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Whistleblower Claims IEA Is Downplaying Peak Oil
Yesterday the Guardian ran a story based on two anonymous sources inside the International Energy Agency who claimed that the agency had distorted key figures on oil reserves. "The world is much closer to running out of oil than official estimates admit, according to a whistleblower at the [IEA] who claims it has been deliberately
underplaying a looming shortage for fear of triggering panic buying. The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves." Today the IEA released its annual energy outlook and rejected the whistleblowers'
charges. The Guardian has an editorial claiming that the economic establishment is too fearful to come clean on the reality of oil suppplies, and makes an analogy with the (marginalized, demonized) economists who warned of a coming economic collapse in 2007.
Reality A: No withheld data. Data is disseminated with some initial shock that by 20xx we will have oil shortages. People get a chance to plan accordingly. Private business gets a chance to cash in on better alternatives and more efficient products marketed to the consumer. California starts to look a little less crazy. Gasoline and fuel slowly becomes more expensive over the years as production slows. People adjust.
Reality B: It's 20xx, suddenly there's no oil. Mass panic. People flip out. People die. Fuel shortages lead to water/food/heating shortages lead to war. Private industry doesn't have a chance to adjust. People aren't prepared to buy a new vehicle on the spot. Californians ride the nearest comet to Heaven's Gate. Crime increases, lawlessness arises, civilization breaks down, I'm forced into a Thunderdome with Cowboy Neal for my right to live.
If the IEA is capable of any logic at all, they are not cooking the books or withholding data. What's the motive of retaining data or fixing charts?
My work here is dung.
an analogy with the (marginalized, demonized) economists who warned of a coming economic collapse in 2007.
Great. This argument boils down to "Someone who we were told was wrong turned out to be right. Therefore, this other person who we are told is wrong (and by extension everyone who we are told is wrong) must also be right." I have no idea whether or not these whistleblowers are correct or not, but this "argument" by analogy is worse than useless, because it encourages fuzzy thinking.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
These popular conspiracy theories about group X holding back product/information Y are all debunked by a single thought: IF these people are truly smart enough to rule the world (or an aspect of it), they know better than to try to control every single individual in it.
What does this mean? That they are smart enough to follow free markets. They are smart enough to know that they can't predict the future of the stock market, even if they can control an aspect of it. This assumes that these groups do have a level of involvement high enough to control the government, financial and religious institutions WITHOUT being exposed. You really think that a large group of people is capable of holding a secret so large for so long? A president gets a blowjob from an intern and the whole world hears about it. I doubt an army of engineers, scientists and politicians would be quiet about what really goes on in Area 51, killing people with vaccines, peak oil conspiracies or whatever bullshit is popular that day.
So give your conspiracy theories a rest and please report some real news.
If it is simply supply and demand, why are we now down to ~$50/barrel and yet demand hasn't decreased and supply hasn't increased? The price of oil is hardly an indicator of what you are suggesting.
Whistle Blowers have agendas too, sometimes. But it's a moot point, because the proper response is the same either way: fast track nuclear plants. There is no other reasonable solution to the inevitable energy problem. We will switch to nuclear at some point or our civilization will collapse.
Yeah, but we aren't allowed to exploit domestic energy supplies. The NIMBY crowd and enviro-nazi's will see to that, aided by the current political overlords in Washington.
Congrats, you just described supply and demand. Oil is cheap, so no one wants to pollute for marginal gains*. Check back in a couple of years or so, and I think you'll find the balance has changed somewhat.
Hopefully, by that point, you'll have learned how not to Godwin yourself.
*There's also a whole commentary about how smart exactly is was for the US to basically outsource everything. Cost of living is cheap, but the blowback's a bitch.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Isn't it better that we start exploiting our own oil reserves when the prices reach astronomically high levels?
By the time that happens we won't have any money left to exploit them with and it will be the Saudi's pumping oil out of the Midwest.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It's all supply and demand
It's really not. OPEC deliberately (and publicly) slows production to keep prices high. They've gotten used to the profits that $70+/bbl oil brings. We're never going back to pre-Katrina oil prices. In the long run, though, this is good - it merely ensures the rise of much more fuel efficient vehicles.
Oil is cheap, so no one wants to pollute for marginal gains*
Employing Americans and keeping money at home instead of sending it to countries that finance extremism is a "marginal gain"?
Hopefully, by that point, you'll have learned how not to Godwin yourself.
You really ought to learn what Godwin's Law is before you start citing it:
"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."
I don't recall making any comparisons. I used a tongue-in-cheek phrase to describe environmental extremists that won't be happy until mankind reverts to a hunter-gatherer culture or dies out entirely.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I would argue that Godwin applies perfectly here. That it has been allowed to become a "meme" just means a significant part of the political spectrum have commited Godwin on themselves - and in the usual Godwin way, made fools of themselves.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
You say "environmental extremeists" as though it's one word.
Environmentalism has a long grey scale that you might be unfamiliar with. And like both current political leanings, there are a lot of other vectors to understand, too.
FWIW, I firmly believe that there's far more oil, pumpable at low cost, than we even know about. The problem isn't exporting oil dollars. The problem isn't exploiting domestic sources. The problem is that burning it blows carbon-oxygen atoms out tailpipes, where they pollute, and ultimately cause atmospheric damage. You can't tell me all of that soot is a good thing.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
It's actually rather simple. Oil is priced in US $. US $ are losing value. As the dollar loses value, a $50 barrel of oil yesterday could be worth $70 today.
My understanding of Godwin's law is not that referencing Nazis is bad (after all, they were a part of history). He just observed that eventually, if a fight goes on long enough, someone will make reference to them. He did not opine if that was bad or good.
Personally I think it's rather silly we can't talk about tyrants or their tyrannical governments. Even if I invoke a different tyrant to make my point, like Communist Dictator Nicholae Ceasescu, I still get accused of Godwining myself. It's like a blatant censorship of history, and the willful decision to put blinders over your eyes and deny that governments can, from time to time, be destructive to their own citizens.
Foolishness.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
It doesn't matter if there is more or not. The total determines the price. THe more simply means we'll be the last to fall, assuming an equal rate of use. However we use a lot more oil than other similar countries so that oil is a mitigating factor and if you think it's going to be sold at a discount to those in the US w/o some sort of government intervention then you are going to be in for a rude surprise.
Yeah, but we aren't allowed to exploit domestic energy supplies. The NIMBY crowd and enviro-nazi's will see to that, aided by the current political overlords in Washington. Apparently it's better that we keep sending hundreds of billions of dollars overseas than it would be to exploit our own resources and keep some of that money within our borders.
Don't worry though, I'm sure our overlords in the Federal Government will come up with a solution. All we need is more energy conservation and investment in key primary states^W^W^Wethanol to save the day.
The NIMBY crowd and enviro-nazi's will see to that....
People complain about the NIMBYs until someone wants to put something in their neighborhood.
"enviro-nazi's"?? Where did you get that name from??
Every environmentalist group that I know of has a goal of basically improving human environments. Clean air, clean water, balanced ecosystem, etc....
Whatever we do to the environment always comes back to us one way or another. It's real easy to be Laissez-Faire when you live in a rich country but it'll only insulate us for so long - that' s assuming we stay rich.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
On the other hand it's possible the EU and China might get mad, and decide to just declare war and take the oil by force.
How exactly do you invade a country with thousands of nuclear warheads and enough firearms to arm every adult citizen, should the need arise?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
That's one of the dumbest arguments people sometimes make. The reason they're not exploited is because current oil prices don't justify exploiting them. The deeper, the more isolated, the lower the flow rate, or a whole host of other factors concerning oil in a block lease, the higher the oil price you need to justify developing it.
This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks.
Maybe you don't realise, but the price of "gas" is factored in in pretty much everything else you buy... That video game, how do you reckon it's transported to the store? That dinner, how do you think its ingredients are harvested, and possible, with what it is cooked?
Price of oil/gas rises --> price of all manufactured goods & services rises --> cost of living rises... This effect is far, far bigger than the "very small part of your recurring bills" that is you directly buying gas...
No me, you retard, that's the way it is
So now we've moved up to personal insults, have we? Funny how I'm the one getting the troll mods.
You seem to think a few greens and their tame puppets in DC are responsible for most of the mess we're in
No, I seem to think that a few greens and their tame puppets are responsible for preventing us from exploiting domestic energy sources. I never claimed that they are wholly responsible for the "mess" that we're in. Thanks for putting words in my mouth though. Goes good with the side dish of insults that you've served up :)
upon which your reply is to accuse me of being an unrealistic daydreamer?
Where did I use the word "daydream"? I challenged your notion that oil isn't "expensive" enough to justify exploiting domestic resources. You've yet to respond to that challenge. Instead you've opted for insults. Perhaps you've learned all of your debate techniques from Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann? Why respond to the point when you can attack the messenger.....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
So, until we have a viable alternative, why not use our domestic resources?
From a strategic standpoint, wouldn't it be better to wait till we've exhausted the oil supplies from everyone else before we start using our own?
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Oh wait, that's free market economics,
See, here is where you are missing something. The 'Free market' isn't the magic bullet that you want to think it is. Oh sure, it will find an equilibrium between supply and demand. Nobody argues that. However, people might die and there might might be economic collapse while its happening, but gosh darn it, letting things take care of themselves gust makes sense!
'The free market' isn't omniscient. It can be blindsided by sudden changes. Those changes can be very bad in the short term. I might point out how the 'fee market' responded to banking deregulation over the last twenty years to illustrate my point. 'The market' has nobody's best interest at heart.
I am not advocating socialism or anything like that. The best system is probably a mixture of elements of a free market and a controlled economy.
Once we have reached the "peak", how long will it take to actually "run out"?
Forever.
We don't "run out." What happens is that the production decreases, and the price increases, so production heads asymptotically toward (but never reaching) zero production rate. As the price rises it becomes economically feasible to extract harder and harder to recover oil, and production never stops.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Would nuclear generation of power be useful? Yes, save we haven't figured out how to deal with the waste products, contamination, and safety issues.
You lost me at "safety issues". The worst accident in the history of American nuclear power resulted in zero fatalities. You'll forgive me if I don't see safety issues as a reason to abandon nuclear power.
The waste issue is a real one, but one that can be mitigated by nuclear reprocessing. In any case, if global warming is actually being driven by mankind's emissions of CO2 then I should think that the choice between a few thousand tons of low-level nuclear waste (the only kind that requires long term storage, high-level waste decays on much shorter timescales) and a few billion tons of CO2 should be an obvious one.
Thanks for demonstrating my original point though. As an environmentalist you find every single option that's currently on the table to be unacceptable. That makes for great politicking but horrible engineering.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Third world scum?
Well, I can see that the US is entering the third world when this kind of talk passes as "argument". I expect that in latinamerica, where we are all frustrated and poor. Not from the first world, that is supposed to be enlightened.
Not anymore it seems.
NO SIG
The thing is, if you *really* believe we're sticking our collective heads in the sand, borrow a couple of billion dollars and buy oil on a long dated future. If the peak oil doom-mongers are right, in a few years we'll be paying a thousand dollars a barrel. The fact that the price of future-dated oil doesn't reflect this suggests that the smart money doesn't believe peak oil is as imminent as the heralds of doom suggest.
[FUCK BETA]
Offer its industry leaders cheap labour, thus tempting them into moving their manufacturing capacity to your country, letting your enemy run up a debt it has no hope of ever repaying, use threats of not giving more credit to force it to devote more and more of its remaining manufacturing capacity to paying you while driving up taxes and weakening social services until the brightest young minds leave it. When it has been bled dry, cut the supply of goods, discard the hollow husk of your enemy, and keep the manufacturing plants they so graciously gave you.
It's working rather splendidly, judging by the financial crisis.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Assume the IEA whisleblower is correct, and that peak oil is approaching far faster than we've been led to believe. Hell, we might even be on the downturn already!
When the rest of the oil in the world is drilled out and used up, what the hell is going to happen to economic progress? What the hell is going to happen to the whole of the industrialized world?
We might get lucky, there might be alternative energy sources made available by then, the whole crisis might be averted. I hope it is. But if it isn't, and the world is still dependent on oil when Saudi Arabia and Russia and South America and everywhere in the world that's currently selling oil run out, we're going to look pretty damn smart for not tapping our domestic reserves until after everyone else has gone belly up.
It's a long-term plan, an insurance policy if you will.
Anytime you encounter one of these conspiracy theories, you have to ask yourself, "Why would they do this?" In this case, what incentive would the US Government have to try and suppress oil prices? That flies in the face of the current government economic philosophy, which is to reflate all assets at any cost. Everything the government has tried to do in the last year has been an attempt to raise prices, not lower them. I think the thought is that if they can manage to report a positive CPI number, they can get people and institutions to start releveraging.
What we've seen in past year is that high oil prices destroy economic growth which destroys high oil prices.
That's not what happened at all, the oil prices had nothing to do with economic growth, and the oil prices also had nothing to do with supply/demand which would ordinarily govern such things.
The oil prices were artificially inflated by the OPEC cartel, which is unmaintainable. They reset prices before the bubble burst on them (which would be very bad for OPEC), and for a little while oil was priced a little lower than it should have been.
The economic crisis was a completely separate issue, caused by funny business in the housing markets - particularly the insurance markets.
In fact what was remarkable about the period of extremely high oil prices was consumption of oil did not change much, people simply got a little angry, and put MPG higher on their list of "things I want in a car" for their next purchase. A lot of companies used oil prices as an excuse, but for most of them it was a complete crock.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
You ignore the fact that China must purchase US dollars to keep its currency pegged and maintain the advantage of cheap labor. Their wealth is therefore built upon the value of the paper the US gives it. Make that paper worthless and the value of those holdings dissolves. Further, many of those shiny manfuacturing plants will be left idle and the value of goods made depreciates since the chief purchaser can no longer afford them.
The massive foreign holdings of the dollar has made the United States into the equivalent of a "bank too big to let fail." Just like the corporate fat cats cashing in millions while the economy around crumbled, the US continues to happily give pieces of paper to enjoy cheap goods, finance it's wars, and feed its appetite for oil.
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Do you realise that it only costs "big oil" around $10 per barrel extracted from the ground. And they are currently selling said barrels of oil on at $79 per barrel. That looks like a healthy $70 a barrel profit right there, before you get to forecourt pricing. In 2007, ExxonMobil made a net profit of $40.6 billion. Shell made $31.3 billion, Chevron made $18.7 billion, ConocoPhillips made $11.9 billion and BP made $20.8 billion.
Yeah, big oil is the middle man, and they're getting fat. Capitalism at its finest, buy low, sell high. What was your point ?
The increases in oil prices could have the long term potential of damaging the economy, but I think your conclusion on the impact of oil prices is correct. The oil prices surged and quickly subsided before they could have any significant effect beyond stirring up anger.
However, I would say the funny business in the housing market was only part of the cause for the current economic debacle. Aside from the games finance, investment and insurance companies were playing with large blocks of risky mortgages was the borrowing of funds from the Fed at very low interest rates and then lending that money to every warm body on the street combined with out of control spending practices of the masses and inflation offset by incomes that had turned stagnant around 2000 and unless you were in the top 10% income brackets was flat until the meltdown where the income quickly dropped to near nil for those who ended up without a job.
Increases in consumer spending and inflation combined with stagnant wages by itself would have eventually been enough to kill the economy. The banking greed only added fuel to the fire. In fact, if wages for the other 90% of the wage earners had continued their rate increase seen in the 1990s then credit would not be as much of an issue as it is today. Banks have money they've borrowed from the Fed that they could lend to individuals, but they wont as most individuals wages are already strapped with debt.
I never metameme I didn't like.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
You're lucky. You're relatively prosperous. You have a very long way to fall before you really feel the pinch, by which I mean, for example, fuel costing so much relative to your income that you have to choose between heat and food. There are billions of people less fortunate than you. These people dream of being rich enough to heat or cook by natural gas or even kerosene - wood or charcoal's all they can afford (mind you, I'd rather cook on charcoal than kerosene, convenience be damned - that stuff stinks). And as for owning a car... no chance.
As cheap oil dwindles, your world (and mine) will become more and more like theirs. The only question is whether it happens gradually, through acceptance and adjustment, or suddenly, through denial and conflict.
Whether it will run out in 20 years, or in 100 years, Oil WILL run out eventually. Whether we make the investment to retool our entire civilization now or in 100 years, we WILL have to do so.
I'd rather we rush ahead right now and find out we had decades of leeway than sit on our asses right now and wake up tomorrow to find out we didn't have as much time as we thought we had.
I know you're being sarcastic, but apart from the fact that much of what has been extracted from the ground already has gone up in smoke....
What's remains in the ground is going to require increasing energy (and associated pollution) or will be in inconvenient or pristine areas.
Take a look at the environmental impact of mining and extracting Alberta's oil sands for instance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_Oil_Sands
for a similar case in point -by the end of the CA gold rush they were making huge cyanide leaches to extract miniscule amounts of gold from ore that had to be pounded into dust. those companies then all folded leaving CA and Nevada (mostly) with these Superfund-type sites (except no one will ever pay to have them cleaned up)
-I'm just sayin'
No seriously. The IEA and USGS (US Geological Survey) were both formed after the 1970's oil shock to provide us with reliable data about future oil supplies. They idea was to provide us with plenty of time to prepare ourselves for future oil shocks. And they did just that - delivering solid if boring data for 30 years.
The suddenly in 2000 everything changed. Sources hereto though uneconomic were included, assumptions like magic improvements in extraction efficiency were added. And the projections altered accordingly.
Seems Bush put about as much store in solid reliable oil data as he did in solid reliable Iraqi intelligence, or scientific advice on global warming for that matter. He was nothing if not consistent.
http://www.peakoil.net/uhdsg/weo2004/TheUppsalaCode.html.
You mean the polluted land with oil pipes transporting oil across Alaska that caused caribou population to increase because they all huddled up next to the oil pipes for warmth and fewer died from the cold?
What you said doesn't necessarily contradict what he said...
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
1. A good portion of our congress is owned by the oil companies
2. These oil companies want to continue to sell as much oil as possible, ergo...
3. These oil companies oppose anything that might reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, so...
4. Any information that might result in an increased sense of urgency to develop alternative energy sources is suppressed, or at least massaged.
Don't believe me? Hey, they did the same for global warming
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
> The fact that the price of future-dated oil doesn't reflect this suggests that the smart money doesn't believe peak oil is as imminent as the heralds of doom suggest.
The fact of relatively low futures prices can be explained several ways: ...
1) As you suggest: there is no problem.
2) Investors base their decisions on inaccurate/fixed supply estimates (as per the article)
3) The investment is too long term for the majority of investors.
4) "Smart Money" is an oxymoron.
Virtually everything in a modern home, a modern hospital, a modern medicine cabinet, our modern lives are made from petroleum. The Peak Oil proponents rarely mention that most of the stuff they intend to have us use to "Go Green" is made from Oil. Their fancy CFL bulbs depend on Oil for the components. Most "Green" solutions rely on Oil-derived materials to be manufactured. The very bicycles they want us to peddle, the stroller they push, the mosquito repellant they use to keep their hippy kids free of West Nile, are all petroleum based at one component level or another.
I can't wait for the day the PETA-loving Peak Oil blabbering tree huggers realize the only oil-free option for a new bicycle seat is leather. May as well leave the fur on.
Learned nothing from the recent oil price spike did we? Price goes up, crisis starts, demand drops, price drops, crisis stops. The end of oil's dominance as a fuel source will be slow, not sudden. There are PLENTY of alternatives waiting in the wings for economies of scale to make them as cheap or cheaper than oil.
The people shilling peak oil are just trying to make money off the "crisis" plain and simple - another feature of the market.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
AND environmentalists always say we have to stop burning carbon based fuels.... which I do agree with, but that's not going to happen in time to save the planet. Switching to nuclear power is the only option we have until fusion reactors become feasible and safe, they produce lots of tritium still ( and you thought they didn't have radioactive waste products). So just like Seven Chu says, nuclear power must be a part of our energy production during this century.
And I do agree, three mile island was a great example of how to contain an accident, which was caused by the engineers shutting off water to the reactor, causing it to overheat, very similar to chernobyl. But there was practically no radiation released, the most anyone got was equivalent to smoking 1 pack of cigarettes. But come on, those designs weren't even made with computers, today pebble bed reactors are extremely safe. Toshiba makes a nice mini nuclear reactor perfect for cargo ships, which burn fuel oil, very dirty stuff. Drop them in all the cargo ships, they burn 100,000 gallons of fuel crossing the ocean. I haven't heard of any alternatives for them.
A climate fix is needed to hold us over (we have too much carbon up there, and it's going to take a while until we stop releasing so much), spraying seawater into the air, a dyson sphere to block out some sun, or other creative options will have to be employed to cool off the earth.
We really need some pro nuclear propaganda in this country, we have by far the most knowledge of nuclear physics, and so much if it has been going to waste for the past 30 years.
As far as nuclear waste, I never saw the problem with sticking it in a mountain, unless you believe in mole people or something. The natural uranium mines has huge amounts of uranium in the ground, and it hasn't been a problem for millions of years, so whats the problem with artificially putting hot stuff in the ground. Hell, you really just need a concrete building to throw the waste in, just don't put it on a fault line.
We have something like 10,000 nukes sitting in the silos and building, they are made of dangerous material, and nobody wines about that, yet nuclear waste is somehow completely different?!
In other words your arguments have no credibility and your just acting out in anger. As is evidenced when you repeat claims that the Democrats somehow destroyed any hope of additional regulation of Fannie and Freddie in a response to a post where I gave you the links to GW Bush's response claiming he will not support a house bill that passed that provided for regulation. And while I didn't provide a link I did give you the information you would need to look into McCain's half assed support of the same while in the senate.
And the funny thing is, none of it matters because if you read any of the reports that looked into the meltdown all the nutso news headlines and talking head spin masters are full of shit. Poor people receiving mortgages did not bring down the economy, that has to be the dumbest conclusion anyone from any political party could ever proclaim. Complete idiocy.
What soot?
Why does the snow turn black at the side of the road?
Why do the wheels on my road bike stain my hands black when I change a tire?
Modern cars are cleaner, sure, sometimes you can even taste it when an old beater drives by, but all hydrocarbon based vehicles are certainly contaminating our environment.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you'd better start looking for a carpentry job.