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Has World Oil Production Passed Its Peak?
dido writes "Princeton University geology Professor Kenneth Deffeyes has been studying world petroleum production data and has come to the conclusion that the world hit peak oil last December 16, 2005. If he is correct, total world oil production will never surpass what was produced last December. From the article: 'Compared to 2004, world oil production was up 0.8 percent in 2005, nowhere near enough to compensate for a demand rise of roughly 3 percent. The high prices did not bring much additional oil out of the ground. Most oil-producing countries are in decline."
I remember in college a geologist was invited to demonstrate a "resource simulator" for our class. By today's standards it would be considered extremely crude (this was after all, in 1978), (wow, weird unintentional pun).
The simulation was basically a giant video game with a simple graphical display of the world's known and projected resources including but not limited to:
About 20 students in the class were given controllers, each to (again, crudely) simulate usage and comsumption patterns of all of these resources. Also, some students had controllers allowing them to spend resources to explore for MORE resources.
At the time, and years subsequent that demo stayed with me -- it left an indelible image of what could and probably would be.
The results? Basically, no matter what the students did to conserve, and what they did to increase the resources, the "world" pretty much always ran out of fuel and resources by the year 2020. At the time that seemed pretty far away and I don't think many people felt the need to care. Maybe that time has come.
Another interesting piece of the simulation: there were those students who pointed out these "estimates" of known and expected future discoveries of resources were just that, "estimates". The geologist obliged, and let the students rerun the simulations with a magnitude of latitude, i.e., ten times the estimated resources were allocated! The results then?, about an additional 10 to 20 years of resources before they ran out.
Note: the results (we ran many different trials) weren't ALWAYS about running out of oil and petroleum. On a few occasions there were severe food and water crises. A very interesting lesson.
If this is true, hope that hybrid technology and alternative fuels come along in a big way in the next few years. Otherwise, we'll be looking at significantly higher gas prices in the coming years.
Here's the site devoted to peakoil: http://www.peakoil.net/
D E9-42BC-920B-91E5850FB067.htm
A huge chunk of Saudi exports come from one gigantic field. This means our eggs are in this one basket. Here's an article that discusses that field, and the chance that the Saudis might have screwed it by over-extracting. If you do that, you limit how much you can get out later; you might lose the reserves. [I'm guessing you might damage it, but that some future technology might make it recoverable -- just at a higher cost]
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/80C89E7E-1
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Wouldn't oil companies want to reduce production so that they can hike up prices for the oil that they currently have? Or am I missing a basic element of economics?
The rising prices make ethanol based petrol a much more viable alternative.
Perhaps new cars will implement the required modifications to prevent corrosion throughout the engines from higher percentages of ethanol in petrol.
I worked for a MAJOR oil pipeline and exploration company in the 80's.
Oil prices drove the drilling/exploring companies to Arab countries, just like China is taking certain industries down in the US right now.
If oil prices were to stabilize in the US at a profitable level, exploration and drilling would resume.
But the US would rather let environmentalist driving SUV's sue the living SH*T out of everybody.
This exports the oil production and pollution to some other country rather than allow exploration to continue in the US. At last count only 2.5% of the "projected oil producing land-mass" of the US had been investigated.
It's not a lack of oil, it's a surplus of lawyers.
B
The author also seems to support simple extrapolation by stating that "By 2025, we're going to be back in the Stone Age"
That's certainly overstating it a bit, but on the other hand, most people seem to be of the mindset that 'oh this peak oil thing was just something someone made up. Don't believe the hype!' They think it's like Y2K. Scary...until it really happens and it turns out it wasn't so bad after all....
I really, really, really, wish that was the case. But I'm afraid it just isn't. A lot of people are living in fantasy land right now and assuming that any spike in oil prices is going to be like the 1970s. But after a point, it won't just come back down. Extrapolation works rather well in this case because there's no real reason to believe that the world's oil consumption is going to dramatically decrease, and considering that oil-producing countries are basically operating on the same fields they always have been (because there just aren't very many new ones). Oil price fluctuates because of the rest of the supply chain, not because there are new wells being drilled and others shut down all the time. Relatively speaking, it's a fairly predictable economy.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
I have a minor in Geology and recently took a class on Geology and World Affairs, the Professor has his Ph.D in Petroleum Geology and worked in the field for around 30 years with a focus on the North Sea and Texas Oil. That professor also professed the Peak Oil theory, however a problem with him, and other Petroleum Geologists with a focus on "rock oil" is an over specialzation on "rock oil". When I asked during our discussions on Peak Oil about Tar Sands or Oil Shales, I was told that "...if it don't come up through a pipe most Petroleum Geologists don't know a damned thing about it." And that in particular, this Professor with his 30 years experiance didn't know a damned thing about it because that isn't what his firms worked on.
Now then, I don't know what Professor Kenneth S. Deffeyes background is, but I can see he is writing books on the subject as so has a vested and economic interest in this theory. Furthermore he seems to discount Ethanol, fuel cells, Methane hydrates, oil shale, and Nuclear power, as "shimmering dreams" so I think one needs to take what he is saying with a grain of salt since, as stated before, his vested interest to make money at this point is "peak oil".
The truth behind "rock oil" right now is that there is alot being used, and there is alot out there and there are still a good number of basins which have not been explored, including the Arctic Ocean and there is alot of oil we can recoved in "played out" areas with new techniques and with new technologies.
Not to denegrate Princeton University geology Professor Kenneth Deffeyes, but Mr. Simmons of Simmons & Co Intnl has been speaking worldwide on this subject from his own research for over 5 years.
Mr. Simmons pdfs and PPTs used with his speaches are avaialable at his website, and are incredibly detailed and convincing.
Nuclear power is the ONLY rational solution, near term.
Weak kneed leaders in the U.S. have been totally 100% cowed by irrational environmental types who do not use any of this data or statistical evidence or engineering facts to oppose anything but "green". What these so-called leaders and environmentalists miss is that they may have doomed the U.S. to great hardship, by delaying the inevitable move to nuclear fission, which other major countries have done and are expanding as we speak.
Bo
Each barrel of extracted oil from the tar sands requires the release of more than 80kg of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and about 5 barrels of waste water - not to mention the environmental nightmare caused by strip-mining. There is no easy answer to our oil addiction. It's certainly not to be found in Canada's north. It will stave off the inevitable for a few short years, at tremendous economic and environmental cost, but our world will change forever.
The good news is that we will be "forced" to rediscover local agriculture and commerce. No more "made in China" stickers on our locally made goods, and craftspeople will regain the stature they once had. Just remember that suburban "starter mansions" will be the slums of the future -- to expensive to heat, too far from shops, farmland and gathering places to be worth inhabiting. My advice? Learn blacksmithing in your spare time.
In 1956, geophysicist Marion King Hubbert predicted that _U.S._ oil production would peak between 1965 and 1970. In fact, U.S. oil production peaked in 1971, so he was pretty close. U.S. production has been going down ever since. This current article is about _World_ production. Hubbert predicted that would peak around 2000.
I read a great article in the New York Times the other day (go figure... its available for free at my law school) about E85. Anyway I was shocked to read that to make a car compatible with E85 it only costs an extra $150. I'm hardly a rich man and I try to save my money, but $150 per car doesn't seem like much in the grand scheme of things, espically considering the way our modern day governments spend and tax the hell out of everything. I was skeptical, about that $150 figure, but here that price is quoute in another article http://www.argusleader.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?A ID=/20060122/BUSINESS/601220310/1003 And Since its so cheap why doesn't our government mandate all (or 50% of) new cars made and imported be E85 comptabile and let the consumer/market choose their fuel? Even if the federal government won't do this, you think some of the midwestern states would. Since the #1 problem with consumer adoption of E85 is its availability, wouldn't these state economies based on farming want to hurry up its availability so they could increase demand for their own product?
If I were an Iowa Legislator I'd want to make every car sold in the state E85 compatible and mandate every gas station sell E85. If the state can succesfuly force E85 onto the market it'd only be a matter of time until gas stations in the surronding states started selling E85 by choice to get those consumers and it spreads. Kind of like how McDonald's spread across America.
Other Problems with E85:
#2 promblem: You get less energy per gallon about 10 to 15% less. But E85 is aparently cheaper than gasoline. So at some point, I don't know where, and I can't find any information on this, there is a "Cost Per Mile" equilabrium between the two. Sure you have to fill up your gas tank more often if you use E85 because you get less milage, but maybe each mile is cheaper. This is a little harder than calculating "MPG" but I'm betting a savy company can add this metric to an onboard dash. If the Prius can calculate MPG, why not be able to enter how much it cost you to fill up the tank and then you get a cost per mile read out, so you can see which is cheaper for you.
Yes they'll be a few years of high prices for domestic users. Oh dear, we'll need to economise, maybe take the bus. But that will be nothing compared to what will happen 10 years after that without oil they'll be little mass production of pharmaceuticals, fertilizer (food anyone?), plastics, etc. We'd need a new set of technologies accross the board to address each industry which is currently reliant on oil.
Oil from the ground is so 20th century I could care less about stories about it. Europe has begun licensing TDP tech and we have a full-scale refinery running near Kansas City. If we ever get serious about putting domestic oil production the whole idea of oil from the ground will be beyond quaint.
t ion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymeriza
It works, it provides clean water and high grade deisel oil, cleans the air by providing higher octane product, less emissions from refinery gasses, can empty landfills of plastic, can clean the water supply from biomass waste. Don't as me why the hell the DOE hasn't gotten behind it. A tenth of the cost of the Manhatten project could make us the largest oil producers on the planet*.
Also check the Wiki references to plastic conversions. Say good-bye to plastic waste and ocean pollution as well. Grey water dumping would also be convertable on the cruise ship level. Plus domestic production nullifies the middle east cartels, and puts tanker accidents off our coasts to an end. The middle east argument alone is a national security problem and it's criminal that this tech hasn't gone into a crash program status.
And this blows all previous gas alternatives out of the water, doesn't require massive leaps in corn production and doesn't require an change in transportation systems or distribution.
I'm confident that we will engage in this tech at some point - but it'd be nice to hear more about it. Try googling it sometime - you'll find almost nothing in the pop-press. I've even had dialogue with MSNBC about it - and they claim they're aware of it - but never say dick. Neither did Wired and they were talking new-oil on the fricking cover of their rag less than a month ago. FEH!
* The KC Star reported that from bio-waste alone via agribusiness we could convert all organic waste-fodder into 20 billion barrels of oil. We consume 12 billion barrels at present. We could ergo go from being the largest consumers to the largest producers.
...and may I just mention that you can thank the so-called European Left that there is a thriving industry developing energy conserving technologies for power plants, heating plants and transportation. I'm telling you, forget about the IT business, microelectronics, pharmaceutical companies. They won't save the world. Energy conservation is The Next Big Thing.
Oh, and by the way, we Europeans aren't all French. Actually, most of us can't stand them at all.
Part of the issue is when he refers to the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia. It produces roughly 6% of the world's oil production (5 million barrels/day). The Burgan Field in Kuwait recently had to scale back its production because it couldn't sustain a pump rate over 1.7 million barrels per day (That's about 2% of the world production). When the two biggest producing oils fields in the World have their production rate capped: you either have to look else where for additional oil or you have to start using less. In the mean time you end up with more people who want oil then can be supplied. Then who ever can pay for it will get it.
Architectural plans are like computer source code with a couple of differences: You only compile once.
I have been following Peak Oil Theory for the past 20 years and those that just scoff at the idea are in for a big shock. I like many others have seen it coming and I have seen the governments ignoring it.
A world with no affordable oil???
As the rich and privileged hog the remaining oil and leave the masses to fight it out society will collapse, there is no doubt about that. I am just glad I do not live in a society where every man and his dog has a firearm, now that society would truly descend into a hellish nightmare.
Scoff at your peril, or learn how to grow your own food (because there will be no distribution to your local supermarket) and then learn how to defend your food, because everyone will want what you have.
Production will start a long, slow decline, and prices will start a long, steady rise.
I thought the whole point of the peak oil theory was that prices won't rise slowly and steadily, but exponentially, due to various psychological and economical effects resulting from the fact that "the end is in sight," as it were.
Part of the reasoning is that the term "Reserve" does not refer to the actual, physical quantity of oil present.
From This document
SPE and WPC stress that petroleum proved reserves should be based on current economic conditions, including all factors affecting the viability of the projects. SPE and WPC recognize that the term is general and not restricted to costs and price only. Probable and possible reserves could be based on anticipated developments and/or the extrapolation of current economic conditions. (emphasis mine).
In other words, the "gold standard" means of defining "reserves" allows producers to take into account the price of oil and the cost of extraction. If the price of oil rises, those bodies of oil which would previously be uneconomic to extract suddenly become worthwhile.
Hence the ability to triple your reserves in a very short time, with no requirement for extra discovery or exploration. It just happens that oil fields that you were previously ignoring start to look viable because the prices are high.
In no way does this reflect an increase in actual real amounts of hydrocarbons. But it does mean that you can increase CONFIDENCE in the supply. Almost by definition, reserves will start to increase the moment any kind of shortage begins.
Of course, it doesn't account for the inevitable increase in price (remember, if prices drop, reserves will DESCREASE instantly). Most of the benefits of oil to the economy are linked to it's high energy profit ratio. As this decreases, the inherent value of the oil decreases, and you end up in an economic downspiral. And that's the real kicker of "Peak Oil". We'll probably never actually drink the oil fields dry, we'll just get to the point where the world economy is so crippled that we can't afford to extract, refine, or ship it.
Walking is inefficient, only equivalent of 200 mpg (based on calories in a gallon of gas), riding your bike is 4.5 times as efficient or about 900 mpg equivalent. That means people should not walk as it is wasteful; they should only ride their bike .
The point I am making: even though you conserve you can't point fingers, because there is something more you could do. I also believe in conserving, but it only delays the inevitable.
Many people don't realize that for a long time in the 90's oil was actually $15-$20/bbl. There are families (such as mine) that do rely on oil prices to make a living and we are not some huge cartel rolling around in piles of cash.
There is a large misconception that oil prices have always been high, because people incorrectly correlate gas prices to oil prices.
Actually, running out of oil in the middle east could benefit the US and Canada. You have to remember that the US and Canada are setting on some of the largest oil reserves in the world in the form of oil shale and oil sands. Shell recently announced that they had a method of extracting (at a net energy gain) oil from oil shale in Colorado. As prices go up it becomes more feasible to extract oil from harder to use sources. An oil "emergency" would prompt the government to assist in lowering the costs of production. The Shell oil shale extraction system, for example, would be a perfect fit for the use of the portable nuclear reactors (a technology already being developed for other uses anyway).
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
That's the stated aim. I think this is the first serious attempt by any government to ween their citizens off of "oil addiction". It's a pity Bush didn't put resources where his rhetoric leads but then his power-base would start whinging, no?
I'm sceptical that the Swedes won't be able to do it without nuclear power but kudos for attempting a difficult problem. I wonder if they'll get rid of all oil-based *products*. Replacing plastic bags with paper ones would be a start. umm. I'd like to see UK supermarkets replace their plastic bags with paper. Using paper instead of plastic for some products would encourage the planting of trees.
Will the swedes make a push in the EU at stopping tax-free fuel for air travel? Of course, that would be the end of cheap trips abroad but that's going to have to stop sooner of later.
I'd also like to see studies of mining operations in the asteroid belt and elsewhere in the galaxy. A space elevator is needed more than ever.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Folks, if the evidence is that it is all downhill from here, with respect to oil, then every day wasted in not massivly researching controlled nuclear fusion is just going to mean that much less power available later, when it is really needed. It does take time to turn successful research into power plants, after all. And, by "massive research" I mean that ALL the avenues should be explored, even the controversial ones like Pons/Fleischmann Cold Nuclear Fusion. Let's stop the arguing for a time, put a wad of money into it to END the debate one way or another, and if it doesn't work, move on to something else. There's still the proposed super-scaled-up Farnsworth Fusor, there's the new sonofusion results, and so on. Even traditional hot fusion could benefit from a major scale-up. Back in the early days it was noted how a donut-shaped magnetic field leaked because the magnetism was weaker on the outside of the donut than on the inside. But why use a TIGHT donut shape? How about something more like a bicycle inner tube, where the inner and outer radii are nearly the same? Put one of those in, say, the place where the SuperConducting SuperCollider had been planned (with something like a fifty-mile circumference), and the leakage problem all but disappears.
There are good reasons to think that the harder we try to be efficient, the faster we'll end up using up our fossil fuels. Efficiency only works if the whole world cries out and does it at the same time. Failing that, someone in the world can, and will buy up the cheap oil in an effort to get ahead of those silly efficient people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
> Princeton University geology Professor Kenneth Deffeyes has
> been studying world petroleum production data and has come to
> the conclusion that the world hit peak oil last December 16, 2005.
This is because he's a geologist and not an economist.
> If he is correct,
Don't worry, he is not.
> total world oil production will never surpass what was produced last December.
Yikes, the cluelessness of this guy is astounding. Anyone wanna bet? Anyone? Hello? Bueller? Bueller?
> From the article: 'Compared to 2004, world oil production was up 0.8 percent
> in 2005, nowhere near enough to compensate for a demand rise of roughly 3 percent.
The ability to increase takes time. If the demand will continue to rise at 3 percent, greedy capitalists will compensate. Also, the higher the price, the more alternatives are found, from exploration to better extraction to alternative ways to create oil to alternative fuels to alternative motors to things no command-and-control government bureaucrat can possibly predict.
Provided, of course, those command-and-control bureaucrats are held at bay. Which is this guy's point all along, and what the earth scientists never understood. Well, the ones writing gloom and doom books, anyway.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Ah, the beauty of one-dimensional thinking!
What about drilling for more oil to serve our (and emerging countries') current energy needs, while we build more nuke plants, ramp up alternative fuels, innovate with solar (a HUGE energy source), add more windfarms, research large-scale geothermal, and continue work on a hydrogen economy. Eventually we'll also get hydrogen fusion working as an energy source, which will effectively forever end energy as a bottleneck of human expansion and industrialization.
The Oort cloud is the limit! (For now at least...)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
Not to mention that the Shell bitumen plant in Canada already produces as much as a major conventional oil field (yes, it's no Ghawar, but it's still quite significant, and at reasonable prices). They're currently majorly ramping up production there.
;) ). Giants like Exxon-Mobil are eventually going to get bitten.
I may be a bit biased (my father is a shell pres/veep, after all), but I really like their diversification strategy into alternate oil sources and non-oil based energy sources (BP has invested a lot too, but they advertize it more
That said, enough with this stupid peak oil panic, for many reasons.
1) As oil prices rise, uneconomical deposits become economical.
2) There are plenty of types of unconventional oil and natural gas deposits (shale, bitumen, hydrates/clathrates, etc)
3) There's a hundred years of coal in the US; even if coal has to take up the slack, big deal.
4) There are viable alternative fuels only held back by the current low price of oil.
5) Nuclear can take up the slack as well (electricity can take over from hydrocarbons in many ways - heating, running industrial facilities, an increased share of electric or partial electric vehicles, making cheaper alternative fuels, etc)
6) If conventional nuclear supplies become expensive, breeders and seawater fissile material extraction can take up the slack for thousands of years.
7) As tech advances during the meantime, wind becomes cheaper, solar becomes a lot cheaper (it has it's own mini-Moore's law going on), nuclear becomes cheaper, alternative fuels become cheaper, and fusion nears reality (yes, it's taken far longer than initially expected, but they've made many orders of magnitude improvement from fifty years ago and have less than an order of magnitude improvement still needed)
Basically, the worst thing that will happen is that worldwide economic growth will slow. There's no possibility of crash just because of point #1 alone.
You can't change that... by gettin' all... bendy.
How long do you think it's gonna take to get at that extra oil? How long do you think it's gonna last with our current usage? The answers are too long and not long enough, respectively.
"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"
Ok, lets agree on one thing. Oil is a finite resource. We are going to run out eventually.
Ok, now that we've agreed, lets also agree that there are significant, exploitable reserves left in the world, and additionally, left in the United States.
If "peak oil" has truly been hit, the only reason is because those significant reserves are not being exploited. And in almost all cases, this is happening because of political reasons. And people like you.
"The sky is falling!" is an excuse not to do anything: "Why should we exploit ANWR when it will only push back the clock for 10 years?"...because it will push back the clock for 10 years. Lets draw an analogy. A patient can have surgery that will allow him to live another 10 years, or he can die today. You guys would rather he die today.
The anti-oil people are ideological relatives of the "Earth First" crowd. Their goal is a massive reduction in world population and per capita energy consumption, and along with it, standard of living. Drilling in ANWR, exploiting offshore reserves, that stuff just pushes back the date when we can usher in Gaia and all million of us go back to living an agrarian or hunte gatherer life-style.
Humanity needs time. Time to build and generate alternatives to the petro-economy. Some of us actually like the benefits of an industrial, technological society and don't want to see it come crashing down around us because environmentalist idiots think that drilling in ANWR is going to be an ecological catastrophe. So when people start starving (because we can't make fertilizer or pesticides from oil by-products, and don't have gasoline to transport the food anyway), what do you think is going to happen to the cute curry animals? Famine is a worse ecological catastrophe than polution. Forests are burned and wild animals are slaughtered wholesale to stave off starvation in the third world.
The world needs time to transition. The neo-luddites like the parent of this post don't want to give the world time. They want those people to starve to death. You, your family, your friends, your city, state, country, your race, your species stands in the way of their vision for Gaia. Think of that the next time we consider voting to drill in ANWR or opening up some of the 98% of the coast in the US that is currently off limits for exploratory drilling.
"There's a hundred years of coal in the US; even if coal has to take up the slack, big deal."
The deal is air quality. Maybe coal can be burned cleaner than oil. My bet is on: probably not.
"Basically, the worst thing that will happen is that worldwide economic growth will slow. "
Have you applied for a job at FEMA, I hear they are looking for someone with as much vision as Brownie. If that's really the worst you can imagine, I think you're in for a nasty surprise in the next decade when China comes knocking for energy.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
If the world's population is cut in half in the next 50 years, assuming it's going to be mostly third-world people without any way to ensure food production and distribution (as opposed to people who live in the first-world, who will no doubt have things tough, but will not likely see a great decline in population) - then demand for oil isn't likely to decline as a result of this population decline. At least not proportionately. I'd tend to think that this halving of population in the first 50 years would be the first step, just to take the pressure off of the first-world countries who are struggling to maintain their energy inputs just to stay functioning. Then the first world countries will likely try to take eachother out (ie. massive nuclear exchange) - in an attempt to reduce the amount of competing consumers of the remaining petroleum. When this starts to happen (and I'm not saying it will after 50 years, it could come much, much sooner - hell, Japan attacked the US in WWII over access to oil - so technically, it's already begun) - then we'll see massive declines in demand and consumption as the industrial infrastructure of first-world countries is burnt to cinders. This will have the effect, also, of destroying much of the production infrastructure for petroleum as well - refineries, transportation, storage, etc. That will probably be the final nail in the coffin of the petroleum age. That coffin will rest upon a mountain of skulls. That's why - as futile as it is, I think America's best bet is investment in missile-defense. :)
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.