Total: World oil output to reach 95 million b/d by 2020



pennenergy

In unrelated news, I expect to grow another 12" in my 40s.

What's that? You expect to grow 12" in you bvd's? no way.

What are you complaining at?

Total, one of the main companies constituting Big Oil, is calling the peak. Read this again:

I thought worldwide oil production had already stabilised at 86 mbpd. Does de Margerie imagine that oil production is increasing right now?

TOTAL CALLS THE PEAK!!!!

Er, too bad they missed it by 14 years.

That's like a graduate student winning a spelling bee. Big whoop. A willingness to accept the concept of peak was impressive at the start of this decade. Now it is just a source of irritation. They get no cookie from me.

Well, can we at least admit that they are walking the fine line of not causing an immediate panic and also telling everyone that the future of oil is limited? Everyone who knows anything about the global economy knows that any sort of hiderance in supply growth is at the very least a major necessity for change in how we get our energy. I did appreciate the subtleness of their 'extra heavy crude.' Meaning EROEI of something like 2. So, basically, since we know that LSC has peaked, you are going to get that extra 10 mbpd by burning about 30 mpbd to turn oil laden dirt into synthetic oil. He gave us no olive branch on price. The age of cheap oil is over, the age of cheap energy is over, at least until demand has gotten the message about supply constraints.

I actually believe the majors are soft-serving this big time. I think that the system as we know it will not survive even the revelation that we are moving from a 40:1 EROEI regime to a 5:1 regime (I'm estimating the effect of what we call net oil, or peak energy, or something like that I forget the 'official' term.) So everything now has this multiple of eight needed in terms of work to get the same amount of energy. That is going to effect prices, constrain growth and ultimately prove the undoing of the global energy market. That said the tyranny of the global financial market will not end yet, but I believe will be bolstered in time by a short lived world political union where the religion of the masses will be the most deceptive form of liberal humanism.

And yes, during that time real Christians will be persecuted for simply believing what the Bible says. After that Christ returns.

So host that for mixing paradigms. Still, even if you reject the faith of which I speak, the analysis of the oil market is corroborated by the testimony of many trusted experts. The goose is cooked, and it's a tough bird.

Alarm is necessary to spur action. Adaptation requires some form of stress as an instigator, in the human world and the animal kingdom alike. Hubbert relied on reason alone in 1956 to advocate change and never stood a chance. We do not respond well to reason unless accompanied by stress. The oil shocks of the 70s were our best shot, unpleasant though they were. They introduced insecurity and that got results. The only tragedy was the stress did not remain in place long enough for effective follow-through.

Our present predicament is a legacy of those wasted years. Avoding panic amounts to avoiding giving people a reason to change their ways. Stress is a powerful motivator. Its most common guise is the plethora of economic incentives that underpin a market, though they are rarely recognised as such. In the interests of saving people from fear, the entire problem is being obscured. In the interests of saving people from fear, they continue to be told that energy prices are a speculative bubble and the result of uncompetitive practices, with eventual resolution by third party naturally being implied. The effect of this is a substantial countering of the economic incentive to switch to a higher-efficiency vehicle. A helpful stress response is postponed.

The instinct on the part of technocrats to minimise untidiness is something I can understand, but this has even been nullifying price signals up to this point! They cannot see the damage they are doing. Some surely do, but are bound by organisational cultural intertia. This policy is dysfunctional.

This is an unpopular stance, but fear is healthy. Rational fear helps you avoid harm. Individuals, societies, they need it. Instead we do not allow people real fears and replace them with irrational ones that are more easily controlled and disposed of. In my opinion this represents a strategic failure of influence. Where is the expectation management? Above all that is what we need, and we need it yesterday.

And the facts of that failure have deeply reinforced resistance to market signals this time through. Big Money has been very resistant to alternatives because it was burned so badly the first time through.

As soon as they are convinced that no one can re flood the market with cheap crude, capital will flow into alternatives like there's no tomorrow.

We've rounded that knee, I believe.

{got any chocolate-chip?}

I agree absolutely. Sure, you can have a cookie. Be sure to eat it quick though, it expires in 24 hours.

Off-topic, when did you become Community Manager? What does the role entail? That sounds like the sort of position ISPs have for being the voice of PR to users when service is unexpectedly degraded.

Oh, I hope not. We're trying to march forward, not degrade.

If our Moderators are Teachers, then I guess I'd be the Vice Principal's Office.

Behave now and no running in the halls!

I would never imply that this crowd could or would act like teenagers, of course.

Getting back on topic:

It would take extraordinary effort and much suffering to achieve 95 million barrels per day, at this point.

We'd have to steer a significant portion of the current consumable energy stream back into new energy production in order for that to happen, which means quite a bit of other economic activity would have to stop.

Those that experience the stop will be unhappy. Sorry.

Maybe it needs to happen that way. lazyness is a vast disease these days anyways.