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When do we fall off the undulating plateau? Pt 2

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

When do we fall off the undulating plateau? Pt 2

Unread postby mmasters » Thu 04 Jul 2013, 15:26:17

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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby John_A » Thu 04 Jul 2013, 17:46:16

Point of order, which plateau? The one we just left a year or so back, or what is expected to be the new one?

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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby Palpatine » Thu 04 Jul 2013, 18:03:40

John_A wrote:Point of order, which plateau? The one we just left a year or so back, or what is expected to be the new one?


Based on the current glut, I think the plateau will start around 2018-2020 (rough guess).
But based on experience, we all know how dicey making predictions on peaks can be. I don't want my name attached to anything that could come back to haunt me. :twisted: Look how it turned out for some reputations in the past.

It depends if we have another rise in production due to more advances Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR). People are clever when there is money to be made.
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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby John_A » Thu 04 Jul 2013, 19:18:13

pstarr wrote:Glut? Referring to the scant 750,000bpd tight shale we've managed to yank out in the last five years?


Don't you mean, "more production than is being produced by the largest fields in the Western Hemisphere out of crap rock because of wild and crazy technological change"?

followed quickly by... "and OMG where does this end up if we can't stop it somehow!"

pstarr wrote:If I recollect Cantarell lost that much production in only a few years. You may have noticed that shale seems to entered its own plateau, at least base on drilling activity. Don't forget that without constant drilling, shale production plummets, at around 69%/year. So with the rest of the world's crude declining 4%-6%/year decline, I imagine the plateau will soon be history. And then there is ELM :shock:


and for some reason all of these things, continuing since the 2005 peak, haven't slowed down global fuel production which recently hit a new all time high! If it wasn't for the price to first replace, and then create more supply, we wouldn't even have noticed the last peak oil! 8O

And we still don't know which plateau we are talking about yet, the old 83 mb/d one or the new 90+ one!
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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby Palpatine » Thu 04 Jul 2013, 19:25:57

John_A wrote:And we still don't know which plateau we are talking about yet, the old 83 mb/d one or the new 90+ one!


But I thought after we peak, it doesn't matter how many holes we poke in the ground, production levels will never rise again... EVER !!! :oops:
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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby ralfy » Thu 04 Jul 2013, 22:10:12

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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby ralfy » Thu 04 Jul 2013, 22:12:44

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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby Loki » Thu 04 Jul 2013, 22:23:03

So John and Palpatine, when do you think the US will blow past our previous peak in 1970? Surely this vast new production will give the lie to Hubbert's failed analysis about peak oil. The only question is when?

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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby John_A » Thu 04 Jul 2013, 22:51:03

Palpatine wrote:
John_A wrote:And we still don't know which plateau we are talking about yet, the old 83 mb/d one or the new 90+ one!


But I thought after we peak, it doesn't matter how many holes we poke in the ground, production levels will never rise again... EVER !!! :oops:


By avoiding the term "peak", we stop that kind of argument dead in its tracks. When someone writes a paper predicting peak plateau, then we will have achieved the next level of peak consciousness.
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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby John_A » Thu 04 Jul 2013, 22:54:31

ralfy wrote:This might help:

http://crudeoilpeak.info/latest-graphs


Cool graphs. Too bad they don't include all the stuff we are actually making liquid fuels out of, and someone correct me if I'm wrong but even in this censored data, is that yet another peak in this particular subset of stuff we make gasoline and diesel out of, right there at the tail end?
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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby John_A » Thu 04 Jul 2013, 22:56:15

Loki wrote:So John and Palpatine, when do you think the US will blow past our previous peak in 1970?


I don't think that the EIA says we do. Considering that they appear to do the modeling and projecting the way everyone wants it done, price scenarios, well level declines, resource based and limited amounts capable of production, I think that is the best answer there currently is.

No new peak. Sorry to disappoint. Better luck next new resource/technology which comes along?
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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby Loki » Thu 04 Jul 2013, 23:38:10

Yes, yes, but surely this new production falsifies the peak oil hypothesis. Your multiple posts on the subject have convinced me. This plateau nonsense is just code word for peak oil, which we agree is a bunk concept.

This apparent plateau is just a lull before the storm of oil that's too cheap to meter. Peak oil my ass, it'll be flowing like the river Ganges in no time. Just wait.
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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby John_A » Fri 05 Jul 2013, 01:07:21

Loki wrote:Yes, yes, but surely this new production falsifies the peak oil hypothesis. Your multiple posts on the subject have convinced me. This plateau nonsense is just code word for peak oil, which we agree is a bunk concept.


no no no. Peak oil happening in 2005, wistfully sliding into plateau oil and then being disguised as a price/economic concept, that has convinced me! All these changes in definitions, distinctions without differences, code words for this subset of a particular length hydrocarbon chain identical to that one but with a different density because of impurities and whatnot, it all makes so much sense to me now!

I just want to know, who got to Stuart, and what did it cost them to get him to publish graphs showing this ever increasing fuel stuff? He is one of the diving into the desert original TOD posters, to get him to make up these ever increasing liquid fuels graphs, the TPTB must have just applied tremendous pressure!
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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby agramante » Fri 05 Jul 2013, 01:27:20

One thing you just mentioned, John--total liquids, not crude. (And since by your own graph we've yet to hit 90 million per day, I think you're anticipating things just a bit by calling a 90+ million plateau. About 3 or 5 years after we do pass 90 million, should we ever, then we'll be on a new plateau. But your eagerness is admirable.) Comparing apples to apples:

world-crude-oil-production-2012.jpg


things have gotten a bit bumpy lately. If the latest spike, as of 2012, remains at a consistent level for a few years. But even including condensate:

Global-Crude-Plus-C.jpg


the same story emerges. There's a possibility that the current plateau we've been on since 2005 could rise, and stay there for a while. I'm lousy at all forms of gambling so I don't really care to put a number to it.
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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby Palpatine » Fri 05 Jul 2013, 02:51:18

Loki wrote:This apparent plateau is just a lull before the storm of oil that's too cheap to meter. Peak oil my ass, it'll be flowing like the river Ganges in no time. Just wait.


In all seriousness, while we all recognize that Peak Oil or Peak Plateau Oil is a reality and eventually oil supply will decline, I just like to poke fun at all of the predictions over the years that have turned out to be so fabulously wrong. It sort of makes it dangerous to make any today. The techies who figure out how to get more out of the ground are beating us every time we think they can't.
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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby agramante » Fri 05 Jul 2013, 06:53:59

Absolutely, Palpatine. I believe the process is happening but we won't know clearly when peak (or the plateau equivalent) occurred until production is clearly in decline. This might sound like a face-slap truism, but innovation clearly counts for something, or we wouldn't have gotten as much out of the planet as we even have so far. Trying to push myself into a corny/doomer frame of mind is really beside the point of just trying to maintain a reasonably clear idea of what's going on.
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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby davep » Fri 05 Jul 2013, 06:57:20

I've gone for five years. It's scarily close in the scheme of things but sufficiently far away that if I'm wrong no one's going to remember anyway 8)
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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby mididoctors » Fri 05 Jul 2013, 07:53:03

Decades. they(we?) are going to throw every last bit of carbon into that bonfire
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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Fri 05 Jul 2013, 08:41:47

Here’s a thought: if we are going to focus on “plateaus” why not just stick with the one that’s of ultimate interest to everyone. As I just mentioned elsewhere except for us geogeeks very few folks care when PO happened, what the current US oil production rate is or isn't ’ going to be, how many more shale wells will be drilled, how much of our liquid fuels won’t be coming from crude oil, ELM, geopolitical upheavals, etc. etc.

Why not focus on the plateau that all those various and often difficult to decipher factors affect: price. Of course that leaves us with the constant question of defining “plateau”: is it a 10% window…20%. Ignore short term spikes…up or down? I’ll let other thrash that out. And then what price do we chart? Brent? WTI? Average price at the pump…in the US…elsewhere?

Probably doesn’t make a lot of difference. In the end we’ve been on a price plateau for a number of years IMHO. And appear to be staying on it at least in the near future. The nice thing about focusing on price is that it modulates factors like increasing oil production in the US from the shales. Increasing US oil production would be fantastic…even it hadn’t come about as a result of those higher prices. I think most have come to the obvious conclusion that the shales are not going to bring us back to the days of $40/bbl oil. This also brings up the puzzle: if US oil production is rising and demand is decreasing why do we still have high prices? We can debate that answer till the cows come home but it doesn’t change the fact that we are on a plateau.

I’ll let the charters do their thing. It would be interesting to see other metrics like US production rates, biofuel production, etc plotted on the price plateau chart. Might make clear some of those relationships we’re always debating.
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Re: How much longer will the plateau continue?

Unread postby rollin » Fri 05 Jul 2013, 10:52:53

As I sit here in the greatest civilization on earth, the lights keep flickering. I wonder when they will go out again.

It seems appropriate that the major response was three to five years for the plateau to end. The descent has always been predicted as three to five years in the future except for one or two who kept declaring it to be in a few months, over and over again.

As far as I am concerned, first world countries are in a descent now, economically and fuel wise. They are band-aiding petroleum with poverty (lower demand), low molecular weight NGL's, bio-fuels, efficiency, natural gas and lots of media lies. The patient has been injured, first aid is being applied but the fight still goes on and so does the injury. When will the first tourniquets and amputations happen?
Once in a while the peasants do win. Of course then they just go and find new rulers, you think they would learn.
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