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Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

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

Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby Pops » Mon 09 Feb 2015, 15:03:11

Revi wrote:The problem is that we are getting so little net energy out of oil nowadays that we will continue down the cliff until oil is practically useless to the average person.

You keep saying this but my old truck got the exact same miles out of a gallon as it did 50 years ago.

Maybe you should switch stations?
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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby Revi » Tue 10 Feb 2015, 12:43:25

I get you, but the whole society is going to be affected by EROEI. If you look at this graph the vast majority of the oil we have been using is the stuff that has a high EROEI, and the stuff on the way down is going to be harder to get.
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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby Pops » Tue 10 Feb 2015, 13:39:08

What you are ignoring by focusing on this ERI emergency is we've only ever received but a scant fraction of the energy in oil even in the good old days.

The theoretical best we ever received from the refinery was .8 BTUs out for every 1 BTU in.

The theoretical best we will ever get from an internal combustion engine is 35-40% of that - so maybe .3 BTU for every one BTU of oil at the wellhead - at best!

That is an ERI of 1:3 - one barrels worth of oil work for every 3 barrels invested.

The whole bit about oil becoming worthless and the world ending when ERI turns negative is just wrong. Even if oil squirted straight out of the ground and into the storage tank we would have been energy negative from the start.
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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby Pops » Tue 10 Feb 2015, 14:28:31

It takes energy to refine oil - crackers are just big distillers, boil the oil and catch what comes off.
Somewhere in here I found the 80% number - it takes 20% of the energy in the product to refine it.
Ditto the amount we get out at the wheels.

I don't doubt that it costs more energy to get it out of the ground today, but what we do with it at least as important.
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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby Revi » Thu 12 Feb 2015, 09:06:57

We are going to see soon how the world works out. It seems like there is more petroleum than the world needs right now. Maybe we are already weaning ourselves off of it.

They pulled a rabbit out of the hat with fracking and other enhanced recovery techniques. It bought us 10 years, but now that game is basically over. Production is still rising, but it may peak this summer, and that's it.
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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Thu 12 Feb 2015, 09:40:40

Revi _ "It seems like there is more petroleum than the world needs right now. Maybe we are already weaning ourselves off of it.". I have an alternative view: It seems like there is more petroleum than the world can afford to buy right now. Maybe we are already suffering withdrawal symptoms
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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby sparky » Thu 12 Feb 2015, 09:46:33

.
@ Rockman ...yep
that's the whole conundrum ,...........plenty of hydrocarbon out there but can't afford it
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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby GoghGoner » Wed 13 May 2015, 08:18:24

dashster wrote:Ron Patterson at peakoilbarrel.com thinks that we have hit Peak Oil.

I am of the firm conviction that the world is at the peak of world oil production right now, or was at that point three or four months ago. I think history will show that the 12 months of September 2014 through August 2015 will be the one year peak. Whether the calendar year peak is 2014 or 2015 is the only thing still in question, or that is my opinion anyway.



Well, the IEA probably just made the latest peak guess invalid. 2016 anyone?

US shale has 'blinked' in battle against OPEC: IEA

It also said that global oil supply growth remained at a steep 3.2 million b/d year-on-year in April, adding that total oil supplies were flat from March as higher OPEC output had offset a drop in non-OPEC supply.

It predicted that supply growth for 2015 from non-OPEC producers would be 830,000 b/d, up by 200,000 b/d since last month's report.
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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby ennui2 » Wed 13 May 2015, 08:53:39

People have been saying we've hit peak oil for 10 years now. That's not newsworthy. When oil prices skyrocket to $100 again then take another look at the situation. But even then, they'll probably just turn on the fracking again and it will moderate. It ain't over yet.
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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby kanon » Wed 13 May 2015, 09:02:39

Pops wrote:The whole bit about oil becoming worthless and the world ending when ERI turns negative is just wrong. Even if oil squirted straight out of the ground and into the storage tank we would have been energy negative from the start.

It does not make sense that it is "just wrong." The consensus was that peak oil arrived in 2005. The great recession began in 2008. The fracking industry has not made a profit and their claimed cost reductions coincide with lower oil prices and slack demand. Your observations about energy losses in the extraction -- refining -- consumption process are all well taken, but I still think there is something going on here regarding net energy. I have not heard an understandable explanation that sounds good to me, but there is too much smoke for there not to be a fire, so to speak. If it takes more to produce the fuel, there must be a consequence somewhere. I suppose I am saying "further research is needed."
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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby Pops » Wed 13 May 2015, 09:07:03

When I was a kid, maybe 7 or 8, I remember riding in my father's Ford Falcon.
I asked where we were going and he said,
"we're going downtown to get gas, they're having a price war and regular is only 25¢"

I can't remember what I thought about that but it must have made an impression.


In marketing, the product cycle describes introduction, growth, maturity & decline of a product. In the maturity phase, the product typically has achieved its greatest penetration into the market (growth) and competition turns to maintaining market share. Eventually the market goes into decline as demand falls or the product is replaced but during the maturity phase there is lots of consolidation, M&As, price wars.

I'm not sure how that relates to a commodity, especially one like oil. I can't see how keeping the price low helps KSA or OPEC. Oil is not like a refrigerator that you buy once and then are out of the market for a decade, it gets used up right away. OK, so they keep their market share, maybe even increase it a spec, but to what benefit if their income is lower?

I guess I just don't get it.

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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby Pops » Wed 13 May 2015, 09:35:45

kanon wrote:I suppose I am saying "further research is needed."

I agree.

The simple explanation is there are no simple explanations.

Rons prediction last August or whenever that peak would be in the following year if all things were equal didn't take into account that things are only equal until they aren't. Trends are linear until they bend. Prices were at historic average highs until they weren't. Demand was constrained until it wasn't. KSA would be the swing producer and backstop the market until it decided to do what everyone else has always done and just let 'er rip flat out.

Sure, I think it is getting harder to keep up the flow of oil, yeah it costs more to frack shale, scrounge tar, drill the arctic or ultra-deep than it is tap a reservoir out in the back 40. But there are a world of variables out there beyond this trendline or that URR guess.

You gotta remember that oil is in everything and everything runs on oil. Regardless of the pessimistic group that gathers here to shake the bones hoping for the end of the world, there is a world of people out there that kind of like things as they are and will pull out every old indian trick they know and invent some new ones just to keep the party going.

Simplistic forecasts have been consistently wrong because they hang their hat on one (or at best a couple) of variables.
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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby GoghGoner » Wed 13 May 2015, 09:41:56

Well, if they know that the current low price will cause higher prices in the future (and it will since upstream investments were cut dramatically)... I don't really think they are that smart, though. I don't think they can swing easily anymore --something to do with all of those straws sticking in the ground. They used to have a few giant straws to turn off. KSA is just a cog like every other producer.

Totally agree with the nonlinear negating any future predictions and that doesn't mean just the single commodity of oil -- that means arctic ice, CO2, corn production, population growth, etc... I have learned to be a watcher not a predictor but I still love folks who try to predict stuff.
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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Wed 13 May 2015, 11:54:34

"People have been saying we've hit peak oil for 10 years now. That's not newsworthy". Exactly the point I keep boring some folks with: the DATE of PO isn't newsworthy at all...never has been and never will be. Oil prices increasing from $35/bbl to over $100/bbl is newsworthy. Thousands of shale wells drilled is newsworthy. The price of oil collapsing 50% in just weeks is newsworthy. the rig count booming/collapsing is newsworthy. The expenditure of $trillions and thousands of lives by the US govt to "export democracy" and fight terrorism in ME oil producing countries is newsworthy.

Etc, etc, etc. IOW it's all the components of the POD that are newsworthy.
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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby GoghGoner » Wed 29 Jul 2015, 11:21:24

Bam! The EIA weekly report has the lower 48 states down 150kbd the last week. They have adjusted how they estimated oil production and it showed up this week.

http://ir.eia.gov/wpsr/overview.pdf
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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby Subjectivist » Wed 29 Jul 2015, 12:14:36

GoghGoner wrote:Bam! The EIA weekly report has the lower 48 states down 150kbd the last week. They have adjusted how they estimated oil production and it showed up this week.

http://ir.eia.gov/wpsr/overview.pdf


But still about 800,000/bbl/d higher than a year ago. I don't think the media will pay much attention until we start producing less than year ago data, which might take another six months.
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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby ennui2 » Wed 29 Jul 2015, 15:47:06

Just because they don't produce as much doesn't mean there's less stuff still in the ground. Oil is cheap, after all. So they stop drilling. They can go back for more.
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Re: Peak Oil Barrel: Peak Oil 2015

Unread postby GoghGoner » Wed 29 Jul 2015, 16:10:41

1) Since it was funded by debt there is a chance that investors will be more leery. Default rates are rising quickly in the sector and expected to keep rising. Debt was so easily secured because of stimulus. I saw this quote recently and it sticks - "Stimulus simulated a recovery, it did not stimulate one." For commodity producers, it made it easy find funds to raise production but it didn't create the additional demand. Whacked out central bankers.

2) The sweet spots have been taken. Even if they can get dumb investors to repeat the mistake, will they be able to achieve such success again?
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