[Cog]

I know that anytime soon was not in 2005-2006 when the PO hysterics over at TOD were posting shark-fin depletion curves that would have resulted in us in 2015 huddling over a camp fire praying for delivery from the rampaging herds.

So anytime soon for when oil depletion really starts to destroy on an industrialized society is something so far out, I can't see it.

In other words don't predict doom and fail to deliver on it. Same goes with GW.

[Cog]

Past predictions of doom and their failure to predict the future are certainly relevant to the discussion at hand.

[Pops]

As for as I am concerned the chart is meaningless.

obviously a product of biased librul media under the influence of Satan

[Keith_McClary]

Ennui - Hubbert curve doesn't take the price of oil in account for his curve

Related mathematical methods are used to model fluctuations in rabbit vs. fox populations. They don't take the price of lettuce into account.

[ralfy]

I understand peak oil to mean maximum rate of production

Peak oil as a movement is concern about what happens AFTER peak. Of course at the peak things are at maximum happy-go-lucky. But that was supposed to have been in the late 90s, not now. There isn't supposed to be a 2nd wave of cheap oil. Geologically that wasn't supposed to have been possible. It doesn't fit the neat shape of Hubbert's bell curve.

PO simply means we are closer to the end than the beginning of the petroleum age

We've been moving closer to the end ever since we stuck the first drill into the ground. That by itself doesn't mean much.

I don't see any reason to be defensive.

Considering that nobody really cares about the issue now, I'd say peakers do have reason to answer the critics. Simply trying to redefine what peak oil is to encompass everything including cheap oil is a non-starter.

I wondered whether the shale and tar sand oil actually add anything to available useful oil and we see the "glut" getting larger as shale and tar sand activity drop off, so I do wonder if that is not in part a reason for the glut.

Where we go from here is an open question, but tar sands and shale has already played a large part in the glut. There's no debate to be had about that, and that in and of itself clashes with peak oil conventional wisdom that these sources were uneconomical, hence shifting the argument over to the idea that this is a credit bubble and that these companies never made a dime on unconventionals.

So yes, there's some interesting analysis to be made here and within the next few years I would expect to see the answer to some of these open questions about how much we really did effectively kick the can down the road.

There has been no second wave of cheap oil.

[ralfy]

Oil is not currently cheap because production costs are still high.

It's cheap to end-consumers. Therefore it's cheap. Period.

It has to go up to pay for higher production costs. Otherwise, production cannot continue in the long run.

[ralfy]

BTW here is a chart that blows Hubbert's curve right out of the water. The PO argument was initially founded on the Hubbert curve, and how he accurately predicted US peak. Well, now we're into a new paradigm and people are cherry picking which charts they think validate their argument and which to ignore, like this one.



Note that the falloff post Y2K corresponds with the "peak" of peak-oil concern of the mid 00s. Only the die-hards are still retconning their narratives to try to reconcile the fact that we're not just huddled behind our arrowslits plugging zombies by now.

From what I remember, Hubbert referred to conventional production. There were separate sections for shale, etc.

[ralfy]

Just to make it clear what this chart actually says.

I think it's tight oil:

http://econbrowser.com/archives/2015/03 ... ll-surging

From what I remember, Hubbert's study referred to the red field. Also, in light of global production:

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2014- ... -peak-2016

Thus, his argument that conventional production should peak after 2005 might also be right.

It's obvious, then, that peak oil has taken place. Otherwise, there would be no need to resort to U.S. tight oil.

The problem is how long will it take before U.S. tight oil peaks. Will low prices affect it, and will global demand remain weak? From what I remember, a 2006 feature revealed that by 2015 demand would have reached 115 Mb/d, probably because of fast-growing economies.

[onlooker]

It is hard to debate with Ennui, because he is stuck with the end result and the present not understanding sufficient the forces in play that distort the end result. Cheap credit and tar/shale have bought us some time but that is it. The very fact that we resorted to all this showcases how the end of cheap conventional oil is a reality. Yet even peak oil does not exist in a vacuum and must be weighed with other factors in play so only in that sense can I somewhat agree with Ennui that economics is complex and all factors must be weighed. Having said that many factors that are in play and will be in play in the future conspire and will conspire to restrict economic vitality.

[kublikhan]

Refinery gain is not a lie pstarr. After you refine oil and turn it into lighter products like gasoline and diesel the volume really does increase. You end up with more output volume than input volume. And because we have been refining more heavy oil lately, there has been more refinery gain. It was not free however. Like unconventional oil that is more expensive to produce, US & China refiners spent billions upgrading their refineries in order to process heavy oil. But to pretend the extra volume you get from the refinery is some kind of lie is not correct either.

There is also growth in “processing gain”. This term refers to the extra volume that is gained when long hydrocarbons of heavy oil are”cracked” into shorter molecules. The EIA assigns this growth back to the country doing the refining. The US comes out ahead in this comparison because it imports a lot of heavy oil, and uses its complex refineries to crack it into shorter chains, such as diesel fuel and gasoline. If the heavy oil imports were to go to another country with complex refineries (such as China), the processing gain would go with it.

Our Total oil supply increase about 10 million barrels this past decade. Less than half of this was NGLs, biofuels, and refinery gain. The rest of it was plain old C&C increases. Yes, C&C really did increase this past decade.

And as for the other half that is various flammable liquids, Gail called them oil substitutes. I think the fact that there are other liquid substitutes to oil is good news. For a long time the peak oil message was there are no oil substitutes. Sure these substitutes are not quite as good as oil, less energy content, more expensive, etc. But anything that buys time for a transition off of oil is a plus in my book(not a fan of corn ethanol though).

[onlooker]

What EIA calls oil today is a mismash of various flammable liquids and gases, each of which requires advanced manufacturing processes to either turn them into useful liquids (like tar sands) or careful expensive blending processes to mix them into crude (NGL's, condensate). Some are outright lies, like ethanol and refinery gain. We peaked. There will be no more tight-shale, nor ultra deep water or arctic.

Yes I think this summarizes my understanding of it thanks P. Nothing substitutes for Light sweet crude and its flow rate, easy accessibility and concentrated energy. All other substances take more energy to extract/process and/or contain less concentrated energy. Another way of viewing it is EROIE is not as good as conventional oil. I hope that is accurate Pstarr.

[kublikhan]

Refinery gain does creates more liquid volume, but it has the same the energy as before. So white the tank may appear fuller, you actually get less miles for each gallon of fuel. So yes, you get more crappy fuel

You get more usable fuel like gasoline and diesel. Very little crude oil is used directly. Most of it is processed into refined fuels.

[onlooker]

Refinery gain does creates more liquid volume, but it has the same the energy as before. So white the tank may appear fuller, you actually get less miles for each gallon of fuel. So yes, you get more crappy fuel

You get more usable fuel like gasoline and diesel. Very little crude oil is used directly. Most of it is processed into refined fuels.

The point K, Pstarr is trying to make I presume is though it may be usable it is a poor substitute for traditional oil. As per our explanations above.