An apology to all future generations: Sorry we used up your oil...

  • Thread starter Zardoz
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Good story on the World Economic Forum meeting:

Fossil-Fueled Worries

The upshot of five days of intense meetings: World leaders need to prepare short-term energy crunch strategies, and come up with new ways to augment supplies in the long term. Jeroen Van der Veer CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant, speaking to NEWSWEEK, summed up the prevailing mood: "The era of easy oil is most likely over."

As demand rises, traditional wells in many countries are running low, forcing companies to start looking at "unconventional" oil supplies in deep water and rock shale. But those reserves are both expensive to tap and environmentally unfriendly, since it takes so much more energy to extract them...

...In fact, most of the experts assembled, whether they were from the energy industry, environmental or governmental camps agreed that bio-fuels, wind, and solar power aren't viable solutions to fill the world's energy needs in the near term future, either in terms of supply or cost.



Let's hope the CEO of Total is correct about the peak of production being 15 years away. A lot of people think he's dreaming.
 
We'll close out February with these cheery little charts:

oilproductionjan062ay.jpg



Any questions about when we hit the "undulating plateau" of the peak of world oil production?

2020? 2012? 2008? We wish!

We're there, folks. The Hirsch Report's worst-case oil crunch scenario is unfolding right before our eyes, right now. It's only a matter of time before TSHTF.

Things may get very ugly, very soon. Cross your fingers and hope for the best...
 
Your lack of consideration for market flexibility is astonishing. That chart hasn't even begun to fall and already you're calling out death and doom. Sure, things are going to change, but they're not going to be as bad as you think.
 
danoff
...Sure, things are going to change, but they're not going to be as bad as you think.

I truly and sincerely hope you're completely right.

It all depends on how steep the slope is on the decline. If it's shallow, we'll sort of make out, somehow. If it's a quick drop, we'll see some real hardship, worldwide.

In any case, we're going to be doing some serious scrambling pretty soon...
 
Zardoz
I truly and sincerely hope you're completely right.

Me too. :)

It all depends on how steep the slope is on the decline. If it's shallow, we'll sort of make out, somehow. If it's a quick drop, we'll see some real hardship, worldwide.

I agree, but I don't quite see how it's possible for the world output to fall off quickly. That would require many many oil wells in different regions to all drop off simultaneously. I'm not saying it would be impossible, just improbable.
 
What makes you think that a slowing in the increase of production means for certain that it will start going down? The chart is only over a four-year period; not the best indicator.
 
kylehnat
What makes you think that a slowing in the increase of production means for certain that it will start going down?

Because it isn't a "slowing in the increase of production". It's a complete levelling off. Look at it again.

Several petroleum geologist types have been predicting this exact "undulating plateau" scenario for a long time. It fits the depletion models of those who have been branded as "doom-and-gloom pessimists" in the past. Let's hope they aren't looked back on as "eerily accurate visionaries", but that may be the case.

Several of the biggest oil fields in the world are already in decline, such as Kuwait's Burgan, Mexico's Cantarell, and the UK's North Sea. At the moment everybody is on pins and needles about the Mother Lode of all petroleum reserves, Saudi Arabia's mammoth Ghawar field. Ghawar has been in production for fifty years now, and there are many clues and indications that it may have peaked out very recently. The Saudis continue to deny it, and there's no way to verify what is happening because Saudi-Aramco is so secretive, but concern about it is growing.

We'll see what happens, but one thing we can keep an eye on right now is the projected demand for the first quarter of 2006, which is over 86 million barrels a day, versus the production level, which appears to be stuck at 84 million. The definition of "peak oil" is the point at which demand permanently exceeds supply. Stay tuned and pay attention. We may be there already.
 
All I can ask is this. Why is it that when I try and find my own data charts nothing goes back farther than 1997? Why am I getting a short term view of this? Oil decline alarmist/activist sites never seen to go back farther than 2002. I saw one that only showed a five month chart. I can look at a chart and show a small snippet and then claim that it shows whatever I want it to say.

Zardoz, I offer you this challenge. Find me an oil production chart that goes back to at least 1970 so that I can see this is not something that has happened before and is definitely a plateauing. I would also like a comparitive chart showing the growth of environmental groups and their political activism (not ELF type stuff) so that I can be sure that any production slowing is not due to "not in my backyard" activism. I like to make sure I have all relevant data before I make a decision and change my mindset.


That all said I do have a graph I did find.
Zeal120205A.gif

This appears to show that the supply has not slowed drastically in comparison to demand. I think that would be a key factor in the doom and gloom scenarios. The only time I see demand outpace supply was when the war started, which did create a disruption in supply. Things look to be just getting back to normal now though. It seems as that your chart shows from the beginning of the supply "catch-up" period, which ended in 2005 and began its normal rate of increase. That might explain the huge growth from 2002 to 2005 that appears to slow, not flatten, from 2005 to 2006. And really, even if the war and a supply drop hadn't happened in 2001-2002 wouldn't you think that the basis of one year's data was a bit drastic to start freaking out over.

I mean if I tried to show you where one year had an average claimate temperature decrease and used that as basis for saying global warming had ended you would be blasting me.
 
FoolKiller
...Find me an oil production chart that goes back to at least 1970...

Here you go:

http://www.oilposter.org/index.html

I haven't gotten around to ordering a hard copy of this impressive piece of work, which would certainly be easier to read than the little digital image of it, but if you click on it and look really closely you can make out the dates along the bottom (starting at 1860 in ten-year increments) and the quantity on the left (in billions of barrels per year).

Look what went on from 1950 to 1970! We just went frickin' nuts. We started swilling down oil like there really was no tomorrow.

Yes, there have been dips before, and let's hope that's all we're seeing now, rather than the realization of the predictions. Remember, though, that those dips in the past did not occur after multiple major fields started petering out, which is what is different about the current scenario.

For what its worth, this chart predicts the peak in 2008, and a pretty steep decline after that. It doesn't predict the levelling off we seem to be seeing now.

(This version is too small to read, but I have it on Imageshack, so here it is: )

oilconsumptionposter5fq.jpg
 
I've actually seen that one before... wanted to order it, myself. Forgotten about it till now. Amazing poster, and anyone who thinks oil will last forever ought to at least give it more than a cursory glance.

I do think those consumption numbers are going to continue going up, with growth in China as it is. Sadly, Chinese authorities are focusing on creating a road infrastructure instead of public transport in order to spur foreign investment and industrial growth from automakers.

Whether or not this is peak oil, I think a major adjustment, a la the 1970's oil crisis, to take place pretty soon. But from all indications, this is probably the big one.

I wonder what the definition of a "steep" decline would be, and how survivable it would be. Could we survive a drop of even 25% of total consumption? Who's going to suffer the most?
 
niky
Whether or not this is peak oil, I think a major adjustment, a la the 1970's oil crisis, to take place pretty soon. But from all indications, this is probably the big one.
Odd that you should mention the 1970's "shortage" and and how this appears to be the big one in the same paragraph. Every time gas goes up I get a 30 minute lecture over the phone from my dad how they are saying the same stuff now as they did then. I can't verify what he actually heard since I wasn't there.

Of course he also thinks Republicans are liberal and Democrats are conservative. He knows their policies, he just can't get his adjectives connected to the right group. :boggled:
 
Zardoz
For what its worth, this chart predicts the peak in 2008, and a pretty steep decline after that. It doesn't predict the levelling off we seem to be seeing now.

That's all that chart is, a prediction - a prediction that doesn't follow the trend from previous years but attempts to take a whole lot into account.

Maybe that chart is right, or maybe it's completely wrong... but I don't agree with your assement that it's particularly sharp and the shape of that curve can be disputed I'm sure.

For all we know it'll level off for a few years and then start a steady but very slow decline. Or maybe it'll dip for a while and then pop back up. Or maybe it'll spike down and then level off. This doesn't appear to be a very exact science.
 
danoff
...This doesn't appear to be a very exact science.

Yer damned right it isn't exact. That's the heart of the problem. Nobody, and I mean nobody, knows precisely what is going on. There are apparently a nearly infinite amount of variables.

Hell, there's all kinds of debate about the actual amount of "recoverable" (both easily-recoverable and theoretically-recoverable) oil there really is. The conventional wisdom is that it's two trillion barrels (and we've now used over half of it), others think it's more like three or four trillion, but even they say those last couple of trillion will be like pulling teeth to actually get (tar sands, for instance), and will be horrendously expensive.

All we can do is just wait and watch...
 
This guy's post on "The Oil Drum" site summarizes the situation pretty darned well. There are a lot of indicators that we've maxed out. Seems like I've been saying this a lot lately, but, once again, I sure hope he's wrong:

Why Peak Oil is probably about now

The "coffee-spitting" that New York Times readers may have done this morning refers to this story that the Times ran today:

Summary of the Times story

It's behind a paywall, available only to subscribers to the Times, but the summary is enough to get the gist of it. He's probably right about some coffee being spat...
 
I drink an oil smoothy for breakfast before school, have a grilled oil for lunch, or maybe a sundae with some oil on top, then I do a huge burnout in my '67 Cadillac--yeah, it's got the 500--as I leave the school parking lot. I change my oil every week and dump the old onto the sidewalk in front of my house, though sometimes I put it down the suewer.
Take that, EPA.:lol:

No, I was being serious...
 
Pfft, that's nothing! I change my oil before every time I start my engine. Startup is hardest on your engine, you know. I also drain the gasoline out of my tank and refill it. When it sits, even for 15 minutes, some of it turns into kerosene, and I don't want to start putting that useless sludge through my fuel injectors.
 
Whe I fill up up, I spray this stuff on the pump nozzle that keeps it from detecting the fumes, so it doesn't stop pumping. I never can time it right, so it ends up with gas spraying all over the concrete, but it's okay, I just wipe off the side of the car--that stuff eats clearcoat like acid! I buy octane booster more often than gum. I wax my car with Vaseline, too. I use diesel fuel for my bond-fire tinder; it burns way longer and dirtier than any wood ever could. I hated it when my pool used to freeze in winter, so I started covering it with a thick layer of crude and sludge; it fends of the freeze and halts the evaporation. It's really tough to get it clean in the spring, though, so my buddies and I all get our 8 gas-powered shop vacs together and suck out all the oil and contaminated water, then we dump them in my neighbor's yard and start pumping again. I doesn't soak in very well, so I drench it with the fire hydrant, which is in my front yard, then I get a firetruck-style hose, hook it up, and fill my pool up. It's kind of dirty, though, so I dump in about 12 gallons of chlorine to clear it up. I hate previously opened chlorine bottles, they stink up my shed, so I dump the leftover chlorine in my neighbors yard, right where I put the oil. Round Up can't even beat Cl in killing vast amounts of vegery and, well, anything, so now I have, err, my neighbor, has a nice sludgey death swamp in his front yard. You can see the green fumes evaporating in the summer heat. It burns your eyes just to look at it. I swear it's radioactive.
 
The major probelm i have is that when i get older, all the major dreams cars i have alwasy wanted to have will be nearly impossible to aquire and drive. I mean I will be no millionaire but i hope to aquire enough money for a used ferrari. So I will be old and my dream ferrari will be in the scrap heap or for a 3 hr drive down the country side will cost me 50 dollars a gallon.
 
Lamboracer
The major probelm i have is that when i get older, all the major dreams cars i have alwasy wanted to have will be nearly impossible to aquire and drive. I mean I will be no millionaire but i hope to aquire enough money for a used ferrari. So I will be old and my dream ferrari will be in the scrap heap or for a 3 hr drive down the country side will cost me 50 dollars a gallon.

No such luck. The more the gas prices go up, the faster the value of these cars will plummet. But gasoline is a tiny fraction of the cost of ferrari ownership - and so gasoline prices are not likely to affect the folks who own exotics any time soon. The rest of us will have long abandoned out gass guzzlers in favor of more efficient transportation before people actually let gasoline affect whether they get that exotic car.

If you were planning on buying a ferrari, I don't think this is going to hinder you one bit. Yes, you might have to poney up 50 times as much for gasoline as you were planning on, but what is that in terms of the price of the car? Nothing.
 
keef
Whe I fill up up, I spray this stuff on the pump nozzle that keeps it from detecting the fumes, so it doesn't stop pumping. I never can time it right, so it ends up with gas spraying all over the concrete, but it's okay, I just wipe off the side of the car--that stuff eats clearcoat like acid! I buy octane booster more often than gum. I wax my car with Vaseline, too. I use diesel fuel for my bond-fire tinder; it burns way longer and dirtier than any wood ever could. I hated it when my pool used to freeze in winter, so I started covering it with a thick layer of crude and sludge; it fends of the freeze and halts the evaporation. It's really tough to get it clean in the spring, though, so my buddies and I all get our 8 gas-powered shop vacs together and suck out all the oil and contaminated water, then we dump them in my neighbor's yard and start pumping again. I doesn't soak in very well, so I drench it with the fire hydrant, which is in my front yard, then I get a firetruck-style hose, hook it up, and fill my pool up. It's kind of dirty, though, so I dump in about 12 gallons of chlorine to clear it up. I hate previously opened chlorine bottles, they stink up my shed, so I dump the leftover chlorine in my neighbors yard, right where I put the oil. Round Up can't even beat Cl in killing vast amounts of vegery and, well, anything, so now I have, err, my neighbor, has a nice sludgey death swamp in his front yard. You can see the green fumes evaporating in the summer heat. It burns your eyes just to look at it. I swear it's radioactive.

Cool!
 
Seriously, it glows at night. This duck landed in it one day, or tried to. I was watching it and all I heard when the duck hit the stuff was "PPPPFFFFssssshhhhhhhh..." Never saw that duck again.
 
danoff
...The more the gas prices go up, the faster the value of these cars will plummet...

That's undoubtedly true. I would expect the price of a 12 MPG Ferrari Maranello to be pretty low in fifteen or twenty years.

And what the hell, just having something like that and doing a restoration job on it will be nearly as much fun as driving it. Sure, your time behind the wheel will be way limited compared to "the good old days" that you'll be looking back on, but I'll bet you still end up with one. Don't give up on that dream.

(And who knows, there may be a lot of ethanol available, and you can make a project out of converting the beast to run on it.)
 
Zardoz
That's undoubtedly true. I would expect the price of a 12 MPG Ferrari Maranello to be pretty low in fifteen or twenty years.

And what the hell, just having something like that and doing a restoration job on it will be nearly as much fun as driving it. Sure, your time behind the wheel will be way limited compared to "the good old days" that you'll be looking back on, but I'll bet you still end up with one. Don't give up on that dream.

(And who knows, there may be a lot of ethanol available, and you can make a project out of converting the beast to run on it.)


I think if you're willing to fork over enough cash to purchase a ferrari, you can afford some serious gasoline prices to take it for a spin. If you think about how much the car goes down in value for every mile you drive it now, even if gas cost a ton more later it won't make a big difference.

I predict that exotic prices will remain very high and people will still think it's worth it to fill them up - even at insane gas prices.
 
I have this funny feeling that Ferrari or Lamborghini really aren't considering producing hybrids or hydrogen or diesel cars. I've already read in my magazines, a Motor Trend, that Porsche just won't build a diesel. Simple as that. They interveiwed the top dog, Wendelin Wiedeking. He said he'd build a hybrid if it was necessary, but never a diesel.
Back to F&L. They are two of the most stubborn car companies on the planet, and they definitely aren't going to change just because gas is really expensive. It doesn't take many changes to run ethanol, so they might rebuild their engines to do that, but that's about as far as I see that going.
Can you imagine a hydrogen powered Ferrari? Why bother, it doesn't even make noise. It'd be heavier and way slower, too.
 
Exotics are going to stay expensive. Doesn't matter whether high octane is $3 a gallon or $30... especially when you only drive the car about fifteen miles a week... on the weeks you actually take it out.

That's why I wholeheartedly recommended the purchase of an XJR to an uncle of mine. Who cares about crappy drivetrain quality (which, realistically, isn't as bad as Jaguars of old) on a museum piece? When the oil runs out, that aluminum beauty will sit all shiny and lovely and un-rustedly in his garage for another hundred or two hundred years.

Guess he took that part to heart. He had glass walls installed in his garage just so people can ogle it. :lol:
 
keef
Why bother, it doesn't even make noise. It'd be heavier and way slower, too.
You have just found the reason that I, as a car buff, will always have trouble with newer technologies. Make it as clean as you want, but for the love of God, or whatever you find great and holy on this planet, don't take away some of the things that make a sports car great such as power, the roar of an engine, and the ability to feel the power even when it is idling. It must look, feel, and sound like a beast ready to lunge. I will accept nothing less.
 
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