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THE Daniel Yergin Thread (merged)

What's on your mind?
General interest discussions, not necessarily related to depletion.

Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby coyote » Tue 01 Sep 2009, 02:50:44

It's nice to have you around again, Dantes.

I don't pay much attention to what Yergin says since reading his famous mischaracterization of peak oil as "not the first time the world has been running out of oil." He knows better than to paint the theory that way, which makes me wonder what kind of axe he's got to grind. IIRC, though, he does have a tendency to come out with these little statements at the beginnings of bull runs.
Lord, here comes the flood
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It'll be those who gave their island to survive...
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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby dissident » Tue 01 Sep 2009, 07:12:25

Yergin and his secret data are totally worthless. I would like to see an independent analysis of the data he supposedly has. Yergin's claims disagree with those of the IEA (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008 ... energy-iea).
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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby DantesPeak » Tue 01 Sep 2009, 07:41:18

coyote wrote:It's nice to have you around again, Dantes.

I don't pay much attention to what Yergin says since reading his famous mischaracterization of peak oil as "not the first time the world has been running out of oil." He knows better than to paint the theory that way, which makes me wonder what kind of axe he's got to grind. IIRC, though, he does have a tendency to come out with these little statements at the beginnings of bull runs.


Thanks. Yergin is a step better than Lynch, being that Yergin is basically admitting that there isn't enough conventional oil to go around in the future.

He also has sometimes temporarily changed his repeated forecasts for lower oil prices, although I don't specifically know where he satnds on that price issue for the short run.
It's already over, now it's just a matter of adjusting.
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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby mcgowanjm » Tue 01 Sep 2009, 09:36:33

Plantagenet wrote:"My firm, IHS CERA, projects that with aggressive sales volumes and no major bumps in the road (unusual for new technologies), plug-in hybrids and pure electric vehicles could constitute 25% of new car sales by 2030." --Yergin

--------

That seems very pessimistic to me. Hybrids are very popular and the technology works. If oil prices go higher I would think hybrids and electric vehicles should be 25-75% or more of the market by another 10 years or so.


$71.50 is the top for oil now and the electricity grid can't handle
the plug ins even if the world does have enough lithium which it doesn't. And then who can spend the $1000's on replacing the battery every couple of years.
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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby Roy » Tue 01 Sep 2009, 12:28:14

mcgowanjm wrote: And then who can spend the $1000's on replacing the battery every couple of years.


Yergin?
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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby dinopello » Tue 01 Sep 2009, 13:24:50

Plantagenet wrote:"My firm, IHS CERA, projects that with aggressive sales volumes and no major bumps in the road (unusual for new technologies), plug-in hybrids and pure electric vehicles could constitute 25% of new car sales by 2030." --Yergin

--------

That seems very pessimistic to me. Hybrids are very popular and the technology works. If oil prices go higher I would think hybrids and electric vehicles should be 25-75% or more of the market by another 10 years or so.


If that's the direction, then invest in rare metals

Hybrids guzzle rare metals

Rare earth metals like neodymium, lanthium, and terbium are used in magnets for electric motors, hybrid car batteries, and even wind turbines. The Prius is the biggest user of rare earth metals in the world, with each motor using 2.2 pounds of neodymium and every battery housing 22 to 33 pounds of lanthium. As production of the Prius and other hybrid cars begins to swell in the next few years, manufacturers might find themselves without the elements needed to switch us to an electric vehicle economy. In the coming years, supply is expected to surpass demand of rare earth metals by 40,000 tons.
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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby ian807 » Tue 01 Sep 2009, 14:12:40

The concept that technology will save us is not a new one.

The thing about technology though. It doesn't happen on schedule. It doesn't care about the economy, or politicians, or wars. It happens when it happens.

There are no guarantees that we'll get battery power that matters in a timeframe that matters. Yeah, hybrids work, but as other folks have correctly pointed out, these hybrids depend on rare earths like lithium. None of these materials is in infinite supply either.

Unless we can develop a much more efficient battery made of common, cheap materials like iron, aluminum or carbon, we just have another temporary patch.

So unless there's a radical breakthrough (possible), ubiquitous personal car ownership ends this century. Ethanol is barely energy positive. Oil won't be by the end of the century. NG might still be around in some form as biogas. Algae oil too, perhaps. Neither is going to come close to replacing our current volume of energy provided by oil.
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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby MD » Tue 01 Sep 2009, 16:04:31

"Advanced biofuels" eh?

That doesn't sound much like a plethora of cheap sweet light ready for fresh tap, to me.
Stop filling dumpsters, as much as you possibly can, and everything will get better.

Just think it through.
It's not hard to do.
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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby emersonbiggins » Tue 01 Sep 2009, 16:50:08

Time to brush the dust off an old goodie:

Image

A contrarian indicator if I ever saw one.

Clearly, Yergin's article is bullish for oil.
"It's called the American Dream because you'd have to be asleep to believe it."

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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby JohnDenver » Tue 01 Sep 2009, 17:20:13

Shouldn't this be merged into the Yergin thread? :)
THE Daniel Yergin Thread (merged)
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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby emersonbiggins » Tue 01 Sep 2009, 17:35:00

Normally yes, but this guy fell off the face of the planet early last year. The fact that he is back beating the drum is, in and of itself, a noteworthy event. (not to mention that his handlers' checks are clearing the bank once again)

Don't fret - it will get the merge eventually, though. :)
"It's called the American Dream because you'd have to be asleep to believe it."

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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby JohnDenver » Tue 01 Sep 2009, 18:53:33

emersonbiggins wrote:Time to brush the dust off an old goodie:

Image

A contrarian indicator if I ever saw one.

Clearly, Yergin's article is bullish for oil.


The peakist record isn't any better:

Matt Simmons:
Image

"From this point out I think we'll see a geometric progression in prices… you know, $50, $100, $200, $400, whatever. The only question now is how short the periods will be between prices doubling again”. -- Jeffrey Brown, June 5, 2008 Source

Chris Nelder, author of "Profit from the Peak" on July 2008:
Oil now dropping to $70? "Keep dreaming."Link

Lots of people on this site got third degree burns by buying into that rhetoric. Our beloved "Eastbay" for instance:

Eastbay on 7/21/2008:
I'm sitting tight with the usual 'roughly' 50-50 split between FSESX (energy service) and FSNGX (NATGAS).

Image

Eastbay after a thorough mauling on 12/08/2008:
70% down seems about right. My FSESX and FSNGX are down a little more than that, I suspect. Strange to watch the equivalent of a parking lot full of new Harley's vaporize in a few months.


Ouch. How much is a new Harley these days? $15,000+? Make that a double ouch.

Maybe a more balanced, honest approach might be in order emerson? There's plenty of bad price calls on both sides.
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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby emersonbiggins » Tue 01 Sep 2009, 21:31:10

No doubt bad calls were made on both sides, JD. The difference is that Yergin was consistently wrong for years prior to the collapse, in addition to being wrong about the collapse itself. The sudden collapse in prices was a mulligan on all sides, as your graphs well point out.
"It's called the American Dream because you'd have to be asleep to believe it."

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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby dissident » Tue 01 Sep 2009, 22:48:26

Attacking Simmons for his predictions is really rich. I guess Simmons failed to predict the September 2008 financial crash and the current recession so that means that he knows nothing about oil production. The current oil price is a low transient associated with recession. When the economy starts to recover it will start going up from $70. So $140 and higher is not excluded. Yergin gets the sign wrong systematically so he has no excuses like Simmons (i.e. recession).
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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby JohnDenver » Wed 02 Sep 2009, 00:55:46

dissident wrote:Attacking Simmons for his predictions is really rich. I guess Simmons failed to predict the September 2008 financial crash and the current recession so that means that he knows nothing about oil production.


If you think Simmons only goofed up one prediction, you're pretty wet behind the ears friend.

1) He predicted in 2003 that US NG would "go off a cliff" by 2005. In reality, by 2009 NG production had risen to a historic high last reached in 1974. More info

2) He predicted in 2005 (Twilight in the Desert) that Saudi Arabian oil production would soon collapse. By July 2008 Saudi crude+condensate production had steadily risen to 9,700mbd, a level last reached almost 30 years ago, in October 1981. More info

And that's just getting warmed up. I could name you 5 more predictive gaffes off the top of my head. Simmons has a tendency to get over-excited and let his mouth get away from him. Sort of like the "Joe Biden" of the peak oil community.

Simmons actually does know nothing about oil production (or at least no more than the average amateur on the internet). He's an ultra-rich investment banker with expertise in deals and mergers & acquisitions, not geology or petroleum engineering. He's never studied those subject, or practiced them in the field.

In fact, a number of very prominent petroleum engineers have publicly taken him to task for his distortions and misconceptions about oil production (i.e. Jim Jarrell of the Smith Ross Energy Group, and Ali Daneshy, Director of Petroleum Engineering at the Univ. of Houston)
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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby TheDude » Wed 02 Sep 2009, 01:25:45

Here's another one of my doctored graphs:

Image

From CERA's Not Running Out Just Yet, from Feb 2007; basically the same graph from Nov '06's Why the "Peak Oil" Theory Falls Down -- Myths, Legends, and the Future of Oil Resources, discussed at TOD: The Oil Drum | Does the Peak Oil "Myth" Just Fall Down ?

Looks like they were still using 2005 data, or the baseline for forecasts looks to be set at 2005, anyway. Something like 103 mb/d for 2009 in their Reference Case. Daaaaammmmnnnn. In Reference to what? Khebab said in the notes for the Business As Usual graph in The Oil Drum | Peak Oil Update - July 2009: Production Forecasts and EIA Oil Production Numbers:

CERA forecasts for conventional oil (Crude Oil + Condensate?) and all liquids, believed to be productive capacities (i.e. actual production + spare capacity). The numbers have been derived from Figure 1 in Dave's response to CERA.


That link in the quote is the same TOD paper I link to above. Having discovered this, let's see what those numbers were:

Code: Select all
Forecast     Date     2006     2008     2009     2010     2015
CERA1       2006      89.52   93.75   95.34      97.24     104.54


This is the blue line, not the brown Reference Case. They originally presented that paper Oct '06 - a month after global production averaged 84506.75 kb/d. Yet the forecast number, if Khebab/Sam was right, was 4.98 mb/d higher than the 2006 average the EIA gives now - which is 84542.9 kb/d, hardly any different than that figure for Sept. I doubt it was revised that heavily. Average cumulative to Sept '06 was 84524.71kb/d...I'd have got out the Liquid Paper.

'Course the whole CERA report costs $499 now, might be a discount at this stage.

The July TOD update has data on how the forecasts are evolving, too - see Fig 7. Robelius's high case is just as out of whack as CERA's, Skrebowski and ASPO 76 are trending out of line as well.
Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby mefistofeles » Wed 02 Sep 2009, 01:51:10

Yergin never said how we going to get the oil. Sure there's plenty of oil,it's just that it's not going to be economically viable to produce.
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Re: Yergin: Ample Oil Supplies to Fuel Global Growth

Unread postby efarmer » Thu 03 Sep 2009, 12:04:13

Dante, Biggins, Dude,Pstarr, Denver: good to see you on one thread together!

Yergin like so many who do art or science for benefactors, ends up painting the wealthy benefactors portrait, sooner or later. I think I recognize the style,
it is Impressionist.
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