9 Comments

1. 1. cjwirth 07:13 PM 12/18/08

   The end of cheap oil is now:
   
   Independent studies (reviewed in the Peak Oil Report
   
   http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
   
   by Clifford J. Wirth) conclude that Peak Oil production will occur (or has occurred) between 2005 to 2010 (projected year for peak in parentheses), as follows:
   
   * Association for the Study of Peak Oil (2007)
   
   * Rembrandt Koppelaar, Editor of Oil Watch Monthly (2008 to 2010)
   
   * Tony Eriksen, Oil stock analyst (2008)
   
   * Matthew Simmons, Energy investment banker, (2007)
   
   * T. Boone Pickens, Oil and gas investor (2007)
   
   * U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (2005)
   
   * Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Princeton professor and retired shell Geologist (2005)
   
   * Sam Sam Bakhtiari, Retired Iranian National Oil Company geologist (2005)
   
   * Chris Skrebowski, Editor of Petroleum Review (2010)
   
   * Sadad Al Husseini, former head of production and exploration, Saudi Aramco (2008)
   
   * Energy Watch Group in Germany (2006)
   
   
   Independent studies conclude that global crude oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time, demand will increase. Oil supplies will be even tighter for the U.S. As oil producing nations consume more and more oil domestically they will export less and less. Because demand is high in China, India, the Middle East, and other oil producing nations, once global oil production begins to decline, demand will always be higher than supply. And since the U.S. represents one fourth of global oil demand, whatever oil we conserve will be consumed elsewhere. Thus, conservation in the U.S. will not slow oil depletion rates significantly.
   
   Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment. The independent scientists of the Energy Watch Group conclude in a 2007 report titled: Peak Oil Could Trigger Meltdown of Society:
   
   "By 2020, and even more by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can hardly be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame."
   
   http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Press_Oilreport_22-10-2007.pdf
   
   With increasing costs for gasoline and diesel, along with declining taxes and declining gasoline tax revenues, states and local governments will eventually have to cut staff and curtail highway maintenance. Eventually, gasoline stations will close, and state and local highway workers wont be able to get to work. We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel and gasoline powered trucks for bridge maintenance, culvert cleaning to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, and roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, large transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables from great distances. With the highways out, there will be no food coming from far away, and without the power grid virtually nothing modern works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated building systems.
   
   This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
   
   I used to live in NH-USA, but moved to a sustainable place. Anyone interested in relocating to a nice, pretty, sustainable area with a good climate and good soil? Email: clifford dot wirth at yahoo dot com or give me a phone call which operates here as my old USA-NH number 603-668-4207. http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/
   

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

2. 2. nfiertel 12:22 AM 12/19/08

   Interestingly, I heard recently that Saudi discovered another oil pool equal to their entire earlier oil discoveries. True or not, I cannot say. In any case, I remember the great threat of resources ending thirty years ago by the Club of Rome. Hmmm. Half of the fears that people have about all of this is based upon advantages to certain businesses to keep prices high. Sure inevitably we will run out of chemical energy never mind polluting the atmosphere and cities and causing global warming ( I say this hunkered down in a minus thirty celsius local temperature) but I have my doubts that the highways system will be abandoned or any of this fear mongering. Humans have taken over this planet for better or worse because we are a clever primate and we will invent alternatives to traverse those very highways. We are not going to turn into a stone age world again. Those that postulate this are not unlike the religious folks who are waiting for the end of the world. By the way, the Alberta Oil Sands are far less polluting than the stupid production of ethanol from FOOD in the US. Rather, the plan is to use nuclear power to melt the oil out of the sand rather than burn gas to do the job. Further, carbon capture technology is being developed to inject into deep strata the gases inevitably produced in certain part of the processes. Whether you like it or not, until there is a real alternative to fossil fuels, we are going to be using them. There is as much recoverable oil in Canada as in the Middle East and it is not supplying money to terror sympathetic regimes as buying oil from Saudi Arabia. I agree, surely, that much money needs to be put into alternative energy but it is going to be a long slog to producing enough energy to replace oil. It will happen but in the meantime, Canada will be supplying the North American market for sure so keep those highways working. If the US chooses not to buy so called dirty oil from Canada..fine. China would love to get it instead. It matters not a bit to me.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

3. 3. al0253 07:10 AM 12/19/08

   About an electric car: http://al0253.okis.ru/Engl.html
   The full text (russian): http://al0253.okis.ru/

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

4. 4. al0253 07:14 AM 12/19/08

   About an electric car: http://al0253.okis.ru/Engl.html
   The full text (russian): http://al0253.okis.ru/

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

5. 5. LeaderofMen 07:32 AM 12/19/08

   Can we talk about Obama's energy plan for America? A paradigm shift is on the way. Once we stop burning oil and use it for the manufacture of PRODUCTS ONLY, we will be far better off. It's quite unfortunate that we've burned so much of it. It's an extremely valuable resource that has resulted in the manufacture of goods that are nearly indispensable. Oil use will not go away any time soon. We just need to stop BURNING IT.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

6. 6. cjwirth in reply to LeaderofMen 08:13 AM 12/19/08

   The Peak Oil energy crisis is a catastrophe that will soon be embroil the nation.
   
   Because energy policy is highly political, complex, and cuts across all areas of society, President Obama would be wise to commission the National Academy of Sciences to study Peak Oil impacts and alternatives.
   
   Only the NAS is qualified to advise the president and congress on the energy crises facing the nation and the world.
   
   Without the recommendations of the NAS, interest groups will dictate national energy policy.
   
   My review of scientific and government studies indicates that alternatives will not fill the gap in declining oil supplies.
   
   This is documented in a free 48 page report that can be downloaded, website posted, distributed, and emailed: http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
   
   and there is more information on the Peak Oil crisis here: http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

7. 7. jb 02:48 PM 12/20/08

   nfiertel:
   
   I agree with you to a point. However with the global "pot" of oil, I really don't see how it matters who we get it from - it's all one big balloon. Buying it from Canada rather than the Middle East only makes sure that someone who would be buying it from Canada will buy it from the Middle East. When demand exceeds supply, any producer will be able to hold the world hostage. If political unrest curtails production anywhere, those purchasing oil there will bid up the price of oil and Canada will certainly sell for the highest price leaving us is the same predicament as if we were buying directly from the Middle East, Russia etc.
   
   The only way I see for us to rid ourselves of this international tether is to become oil independent even though the costs will show it to be more expensive than buying on the open market.
   
   There are many ways that we can convert to the grid such as:
   
   Electric city busses (old technology)
   Electrification of freight trains
   Electric Cars
   
   And so on.
   
   This will all cost money which means as a society we will have less money available for wide screen TV’s, luxury vacations, large homes and several other things that are of lesser importance.
   

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

8. 8. diacad 06:02 PM 12/23/08

   I am not so sure I fully believe in "peak oil" as it is usually presented.
   It could be a "chicken little" scare tactic to usher in higher oil prices
   and subsidies to oil companies' alternative energy projects. So many things
   are done for reasons other than stated to benefit certain vested interests.
   For example, the extent and perfidy of the "ethanol" scam is now coming to
   light. Sorry to say that politicians in the state of my youth (Iowa) such
   as Harkins and others, played a part in this fiasco. The farmers have been
   originally behind it, but the thing will tragically blow up in their faces.
   
   Some of those truly "huge" oil company profits are already going into
   alternative energy R&D, and that should be alarming. If you scratch almost
   any large-scale solar, wind, atomic, or biofuel project along these lines,
   you will find oil company money. The real problem is oligarchic monopoly in
   the energy business, not oil per se. Some of these oil-funded "alternative"
   projects even have the nerve of asking for public subsidies to further
   development and consolidation of their own future private profit potential.
   Most alternative energy projects require extensive capitalization; why not
   leverage it out of a panicked public? As one song asks, "when will we ever
   learn?", another answers "it's the rich what gets the gravy, and th' poor
   what gets th' blyme". Ain't it a bloomin' shyme!
   
   There is a controversy about the origins of oil that has been carefully kept
   out of public discussion. In the old Soviet Union, the dominating theory of
   oil formation was abiotic, that is, non life-based. This view is still held
   in the Russia of today, their prospectors go by that theory, and they are
   one of the leading oil producers in the world. The dominating theory in the
   west has been that oil is a fossil fuel. But there have been mavericks here
   who adhere to the abiotic theory, such as the late Dr. Tommy Gold, a
   respected cosmologist who pointed to the primordial methane content of the
   outer planets as evidence of abiotic hydrocarbons in our solar system, and
   had done calculations showing the unlikelihood of such hugh quantities of
   oil from once living matter (fossil fuel theory). Also, it has been found
   that many oil fields, left as "played out", replenish themselves after a
   number of years (and in our lifetime, no dinosaurs or plankton necessary).
   I am absolutely agnostic on this issue, not having made a study of it. But
   what I have found is enough to question some "peak oil" assumptions that are
   made without hearing all sides of the controversy.
   
   It is ironic that, under an oil man for President, we should have developed
   such a murky view of the oil and energy situation, and have no intelligent
   policy about how to deal with it.
   

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this

9. 9. Henri 03:14 AM 12/27/08

   1)The current economic downturn is temporarily hiding the reality of peak oil. When the world economy eventually recovers (when that will be is another question) demand will surge ahead of supply. Since current oil prices and the credit crunch lead to reduced investments in exploration and development , oil price rises may hit harder even than earlier in 2008.
   2) Now to the Saudi oil ministers comment:'The Stone age didn't end for lack of stones'. Funny , but misleading. People didn't stop using stones at the end of the stone age! The started using a lot more, they just stopped using stones for basic tools! Even today, stones are probably tonnage wise our most important raw material for creating infrastructure (think limestone for making cement, think ballast for roads and railroads), so you may well argue that we are still in a way in the stone age and are likely to remain there well after fossil fuels are exhausted. Stones will last forever, fossil fuels won't.

   Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this