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Article refuting the imminent end of oil

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.

Article refuting the imminent end of oil

Unread postby JD » Sun 28 Nov 2004, 20:10:00

http://worldnetdaily.com/news/article.a ... E_ID=41613

Comments?

The reserve figures here don't match those of many postings on this site.

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Unread postby Jack » Sun 28 Nov 2004, 20:17:51

The article uses an optimistic approach. Perhaps they are correct.

And yet, the trend of oil prices has been up. We can look at global political allignments, and one interpretation is that they are driven by oil.

In the end, one places one's bets and one takes one's chances. My bet is more on the side of Peak Oil being at hand. You might wish to consider Matthew Simmons' views before you make up your mind.
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Confused

Unread postby JD » Sun 28 Nov 2004, 20:22:01

http://www.lesjones.com/posts/000863.shtml

This guy seemed to originally believe in peak oil being imminent, and now doubts that this is the case. Again, pointing out that reserve figures are growing all the time...
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Saudi's triple oil reserves

Unread postby Guest » Sun 28 Nov 2004, 20:30:38

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Unread postby MonteQuest » Sun 28 Nov 2004, 20:34:29

These arguments and figures have been refuted at length here and other places. For example:

The major media focus with myopic intensity on conventional crude reserves, ignoring stunning reserves of oil located in tar sands and oil shale. At best, this is difficult to comprehend.


Not too hard to comprehend if one does the EROEI work. That and the ability to meet or even match coventional oil production is woefully short, not to mention the enviromental costs and the huge requirements of water and existing energy required to extract it. It is not that we are running out of energy resources, it is that we are reaching our limit in the ability to meet demand no matter what we do or try to develop.


But by far the largest potential reservoir of future oil is held in oil shale.


This has been shown to be an energy sink, in that it takes more energy to extract it than is there.

JD, do a search of this site for postings related and you will find a wealth of info.

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Re: Confused

Unread postby MonteQuest » Sun 28 Nov 2004, 20:40:11

JD wrote:http://www.lesjones.com/posts/000863.shtml

This guy seemed to originally believe in peak oil being imminent, and now doubts that this is the case. Again, pointing out that reserve figures are growing all the time...


Inflated is a better word. Shell just got it's hands slapped and had to reduce their stated reserves by 20%. OPEC's quota system allows members to sell their oil based upon proven reserves. Many of the new reserve numbers came about following no known discoveries of new oil.

And even if reserves are increasing, demand is outstripping them. We are consuming 3 to 4 barrels of oil for every one we find.
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Unread postby savethehumans » Sun 28 Nov 2004, 22:47:47

Thanks, MonteQuest! You've said what I'd have said, and a lot of others, too, I suspect.

I, too, wish I could believe the optimists. But I can't. Too much fact in the way! And the wishers, gullible, and people with a stake in believing the skeptics (like corporate & government sorts), will keep insisting that all is well--or at least not as bad as all that--right through the crash, the die-off, etc. I've followed the battle for truth on Global Warming and Climate Change, too. The skeptics there make me see the skeptics here as deja vu all over again.... :roll:
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backdating.

Unread postby Such » Sun 28 Nov 2004, 23:43:12

Yeah, we have more reserves than ever... and the number keeps going up

Remember to look at the creaming curves... backdated reserve figures... then you see a real trend.
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Unread postby 0mar » Mon 29 Nov 2004, 00:25:45

Unless theres a giant 500-600 billion barrel of oil just laying around, I doubt we will find anymore significant findings. As Campbell has said "There is only a finite amount of oil and the industry has found about 90% of it."

And we won't run out of oil ever. It's just that the production of oil will be in permanent decline and our industrial/financial machine requires 2% or so growth in oil to be successful. Thus, demand outstrips supply and bad things happen globally.
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Unread postby Guest » Mon 29 Nov 2004, 11:34:45

At the end of the article referenced above they give some links including one for the office of Naval Petroleum and Shale Oil Reserves-US Dept. of Energy.

The link has an article by this office indicating that they believe conventional oil will peak sometime before 2020, but oil shale can step in and make up the shortfall. Maybe it can or maybe it can't, but it's pretty interesting to see a US government agency endorsing the idea of conventional peak oil.
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Unread postby Guest » Tue 30 Nov 2004, 16:36:39

Maybe the deep-earth gas theory is correct after all. We've known for decades that existing Saudi fields are filling back up from somewhere, and the Russians have written about a thousand papers over the past fifity years arguing that oil doesn't come from primordial life but is merely trapped hydrogen and carbon like you'd find on any planetary body. I mean, you'd expect the first and fourth most abundant elements in the solar system to show up somehow, and the thermodynamically stable form of carbon and hydrogen a hundred or so kilometers down is in fact petroleum. All this may be true, or maybe not, but it's certainly interesting.


It's amazing that Saudi and Russian oil fields are filling back up, but US and North Sea reserves are in decline :wink:

An economy based on exponential growth, a fractional reserve banking system and an end of cheap oil is what the Peak oil problem is all about.
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Unread postby WebHubbleTelescope » Tue 30 Nov 2004, 21:50:42

0mar wrote:Unless theres a giant 500-600 billion barrel of oil just laying around, I doubt we will find anymore significant findings.


The World Nut Daily article essentially said that. How's this for hyperbole:
"since recent deep oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico has identified a huge vat of oil."

imho
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Unread postby cador » Tue 07 Dec 2004, 14:31:44

I'd like to comment on the following points in the article:

Move forward to the 1973 Arab oil embargo, which prompted the highly respected journal Foreign Affairs to publish an article on "The Oil Crisis: This Time the Wolf is Here."

In many ways, the oil cris of the 1970s was a mini depression. How did we ultimately get out of this crisis? Eventually the oil embargo subsided and oil prices dropped to more reasonable levels and even reached an all-time low in 1998 (when you factor inflation), period known as the "dot-com Clinton New Economy boom".

Also, there's the fact that afterwards, many households required 2 incomes in order to maintain the same standard of living that existed in the 1950s when the "man of the house" could work in a factory for 40 hours a week safely secure in his job while living the "American dream".

In 1981, a respected textbook on economic geology predicted that the United States was entering a 125-year-long energy gap, expected to be at its worst in the year 2000 with dire consequences to our standard of living

Actually this prophecy came to pass in many ways. Oil prices started to go up around this time (2000) and the dot-com bust created a lot of economic hardship that still exists to this day.

The only thing wrong with that prediction is that the worst is yet to come. Yes, the economy might eventually recover giving us another brief period of prosperity that will prove all of us doomsayers wrong, but this will be a fleeting period at best (as it was in 1998).

It's fairly obvious to me that the economic and social trends of the past 35 years are all co-related to the rise in energy costs. In the 1950s lifting costs were 1 barrel used for every 40 barrels of oil produced. That number is down to 1 barrel for every 4 produced.
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Unread postby johnmarkos » Tue 07 Dec 2004, 15:37:54

Do I know that oil is going to peak in 2005? Do I know that oil is going to peak in the next five years? Well, actually, no I don't. I'm not a geologist or an economist or a mathematician. I'm just a guy with a liberal arts degree and a better than average B.S. detector. Unfortunately, this issue, one that I am completely untrained to deal with, has the potential to affect my life and the lives of everyone around me.

I can tell the difference between solid analysis and political pronouncements. Claims like, "Saudi Arabia now has 1.2 trillion barrels of estimated reserve. This estimate is very conservative," are political, not scientific statements. They are not backed up by solid figures, analysis, or explanation of where they expect to find that oil.

One contrast I find particularly convincing is that the folks who claim that oil is about to peak (Deffeyes, ASPO) provide detailed figures, analysis, and point out places where their numbers could be wrong. Those who deny peak oil tend to be rather fuzzy about where the extra oil is coming from. The calls for reserve transparency and better numbers are coming from folks like Matthew Simmons, who believe that oil is about to peak.
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Unread postby TWilliam » Tue 07 Dec 2004, 17:12:04

johnmarkos wrote:One contrast I find particularly convincing is that the folks who claim that oil is about to peak (Deffeyes, ASPO) provide detailed figures, analysis, and point out places where their numbers could be wrong. Those who deny peak oil tend to be rather fuzzy about where the extra oil is coming from.



Well now isn't that how it works tho'? "If you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance (by refuting the facts), baffle 'em with bullsh**!" :P
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Unread postby Trab » Wed 08 Dec 2004, 16:31:46

One possibly stupid question:

If you believe in abiotic oil, the earth somehow generates oil, and it fills up the reservoir over time. Let's assume this is true.

If oil reserves build up at a suitable rate to handle the world's ever-growing appetite for petroleum, wouldn't you expect to see an 'oilcano' resulting from a previously untapped reservoir finally hitting it's max capacity and rupturing due to the pressure?

It happens with volcanos on a regular basis, so why not abiotic oil?

I'm obviously not a geologist, so maybe I'm talking complete nonsense... I've wondered about that, though.

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Unread postby trespam » Wed 08 Dec 2004, 19:12:45

Anyone else read this particular post: [link].

It accepts the ODAC analysis but counters, without significant analytical backing I admit, that peak will not happen this decade and perhaps not even next decade. I think this line of argument should be incoporated into the ODAC numbers. ODAC should not just be consider the BIG projects. Even Youngquist, who wrote Geodestinies--which argues that geology is tightly tied to the destiny of a country--even he admits that a significant amount of oil comes from small fields that produce very little.

Oil prices are increasing. Even a little demand destruction and a little production increase, combined with depletion, may prevent a catastrophic problem in this decade and perhaps well into the next.

This does not negate dollar problems and other associated issues, but those who believe peak or a crash is imminent may be wrong.
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Unread postby Canuck » Thu 09 Dec 2004, 19:10:26

trespam wrote:Anyone else read this particular post: [link].

[snip...]
Oil prices are increasing. Even a little demand destruction and a little production increase, combined with depletion, may prevent a catastrophic problem in this decade and perhaps well into the next.

This does not negate dollar problems and other associated issues, but those who believe peak or a crash is imminent may be wrong.


I hated this piece even though anyone who does believe in an imminent peak may be wrong. I am firmly in the Matt Simmons camp. We won't know until after it happens. It may have already happened and it may not happen for a decade.

The part I really dislike about the article and the part I consider intellectually dishonest is that his view is not falsifiable. Suppose he is right, more or less, and demand slows while production continues to climb for the next ten years. Ten years from now he will be able to write exactly the same story. His argument can be used to put peak off forever. It can't be right if it can do that. He will be correct right up until the moment he is wrong and he must be wrong one day.

He makes an error on both the demand and supply sides, in my opinion. Higher prices will knock back demand somewhat, but he skates past the implication of demand destruction. We can't have both continued global growth and demand destruction because demand for oil is not very price sensitive, at least not in the short run.

On the supply side, the technology improvements are also a given in the Campbell models. It is part and parcel of exploiting the second half of the resource. The challenge is not merely to get more oil out of the ground. We have to get it out of the ground faster and faster forever. If the methods to get it out faster cost a lot of energy, well then, we have to get it out still faster, eh?

It just isn't possible. It may very well be that we can continue to accelerate production for a few more years, but beyond that it becomes increasingly difficult to believe. When I see someone suggest things might be okay through the end of the decade and beyond, I don't dismiss it out of hand. We don't have good enough data. But it will happen and then we will know.

This argument is a bogus sidestepping of the real issue for economists. They aren't qualified to tell us when oil production will peak. They aren't qualified to criticise the work of the geologists or the engineers. They are qualified to answer some other questions, though, and I wish someone would ask them:

"Okay, for the sake of argument, oil production peaks at 95 million barrels a day in 2015. That is only ten years away. What are the implications of peak oil on the economy? What should we be doing today to mitigate the impact? Can the economy continue to grow with an energy supply in decline? How?"
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Unread postby TWilliam » Thu 09 Dec 2004, 21:59:08

Canuck wrote:"Okay, for the sake of argument, oil production peaks at 95 million barrels a day in 2015. That is only ten years away. What are the implications of peak oil on the economy? What should we be doing today to mitigate the impact? Can the economy continue to grow with an energy supply in decline? How?"



"Why worry about it now? It'll be someone else's problem then. Pass me a brew and let's crank this party up!"

That's the short answer anyway... :-x
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Re:

Unread postby AdamB » Thu 27 Jul 2017, 20:35:15

Perusing the archives, and BOY this place must have been a riot back in the day.

Here we go with someone trying out the EROEI argument as to low EROEI sources not able to meet burgeoning demand. And what actually then happened? EROEI is claimed to be falling, those low EROEI resources are what changed the face of the oil market, and no one has even needed to touch the US oil shales that were all Monte could think of in this resource category.


MonteQuest wrote:These arguments and figures have been refuted at length here and other places. For example:

The major media focus with myopic intensity on conventional crude reserves, ignoring stunning reserves of oil located in tar sands and oil shale. At best, this is difficult to comprehend.


Not too hard to comprehend if one does the EROEI work. That and the ability to meet or even match coventional oil production is woefully short, not to mention the enviromental costs and the huge requirements of water and existing energy required to extract it. It is not that we are running out of energy resources, it is that we are reaching our limit in the ability to meet demand no matter what we do or try to develop.


Reaching our limit to meet demand? How about DROWNING demand in so much that the price crashes!
Plant Thu 27 Jul 2023 "Personally I think the IEA is exactly right when they predict peak oil in the 2020s, especially because it matches my own predictions."

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