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

[BasilBrush]

Environmentalists are not saying we're running out of oil. "Peak Oil" does not mean the end of oil. Indeed it's believed to happen when around half the oil has been extracted, and half is still in the ground. The reason production goes down is because the remaining oil gets more and more difficult to extract. Costly both financially and in terms of energy. And if it cost > 1 joule of energy to extract oil that gives 1 joule, it's not worth it.

Note that the first 50% of oil was mostly consumed in a century. Because of increased consumption, even if the second 50% were easy to extract, it wouldn't last a century.

Environmentalists ARE saying that oil is polluting, both in terms of traditional pollutants, and releasing green house gasses. And if we have to switch to renewables anyway, why not do it as soon as possible.

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

[FooAtWFU]

And if we have to switch to renewables anyway, why not do it as soon as possible.

This question is easier to ask when you're making well-above-average computer-programmer-level salaries and quadrupling the price of electricity and fuel (or something) and the various manufactured things which depend on that price isn't going to really ding your lifestyle. But given the number of people in this world who make a trivial fraction of that, it gets more complicated.

Re:We Wish

[Albanach]

even though the evidence now points to there being plenty of oil?

So let's say we take the high end estimate. 11 billion barrels of shale oil available.

Current US oil consumption runs around 19 million barrels per day. You just discovered enough oil to last the United States for twenty months.

I guess you might be correct, for very small values of plenty.

Re:We Wish

[Narcogen]

The reason why not is obvious. Oil companies have their place in the markets, their sunk costs invested in equipment, technology, business processes, and distribution networks. Their interest is not in getting off oil as soon as it is possible, or practical. It is to stave off that transition as long as possible, to make sure that extracting and refining oil remains profitable right up until the last possible drop that can be produced and consumed is produced and consumed.

Presumably at some point, if they want to remain in the energy business, they will themselves convert to something else so that when there is no more oil that can be practically and profitably produced, they will remain in the market by diversifying.

So there's the time when environmentalists say we should transition (now) and the time when oil companies say we should transition (when oil is no longer profitable, when they say so) and what actually happens will fall somewhere in the middle, very likely much closer to the latter than the former, because when it comes to resolving conflicts of interest between the energy sector and interests of ordinary citizens, most Western governments have a pretty terrible track record.

Re:We Wish

[Anonymous Coward]

And if we have to switch to renewables anyway, why not do it as soon as possible.

This question is easier to ask when you're making well-above-average computer-programmer-level salaries and quadrupling the price of electricity and fuel (or something) and the various manufactured things which depend on that price isn't going to really ding your lifestyle. But given the number of people in this world who make a trivial fraction of that, it gets more complicated.

That sounds a lot like figuring the cost of something based solely on what you paid at the cash register.

How about this, instead? We invest in alternative energy technologies R&D now? Then when (or if, if you prefer) the cost of oil-based energy becomes prohibitive, we'll be prepared, instead of waiting until the last moment and running around like the denizens of Tokyo when Godzilla comes to town? We'll have already learned the expensive mistakes and false starts, and be able to more efficiently deploy the most cost-effective alternatives when we need them.

I realize that there is a large segment of the population that screams we're absolutely utterly helpless whenever a problem comes up that cannot be solved by invading and pillaging, but I have a little bit more faith in both Nature and the human race. If we just take some responsibility and do something instead of waiting around quivering until the oil taps run dry, we just might achieve something worthwhile.

We always seem to be able to find the money to fund wars, so I don't buy into the idea that we cannot afford to provide for our own future. What's the point of winning the wars if the country is destroyed by its own negligence?

Re:We Wish

[BasilBrush]

and quadrupling the price of electricity and fuel (or something)

Or something? You're making an argument when you don't even know? Check out green energy tariffs. They are a bit more expensive than ordinary ones. But not 4 times, that would be ridiculous.

But that's by the by. Fossil fuels are not a repeatable bargain. The human race can extract them once every several million years. What makes you think that you saving a bit of money is justification for using up all of a particular resource, and polluting the place in the process? Why do you deserve it more than your grandchildren, great grandchildren and so on.

Remember, oil isn't just for energy. It's a raw material for manufacturing most products too. Do you really think it's wise to burn it off in the next generation, leaving nothing left for the thousands of generations to come?

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

[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.

We will

[AmiMoJo]

Oil is a finite resource, it will inevitably run out eventually. In the meantime it is getting harder to get out of the ground and tends to involve us with countries we would rather not be too closely involved with.

Re:We will

[Robotbeat]

I am a physicist with no stake in nuclear energy. I doubt fusion will be better than /effective/ fission, at least for a very long time (we'd have to get to aneutronic fusion for it to be significantly better). But the good thing is that fission is /actually/ pretty darned good. Fast breeders, traveling wave, and LFTR (especially) offer enormous advantages over current designs. Heck, even more conventional modern designs are much safer. But we'll be stuck with the old ones (or nothing) because even the slightest accident (if judged by demonstrated fatalities, i.e. none in the case of Fukushima!) means the developed world runs away from nuclear power as fast as they can, largely because they don't understand it (physics is hard). Natural gas explosions happen, um, every single day and kill several people every year (and those are just the direct deaths, not counting global warming, etc).

And in spite of huge explosions rivaling or exceeding high-profile terrorist attacks, the world is running in a full sprint /towards/ natural gas. Germany, Japan, the US... Abandoning nuclear and building natural gas power plants. Why? Probably because everyone kind of understands it. People cook with it, heat their homes with it. Nuclear still has the stigma of the Cold War nuclear annhilation, but the irony is that most newer nuclear power plants (LFTR specifically) aren't well-suited to the nuclear weapons industry.

And by the way, nuclear is cheap. What makes it expensive is delays. Delays caused by endless lawsuits of people utterly afraid of nuclear power. And so we CAN'T build new nuclear power plants. Instead of taking 3-4 years, they take maybe 3 decades as construction is stopped by the courts until being given approval to proceed. At, say, 10% interest rate, over 25 or so years that increases the cost by /an order of magnitude/ over what it would be with a quick construction. That is 90% of the reason for the supposed high cost of new nuclear power. This is cited by opponents of nuclear power as reason for why we should oppose nuclear power, but that is, of course, a self-fulfilling prophecy because lawsuits and political opposition slow down new construction. Meanwhile, we're doubling and soon tripling the carbon dioxide levels. Old nuclear power is cheap, still, because it has been operated for many decades and like renewables its upkeep and "fuel" cost is very low. Which is partly why utilities don't like them, since they have big upfront costs (like renewables) and the lack of fuel costs isn't a huge deal for them since they can just pass that on to the consumer. Both nuclear and renewables have too long of payback periods to satisfy investors wanting 10,15% annual returns. But for an economy growing at a moderate rate, even 5% return is plenty.

There's enough thorium to last hundreds of millions of years. We most certainly won't be the same species by the time we run out of nuclear fuel, and because of the recycling of the Earth's crust, there'll be more available by the time run out. Of course, the easiest to get stuff is still plentiful, and the tiny contribution of fuel costs to nuclear power generation is why thorium isn't looked at more closely. Also, LFTR reactors can burn up our old nuclear waste, so building new LFTRs would actually /reduce/ the long-term nuclear waste. They can burn up all the long-term waste so that only medium-term waste (which decays fairly rapidly, i.e. half-lifes of decades instead of thousands of years) is produced, which we can deal with until it decays to low levels.

That said, I support renewables. An idea I'd like to see more of is hybrid geothermal and photovoltaic power plants co-located using the same infrastructure. Geothermal can act as storage or backing power for when the sun don't shine, and solar makes geothermal last longer. Solves lots of problems.

We turn the planet into Venus

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens if we don't run out of oil? We continue to pump out CO2 until we turn the planet into Venus. Switching to renewables isn't just about running out of oil.

Economics

[Registered Coward v2]

There are a couple of economic reasons that will drive renewable adoption:

It's not the size of the reserves but the cost of extraction that will drive adoption of renewables. As long as natural gas is cheap (and prices can be hedged) utilities will build natural gas plants at the expense of renewables. If prices rise sharply, gas becomes less attractive (since much of the cost per KW is for fuel) and other energy sources become viable options.

The energy density of the energy source. If a lot of space is required per BTU fossil fuels will dominate in many places. For example, a gas plant is relatively compact compared to a wind farm of similar capacity; so it is much easier to acquire land for a gas plant. For small scale uses, such as automotive or home fuels, the ability to get a long range or have a reasonably small supply pipe vs large panels favors fossil fuels currently. The economic driver here is "what fuel source gives me the best return on my needs;" such as the ability to travel or not want a roof full of solar panels.

Economics is what limits OPEC's ability to rise prices - eventually alternatives are viable on a cost basis as well as an energy self sufficiency one.

Quite frankly, global warning is not as major concern to most people than the ability to afford fuel drive, cook, and heat their houses; so selling renewables on that basis is very difficult.