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PeakOil is You

PeakOil is You

THE ASPO Thread Pt. 2

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

Re: ASPO-USA IMPLODES!!

Unread postby asg70 » Fri 23 Feb 2018, 11:04:18

Carnot wrote:Their cornucopian beliefs that mankind will always be able to find a solution is indeed even more polemic than Peak Oil believers belief in peak supply.


Not all who rejoice hold this belief. In fact I think you're strawmanning.

Carnot wrote:Peak Oil proponents only need to be right once.


The problem is that chicken-little syndrome winds up in causing the general public to permanently tune-out. This is ultimately counter-productive to the cause of advocating a shift away from fossil-fuels. At present the main impetus to do so is climate-change and fossil fuel depletion has moved to the background (although Elon Musk sometimes hints at it).

Therefore anyone who sees themself as concerned about PO should a) own up to being wrong and b) check methodology before fanning the flames of short-term doom once more.

Right now I am not seeing what I would consider "good methodology" applied to peak-oil. I continue to see a sort of continual straining on the part of die-hards to find a vector for short-term collapse of one sort or another. ETP was one, and current talk about debt bombs is another. The more it seems as though peak oil advocates are starting with a conclusion and working back to justify it the less credibility they appear to have. This doesn't register to the already-converted who are happy to be told what they want to hear, but it falls on deaf ears beyond the echo-chamber.

This is why, on any given day when you come here, the doomiest headlines that are aggregated on the homepage almost always originate from a small group of of perma-doomers who have been spewing daily doses of doom for a very long time. Ugo Bardi, Zerohedge, Gail, etc... and then a few random no-name bloggers who, by virtue of "blogging" are considered de-facto citizen journalists.

The credibility of the most pessimistic predictions is therefore very low.

It would be nice to see someone who doesn't seem to be harboring some massive chip on his/her shoulder or is merely interested in internet fame or hawking books to come around and really say something new and informative. The old guard of Colin Campbell, Matt Simmons and the like are gone. Those people at least seemed to have credibility from having logged lots of years in the oil industry itself. That kind of direct expertise is lacking. In its place you just have various flavor of low-level demagogues, crackpots, and attention-whores.

At least ASPO gave off the illusion of academic seriousness, but with even them gone, the movement has hit rock bottom.

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: ASPO-USA IMPLODES!!

Unread postby marmico » Fri 23 Feb 2018, 11:49:59

+1. Shorten it to 250 words to make a good abstract. It's all about the price. $150 oil in 2008 is $180 oil in 2018.
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Re: ASPO-USA IMPLODES!!

Unread postby Cog » Fri 23 Feb 2018, 11:53:43

I'm a cornie that you despise. I would not be a member here if I believed the earth's core was filled to the brim with oil. But peak oil doomers tend not to look at what is actually going on with supply and demand and look to theories like ETP. Sure, at some point, we won't be able to produce oil economically. The juice won't be worth the squeeze so to speak. But that is not now nor is it soon.
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Re: ASPO-USA IMPLODES!!

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Fri 23 Feb 2018, 14:33:54

Carnot – I agree with the relative unimportance of the date of global PO. We’ve been dealing with the effects of the diminishing new reserves for many years. What confuses some folks is that even the dramatic decrease in oil prices a couple of years ago was actually part of that dynamic. We’ve gone over the POD many times so I’m not going waste space doing it again. If someone doesn’t get it by now they never will.

If I get the drift correctly some have concerns we may be developing too much of a C/LO (condensate/light oil) reserve base. I doubt that will ever be a problem. I won’t approach the subject quantitatively: too much time and way too much debate. So will stick with anecdotal. For instance without C/LO Alberta could not pipeline 1+ BILLION /yr of dilbit (diluted bitumen) to the US. But even then dilbit, at 21 API, is of no use to the refineries unless more C/LO is blended with it to bring the gravity up to 32 API. That has been the average gravity refined for many years.

No one can claim that the world doesn’t hold a huge proven reserve of heavy oil/bitumen. And that’s just the reserves in Alberta and Venezuela. And almost all of it has no value without sufficient C/LO to blend with it. And where will it come from? Venezuela has already imported C/LO from Libya to blend with its crap. Given the Vz financial troubles it had to be very necessary to BUY foreign oil. Many folks are also unaware that hundreds of millions of bbls of Eagle Ford condensate have been tankered half way around the country was for years to refineries in eastern Canada. There it was blended with there heavy crude imports to meet the requirements of those refineries. The increase in production from the Eagle Ford allowed US oil blenders to stop importing condensate from foreign producers. Again, a fact that very few Americans (including a few here) were not aware of.

The need for increasing amounts of C/LO may explain a part (perhaps much) of the higher oil prices we experienced some years ago. While C/LO production did boom in after 2007 it did so primarily due to the higher oil prices. Higher oil prices needed to justify the high cost of developing the shale plays. Of course that led to the seesaw effect we’ve seen with oil prices. Current high oil consumption has increased the value of the formerly VERY INEXPENSIVE heavy oil/bitumen reserves. Which led to an increased demand for C/LO for blending. Which has put upward pressure on the oil prices we’ve experienced recently.

The long term future is cloudy to the Rockman. Low C/LO prices made those very cheap heavy oils/bitumen very attractive. But that put upwards price pressure on those rather poor but extremely abundant resources. But they also require more C/LO production which causes a price push there. But then comes pricing induced demand destruction. But in the shadows is the geologic limitations of the C/LO reservoirs. I’ll let others argue about that volume. But it doesn’t change the FACT that just like conventional oil reserves there is a limit and someday, regardless of the oil prices, there will be an ever diminishing supply of C/LO coming to market place. That might start in 5 years, 15 years or 50 years.

But that point will eventually be reached.
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Re: ASPO-USA IMPLODES!!

Unread postby Cog » Fri 23 Feb 2018, 17:39:01

Are you saying that heavy oil(without dilution) can not be refined ROCKMAN with the refinery set up to do so?
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Re: ASPO-USA IMPLODES!!

Unread postby Carnot » Fri 23 Feb 2018, 18:06:33

Wow, what a response. Thanks everyone. Debate is still alive . I do not propose to be right( although most of the time I am - joke). Keep the opinions coming because this is what good debate is about. I side with the peak oilers but I am not blind. Do your homework and present your arguments without prejudice. Good science is about debate. I might not agree with your view and you might not agree with me. Fine, just keep the debate civil.
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Re: ASPO-USA IMPLODES!!

Unread postby Darian S » Fri 23 Feb 2018, 18:10:07

My question is take the U.S. they're currently increasing production, but probably would increase even more if production in other parts wasn't falling. All the shale plays when all is said and done, won't they vanish by like 90% within years? Basically production will fall by millions upon millions of barrels. And you will need thousands upon thousands of new wells to restore production back up and if it is shale again it will again vanish within a few years, no?

So effectively barring other new sources won't the U.S itself peak permanently after the current shale plays have played their role. In the mean time demand will continue to rise, and conventional fields all over the world will continue to fall in production rate, demanding even more spectacular shale plays or similar across the globe to continue production.

How is the rest of the world? Can it put out multiple shale plays globally to kick the can?

If shale is such a great play, and so energy productive why is it that many of the companies involved are said to be having financial problems? Why is it said that massive amounts of debt were required to allow it? Debt basically allows borrowing energy from other sectors to fuel the industry.
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Re: ASPO-USA IMPLODES!!

Unread postby AdamB » Sat 24 Feb 2018, 00:06:25

Darian S wrote:My question is take the U.S. they're currently increasing production, but probably would increase even more if production in other parts wasn't falling. All the shale plays when all is said and done, won't they vanish by like 90% within years? Basically production will fall by millions upon millions of barrels. And you will need thousands upon thousands of new wells to restore production back up and if it is shale again it will again vanish within a few years, no?


Such has been the business since before you were born. You seem surprised?

Darian S wrote:So effectively barring other new sources won't the U.S itself peak permanently after the current shale plays have played their role.


No reason to bar new sources when we already know of their existence, even if their economics aren't currently favorable. Oil shale, hydrates, reserve growth in existing fields, the ROZ in Texas. SPL gels and CO2 flooding in the existing shale producing fields as well.

Darian S wrote: In the mean time demand will continue to rise, and conventional fields all over the world will continue to fall in production rate, demanding even more spectacular shale plays or similar across the globe to continue production.


Peak demand now has more credibility than peak oil supply, conventional fields have been falling your entire lifetime and didn't bother you any, and of course there are other "spectacular" (whatever the hell you think that means) shales, folks like the USGS, EIA and IEA have been quantifying and discussing them for years. Not that peak oilers want much to do with the geoscience behind what happened to their idea, but there it is.

Darian S wrote:How is the rest of the world? Can it put out multiple shale plays globally to kick the can?


Won't even need to with how demand projections are looking.

Darian S wrote:If shale is such a great play, and so energy productive why is it that many of the companies involved are said to be having financial problems?


Because oil companies having financial problems has also been going on in the patch longer than you've been alive.

Darian S wrote: Why is it said that massive amounts of debt were required to allow it? Debt basically allows borrowing energy from other sectors to fuel the industry.


I never completed a single shale well with borrowed money. Some folks are still familiar with bootstrapping a company, but others would prefer to accelerate growth when they can, and that can require borrowing, or becoming involved in the market. All of this was happening before peak oilers got involved and demonstrated that building rapture scenarios don't have much to do with the engineering, geology or economics of oil production.
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."

Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
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Re: ASPO-USA IMPLODES!!

Unread postby Darian S » Sat 24 Feb 2018, 02:07:40

No reason to bar new sources when we already know of their existence, even if their economics aren't currently favorable. Oil shale, hydrates, reserve growth in existing fields, the ROZ in Texas. SPL gels and CO2 flooding in the existing shale producing fields as well.


Isn't tight oil more profitable than shale? And yet isn't there financial problems with current companies, aren't they struggling? How will they have success with more difficult endeavours?
All of this was happening before peak oilers got involved and demonstrated that building rapture scenarios don't have much to do with the engineering, geology or economics of oil production.

You've seen the graph on U.S. tight oil? The sudden rise in the recent past. Why wasn't it exploited earlier? It speaks, or looks like a measure of last resort, and as said seems will only buy years for the U.S.

Don't see why more difficult sources will manage to not only restore the fall but provide for further growth and profitably so.
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Re: ASPO-USA IMPLODES!!

Unread postby asg70 » Sat 24 Feb 2018, 12:10:13

Darian S wrote:Don't see why more difficult sources will manage to not only restore the fall but provide for further growth and profitably so.


It's reasonable to question the sustainability of the shale revolution. However, it doesn't seem like there's an existential threat to oil supply in the immediate future. Also note that the entire thesis surrounding ETP, which had been dominating mindshare here for the last few years, was that the LOW oil price regime was responsible for driving shale drillers into bankruptcy. The current uptick in prices is actually the best scenario as it's high enough to fix their balance sheets while still low enough not to put a drag on cost of living.

Also, technical innovation never stops in the oil patch. That innovation is tasked with increasing recoverability and lowering overhead. Depletion will, of course, win out in the end, but in the short-run, innovation has been able to kick the can down the road.

I think there's still a residual feeling with the remaining peakers that the world was supposed to end in 2008 and therefore there is this constant fishing around the news and the blogosphere for a short-term trigger. If everyone finally lets go of that sensibility and accept that we're in a reasonably stable lull, just reset the doomsday clock as it were, then maybe something akin to a reasonable discussion can resume, albeit with only a tiny band of posters.

The nature of that discussion should factor in the changes in the world over the last decade. Those two biggest changes have been a) the shale revolution and b) the looming EV wave. Both of these together point towards, at the very least, a softening of the blow of the long-delayed fall off the peak-oil production plateau.

Meanwhile, climate change predictions get increasingly dire and we see more and more global weirding. I rarely even pop my head into the AGW threads here because it's just too terrifying to contemplate. I really think the AGW situation is far more concerning than peak oil because there are a lot of ways to produce energy besides oil, but most of what we're gonna face in the future with AGW is now permanently baked in even if we cut CO2 output to zero.

BOLD PREDICTIONS
-Billions are on the verge of starvation as the lockdown continues. (yoshua, 5/20/20)

HALL OF SHAME:
-Short welched on a bet and should be shunned.
-Frequent-flyers should not cry crocodile-tears over climate-change.
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Re: ASPO-USA IMPLODES!!

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Sat 24 Feb 2018, 18:16:43

Darian – “If shale is such a great play, and so energy productive why is it that many of the companies involved are said to be having financial problems?” Need to pull apart that dynamic. First, the shale play isn’t a “great play” per se. There have been many profitable wells drilled as well as many dogs. Just like in every play that’s been developed since Col. Drake poked that first hole. Much of the “financial problems” came about when oil prices fell. Many wells were drilled that required $X+/bbl to turn a profit. Just like in every play that’s been developed since Col. Drake poked that first hole. And there were some companies that developed financial problems when oil was still $X/bbl while other companies were turning good profits. Just like in every play that’s been developed since Col. Drake poked that first hole.

I don’t know if you were hanging around here when we chatted about the roughly hundred shale playing companies that filed bankruptcy. Some of the poorly educated types here pointed to those companies and predicted the end of the oil patch. And did so despite that being a very small % of the industry. Even worse not recognizing that filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy wasn’t the end of life but actually a rebirth. A rebirth into a healthy financial condition. Who typically gets f*cked are the lenders and occasionally the shareholders. Federal bankruptcy laws are specifically designed to make companies financially viable once again…not to put them out of business.

My favorite example: Halcon. After clearing Chapter 11 bankruptcy $billions in debt and hundreds of $millions of interest payments were eliminated. And with such a “clean spreadsheet” it was given an asset based (it did develop a lot of proven reserves) $600 million credit line. It’s now using that new capex to jump into the hot play developing in the Permian Basin. In this example the debt holders came out on top: the original shareholders had to give them 96% of the stock. But the company, Halcon, came out in great financial shape.

To paraphrase: “The death of the oil patch was greatly exaggerated.” LOL
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Re: ASPO-USA IMPLODES!!

Unread postby AdamB » Sat 24 Feb 2018, 23:02:58

Darian S wrote:
No reason to bar new sources when we already know of their existence, even if their economics aren't currently favorable. Oil shale, hydrates, reserve growth in existing fields, the ROZ in Texas. SPL gels and CO2 flooding in the existing shale producing fields as well.


Isn't tight oil more profitable than shale?


Oil produced from shales is tight oil.

Darian S wrote:Don't see why more difficult sources will manage to not only restore the fall but provide for further growth and profitably so.


This appears to be what has already happened.
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."

Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
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Re: ASPO-USA IMPLODES!!

Unread postby Darian S » Mon 26 Feb 2018, 13:22:02

Oil produced from shales is tight oil.


I've heard that the word shale is used to describe two types, one tight oil with a higher EROEI and another with a far lower EROEI that may not be viable.
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Re: ASPO-USA IMPLODES!!

Unread postby AdamB » Mon 26 Feb 2018, 22:42:06

Darian S wrote:
Oil produced from shales is tight oil.


I've heard that the word shale is used to describe two types, one tight oil with a higher EROEI and another with a far lower EROEI that may not be viable.


Whoever told you anything about EROEI distinguishing between different "types" of oil was shining you on, or just oil-ignorant. Not only because EROEI metrics in the industry are meaningless, but obviously they aren't even familiar with the word "tight" and what it means, geologically speaking.

Tight is a characteristic defined generally by permeability. It includes shales (depending on how you might wish to characterize the natural fracture sets within them) and other rocks as well, of a certain permeability. I seriously doubt that someone who doesn't know this could manufacture a metric based on a difference they don't understand.
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."

Plant Wed 11 Apr 2007 "I think Deffeyes might have nailed it, and we are just past the overall peak in oil production. (Thanksgiving 2005)"
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Re: ASPO-USA IMPLODES!!

Unread postby Darian S » Wed 28 Feb 2018, 12:20:00

Shale oil can refer to two types of oil. It may refer to crude oil that is found within shale formations, or to oil that is extracted from oil shale. Oil shale is a type of sedimentary rock that has low permeability, and which has bituminous-like solids that can be liquefied during the extraction process.-Investopedia


The Bottom Line
Whether we are talking shale oil or oil shale, there is a common denominator to both - they cost more per barrel for extraction than more conventional oil deposits. This means that both are prey to market forces. Oil shale in particular, while potentially an enormous source of oil, is still a work in progress as far as getting the production costs low enough to compete. This is unlikely to change with prices below $60 a barrel.

Shale oil, on the other hand, has shown some resilience to this current pricing environment as some deposits are still being extracted with the expectation of making a profit at current market prices. So, in the end, the biggest difference between oil shale and shale oil is that shale oil is still a money making endeavor whereas oil shale is a potentially important source for the future. (For more, see: Is U.S. Shale Becoming the Global Swing Producer?)-https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/080715/difference-between-shale-oil-and-oil-shale.asp
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