THE International Monetary Fund Thread (merged)

[Graeme]

Forget Peak Oil, Time To Worry About Peak Oil Labor

In a recent working paper, researchers at the the IMF (International Monetary Fund) attempt to reconcile the Peak Oil debate that whether resource constraints will dictate the future of oil output and prices, or advance in technology motivated by high oil price would eventually provide a solution to more production, as well as higher oil prices.



However, what most forecasts as well as the IMF paper did not discuss is the scarce human capital that's already seriously plaguing the oil industry, which could have serious implication in the future oil production and technology development.

With the aging and retirement of the boomer generations that began their careers in the late 1970s (see chart below), the oil industry is suffering an acute shortage of experienced skilled professionals.


A separate study by the Petroleum Human Resources Council estimates about 39,000 workers will be needed in Canada along to replace those who are expected to retire before 2020 just to maintain the status quo. The industry could need as many as 130,000 new hires by the end of the decade with more bullish oil and gas prices.

Already at least one analyst firm is scaling back its drilling activity forecast for 2012, in part because there aren't enough workers who can drill big, complicated wells. For now, NES Global Talent sees a depletion of skilled workers in oil and gas fields in the United States, Great Britain and Australia, three of the busiest oil and gas regions, will become a major problem.

zerohedge

[Plantagenet]

With the aging and retirement of the boomer generations that began their careers in the late 1970s (see chart below), the oil industry is suffering an acute shortage of experienced skilled professionals.

This is easily rectified. Already we are seeing some university faculty in geology and engineering hired away by oil companies at 2x their university salaries-----in just the last couple of months two people I know here have left the university to go to oil company jobs in Houston and to Aramco in KSA.

We are also seeing more oil company money for training students. Just last weekend we had a grand field excursion ---- free for anyone who signed up-----all paid for by the new BP travel fund.

[sparky]

.
Same in Australia ,anyone with some rig experience is being bidded for
lot of barely competent techs , but the good ones will learn and the bad ones will be dumped

That a classic "financial technological " response and that's why this side of the future has to be considered too .
of course Geology is a primary consideration ,
but within it's constrains , the financial tech can substantially modifies
the supply/ demand equation too

It's not either /or , more like to side of the same industry

[Pops]

Here is a presentation of this paper.

This models says oil prices would need to double within 10 years to sustain a .9% yearly increase in supply.

[Plantagenet]

It only took the IMF a decade to figure out what Colin Campbell and the ASPO have been saying all along about lack of global oil production growth and its effect on oil prices.

I just wish the IMF had the decency now to apologize for all their prior misleading energy forecasts.

[Pops]

Technology and exploitation of unconventional sources can't defer the long-predicted decline in global oil production

IN 2007 former US energy secretary James Schlesinger claimed the arguments in favour of peak oil - the key theory that global production must peak and then decline - had been won. With production flat and prices surging towards an all-time high of $147 per barrel, he declared, "we are all peakists now".

Five years on and production has risen by 2.7 million barrels per day to 93 mb/d, prices have recently slumped to around $100 a barrel and those who dismissed the idea that the rate we extract oil from the ground must inevitably decline jeer in delight.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg2 ... k-oil.html

[dissident]

Five years on and production has risen by 2.7 million barrels per day to 93 mb/d

Who needs facts when BS will do. There is no 93 mb/d of crude+condensate production today. Counting biofuels and other liquid fuels categories is moving the goal posts. The peak oil "theory" (fact) applies to crude+condensate. Peak for biofuels will come soon enough, but is an unrelated question (it is related only in that biofuel production depends on crude oil availability).

The standards at New Scientist have been slipping a lot in recent years. It used to be a sober scientific magazine during the 1990s and before.

[pstarr]

Five years on and production has risen by 2.7 million barrels per day to 93 mb/d

Who needs facts when BS will do. There is no 93 mb/d of crude+condensate production today. Counting biofuels and other liquid fuels categories is moving the goal posts. The peak oil "theory" (fact) applies to crude+condensate. Peak for biofuels will come soon enough, but is an unrelated question (it is related only in that biofuel production depends on crude oil availability).

The standards at New Scientist have been slipping a lot in recent years. It used to be a sober scientific magazine during the 1990s and before.

Natural gas liquids have also been added recently to the mix of liquids, bumping up the production numbers. EIA reasons the availability of extra NGL's frees up crude to become liquid fuel. (Apparently in Europe some regular crude is diverted from liquid fuel use be distilled into naphtha as a chemical feedstock, for plastics). Sounds good except it is not, because NGL's are more valuable as feedstock then motor fuel.. Lots of extra NGL's===lots of inexpensive plastic, i.e. more plastic substitution for various other applications (extra plastic packaging, plastic auto bumpers, plastic lumber, etc.).