Slashdot Mirror
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.
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_
Actually I don't think so. Artificially causing spikes in oil price just causes more people to seek other energy sources, causing demand for oil to decrease. Then again, our infrastructure is almost hopelessly dependent on oil, so I suppose there would be a demand either way. Anyway, I don't think this kind of production decrease is really that calculated. Occam's razor; we know we're running frighteningly low on oil (virtually guaranteed depletion in our lifetimes). This naturally causes more difficult/expensive, and thus, lower production. Or, on the other hand, do you really think it's a grand OPEC conspiracy to get the whole world to pay more for oil, that just happens to correspond with overwhelming geologic evidence that we simply don't have an unlimited supply of oil?
Take off every sig. For great justice.
I tend to agree. Here in middle America there's a hell of a lot of land that could go toward production of E85. Most cars out there now can run on it with only trivial modifications (making sure there's no aluminium in the fuel line and adjusting the timing belt). Our infrastructure can easily adapt to it. In fact, there's a good chance you're already putting E10 in your car right now.
Ethanol is a hell of a lot closer than the far-fetched hydrogen economy proposed by the US's current executive administration.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
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.
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.
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.