[Tanada]

I do like the fact that North Dakota and Texas are supplying much more of our oil, but I also am cautious because it might prove to be a flash in the pan, or it might be a long term sustainable resource. I don't know which yet. Either way it is good as long as it lasts.

Absolutely right, Tanada. As a moderate, this is an example of the positive kind of thing I expect to see as technology improves. (And like you, I have no idea how long it may last).

BUT, the negative side of BAU growth and the third world demand dwarfing any relatively minor supply improvement we may see OVER TIME, still doesn't change. Whether China grows at 6% or 8%, the big picture is BAU thinking continues apace, and 3+ billion people wanting cars will consume all the oil (and tend to push prices higher) we're likely to see for some time.

Do we have enough time to cross the bridge to the green nirvana the cornies see? (The world covered with Teslas powered by solar, for example). Maybe, but I think this takes a good 30 years, and a lot can happen in the mean time.

Personally I think the Cornies and the Doomers are both far from the truth, BAU is hard up against resource limits, even if the Cornies get LENR to work as advertized that doesn't mean BAU can continue without other problems rearing their ugly heads. By the same token I don't think humanity is about to go extinct like the deepest Doomers predict either, we are spread out through every biome of the planet and even if you shut off every piece of technology many scattered groups would survive and even prosper. Personally I suspect we are in the moderate middle, lots of things could go wrong and sharply cut human population but we will survive and stay human, for another while anyhow. Even in the worst case civilization crash we will survive and the survivors descendents will have their day in the sun just as we and our ancestors have had ours.

[ralfy]

For me, "sharply cut human population" is as bad as extinction.

[ROCKMAN]

Wild man - I would temper enthusiasm for other shale plays a tad. Not that some don't have some commercial potential but so far nothing close to the Bakken or Eagle Ford. I could list at least 2 dozen shale formations that have produced some oil/NG and by now most have been evaluated with horizontal wells. I think you know the most abundant sedimentary rock in the US is shale. But shales don't uniformaly produce commercial. For instance their are a half dozen shale formations above and below the EFS. Some have produced a little oil/NG, some a lot (Austin Chalk) and most nothing at all. The fast majority of rocks (sandstone, shale and limestone) in the US have been proven to not contain commercial deposits of hydrocarbons. Most would be very surprised to see how very little of the geologic section (even in Texas and La) have produced all of our hydrocarbons to date. Difficult to appreciate when you see all the wells on the map that commercial accumulations are actually rather rare.

[dorlomin]

BBC world news has decided this story has legs.
From http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-envir ... #FBM262379

Shukman is a science editor with only a Bsc in Geography.

Outside of New Scientist I can count on one hand the number of science qualified journalists in the UK press.

All this story is is a rehash of the same set of stories for a BBC online audiance.

In his book Flat Earth News,[3] the British journalist Nick Davies reported a study at Cardiff University by Professor Justin Lewis and a team of researchers[4] which found that 80% of the stories in Britain's quality press were not original and that only 12% of stories were generated by reporters.[1] The result is a reduction of quality and accuracy as the articles are open to manipulation and distortion.

In 2011 the Daily Mail reported that under former editor of The Sun and News of the World, Rebekah Brooks, "Scores, if not hundreds, of front-page stories were written by the PR men. They would think up a headline and story and The Sun and News of the World would run it, word for word. Some of them were complete fiction. Meanwhile, proper stories by proper journalists were buried deep inside the paper."[10]
Churnalism does not only occur in newspapers; for example, Chris Anderson's wide use of "writethroughs" in his book Free has been labelled churnalism,[11] and psychiatrist David Healy has criticised past use of ghost-written copy in academic journals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churnalism

Suprised the term is not more widely used round here, Im sure we can all see examples of it.

[wildbourgman]

Rockman, all I'm saying is that it may be possible to keep growing production rate in the United states enough to outstrip demand short term in this weak stagflated (is that a word?) economy. I'm not saying it's cheap, easy, or sustainable. My other thought that I'll repeat is that If we have a price collapse in oil we will have a rig count collapse that will punish those in North Dakota and South Texas that have overextended themselves. There will be a bad taste in their collective mouths. The downturn might not last long but it could be a real shocker to those who believe the oil company propaganda of 30 years of prosperity.

What I'm saying has little effect on long term peak oil and as a matter of fact on another blog they think I'm a peak oil doomer, because I happen to talk about shale well decline rates.

[John_A]

BBC world news has decided this story has legs.
From http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-envir ... #FBM262379

Shukman is a science editor with only a Bsc in Geography.

And this education disqualifies him how when mixing it up with other peak oil writers? Certainly I agree that journalists tend to generally know nothing about the oil and gas industry, but the same could be said of peak oil advocates like Heinberg, Ruppert, Kunstler, Kobb and even Gail. Find me one of those who has ever worked the monkey board and I'll eat Rockman's hard hat.

[Ibon]

For me, "sharply cut human population" is as bad as extinction.

Such a short statement deserves a short response......... pure ignorance.

[dorlomin]

And this education disqualifies him how when mixing it up with other peak oil writers?

Well done on squeezing your hobby horse into yet another thread.

You have about 4 or 5 core post templates that you vary to make up about 80-90% of everything you post.

[SeaGypsy]

It seems Rockman has given the guy something of a pass when looking at the exact wording- 'production', not exports, gross not net. This may be debatable. But spinning this out to meaning decades of cheap oil (enough for BAU), a glut or even an end (let alone a lasting end) to US import dependence, as is happening around the global MSM is quite unforgivable.

For any journal claiming scientific basis to include a sentence like the following:

A paper published last week in Eos, the newsletter of the American Geophysical Union, supports the assertion that a peak in oil production is "a myth" but argues that the rising cost of extraction could itself provide a limit, and may act as a brake on economic growth.

Which fails to even make sense, leads me to agree with the sad state of what passes for science writing in these times.

[ralfy]

For me, "sharply cut human population" is as bad as extinction.

Such a short statement deserves a short response......... pure ignorance.

The reason is painfully obvious: with extinction, no one will be around to argue that we are "doomed."

Pure ignorance.

[ROCKMAN]

SeaGypsy – Yep…going after this guy would be the same as clubbing baby seals: not much of a challenge. But really irritating the see such statements by the AGU: “…a peak in oil production is "a myth" but argues that the rising cost of extraction could itself provide a limit, and may act as a brake on economic growth.”

Amazing statement that contradicts itself in the same sentence. IOW there will be no PO unless there’s PO caused by the economics of extraction. Since Col. Drake drilled the first oil well the production rate of oil has always depended upon costs. Thus when the global economy can no longer afford to pay for extraction we will be at PO. And yet at that time there will still be 100’s of billions of “technically recoverable” bbls of proven oil reserves. But the vast majority of that oil won’t be recovered due to the extraction costs. IOW they are saying PO won’t happen…until it happens.

Folks need to remember that such statements by the AGU, AAPG, SPE and all the other oil patch organizations are not addressing their members…we know the fact. They are pure political fodder for the general public. The worst part is that it allows individuals with no technical credentials to use such statements in an authoritative manner. IOW who the heck are you to tell me I’m wrong when the all these oil patch organization and govt groups make statements that support my position.

[John_A]

And this education disqualifies him how when mixing it up with other peak oil writers?

Well done on squeezing your hobby horse into yet another thread.

You have about 4 or 5 core post templates that you vary to make up about 80-90% of everything you post.

they say while making darn sure they don't address the point made.......

[John_A]

The worst part is that it allows individuals with no technical credentials to use such statements in an authoritative manner.

and attach this idea to the internet giving an equal voice to everyone because everyone believes their opinion is just as good as anyone else's (regardless of actual knowledge on the topic) and presto! You have bloggers who believe their thoughts on a topic are as considered as, oh, this guy.

[TheDude]

When crap rock with nothing but a little help from a frack job can cough up oil production larger than Prudhoe Bay and Cantarell COMBINED (largest conventional oil fields in the Western hemisphere for those unfamiliar with them) it just doesn't seem fair to think of what is going on as flash in the pan.

Combined production at the moment of course, and Eagle Ford puts out a lot of middle distillates. How many wells are drilled in these plays today per year? I wonder if in a single year they don't surpass all the work done on those supergiants over the decades, that would make for an interesting data point.

Like the chart above illustrates the tight oil surplus doesn't seem to have done much to curb prices. There are some absolutely huge similar plays around the world too but little interest has been shown in them to date; Brian Wang did a roundup piece of two of these prospects: Paris Basin Shale Oil Could have more recoverable oil than the Bakken oil field, and 126 trillion barrels of oil equivalent biomass in Bazhenov Oil shale in Russia. As France has predictably come down hard on fracking the lack of work on the former isn't surprising; what's up with Russia isn't so obvious. Perhaps they simply haven't had their fill of conventional prospects yet; or maybe the American situation simply won't be duplicated elsewhere, owing to our unique mineral rights laws and copious upstream infrastructure.

I had some real teeth gnashing arguments about the Bakken with "Reservegrowthrulz" about 6 years ago; at that time I'd concede that if they just absolutely drilled the crap out of it, given average well production figures, you could get a bit of oil going; but drilling thousands of holes a year seemed utterly insane. Yet, here we are. So I wouldn't discount the viability of other plays around the world; but, like Ron, I wonder if the bloom won't be off the rose in the US soon - they do seem to have tapped out the most prospective prospects in the Bakken, and the sweet spots are definitely discrete there, with almost all production coming out of just 4 counties.

[John_A]

You could have included Malthus and Darwin, even Joule and Coriolis in your list of "peak oil advocates."

Show me where Malthus or Darwin ever advocated for or against peak oil. I dare you.

That none worked the "monkey board" (or you) does not obviate their common understanding: entropy increases/complexity and usable resource decreases. Creationist faith will never replace free-flowing, low-API, high-quality liquid petroleum with either bitumen or kerogen, nor impermeable structures like Bakken with high-quality fields such as Ghawar.

Once upon a time distinctions among oil types might have mattered. Today, they do not because we are manufacturing oil. So what matters is not a particular combination of carbon and hydrogen atoms, but just their existence, sometimes in liquid form, sometimes gaseous, sometimes solid, and then the price we are willing to pay to convert those molecules into the configuration we need. Like gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, asphalt. Nowadays the origin of the molecules is being less and less relevant as time goes on.

What kills peak oil is price, as Rockman has said.

The deeper we go, the more we have, and less the old stuff matters, because the new stuff sets the marginal price.

See those things on the bottom of the pyramid? The Japanese started producing some as of late, and the GOM has been estimated to hold enough f it to convert to more than a TRILLION barrels of refinery feedstock.

The only question is what are you willing to pay to have your liquid fuels? Versus the CNG it would be even easier to make? And is anyone taking THIS into account when declaring the energy production potential of the United States? This stuff alone is probably more resource than Saudi Arabia has in oil in place. And this is only the GOM.

[SeaGypsy]

Ok Pstar, let's try another: It's a myth that the planet has limits, we can build another planet, but it may cost more than we are willing or able to pay. Or, given an infinite investment base, infinite oil extraction is not just possible, but inevitable. (We print money, right?)