pstarr wrote:I see mostly peak-oil debunking in your arguments, and little response to data, context, facts. You have dissed pops with a supercilious image and little more than argument by assertion: where is the time-line/trends for alt fuels replacment?C8 wrote:to me, this whole plateau thing is creating the time and desire to fully develop alts (BTW- I include natural gas in those alts as many vehicles are switching over). 5 years ago PO was mainly based on the hard quick landing scenario- that is becoming less and less likely. if nothing else- our energy sources seem to be expanding since then (methane ice, thorium, etc.) we may have over 50 ways to get energy in the nest 10 years
I cannot see anything but checkmate and eventual obsolescence for PO as it is linked to oil only. I think a broader concept is necessary (maybe energy scarcity- ES or Peak Energy PE)
Endless claims for ultra-deep pre-salt, tight-shale, NG condensates, undiscovered resources, corn ethanol, biodiesel, EV, hydrogen fuel cell, thermal depolymerized turkey guts, green river shale oil, saturnian methane, methane clathrate, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generations misincampthus/algae/cellulosic blah blah blah come and go. Yet none have taken us off the 10-year plateau. Show me the TRENDS to support SUBSTITUTION. I contend they are far and few between.
It is clear that PO, a geologic event, will not play out in an American TV/net/financial time frame. That was intent of Pop's graph, to show that blind perspective -- conditioned by quarterly reports and infotainment diversions -- has nothing to do with the the planetary perspective, the slow-mo reality playing out in earth-time.
SamInNebraska wrote:
No, I was responding to Ralfy's point that somehow BAU can only continue with increasing demand. Obviously between about 1979 and 1992 there could be no happiness, no increase in GDP because there was no increase in demand (i.e. consumption). Obviously this is a rhetorical statement because GDP did go up, and the relationship between increasing demand and continued economic activity was different. Ralfy's "it always has to do this" scheme just doesn't hold up to any scrutiny across time.
As far as supply and demand today, demand is not defined by economists as an equivalent to consumption (even though I do it that way), because demand to an economist is someone sitting in a boat in the middle of the Atlantic, "demanding" fresh water. An economist then applies a relationship between this nefarious "demand" for something and quantity, the place where they intersect called price. In this example, there is no price available to meet demand because there is no supply.
Because Ralfy never supplies actual cost/supply relationships in his voluminous references to others who also don't provide cost/supply relationships, there is no way to know what him, or they, actually mean in the traditional view of economic theory.
The ability of someone to pay the local price to get any quantity they wish of gasoline or whatever means that demand is being met...at a given price. None of this is an argument, any freshman econ text would start with these basics.
SeaGypsy wrote:The USA is still by a very long way the biggest economy in the world. They were about to fall into an unfathomable hole- thus QE infinity. As the reserve currency they had the means. Nobody else could have done what the US has done. If they weren't doing it, nobody else could.
Freshly fracked wells sent U.S. oil production soaring 39 percent since 2011. That’s the steepest climb in history, and if production continues apace, the U.S. would become the world’s biggest source of oil by 2015, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Rapid well declines threaten to spoil that promise. The average flow from a shale gas well drops by about 50 percent to 75 percent in the first year, and up to 78 percent for oil, said Pete Stark, senior research director at IHS Inc.
‘The decline rate is a potential show stopper after a while,’ said Stark, a geologist with almost six decades in the oil patch. ‘You just can’t keep up with it.’ [1]
That’s an interesting comment, given that the company Mr. Stark works for is more commonly known for its sunny optimism about our future fossil fuel supply.
FRACKING ISN’T FREE OR EASY
The reality is that rapid decline rates are a common feature of fracked wells. Drilling faster, more, and at higher costs just to keep pace with current production is not exactly a winning strategy. Higher costs for them are supported by the higher costs we pay. At some point, consumers balk, and when they do, there goes a lot of investable funds for more production. Then what?
The article from which that quote was sourced describes some of the admittedly-fascinating overview of the artificial intelligence systems now being considered—and it some cases already deployed—to improve the drill results from fracking (the hydraulic fracturing of shale in order to facilitate the flow of “tight” oil trapped in those rocks.) The article notes that “four out of every 10 clusters of fractures in an average horizontal well are duds.” Given that each well can cost millions of dollars, much more than wells drilled in conventional crude oil fields, that can be a problem.
AN UNSPOKEN CHALLENGE OR TWO
The use of fiber-optics and 3D seismic imaging are among the technological advances now being used to aid scientists “scientists see and hear what’s going on two miles underground.”
An executive of Schlumberger Ltd is quoted in this same article announcing that the combination of their own scientists’ expertise with the “U-ROC” software program “has led to an almost 30 percent increase in production in some wells in the Eagle Ford [TX].”
An official from another petroleum company that after collaborating with Halliburton and using a “science-based approach,” his company’s “shares doubled in the five months after” a conference call with investors.
If that’s not enough good news, by last summer the company enjoyed its “best-ever results” in the shale formations of western Texas’ Permian Basis, “and that it was ‘among the best’ among its competitors at that location. The improvements were attributed in part, as a spokesman noted, to the company’s “own internal efforts to pump more time and money into the science of drilling and production.”
A LOOK AT THE UNSPOKEN
Improved performance is improved performance. But for those of us interested in how depleting and finite fossil fuel resources—with a healthy concern that technology and economics will continue to make extraction and production feasible to begin with—will keep up with demand in the years ahead, the doubling of a company’s shares, “an almost 30 percent increase in production in some wells,” being “among the best,” and pumping “more time and money into the science of drilling and production” suggests that all is not well in Oil Production Land.
That’s precisely what those of us concerned about peak oil continue to stress to listeners and readers.
It’s probably safe to assume that none of those efforts or the technologies employed are inexpensive. It’s also a certainty that whatever costs are associated with developing, testing, supplying, and using those impressive advances get passed on to consumers.
The impressive technologies now in play, with their higher costs, to locate and produce a product harder-to-come-by and not of the same quality as the conventional crude oil we’ve used to power our civilization for more than a century all point to the fact that we clearly can no longer rely on Business As Usual in oil production itself and fossil fuel usage by all of us.
Taking a bit of a detour in the headlong pursuit of ever more expensive technologies in order to plan for what happens in years to come when that resource just doesn’t do what we all need it to do; or devote more resources to the alternatives which will be needed when it makes little sense to continue the fossil fuel chase; or even provide more information to the public now so that they can get into the game doesn’t seem all that unreasonable, does it?
C8 wrote:Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As The World's Top Oil Producer Within A Decade
In a new study published by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, former oil company executive Leonardo Maugeri predicts that for America's three largest shale oil plays — the Bakken in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford and Permian Basin in Texas — the boom should last at least another decade.
He arrives at that estimate by calculating current well densities — how many wells there are in a given acre of shale play — and improving rig efficiencies, the result of improved drilling times and lower-cost drilling methods. Plus, he writes, new infrastructure coming online will make it cheaper to invest in these plays:
Figures about the Permian basin are still in the making, yet it is possible to figure out that the Big Three U.S. shale plays have a combined potential of many more than 100,000 shale producing wells, or about ten times the number of those already on line. Taking into account this potential, the limits to drilling intensity probably would start affecting Bakken Three Forks and Eagle Ford only in the second half the 2020s.
There remains uncertainty about the rest of the country's plays. But Maugeri asserts that the U.S. will become the world's top oil producer within this decade, leapfrogging Russia to topple Saudi Arabia.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard- ... z2XTGEvNG1
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard- ... z2XTFtf8q0
ROCKMAN wrote: sub - It's like listening to a regular gambler brag about how much they won on their last trip to Las Vegas knowing in they long run they are almost certainly a net loser. Bot the doomers and cornies have a long history of incorrect projections.The only sure thing is that anyone's prediction of the future will eventually be proven wrong. LOL
ROCKMAN wrote:h-man - here's the problem with single point oil price prediction: the "blind pig" dynamic. I'm sure everyone understands that. I can predict any price average for 2017 I want BASED ON NOTHING and still have a chance at being correct. If someone wants to impress me with their predictive abilities no problem: just predict the average yearly price of oil correctly (I'll even allow a 10% variance) for each of the next 10 years. Might be a bit of a struggle though: no one in the world has yet to do that since the dawn of the oil age.
OK, OK. I'll make it easier: for just the next 5 years. LOL.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
ROCKMAN wrote:h-man - here's the problem with single point oil price prediction: the "blind pig" dynamic. I'm sure everyone understands that. I can predict any price average for 2017 I want BASED ON NOTHING and still have a chance at being correct. If someone wants to impress me with their predictive abilities no problem: just predict the average yearly price of oil correctly (I'll even allow a 10% variance) for each of the next 10 years. Might be a bit of a struggle though: no one in the world has yet to do that since the dawn of the oil age.
OK, OK. I'll make it easier: for just the next 5 years. LOL.
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