Ask Slashdot: What If We Don't Run Out of Oil?

symbolset writes "The Atlantic recently ran an in-depth article about energy resources. The premise is that there remain incalculable and little-understood carbon fuel assets which far outweigh all the fossil fuels ever discovered. The article lists them and discusses their potentials and consequences, both fiscal and environmental. 'The clash occurs when renewables are ready for prime time—and natural gas is still hanging around like an old and dirty but reliable car, still cheap to produce and use, after shale fracking is replaced globally by undersea mining of methane hydrate. Revamping the electrical grid from conventionals like coal and oil to accommodate unconventionals like natural gas and solar power will be enormously difficult, economically and technically.' Along these lines, yesterday the U.S. Geological Survey more than doubled their estimate of Bakken shale oil reserve in North Dakota and Montana to 7.4-11 billion barrels. Part of the push for renewables over the past few decades was the idea that old methods just weren't going to last. What happens to that push if fossil fuels remain plentiful?"

Comments

We Wish

[Cornwallis]

Suggest you read this:

http://kunstler.com/blog/2013/04/we-wish.html

Re:We Wish

[Anonymous Coward]

The evidence is overwhelming. Burning fossil fuels reintroduces carbon that has been out of the carbon cycle for millions of years. If we were burning corncobs there wouldn't be a problem because that carbon is part of the active carbon cycle, but instead we're releasing buried carbon back into the air that hasn't been active carbon since the earth's dinosaur-greenhouse days.

We have "plenty of oil" in the same way Social Security is fully funded and solvent... for about 30 years. The emphasis in the statement is on the "we" part, because you and I have plenty of oil but our grandkids are pretty much fucked. Claiming there is plenty of oil is the classic "fuck you, I got mine" mentality in action.

Re:We Wish

[sribe]

Note that the first 50% of oil was mostly consumed in a century.

Except that it wasn't. We keep finding more and more, and that 50% keeps going down and down...

Well, in this context the word "oil" is ambiguous. It could mean a very specific thing, in which case the 50% is closer. Or it could mean anything that falls under the category "petroleum", which is the way I took it.

Re:We Wish

[BasilBrush]

Except that it wasn't. We keep finding more and more, and that 50% keeps going down and down...

Hubbert came up with peak oil theory, and he based it on the finite oil in the ground, not the vaguaries of oil that we happen to know about at any one point in time.

Hubbert was a geologist working for an oil company. The fact that new discoveries come along, but at an ever slowing pace, was hardly something he wasn't aware of, and isn't a flaw in the theory.

The 50% is "50% of oil in the ground", not "50% of oil that we've discovered". The 100% doesn't move, other than at the pace of geological time frames.

Re:We Wish

[thoth]

Whoever modded parent insightful can't do math either.

The irony is delicious...

11 Billion barrels is 11,000 Million. 11,000 Million / 19 Million per Month = 579 Months = 48 Years

You somehow translated 19 million barrels per day into 19 million barrels per month. So you are the one off by a factor of 30.

579 months / 30 = ~19 months, right around what the GP said.

And, a quick google seems to confirm these numbers (~19 million barrels per day): http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=33&t=6

Re:We Wish

[arpad1]

Hubbert came up with the peak oil hypothesis. It's not a theory until he demonstrates the hypothesis predicts something. He didn't.

I know, I know. Hubbert predicted peak oil in the U.S. putting the date of peak oil as 1972 and lo! U.S. oil output peaked in 1972.

Of course Hubbert didn't predict any such thing. He got lucky.

How do I know for sure? Because he never issued another correct prediction again. A stopped clock is right twice a day but doesn't have much value for keeping time. Hubbert was right just once.

The 100% doesn't move, other than at the pace of geological time frames.

Feel free to reveal the means by which you've nailed down the quantity of oil that amounts to 100%.

Re:We Wish

[Lonewolf666]

Renewable energy is widely used indeed, but so far often thanks to subsidies. In Germany, for instance, electricity from renewables gets a guaranteed price for 20 years from installation of a plant (paid for by an apportionment of the costs to the buyers of electricity).

The interesting point is "grid parity", when making your own electricity becomes cheaper than buying it. For private households we have reached this point in Germany, but with an important qualifier:
If you had to make your own electricity all of the time, it would become more expensive because you would need some energy storage for times of weak production.

On the production side, the cost of running a coal plant is still below 10 Euro-Cent / kWh, so most renewables cannot compete yet without subsidies. Wikipedia has some estimates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source and http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromgestehungskosten (German Wiki). If those are accurate,
  - Natural Gas currently wins in the US by a wide margin. Which may, of course, rapidly change if the more skeptical estimates about fracking are correct.
  - Hydro power looks nice (clean, and cheaper than coal-fired) but most attractive places to build a hydro plant are already in use.
  - Wind looks interesting in terms of cost, but has the disadvantage of being non-dispatchable.
  - Solar cannot compete yet, but may get there with further improvements in making solar panels cheaply.

Re:We Wish

[BasilBrush]

Hubbert came up with the peak oil hypothesis.

You are incorrect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubbert_peak_theory

It's not a theory until he demonstrates the hypothesis predicts something. He didn't. I know, I know. Hubbert predicted peak oil in the U.S. putting the date of peak oil as 1972 and lo! U.S. oil output peaked in 1972. Of course Hubbert didn't predict any such thing. He got lucky.

He also got lucky more than 50 more times as subsequent countries also passed peak oil.

Feel free to reveal the means by which you've nailed down the quantity of oil that amounts to 100%.

I already did. Question asked and answered elsewhere on the thread.

Re:We Wish

[mlts]

There are other gains as well. There is loss of voltage through long distance power lines, so 5KW of electricity coming from solar/batteries is a lot less than what is needed to be pushed from a substation to a house, through a number of step-up and step-down transformers in order to overcome the resistance in the wires. This is something that isn't thought of -- someone might think $5 in solar may not recoup $5 in energy, but realistically, it saves far more electricity.

Solar is constantly improving. Supercap batteries can be used as a front-end (fast charging, lower energy density) for the regular ones, to allow charging to continue even after there is no usable sunlight, as well as take advantage of peaks (cloud edge effects) that a normal charger wouldn't be able to use.

This doesn't say that even distinct solar panels have to be used. There are roofing shingles that might make less wattage, but make up for it by no need to install brackets and such.

Solar does have its detractors. When RV-ing, solar is a must have for anyone who decides to do camping that isn't at a full hookup resort. However, outside of the RV world, there are always people who complain that the energy it takes to make a complete solar panel (frame, cells, wires, etc.) are far more than the panel will ever generate in its usable lifetime. It is hard to change that attitude.

I agree with the above, perhaps even tossing a bone to the gas/coal industries with a subsidy, so they can produce less, but not dent their bottom line. In the long run, it would be a win/win for everyone involved.

I wish there were some way to convert natural gas into propane. Propane has a lot of nice qualities as a fuel, from being able to be stored as a liquid (which means it approaches gasoline for energy density), to not being a greenhouse gas, to being extremely useful as a refrigerant (R-290.) A vehicle with a propane tank would have almost as much range as a normal gasoline vehicle. To boot, if propane spills on the ground, it goes downhill and disperses, and doesn't make a mini-Superfund site like gasoline does.

Re:We Wish

[CAIMLAS]

There are no viable alternative energy investments, currently. Solar is as close as it comes, and that's really not a viable alternative for oil.

Oh, did you mean research? Research money is entirely different than investment money; investment money expects at least a close to parity return. Research money is a sunk cost; it's completely unknown.

Let's not be disingenious.

Truth be told you've got a lot to do in physical research before anything for energy storage becomes viable as an oil replacement. Your best bet is something which fits into existing infrastructure: either a liquid or gas that can substitute petrolium (eg. LP for instance), or something using electricity (eg. batteries).

There's nothing even approaching viable here, unfortunately, especially with California electricity costs.

Re:We Wish

[Maury Markowitz]

"The US Department of Energy estimates that a new photovoltaic power plant entering service in 2017 will runs about $157/MWh in total levelized system costs (in 2010 dollar terms)."

Ahh, the famous DOE report. The numbers in question were from the 2008 time frame. Prices since then have fallen 4-fold.

I bought my SolarWorld 230W panels in 2010 for $2.30 a watt. Today I can buy 270W versions for $1 a watt. I can get Chinese A-brands, like Trina, for about $0.75.

The price of power from PV is directly related to system cost and pretty much nothing else. Total installed costs have fallen from about $8 a watt to about $3 a watt. Factor that in, and the fact that the numbers in the DoE report are from even earlier, and you're looking at a 4 to 5-fold decrease in system prices.

When you factor that in, power from PV is about 12 to 25 cents, which is *extremely* competitive with other peaking sources like NG.

Roast

[mdm42]

We all get to roast in the human-induced Global Climate Change that results form dumping all that C into the atmosphere. More realistically, we get to starve as our crops and farming methods fail to cope with the variability implied by climate change, aggravated by the terribly, dangerously narrow genetic diversity in agricultural varieties in use because we've allowed major corporations to "patent" and "exclusively license" the genestock that feeds us.

~4B barrel increase is minimal help

[armahillo]

http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_cons_psup_dc_nus_mbbl_a.htm

Last year, we consumed 6.8 billion barrels of oil. This has been a pretty consistent average over the past 5 years, all things considered (5 years prior it was 7.5B, but seems to mostly fluctuate around 7B). And this is US consumption *alone* -- not even factoring in the increased rate of Chinese consumption, or any of the European, African, Asian, Australian, South American nations (Antarctica gets a pass, because it's effing cold down there and they can use a little oil to not die while watching penguins)

7.4B to 11B barrels is 2 years AT BEST if we pare down our oil consumption. Then those resources are GONE.

Considering "oh, but there might be more than we think left over!" is pretty pointless when we alone are consuming oil at this rate. Absorbing the mild inconvenience of reducing our oil consumption should be priority #1 for all of us. It doesn't solve the problem but it will (a) give us a *little* more time to get off the sauce and (b) start altering our habits and consumption practices in a direction that will prepare us for the inevitable end of oil reserves, which are guaranteed to happen someday.