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Report Blasts "Peak Oil" Theory
Rei writes "Today, the Cambridge Energy Research Associates released a report dismissing the Peak Oil theory, suggesting that world oil production will continue to increase for the next 24 years, and then only level into a plateau. The report, which suggests that world reserves are enough to last 122 years at our current rate of consumption, also blasts Peak Oil theorists for repeatedly making unscientific predictions and then shifting them whenever their predictions fail to materialize."
Does anyone know who they really speak for? Do they have an agenda?
You mean like global warming theorists?
an ill wind that blows no good
And I don't know why anyone else should either since I'd like to think that we as a species are smart enough to come up with an alternative fast enough to avert this. And even if we don't, we'll come up with something really really fast. We run out of oil, we'll use the shale in Colorado. We run out of that, something else will pop up. Fusion should be viable long before then, we'll have better solar energy, etc.
And, if our demand for oil increases?
Oh, I see. They assume our demand for oil will never increase. The developing world's demand for oil will never increase. China's demand for oil will never increase.
I'm usually not this blunt, but this seems like a good time: are the authors of this report FUCKING IDIOTS?
Peak Oil theory is a big reason why a lot of folks don't take environmental issues like global warming or ozone layer depletion seriously. I still remember our science book in high school saying the world would run out of oil by 1982. (It was already 1994.) When people see that sort of crap side by side with other environmental issues, I can see why they don't always take the other issues seriously.
Alternate energy sources and fuel conservation are a good idea under any conditions.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
You Peak Oil conspiracy theorist! How dare you suggest the world is running out of oil? We'll have enough for the next 120 years! How dare you suggest we change our ways or find alternative sources of energy?!?
(Oh, well, nevermind that we really are going to run out sometime, and that all this means is our children or grandchildren will be stuck with the problem instead of us, or that this now gives us more time to think up solutions that we should take advantage of immediately. You're still a conspiracy nut and you're wrong. So there.)
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
How long it will take for people to blast this as Industry fallacy.
I say there's been so much doom-and-gloom about oil, every prediction I can remember about oil running out has been proven wrong time and time again. As our technology increases, we will find ways to get more oil out of existing locations and find new ones. Hmm. Go figure.
Hell, in 1879 Edison invented the light bulb. Who would have thought after 100+ years, the only thing a house from 1890 and 2006 would have in common is a lightbulb? And now the idustry is changing with LED bulbs for just about everything these days. I bet the next advancement doesn't take 100 years.
In oil, there's money. And a ton of it. So, advancement will happen much faster. We will use it more efficiently and get it from places we never thought possible.
The world doesn't have to run out of oil before we have to feel it's effects dramatically.
The fact is that if the United States were cut off from foreign oil we would last 2.87 years at our current consumption.
But we wouldn't remain at our current consumption. Rationing and hording would be quick, which we got a taste of in the 70's IIRC.
Very little new oil is being found, but consumption is going up very quickly in countries like China and India. The rest of the world wants to live like Americans, and as they do there simply won't be enough. Period.
That may not happen today, and it may not happen in the next few years, but it will happen in the next few decades. And in my opinion that will be the cause of WW3 if it hasn't already taken place and no alternative energies fill the vacuum.
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Looks pretty unscientific to me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil
I smell an agenda. Of course much of the Peak Oil writing can be exaggerated, but my feeling is that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The statistics have also been reasonably accurate, and with so many oil companies over estimating reserves, how exactly are we to know what is cost effectively extractable?Hubbert estimated using the tried and true "what gets taken out of the ground" numbers. Saudi Arabia has not been able or willing to prove that they can draw more.
Like global warming it's an argument taking away from the real issues. With a bit of attention and care with most resources we can do just fine. We are simply not respecting our general environment.
I'm not seeing the incentive for an energy company to pretend peak oil doesn't exist.
In fact, the scarcer oil seems, the higher the price goes, and the more money the oil companies make.
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In other words:
"I don't like what they're saying. Is there a way we can slur them with a phony conflict-of-interest implication or some other kind of ad hominem? Dealing with arguments on their merits is too hard."
In other words, people who would actually KNOW....are you implying that environmentalists wouldn't have a bias as well?
Steve
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
People start looking for alternatives sharpish. Business as usual is a much better proposition for the oil suppliers. If that happens to fuck over the customers as the price soars 5-10 years down the line, that's just tough for them.
Deleted
Fuelling it?
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
In other words, people with a REASON to LIE.
Sure, environmentalists would be biased as well. However, since there are going to be none present, it's going to be biased entirely the other way. +5 + -5 = NO SPIN ZONE! No but seriously, the point is that there's no balance, and that is damning evidence on its own.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You don't understand the argument. The argument is this:
Oil companies are evil. Their objective is to hurt people no matter how much it costs them.
Some of them are motivated by money. They are still evil. They are also extremely stupid and less informed about the oil business than your average Internet message board poster. The Internet message-board guys and the bloggers know more about how much oil is available than the oil company executives.
The oil price is going to skyrocket in the very near future because of Peak Oil (tm). The oil companies have oil in the ground. They could just stop pumping it for a year or two and sell it for $300 a barrel at that time. But they don't, because they're stupid and evil, unlike us message board posters and bloggers.
Now do you understand?
Mod parent +1 Funny!
Oh, wait, were you serious? You've heard of the government giving money to people and corporations for environmental causes, maybe? Hmmmmm.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
The incentive is to keep people from doing something about it. If peak oil is going to hit in the next 5 or 10 years, or if you can even convince a large number of people that it is, then oil consumption would drop dramatically as we begin to conserve. That means less profits in the short run. Plus, if oil companies hasten the path the peak oil, that means a quicker route to the ungodly profits that they'll see when it happens.
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While details about when vary between different predictions, the theory of peak oil (and it applies to peak X where X is any extracted, non-renewable resource) is simply that at some point a maximum rate of production will be reached and after that never exceeded. (And, as a common corollary, providing there are no adequate substitutes, that increases in demand after that point will lead to extreme increases in price in the long term rather than increases in quantity consumed, as the rate of production is a long-term limit on the rate of consumption.)
This report claims that after 24 years, an extraction plateau will be reached which will never be exceeded.
This reports idea is slightly different from that suggested by peak oil in that the "peak" in peak oil refers to the idea that production will actually fall at some rate, while this report suggests a plateau, but that doesn't really change the fundamental dynamic is that increasing demand for energy and other products of the oil industry (plastics, etc.) cannot, whether with a peak or a plateau (which is merely the "best-case" limit of a peak) be met with increased production, but instead higher prices.
While it certainly diverges sharply from the timeframe predictions of many peak oil theorists, it fundamentally confirms that principal problem envisioned by peak oil: a production limit that will be reached in a fairly short time.
(Of course, since the supply of oil is finite, unless the rate of extraction is lower than the rate at which geological processes create oil, it is clearly impossible for a plateau to hold in the longest term, so it seems unlikely that any "plateau" will be a long-term state rather than merely a transitional period before a decline.)
Jeezus, instead of arguing the merits of TFA, can we instead discuss TFA instead?
Like, for example, the report pretty much dovetailing nicely with Peak Oil theorywith the only majot difference being when the peak happens?
Or how about that he report talks about ALL know oil sources, when in fact Peak Oil theory is based around EASILY recoverable sources, basically making this report an apple and oranges thing.
This is what Peak Oil sceptics don't get: Yes, we have a shitload of oil, but when you eliminate the stuff that's a PITA to recover, it doesn't leave a whole lot. It will probably take us a few decades at least to run out, but that downward slide is going to be a bitch.
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I will believe this when I hear that the oil companies have built enough new refinery capacity to process all this oil for the next 14 years. Let them put their money where their mouth is. If the oil companies actually believed that peak oil were not the case, they would be building capacity so they could sell all that they could pump. Instead, we hear about limited refinery capacity. Believe me, a refinery can make lots of money if there is lots of crude feeding it. I hope they reveal all the facts behind their assertions in a traceable form since available capacity in oil fields is always held pretty close by the companies that own them. It sounds to me like propaganda since the US finally has reacted to the price shocks that precede peak oil and if we give up SUVs etc. it could really rain on the oil company parade. There is a lot of money to be made by the current glut/shortage mentality. Let the glut make people insensitive to the cost of their actions and then collect lots of money with a shortage from the inflexible deamand that results. Also, read another view which challenges some of their assumptions.
If you read the article, Peter M. Jackson's call for "rational and measured discourse" is especially telling, when compared to this discussion. As usual, we have frothing-at-the-mouth comments from "both" sides of the issue. Here are a couple points which I think may have been missed by some /.ers:
1) This article is about oil production, not oil consumption. We could very well be heading for the collapse of oil-based civilization, due to Hummers and China's booming thirst for oil. That doesn't mean this report is wrong, because it is about supply, not demand.
2) Contrary to the article's (somewhat) misleading title, the report isn't disputing that there will be a global peak in oil production. Instead, it disputes the (oft-rescheduled) temporal location of that peak, and the shape of the resulting down-turn (predicting a plateau and gradual decline, rather than a rapid drop-off).
It seems to me the root questions debated by the report are whether or not hard-to-extract oil should be included in our oil reserve estimates, and how much new technology will delay and soften the inevitable oil decline. Agree or disagree, we could all use a little more "rational and measured discourse".
at the height of the Arab oil embargo, exclaimed that there was "no energy shortage" and said that "at the current rate of consumption we have 600 years of oil left."
/html/012306/012306.html we have the following facts:
Fifteen years later, during the 1987 oil crisis, they ran a similar ad but this one said "at the current rate of consumption we have 200 years of oil left".
Amazing. In 15 years we lost 400 years worth of oil!!!
Both statements were right, of course, but what the oil companies were COUNTING on was that most folks would NOT understand that "at the current rate" doesn't mean that the rate wouldn't INCREASE. It seems that most folks STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND.
Now, we have politicians running for office with the promise that they will "replace oil fields with corn fields". To make matters worse, the US government is subsidizing corporations who make and run Ethanol plants, which immediately begs the question "If Ethanol is capable self-sustaining energy production sufficient to replace oil, why does it need subsidies?"
Independent studies by academic agricultural and environmental experts report that Ethanol requires an input of 54,725 BTU more for each gallon produced than you'd get by burning it. On the other hand, Ethanol industry sponsored studies claim Ethanol has a net energy of 17,058 BTU per gallon. Whose right?
Let's look at the problem in another way. Assuming pro-Ethanol groups are correct, how much Corn will it take to replace gasoline as a source of energy?
From http://www.farmdoc.uiuc.edu/marketing/grainoutlook
1) The USDA's January estimate of the size of the 2005 U.S. Corn crop came in at 11.112 billion bushels.
2) Planted acreage of Corn in the U.S. in 2005 totaled 81.759 million acres, with a calculated yield of 135.9 bu/acre.
From Ethanol industry sources we find that the more efficient Ethanol plants can generate 2.68 gallons of Ethanol from each bushel of Corn. Therefore, 11.112 billion bushels of Corn can supply 30 billion gallons of Ethanol.
A fact of chemistry that economic theory cannot change is that Ethanol supplies 76,000 BTU/gallon and gasoline supplies 120,000 BTU/gallon. In other words, it takes 1.5789 gallons of Ethanol to replace the energy in 1 gallon of gasoline. That COULD mean that 30 billion gallons of Ethanol will replace 19 billions gallons of gasoline. But, in reality, Ethanol produced from Corn replaces even less. From a pro-Ethanol website, http://www.ethanol-gec.org/corn_eth.htm#concl:
"We conclude that the NEV of corn ethanol is positive when fertilizers are produced by modern processing plants, corn is converted in modern ethanol facilities, farmers achieve normal corn yields, and energy credits are allocated to coproducts. Our NEV estimate of 16,193 Btu/gal can be considered conservative, since it was derived using the replacement method for valuing coproducts, and it does not include energy credits for plants that sell carbon dioxide. Corn ethanol is energy efficient, as indicated by an energy ratio of 1.24, that is, for every Btu dedicated to producing ethanol, there is a 24-percent energy gain. Moreover, producing ethanol from domestic corn stocks achieves a net gain in a more desirable form of energy. Ethanol production utilizes abundant domestic energy supplies of coal and natural gas to convert corn into a premium liquid fuel that can replace petroleum imports by a factor of 7 to 1."
That "7 to 1" is 7 gallons of Ethanol are needed to replace 1 gallons of gasoline! Here is how it is figured: about 58,942 BTUs must be supplied from external energy sources for each gallon of Ethanol produced. To be self-sufficient Ethanol must return that energy, leaving only 17,058 BTU/gal available as excess energy. Or, dividing 120,000 by 17,058 shows that it will take 7.0348 gallons of Ethanol to replace eac
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Looking at that chart, the only difference I can see between their line and the one they are "debunking" is that their line wobbles for a while before the downtrend is clear.
Both theories look equally valid, as presented, and both have pretty much the same implications, with a 20 year time difference. Short term thinkers are the only ones that will be impressed by this.
Also, did anyone notice the graph? Supply plateaus around 2030. Yet the demand curve goes straight up. Hello? Doesn't that mean oil will peak in 2030?! (And the graph even included alternative sources like liquid coal).
There are perhaps a couple of things to consider about peak oil that may not have been considered. One is that at any given price point, there will be a peak in oil availability. As the price of oil goes up, the oil that is more expensive to obtain becomes more economical, such as oil from oil shale or heavy crude. However, that oil is much more difficult to produce and the production of that oil is probably not at the same rate as for the lighter crude that is easier to produce. Thus the peak for oil production is different than the peak for oil availability. One may peak while the other may not. The market factors may inhibit the production of the more expensive oil because fewer people may be willing to pay for it. In addition, other forms of energy will become more economical for R&D as the price of oil rises which may also inhibit the production of that oil. There are also other factors such as a producer wilfully withholding production to keep the price up. What is very interesting to me here is that with the high price point of oil, Venezuela's reserves of heavy crude is probably the largest in the world making them the de facto leaders of OPEC, something tp which the Saudi's and the US are rather resistant.
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You seem to be debunking a strawman that has nothing to do with the peak oil theory.
Peak oil is a theory regarding future rates of conventional oil extraction. It is not a prediction of impending doom or a crude oil price forecast, nor does it have anything to do with unconventional oil or alternative energy. Should some futuristic technology make petroleum obsolete, that would neither contradict nor prove peak oil; it would simply make it irrelevant.
Many people use peak oil as a foundation for their predictions of impending doom. Those predictions may or may not be nonsense. But debunking such predictions, as you seem to think you have done, hardly contradicts peak oil theory.
Demand is growing because capitalism requires constant growth, and one of the essential inputs into economic activity is energy (in the form of oil). If production rate is flat while demand is growing, you get a supply crunch. Buyers bid up the price, and sellers make out like bandits. That's the whole point of Peak Oil theory, not that we run out of oil, but when demand outstrips supply we'll run out of cheap oil. Markets are cyclical, so we'll still get highs and lows in oil prices, and prices will spike high more often because producers are tapped out and can't crank up more production to take advantage of high prices. Because of the volatility of financial markets, we won't get much warning about it either.
You can't debunk Peak Oil, that's like debunking gravity. There's a limited supply of oil, and a limited production rate. Someday, we won't be able to produce oil as fast as we have been, and that's when we've hit Peak Oil. Kinda simple, right?