome results/observations:
- CNG / LNG is a cleaner and cheaper transport fuel.
- Production of CNG-fueled cars, trucks and buses is increasing.
- Fishing trawlers and other ships that use oil in diesel engines can be converted to use cheaper/cleaner natural gas.
Sometimes the obvious solutions are hard to see?
Summaries of reference material: http://goo.gl/Q4tdY
The ONLY economically viable alternatives to Oil are Coal & Nuclear. Coal maybe for 25-100yrs, and that with major environmental consequences, quite possibly overwhelming consequences. That leaves only Nuclear as a viable option. An option that has been blocked since the early 80's by Vested Interests, who know damn well Nuclear will KICK THEIR BUTTS, if it is unleashed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are three significant classes of Energy our civilization uses:
1) Fossil Fuel Energy -- right now supplies 85% of World Energy.
2) Renewable Energy -- right now 9% of World Energy and old sources - Hydro & Biomass are 7 of that 9%. The much touted New Renewables Solar, Wind & Geothermal have been around for centuries, and still haven't made a tiny indent in Fossil Fuel consumption.
3) Nuclear Energy -- 6% of World Energy right now. It has three subclasses: 1) Fission 2) Fusion 3) Exotic (i.e. antimatter, LENR, Mach Effect).
Nuclear goes far beyond Fossil Fuels or Renewable Energy as an Energy source. With > a million times the energy density of the others. I call Renewable Energy "pixie power" and Fossil Fuels "wimp power", because Nuclear is orders of magnitude beyond either of those. Its time for us Children to grow up and quit trying to be a bunch pathetic losers who are too stupid, corrupt and weak to embrace the Nuclear Giant.
Can Renewables or Fossil Fuels work under the ocean? Nope. Nuclear has no problem there.
Can Renewables or Fossil Fuels work on the moon? Nope. Nuclear can handle that very easily.
Can Renewables or Fossil Fuels propel civilization to the outer reaches of the Solar System? Nope. Nuclear can take care of that.
Can Renewables or Fossil Fuels sustain our civilization for millennium to come? Nope. Only Nuclear can do that.
A good comparison of Nuclear vs Fossil Fuels for Ice-breaking Ships. Renewables Wind powered won't get through one inch of ice.
http://tinyurl.com/2doo92y
Crashing through Ice at speed requires a huge amount of energy. The Russian Nuclear Icebreakers travel at 15 knots for one day through 6 ft of ice on ONE POUND of Uranium. Canada & the US diesel powered Icebreakers which got stuck trying to reach the North pole and the Russians had to rescue them, cannot do a fraction of that consuming 100 tons of smoke belching fuel every day. They need a bloody Oil Tanker to keep them running.
From the Video:
"...crashing through ice 10 ft thick, and to see her 25,000 tons roaring along @ 20 knots, it is hard not to be staggered by the Nuclear Fires in this Ship’s belly..."
The internal combustion engine may soon be axed , because of pollution .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThrowing out the baby with the bathwater ("The internal combustion engine may soon be axed because of pollution.") -
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInternal combustion engines running on natural gas produce very few emissions in contrast to gasoline and diesel: "Natural gas doesn’t contribute significantly to creating smog because it emits 75 to 95 percent less nitrogen dioxide, 99 percent less sulfur dioxide and 90 percent less particulate matter."
Yes hydrocarbon sourced from the mantle is bogus. the idea was based upon the fact the the gas field at Eugene Island 330 (if memory serves correctly) was being sourced from the mantle because as production continued there was no pressure depletion nor decline rate. It turns out that the gas is being sourced from deeper reservoirs and migrating along faults but that is all beside the point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far as EROEI it is not the metric by which the commercial viability of producing a reservoir is measured. The ROI (return on investment) is what is used. Simply how much money will be generated given the probable money required to make that money. The cost of the energy that is required to produce the resource (electricity, etc) is factored into the cost of production along with all the other costs (facilities, pipelines, personnel, leases, royalty, taxes, etc).
Each oil company has their own ROI target but in each case the investment has to show a reasonable projected rate of return in order to get funding. It does not matter if it is primary, secondary or tertiary recovery. All that matters is getting more of the resource for a ROI.
If any progress toward energy stability is to be realized, alternative methods must be employed to a
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismuch greater extent.
The big break through will be in energy storage. One of
those items that fell to the wayside during our period
of easy, seemingly endless fossil fuel.
Contemplating where to find more fossil fuels might be better served by serious consideration of how to Not use more.
Just look at rush hour traffic in any city. The amount of wasted energy is virtually beyond anything sustainable. Electric vehicles would help, though a decent public transport system would make a more significant impact.
Consider that for the entire history of automotive
engine development, only about 30% of each gallon of gasoline or diesel is used to do work. Heat and friction using the rest.
So in effect we have wasted 70% of the total energy
available just in the transportation segment.
Time to adjust thinking about energy in broader terms.
And not accounting for EROEI is how we get utter failures like corn ethanol and Tar Sands. For example, they have to use 1 unit of clean(er) natural gas to extract and upgrade 4 units of Tar Sands heavy crude. So just in natural gas, the EROEI is down to 4, never mind the energy required to make the mining equipment, or to dig out the moonscapes in the boreal forest, etc. After this, they still need to ship it to a refinery (shipping it through Keystone XL would cost what, %20 of the energy going through the pipeline?)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere, the refinery uses the equivalent of %15 - %20 of the energy in the incoming crude to refine it into petrochemicals. It is estimated that a gasoline-powered car uses more electricity to go 100 miles than an electric car because of how energy-intensive the refining process is.
Anyway, after all this, the EROEI for Tar Sands is probably around 3 or lower. THEN, we use those refined petrochemicals to propel a 2 - 3 metric ton steel cage with an engine that is only %30 efficient AT BEST. So, as far as USEFUL energy is concerned, Tar Sands are at or BELOW 1.
A term I (might have) invented, but isn't used regularly, is USABLE Energy Returned On Energy Invested. It's a comparison between inputs and outputs of an energy conversion process to see if it makes sense. UEROEI makes a clear case that hydrogen cars are a boondoggle because it's way more efficient to use electricity or natural gas to propel a vehicle directly instead of using them in an expensive and inefficient process to produce hydrogen. The same goes for the Tar Sands. What could we be doing with all that clean(er) natural gas, clean water and electricity that are required to produce usable products from Tar Sands crude instead? Considering all the steps required and the low efficiency of the process, we would have WAY more usable energy burning all that natural gas in CC plants and charging electric vehicles with it. We have the spare capacity and oil demand has flatlined in the U.S. for years. There's ZERO reason to build up the Tar Sands and the dangerous Keystone XL pipeline unless you wanted to export oil to China.
Tossing about 160 million consumer owned solar rooftops into the mix would help the peak oil situation tremendously. Wasn't a study done back in the 60's showing that in a nuclear war only petroleum based foods would be radiation free because of the pass through effect? Regardless, the time has come for clean energy to emerge full steam ahead. We may need to request that Mexico send over additional labor to help us quickly get these installations into place. It will create thousands upon thousands of jobs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot little 5-7KW units but units capable of plugging in the millions of family cars. People may be able to afford the car payments with the savings from a $0 utility bill and close to $0 fuel cost. Good, lots of automakers back to work.
We need to start looking at ways to compensate oil companies and utility companies for the massive amount of business they stand to lose. Its no wonder they pray for a slow economic recovery. As rooftop solar PV gets closer to dirt cheap, these units will be selling like hot cakes. We need to find a way to preserve the political clout they held with the massive donations to PACS and super PACS. I feel a little sorry for these folks. But we will need to help them transition with compassion.
Back of the envelope arithmetic with data from http://www.energy.alberta.ca/OilSands/791.asp suggests we may have a bit shy of 10 years left at current consumption however, how much does the atmosphere feel like absorbing. I am reading Physics.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeats me why the obvious solutions are ignored.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor example, the new CNG Zafira Tourer with Best-in-Class 330 miles (530 kms) Natural Gas Range:
"...the engine can also run on biogas or a mixture of natural gas and biogas. In the case of 100% biogas propulsion, the carbon foot print is almost zero."
We can extend the life of natural gas if we use it for transportation as substitute for oil in ships and airplanes instead of power plants. For land transport, electric and bicycles are better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease note what we are doing in our desperation to keep consumer gluttony going: dangerous/hypocritical foreign policy games, ecological damage and potential devastation in terms of earthquakes etc. (shale), nuclear dangers -- Murphy's law means Three-Mile Islands, Chernobyls, and certainly Japans will continue to happen. And we play dangerous guessing games at new straws to stick in and suck out Mother earth -- that we will find what we seek in the first place, let alone what unforeseen new permanent damage this might cause. And perhaps worst of all, our appetite is grown to fit the perceived availability, so when the other shoe drops -- and it will -- it will not happen much later, but will be much more catastrophic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDo we need all that we consume? How much is packaged hype, duplication, artificial obsolescence. Now is a time to take a cold, hard look, and maybe seek to change the Madison Ave environment before we choke or starve to death in it. Maybe we can yet heal the planet.
Didn't I read this same article in the 70's. There is plenty of oil. The only thing that is making it "uneasy" to get is environmentalist and their endless stream of lies. (remember the great global warming scam based on fraudulent temperature data). It's time to end all restriction to oil drilling in the US. If that means running a drill through a snail darters home then so be it. People come first and the people in the world need oil.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"remember the great global warming scam based on fraudulent temperature data"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI remember that there were a lot of lies about the temperature data allegedly being fraudulent.
It is all about the economics because the energy purchased and used to exploit/produce a resource has a cost.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHonestly, it is that simple there is no other need for the energy in/out metrics as they are just muddying the water as the cost of the energy goes into the computation of ROI. If I used the EROEI to determine economics in a business setting (non-energy) I would never create a single product because production of anything is always a energy losing proposition.
I have worked a number of projects and the metric is always the same ROI. You determine the volume of the resource, figure out what the product is worth and the cost (using a probasblistic analysis). The goal is to be reasonably certain that your P50 (which should be close to the deterministic mean) is the most likely case and that the P10 and P90 indicate the reasonable up and down side scenarios.
I agree that we should be building natural gas power plants and stripping the CO2 out of the exhaust and reinjecting it to: (1) dispose of the CO2 and (2) recover more of the hydrocarbons until that endeavor becomes uneconomic. Natural gas is a companion for renewables where coal and nuclear are not.
As far as the tar sands go: if it is economic to exploit them then they will be exploited and sold to China. The thing that people (including myself before being in situations where we were bidding against them) is that the cost of energy (oil, gas, coal, etc) is just that a cost to the Chinese. With the Chinese it is different. They do not bid based upon making a profit from the energy resource but rather on how it impacts the overall economic bottom line of what they are using the energy to create. They quite often would enter a bid that had a heafty premium over the asking cost to secure the energy.
Electric cars are fine with the exception that the EROEI (which needs to include the energy for the production, transport, etc for the gas to make the electricity) for propelling one has got to be less than for a gasoline powered car. Also batteries are environmentally nasty to build, recycle and dispose of so there is an issue there.
I am actually not an economic geologist, but it is part of my job. I have two degrees in Geology (BS and MS) as well as a professional license. I am now employed as a petrophysicist (half geologist half engineer) which means that I build multidimentsional geomodels (quite a bit of time series data analysis and uncertainty modeling) and determine economics (with my team) and then inform management of the outcomes.
Lat time I priced a solar system for my house it was, at best, a break even proposition at 30 years versus buying off of the grid.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"...Natural gas is a companion for renewables where coal and nuclear are not..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's the REAL STORY, behind this big push for "renewables" = mostly wind, some solar, token geothermal. 100's of $billions are being thrown down the sewer on absurdly expensive Renewables, the main one Wind is an utterly useless source of energy, since it induces as much wasted fuel in the shadowing NG power source as the wind would otherwise theoretically save, making it a TOTAL WASTE OF CAPITAL.
Obviously, anyone with half-a-brain can figure out what is behind this World Wide Mega-Push for mostly Wind and some Solar. Economics has always limited NG to be a Peaking Power supply, with Coal, Nuclear & conventional Hydro supplying baseload, and the older Coal plants supplying shoulder load. This wisely limited NG penetration into the electricity market. But with Coal getting a thrashing from environmentalists Big Oil/NG saw an opportunity to exploit weasel their way into the Electricity Generation sector. Put in lot's of worthless Wind Turbines, which suddenly make Nuclear & Coal less practical, and now in the new Insane Asylum of Electricity Generation, we throw 100's of $billions down the sewer on Renewables just so added 10's of $billions on expensive NG generation is more practical.
Since the Shale Gas Ponzi Scheme bubble will burst, Western Nations won't have nearly enough NG to sustain present demand never mind added Electricity Generation. Result MASSIVE LNG imports to the USA, mostly from the Middle East, not at the current $3 per mmbtu, but current international pricing of $15 per mmbtu. New Renewables Advocates ARE Enemies of America. Bad enough the terrible trade deficit on Oil, add to that Solar PV and Wind Turbine imports and future MASSIVE expensive LNG imports.
"Tossing about 160 million consumer owned solar rooftops into the mix would help the peak oil situation tremendously. "
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy? Are you going to buy the owners of the 850 million or so cars on the planet a new electric car?
Peak oil is a liquid fuel problem and generating more electricity don't do even a little bit to help that in the near or medium term.
Note that the USGS has cut the estimate of the shale gas plays and the EIA has been forced to follow suit and attempt to explain why there were so off (by a factor of 5).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen read Art Berman's critiques of the shale gas plays and you won't be so confident that the "U.S. has 100 years of natural gas," as the President said the other night.
Complete nonsense. It was obvious those first estimates were wildly off the mark. They used the best producing wells (less than 10% of the total) and simply multiplied that by the entire area. But those wells were drilled first *because* they were likely the best producing ones. The subsequent wells haven't produced nearly the same output. The EIA made a colossal error and the U.S. does not have 100 years of natural gas.
It certainly does not have 100 years if the entire vehicle fleet is moved over to using it.
Natural gas is not a solution. At best it is a 15 to 20 year band aid.
Anyone who says we aren't running out of oil "soon" has an extremely short view of history. Suppose we could find every last drop of oil and stretch it to last for the next hundred years - which is far beyond any reasonable expectation. Even with that belief, we need to take action today to wean ourselves from dependency on oil.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn Iranian oil expert, Dr. Ali Samsam (deceased) has published a similar study 7 years ago, forecasting peak had been reached and the bottom price of oil was above $60 under any reasonable optimistic scenario, while there was no upper limit to the price under most other scenarios.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHis full name was Dr. Ali Samsam Bakhtiari.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The big risk in Saudi Arabia is that Ghawar's rate of decline increases to an alarming point. That will set bells ringing all over the oil world because Ghawar underpins Saudi output and Saudi undergirds worldwide production." - Ali Morteza Samsam Bakhtiari
I'm a geologist living in Alberta and have worked on and off in the energy sector.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBottom line...nobody knows. Too many variables and too many unknowns. My 'guestimate' is that we are not at peak oil or anywhere near it....but...nobody knows.
Wow. Let me try to explain this a little better for those who keep claiming there's plenty of oil because they heard this argument in the 70's. Add in the population increase to the developed world using oil plus the increase and their oil usage since the 70's. Now add the huge increase in the new areas of development and their oil usage. This far outweighs the meager discovery amount. The 70's numbers still stand. Peak amount was reached decades ago.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"bottom line...nobody knows"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot true. Either the group of geologists who say we will be on a production plateau for another 30 years are correct or the ones who says we are going to decline this decade are correct.
Since we now have the oil megaproject databases telling us that there aren't enough projects past 2015, I'll put my money on the decline occurring this decade.
A really good explanation around the oil megaproject databases is put out by the UK Industry Task Force on Peak Oil report.
Since oil projects now take on average 7-10 years, we can see that far in the future — and there aren't the oil projects to make up for the annual 4 mmbd decline.
Note comment 36: "...the new CNG Zafira Tourer with Best-in-Class 330 miles (530 kms) Natural Gas Range:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"...the engine can also run on biogas or a mixture of natural gas and biogas. In the case of 100% biogas propulsion, the carbon foot print is almost zero."
Biogas is renewable. Natural gas is not.
Natural gas is also being produced from gasification of coal.
Concur. The real problem is that the new resources, yet to be found, tend to be in politically unstable regions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisElectric Vehicles (EVs) use electrical energy from the wall at %75 - %85 efficiency. A good diesel or a hybrid car can turn its wheels for about %30 efficiency. %85 of the energy used over the entire life of a vehicle is during operation with %10 used during construction and %5 used during disposal. Since EVs are so efficient, and they have a little more technology under the hood, the lifetime energy use might be closer to %70 - %80. So regardless, energy used during operation is still the dominant factor.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen you have the refining step necessary for petroleum-powered vehicles. Like I said, a gasoline powered vehicle uses more electricity to go 100 miles than an EV due to the energy intensity of the refining process. Plus you have oil exploration and drilling counting against ICE vehicles, weighing them down further. Then they throw %70 - %80 of the energy in their fuel away as waste heat, giving the entire energy chain a pitifully low total efficiency. EVs can use natural gas (%50 eff) or thermal (%30 eff) or renewables (think about it...INFINITY percent efficient). You also have to consider that ICE cars are locked into that oil supply chain forever, while EVs have a range of source fuels that can get cleaner and more efficient as time goes on.
ROI calculations are fine when dealing with inidividual companies, but when some of these decisions determine the fate of society, like locking us into Peak Oil with very little groundwork laid down to transition away from oil, ROI doesn't matter as much. You can have all the money in the world from a solid investment, but when agriculture starts faltering because we haven't prepared for a post-oil future as thoroughly as we need to, you'll realize that you can't eat money. The single-minded pursuit of ROI that you have highlighted blinds large energy firms to the global picture. This is why dirty fuels like Tar Sands get developed.
Actually, I would have rather seen the billions paid to get Tar Sands production going spent on almost ANY other energy technology, even nuclear power. Spending those billions to install electric car chargers or develop renewable energy would be investing in the future instead of the dirty fuels of the past.
Might want to look again because solar PV prices fell %50 last year. If you're not counting rebates and incentives, that's not a fair accounting. Fossil fuels get plenty of support from governments around the world and they don't have to pay for the harm their pollution causes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre you trying to be a troll? Please take the loaded words and unsupported claims out of your argument and you'll see you're left with nothing...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSurprisingly, I partially agree with both of you. Although most of the data out there right now shows that we are headed for a drop-off in oil production, or at least a chronic tightening of global supply for decades, the uncertainty in that data for such a crucial factor (oil) is troubling. This is why we need to direct investment away from anything requiring oil because it will become worthless a lot sooner than people realize.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome investment patterns that will need to change are:
- Suburban sprawl: As global oil markets become increasingly unstable, living in a 5,000 square foot house, driving 50 miles to work each way and then sitting in miles of traffic to shop / eat / do anything will become untenable.
- Tar Sands: The few companies investing in these projects will make oceans of money once oil climbs over $150, $200 per barrel and higher. However, it will do very little to calm oil markets, especially if Middle Eastern, Caspian, or Nigerian production is disrupted or starts to fall. Billions spent on pipelines will not help since countries like China and India have shown that they will not be outbid if they need the energy.
- Energy-intensive traditional agriculture: investments in this area could be better utilized to develop a food supply chain that is more robust in the face of fuel price uncertainty.
In short, when corporations affect the well-being of billions due to their decisions, they need to think more than a few quarterly statements into the future. If they are unwilling to do this, then governments need to step in and fulfill this role. The only reason we're in this mess is because my great-great-great grandkids can't hire lobbyists yet...
"Are you trying to be a troll? Please take the loaded words and unsupported claims out of your argument and you'll see you're left with nothing..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo once again in his own words, we have Sault showing himself to be by definition - a troll.
evosburgh: "The real problem is that the new resources, yet to be found, tend to be in politically unstable regions."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo they aren't. Fossil fuels are largely untapped in many offshore deposits. As far as 'unstable regions...so what? Production is rarely impacted in the medium to long term in any country. This includes Iraq where production is now higher than pre-invasion. Oil flows in democracies, countries with civil wars, theocracies, dictatorships and all manner of political systems.
It's true all those different types of countries produce now but there isn't nothing etched in stone saying that that has to continue.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe've lived in a oil abundant era, which led to a general enriching of the planet. When oil gets scarce, the whole game changes.
Read the leaked German military report on peak oil and you'll see clear-headed people discussing the likely outcomes, including:
"In the medium term the global economic system and every market-oriented national economy would collapse"
"The proportion of oil traded on the global, freely accessible oil market will diminish as more oil is traded through bi-national contracts"
Public anger at the existing system would create “room for ideological and extremist alternatives to existing forms of government.”
Google "german report on peak oil" to find the actual report.
Anyone who doesn't see these likely consequences doesn't, in my view, fully grasp the situation.
More loaded claims and unsupported claims of Sault.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFossil Fuel subsidies are trivial compared to the subsidies being loaded upon Solar & Wind. In 2007 Federal Subsidies to Renewables(almost all for Wind,Solar,Geothermal) was $4.9B for a trivial amount of energy production, <1% of total. Coal was $3.2B for 23% of total energy production, NG/Oil was $2.3B for 61%, Nuclear(almost entirely weapons rel'd) was $1.3B for 9%.
www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/graphic-of-the-day-us-federal-energy-subsidies-and-support-fiscal-year-2007.html
Cheapest Solar panels I can find anywhere are $1.20 per wattpk. Cheapest basic packages without switchgear/installation/batteries/mounting-hardware/cable/cleaning-system/metering/shipping is $2.80 per wattpk.
So Fixed Tilt array in prime location, Los Angeles produces 1470 AC kwh/yr/kwpk or avg 168 avg-watts/kwpk. So at an excellent installed price of $3/kwpk that's $17.9k/kwavg. That's assuming a perfectly aligned roof, no shade trees or buildings, perfect maintenance/cleaning. Ignores the high cost of shadowing/backup power. So that is about as cheap as Solar PV can get. Even $.70/watt firesale prices wouldn't get better than $3/kwpk installed. More realistic price is from Sault's friends at the NREL site:
http://openpv.nrel.gov/
Avg cost of Solar PV installs in USA, 2010 was $7.16 per wattpk. A far cry from $3/wattpk I assumed. And Los Angeles is one of the best USA locations, and better than most countries.
Solar is cheap now because of oversupply, if you build a $billion factory, you can't just cut your production down to half, due to decreased demand, or you will go bankrupt, so you have no choice but to cut prices, to maintain full production. In the end, as is happening, Solar companies are dropping dead like flies on DDT. After that is all done with, and the blood is wiped up off the floor, there will be a lot less Solar Manufacturers, and most of them will be in China, and they will start raising prices again.
So BEST CASE solar 20-25yr life and power @ $18k/kwavg output, neglecting Grid Costs and mostly foreign jobs VS WORST CASE Nuclear for 60-80 yr life, 24/7, summer/winter, north/south, windy/calm, power @ $10k/kwavg and mostly domestic jobs. Doesn't take a Rocket Scientist to see which is the RATIONAL source of future Energy.
Some good articles on the subject of Peak Oil:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswww.energybulletin.net/stories/2012-01-23/fossil-fuels-vs-renewables-key-argument-environmentalists-are-missing
Kurt Cobb concludes:"...There is increasing evidence that no fossil fuel will continue to see its rate of production climb significantly in the decades ahead and so none of them is a viable "bridge fuel," not natural gas, not oil, not coal..."
Faith Birol, chief economist of the IEA, states World Crude Oil has already peaked in 2006, increases are now all by the expanded definition to include "all liquids" (ethanol, NG condensate etc):
www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3201781.htm
The Net Energy Cliff:
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9b/Net_energy_cliff.gif
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeBtdwPpTQM
The Fact is we are approaching an Energy Catastrophe, and there is ONLY ONE Energy Source that can supply the World's Energy, that is Nuclear, and the happy coincidence is that it is also the Cleanest of all Energy Sources, and has zero CO2 emissions.
Can it be done with Nuclear? The answer is yes, and the proof is shown here for France:
www.iea.org/stats/pdf_graphs/FRTPES.pdf
See the big fat yellow line - that's Nuclear. Notice how much Oil consumption it replaced. So that is what France achieved with a mediocre effort, using an ancient US design LWR. No Factory Construction. No Assembly Line production. No modern CAD or CAM. No modern PLC/DCS control systems. And yet they managed to generate half of their Energy Supply with Nuclear in about 15 yrs. This is for a middle wealth nation, with the best health care & social services in the World, one of the most expensive, World Class Militaries in the World, and during the period improved their Standard of Living & productivity much faster than Renewables Germany, and instituted a 4 day, max 35 hr work week with minimum 5 weeks paid vacation – most get 8 weeks. See:
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/27/60II/main704571.shtml
Notice how duplicating that modest effort one more time and France would be 100% Green Nuclear Energy. All it needs to do is complete electrification of Transport which it has already started. And use Nuclear synthetic fuels – very simple – Nuclear H2, Heat & Electricity plus Biomass/Flue gas Carbon = Methanol & DME at ~25 cents per liter equivalent to diesel. Note that this is a 100% transfer of Biomass Carbon to liquid Fuel carbon - the most efficient & greenest way to utilize Biomass.
Repeating. Nobody knows. All these 'experts' are reading the same data from limited sources. There is no 'magic'. We tramp around doing seismic lines for days on end...preliminary drilling and sampling...there is NO OTHER MEANS of knowing how much oil is 'out there'. We've barely searched for deep sea reserves. There could be a hundred times the amount of oil available today or zero. Anyone who claims to know is full of B.S.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe only reality is that coal will be an increasingly higher perdcent of energy productiion in thge net 20 years. Probably the next 50...but, anything beyond a 20 year windoiw is speculation. Solar and wind?...irrelevent tinkering around the edges. Nuclear?..decades away as a substitute for fossil fuels (logistics alone put the planning and building of a facility 20 years away).
"...We've barely searched for deep sea reserves. There could be a hundred times the amount of oil available today or zero..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou don't understand Peak Oil. It isn't about "how much oil" is out there. It is about economically replacing depleting supplies with new supplies. And it AIN'T HAPPENING. You are claiming that a trend that has persisted on EVERY continent is by some magic, not going to occur on the World as a whole. That would be a major statistical aberration. Not impossible, but the probability is close to nil. North America is a vast continent - with politicians claiming since the 70's "we will strive for Energy Independence" - a no-holds-barred effort. In spite of this ALL-OUT effort with EXTRAORDINARILY high Oil Prices, this is what has been achieved:
www.tititudorancea.com/z/ies_north_america_crude_oil_production.htm
So even including the large added extra of lease condensate, North American production peaked in 1985, and has dropped 22%. While demand has increased 23% in the same period. same for the north sea:
norwayportal.mfa.no//NR/rdonlyres/3AE52C92D215419D81319A5A13FB1ACA/49868/productionncs1.gif
And Europe:
www.tititudorancea.com/z/ies_europe_crude_oil_production.htm
And Peak Oil deniers would have us believe by some magic THE ENTIRE WORLD will be able to TOTALLY counter what has already happened in all of Europe & North America. A pipe dream. Reckless Stupidity that will put a billion lives at risk.
"...Nuclear?..decades away as a substitute for fossil fuels (logistics alone put the planning and building of a facility 20 years away)..."
Absolute nonsense. I already showed you what France is done with Meager & Archaic effort. Why don't you read? We haven't even done Factory construction or Assembly line production with Nuclear yet. According to Geo's logic, you can build as many cars one at a time as you can on an assembly line. According to Geo, automakers have wasted 10's of $billions making assembly line production facilities, when they could make auto's just as cheap one at a time.
I agree except with the the cost, in terms of energy and efficiency, of using natural gas to generate power which is then used to drive your electric car. You cannot discount the energy used to drill, process, transport, process again, generate the electricity and then transmit that energy to the outlet to charge your car. There are a lot of losses along that chain which all effect the end efficiency of the car. While I am not going to make that computation I am pretty sure that the efficiency of an electric car is on par or below a ICE if all of these factors are considered.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am exploring and producing reserves on a daily basis and with the exception of shale gas/oil most of the large fields are being discovered offshore from politically dodgy areas. The easy stuff has been found and we are now looking for the stuff that we have overlooked or are finding places we haven't looked yet.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe USA has produced over 1/3rd of the world's oil. The USA makes up about 1/18th of the world's land mass.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe USA is not unique geologically.. there is LOTS of oil to be extracted from potential land based deposits AND a lot more in potential offshore deposits.
"...Nuclear?..decades away as a substitute for fossil fuels (logistics alone put the planning and building of a facility 20 years away)..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this'Absolute nonsense"
Not nonsense at all. From conception to producing energy, no nuclear plant not yet on the books will produce a watt of energy in the USA, Germany, Japan the UK, etc. before 2032 AT THE EARLIEST. In these countries and many others there are no plans for meaningful future nuclear production. Nuclear energy isn't produced out of 'nothing'...a who infrastructure is required. That infrastructure does not exist in most western countries. A couple plants can be built but that's it. The one exception is France but France is not the world.
"...no nuclear plant not yet on the books will produce a watt of energy in the USA..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChina, Romania, Korea, France and the USA have all achieved 4 yr build times. The new medium sized nuclear plants being designed by Westinghouse, B&W, Toshiba, NuScale and several others are projecting 3 yrs or less between 1st order and delivery. YOu once again ignore Factory Module construction and Assembly line production. Nuclear has been effectively blocked in the West by Fossil Fuel Vested Interests. That can easily be removed with the stroke of a pen, if politicians ACTUALLY DID CARE about Global Warming, Peak Oil, High Energy Prices. Before the Paid-by-Oil ENGO's attacked Nuclear in the 80's Factory construction of Nuclear Plants on Barges was in the Works. EASILY 3yr order to delivery.
You are claiming let's have TOTAL FAITH in the status quo, and who cares if a billion lives our loss, as long as you are not one of those billion. But using PROVEN technical ability to produce Nuclear - remove political, Vested Interest blocks and you say it is more important to keep those in place than save a billion lives. That's your position.
You will note that Toxic, Mega-Oil-Spill rigs that make Fukushima look like an excessively rainy day are limited by law to a 30 day Environmental Hearing. This same type of strategy has been used by lawmakers to Fast Track Wind Farms and Run-of-River Hydro plants. Politicians can easily do this if they REALLY CARED ABOUT Jobs, Trade Deficit, Pollution, Peak Oil Crisis, Global Warming. Unfortunately most politicians are only interested in who pumps the most dollars into their pockets, rather than what is good for America. And after the BP Gulf Mega-Oil spill Oil rigs are back to their build & drill frenzy in the Gulf. It would certainly be trivial to do the same with Nuclear if the Politicians weren't in Big Oil/NG & King Coal's pocket.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisQuit posting links that say the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you say in your post summarizing them:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Take the Lipstick Off the Renewables Subsidy Pig and it's a Different Animal.To grasp the meaning of this bar chart, you have to know which line items are embodied in the big ticket items. For example: "Ethanol production received $3.0 billion in blender’s credits under the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit, exceeding any conventional or renewable fuel." That's a three billion dollar pig feeding from the public trough, making food more expensive for humans and real pigs! Subtract that oinker and the renewables bar would drop down to fourth place (total of $1.9 billion for non-ethanol renewable energy support)."
Yeah, and take away Weapons R&D funding, like the NIF, and Nuclear drops to the LOWEST, in spite of it being the largest source of low carbon electricity. Virtually all of that $1.9B renewables funding goes to Wind & Solar which produce Zip for energy. So Subsidy/Energy produced and Wind & Solar are the most heavily subsidized BY FAR.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNope, USA Federal Subsidies for non-carbon emitting electricity, 1950-2006, (renewable subsidies have increased exponentially since 2006):
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2008/09/federal-support-for-non-carbon-dioxide.html
Solar & Wind subsidies: $45B for 0.7% of USA Electricity production
Geothermal: $7B for 0.3%
Hydro: $81B for 7%
Nuclear: $65B for 19%
Thus Hydro received 3.5X the Nuclear Subsidies per TWh of Electricity produced.
Geothermal 6.9X the subsidies of Nuclear.
And commercial Nuclear Power isn't getting ZIP for subsidies anymore, whereas Wind & Solar are getting $10's of billions in the USA alone.
Solar generates at the point of load, taking that building partially, totally, or even NEGATIVELY off the grid during peak usage times. Therefore, it actually EASES stress on the grid, allowing the utility to delay adding more capacity wherever the panels are installed. And the solar jobs are foreign only because of our pigheaded energy policy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBesides, worst case for a nuclear power plant is that you spend $5B or $6B on a reactor but your welds are inferior or you find out that there's an earthquake fault under your plant and the safety rework explodes your budget. The project is cancelled and the utility's ratepayers and/or U.S. taxpayers have to bail out the utility and take the financial hit.
If the reactor actually DOES get built, maybe it's like many of the CANDU reactors that need a multi-billion dollar refurbishment after 5 or 10 years of operation. Maybe it melts down like 3-mile island due to operator error.
Seriously, if you're going to inflate your numbers with shakey assumptions and bogus statistics, it goes both ways. However, all the things I mentioned about nuclear power actually happened while all your solar PV scaremongering is either cherry-picking or outright false.
Lets do the math:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthe energy chain for a gasoline car (efficiency in parantheses)
Crude oil - transport (%95) - refinery (%86) - transport(%95) - distribution(95%) - use(%25) for an end total of %18.4
Energy chain for an EV:
Combined cycle plant(%50) - electric grid(%93) - charge / discharge of EV(%80) for an end total of %37.2.
Exploration and drilling are neglected for both, so an EV has 2x the energy efficiency of a close to ideal gasoline car. See if you agree or disagree on any of my figures.
This doesn't count the liability coverage of the Price Anderson Act. You can spin this inconvenient little fact any way you want, but the fact remains that civilian nuclear power is impossible without the government picking up the liability tab for. horrendous reactor incidents. Incidents like the $100B+ Fukushima debacle, even almost 1 year after the disaster. Or what about how ratepayers and taxpayers had to pick up the tab when all those reactor construction projects failed in the 70s and 80s? How many billions did that cost? How much does preventing nuclear proliferation cost? India, Pakistan and now Iran would have ZERO excuses for messing around with uranium enrichment if they couldn't use their civilian power program as a cover for their weapons program.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisToo bad the "report" you referenced was "60 Years of Energy Incentives - Analysis of Federal Expenditures for Energy Development. Report prepared for The Nuclear Energy Institute, October 2011, 58 pages"
Key words there, REPORT PREPARED FOR THE NUCLEAR ENERGY INSTITUTE!
How about we ask a contractor paid by Exxon how bad oil spills are, or a contractor paid by McDonald's how unhealthy Big Macs are? Heck, here's there mission statement: "Management Information Services, Inc. (MISI) is a Washington, DC-based company that offers cost-effective economic, financial, and computer services to help clients increase sales and profits..."
You are being played, or you're a player yourself!
Sault claims: "...even NEGATIVELY off the grid during peak usage times... EASES stress on the grid, allowing the utility to delay adding more capacity wherever the panels ..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWrong. Solar is a sinusoidal output that peaks at noon, down to nil by 5 pm, just when grid load peaks, a peak that continues into the early evening. So Sault wants expensive fuel-guzzling NG power plants to ramp up in the morning, supplying the shoulder load, then ramp down as Solar gradually increases, and then fire up the NG fuel-guzzlers as Solar declines in the afternoon, as power demand increases. So we pay for the Solar PV PLUS 100% backup in NG Power plants and peak output NG infrastructure. So what point is there in wasting money on the Solar in the first place, why not just install CCGT. Craziness.
Sault claims "...And the solar jobs are foreign only because of our pigheaded energy policy..."
Yeah, right. Solar, which I showed Sault repeatedly is OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive, is going to be even more ridiculous manufactured in the USA under protectionist rules, with proper expensive environmental restrictions, that don't exist in China, and using INCREDIBLY expensive and unreliable Solar & Wind power, rather than dirt cheap, Chinese no environmental controls Coal Power. Sault's plan would result in the IMMEDIATE doubling of Solar PV prices.
Sault claims: "...welds are inferior...earthquake fault under your plant and the safety rework explodes your budget..."
An idiotic statement. You could say that about any skyscraper, NG storage, mega-death LNG tankers & storage facilities, NG mega-death pipelines, Chlorine tanks ..... The proof is in the pudding. The archaic 50's designed Fukushima reactors and all others (unlike Sault's mega-death Oil & Gas facilities) survived the mag 9.2 earthquake just fine. Only the 1000 yr tsunami caused problems with the soon-to-be shutdown Diiachi reactors. Zero deaths. Nuclear still has 100X lower deaths per twh than Sault's NG power plants. And Sault's NG is going to be replaced by the VASTLY more dangerous LNG.
Sault claims: "...CANDU reactors that need a multi-billion dollar refurbishment after 5 or 10 years of..."
More nonsense from Sault. The CANDU's are 25-30 yrs between refurbishment which lasts another 25-30 yrs at a cost of about $1B or $1.4k per kw output vs Sault's cheapest Wind at $12k per kw output good for 20 yrs, and that is ignoring the fact that it needs >90% backup with fuel-guzzling NG power plants which waste as much fuel shadowing the fluctuating wind as the wind could theoretically save.
Sault claims: "...This doesn't count the liability coverage of the Price Anderson Act..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI keep destroying that argument, and you haven't answered NOT EVEN ONE POINT I MADE, you just ignore everything I stated, and continue repeating the same nonsense hoping that repetition somehow makes pure garbage somehow true.
"...Too bad the "report" The Nuclear Energy Institute, October 2011...REPORT PREPARED FOR THE NUCLEAR ENERGY INSTITUTE..."
This was by an INDEPENDENT and reputable analysis agency and shows citations from GOVERNMENT publications for all of it's data:
http://www.misi-net.com/
This is from the Sault, whose favorite "source" is Joe "the censor" Romm who NOT ONLY censors any comment he doesn't like but ACTUALLY EDITS comments to make them sound like they said the opposite of what the commenter intended. One of Joe Romm's & Sault's favorite "citations" is the Toronto Star anti-Nuclear Fanatic, Tyler Hamilton, who repeatedly lies, falsifying or deliberately misinterpreting data, and censors anyone who tries to point out the errors in any of his analysis. I have tried to comment on his columns and get censored every time.
You spew fact-free troll arguments like this and wonder why Joe Romm doesn't want your diatribes on his site? Where's your facts about Natural gas "guzzlers" or efficiency curves for those plants? How come you are blind to the fact that many CANDU reactors needed refurbishment after only 5 - 10 years of operation? How come you don't mention the $5B heavy water plant CANDU reactors need as well as $1.5B in heavy water FOR EACH REACTOR? Do you have something to hide? Does your mind only take in pieces of the story that conform to your preexisting beliefs? Or are you deliberately trying to mislead us?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm beginning to think that a lot of these people are on the nuclear industry's payroll, but considering that %90 of nuclear fanbois are hopeless trolls, I'm beginning to think the fossil fuel industry sends you guys out to disrupt ANY discussion on energy wherever you can.
Me thinks that you forget that there are separator facilities and the gas plant (more separation and processing and chilling) between the well and power plant. Then there are the compression and pipelines to transport the gas to consider.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that if you consider those factor is you are going to be at cost parity, at best, because a huge amount of energy is used between the well site compression and transport to the gas processing plant and then to the power plant.
Simply, if it was more cost and/or energy efficient to be using natural gas to power electricity production and then electric cars we would be doing so. There is not some huge conspiracy that the government and oil companies are in on to screw the people. In fact, why is it that each time the price of gas gets high we have to drag the oil company execs in front of congress in an attempt to shift blame about the cost of energy off of the elected officials (who could quite easily explain the energy does in fact cost money) and on to the evil oil company executives.
There is such a thing as technological inertia and status quo bias. This means that incumbent technologies have a huge advantage of familiarity, existing supply chains and an existing market. You also have to realize that gas and diesel-powered cars have been improved upon by over a century of development by one of the largest industries in the world. Electric cars have been relegated to the technological hinterlands since the early 20th Century.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome government lab or inventor would come up with a new battery technology, like Stan Ovshinsky and his large-format NiMh batteries used in the EV1. Then the automakers would quickly discard it because oil was so cheap and their conventional vehicles were making so much money. As for the NiMh batteries, Chevron bought the patents to them and sued Toyota for using them in the Rav4 EV. Then they sat on the patents until today, requiring the development of Li Ion batteries before EVs were as competitive as they were in the 90s.
Did you know that many of the technologies used in the Toyota Prius were developed by U.S. labs? When the domestic automakers decided to make SUVs instead of hybrids, Toyota scooped up the technology, incorporated their own, and made one of the most remarkable vehicles of the last generation.
We fight so hard to make oil artificially cheap and all we're doing is locking ourselves into a dwindling resource that trashes our environment and enriches our enemies. There are many more factors outside of the free market that determine what our energy landscape looks like today.
I concur that the development of technolgy is important and that there is a bias toward existing technology. I do not argue that there is a problem overcoming that hurdle until we are at at a crisis point.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, the problem is that the elected officials will not stand up and tell the truth when it comes to explaining why the cost of energy is increasing. Because they are more interested in keeping their jobs rather than doing what is right they will just look for the scape goat to pin the problem on to make it look like they care. Simply: people get angry when they have to pay for a product when they think that the cost is not fair. As soon as they are angry they will not listen to the rational arguments about how we have lived in a cheap energy environment for a long time now and that the cost is going to increase if we want to keep living the same lifestyle.
As far as the patent thing goes. If Chevron wants to own that technology, which they did, and Toyota wants to use it then they pay. Whether Chevron is attemtping to: (1) enter the battery market (because trust me they also know that sooner or later if they want to survive they need to diverisfy in the energy market) or (2) they want to supress the technology (which is a poor business investment know what they know regarding point 1) it does not matter one bit.
For better, worse or indifferent it is going to be the cost of creating and using energy that will dictate the future of the market.
Here is another spin on the abudant consipracy theories regarding the actions of oil companies and government and their collusion to keep the cost of oil artificially low to fill their pockets. Let's take for a fact that he that controls the energy supply controls the world because when it comes right down to it you cannot do much without energy. Now let's assume that people (no names included just use your imagination here) figure this out. Now if they support 'green energy' and package it as our only reasonable alternative and then villify the existing power brokers to further their cause then ltimately who benefits? Certainly not the people paying more for energy. Presumably the profit margin is going to be the same (more or less) so who gets to line their pockets with that cash?
If it is believable that the oil industry, and all the companies, and colluding to do so then why not the green energy proponents? I do not actually believe in either of these conspiracies but it is an interesting thought experiment.
You just have to follow the money. Being an oil company is basically a license to print money and the oil majors act like anything outside their core business model is a distraction. In fact, they have spent $100M in advertising "clean energy" research investments of $10M or a somewhat similar ratio thereof.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisChevron did NOTHING with their battery patent and refused to license the technology. Toyota had licensed the battery tech before Chevron had acquired it, but they still threatened a lawsuit and Toyota settled out of court. Just think if there was an electric car available in 2000 that had a 140-mile range? How much would that have threatened Chevron's main, blinders-on, buisness model?
Industries collude all the time. It's called lobbying and trade groups. However, the oil industry colludes and puts political pressure to preserve unfair subsidies and preferential treatment, while clean energy companies are merely asking for a level playing field and a little help from the government to counteract the historic and on-going market interferance on behalf of the fossil fuel interests.
Fine but there is no fact based arguement in your last post ... just rhetoric which is exactly what I posted in #81 to see if you would understand that the rhetoric is only true if you buy into that point of view.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou have no proof of why Chevron did what they did but you certainly can speculate. Unfortunately speculation is not proof and therefore it does not support your arguement.
From my point of view it is not giving 'green energy' a fair playing field by supplying them with subsidies just as is it not fair to subsidize ethanol production to lower the cost of gasoline that is mandated to use it. In my humble opinion the ethanol subsidy is just Congress avoiding blame for legislating the use of ethanol in gasoline which would increase the price without the subsidies.
Others are going to have other points of view and therefore emotionally biased posts do little to prove one's point.
I was told by a geolgist probably 18-20 years ago when oil prices had come down so much and wells were being shut in that it is just too bad this is happening. Once an oil well is shut in it is very difficult to resume production and whtever was left would likely remain there. Is this really true? It seems with rising prices there will come advances in enhanced recovery perhaps providing another cushion to price rises by going back to old shut in wells. After all we know exactly where the oil is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks to anyone with insight on this.
The USGS says about 400 billion barrels of recoverable oil lie in the Arctic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut importantly, the USGS also acknowledges the oil shale of the Rockies is about 2 trillion barrels. Where's the disconnect? The study cited in the article doesn't include precursor petroleum of which oil shale and oil sand are categorized.
The Carbon Trap, a new ecological thriller describes mankind's attempts to reduce CO2 going awry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy worry about peak oil? In twenty years time there will be no phosphates left, so no cereals!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@2008RealityCheck The USGS numbers in this area are fatally flawed. On The Oil Drum there are several commenters who have been part of major discovery projects in the Arctic. Billions of dollars later all they found was gas, which is exactly what you'd expect given the geology there. And it was extraordinarily expensive to work up there. Any oil they eventually find will not come at a price this economy can afford.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou're missing the cost issue. There is plenty of oil, but when it's deep down or far from transportation infrastructure, or stuck up in the arctic where it can't be piped without spending a bunch of energy to heat the oil and make it flow in the pipe, the COST gets so high that it's not worth it. The deeper in the ground, the harder to get it up and out. The energy cost is paid in OIL meaning the NET oil you get out is lower and lower (we use all the easy/good stuff first). Don't underestimate scientists who have been analyzing this issue for 80 years. Their methods and data get better every year. Hubbard accurately predicted peak oil in the lower-48 of the USA, and his prediction (based on insufficient data) for the world was about 2001, only 4 years early. We're not "running out", but running out of the cheap, high net-energy stuff. It will be a slow decline over decades and decades, but it will choke economic growth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@2008RealityCheck: oil-shale and tar sands have extremely low energy returns. It doesn't matter how much is there, because it takes so much oil to run the equipment to get it out the ground and process it than the energy return on investment is only 3:1 or so (compared to 20:1 for today's light sweet crude; and 100:1 for the oil we used up early in the 20th century). Also, the rate at which we can dig it up is slow. It will provide a trickle of oil for the rest of the century or longer, but it will not prevent a yearly decline in net oil production.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps the most remarkable thing about the current Sci American article are the comments in this forum.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese reader comments reflect the views of people who are (mostly) educated, and often knowledgeable about matters related to energy. So what do we see?? Arguing, bickering, finger pointing, and a COMPLETE lack of clarity.
I conclude on the basis of the feedback here that we are headed for an energy catastrophe in the next 2-3 decades (probably sooner). It is guaranteed because our scientists, engineers and politicians cannot even communicate in a clear and fact-based way.
The logical conclusion is to expect war and a collapse of our current financial/economic system.
"These reader comments reflect the views of people who are (mostly) educated, and often knowledgeable about matters related to energy. So what do we see?? Arguing, bickering, finger pointing, and a COMPLETE lack of clarity."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI see everything you see but a little more.
It makes me infinitely hopeful to see the AGREEMENT that has taken place here about the reality of Peak Oil.
Sault, Evosburgh and DWDB are arguing but not over the reality of Peak Oil, just about what is the best technology to take the place of conventional crude oil.
I don't know what technology will "save" humanity from the carbon trap we've entered but it doesn't mean extinction.
The hardest hit by peak oil will be the country that has already benefited the most from the cheap stuff. (The United States)
Yes the peak in extraction has already happened. For true industry experts there is not too much debate. However we have huge reserves of already extracted oil that has not been used. So basically we have not used half yet; at least in volume: not time. I think the last estimate was 944 billion barrels used, and 1333 billion barrels left. 1333 will not last as long as the first 944 billion because of China and India's growth. In about 20 years, assuming these numbers are true, the markets will begin to panic and it will be the beginning of the end for the era of oil. Lets hope we have an alternative energy infrastructure by then. Even if the numbers are wrong we should at least hedge are bets; and they could be wrong in either direction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this