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Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Tue 23 Jul 2013, 18:08:58
by Oily Stuff
No joke, RM; the quickest way I know to stir somebody's oatmeal up in the oilfield at the moment is to question the longevity of tight oil resources. Folks can get darn right hostile.

And while we're on the subject of hostility, check out the comments under this dumb article and tell me its currently safe to be in the oil business right now. I am thinkin' after a couple of cold ones this evening I better scrape the America Needs America's Oil bumper sticker off my pickup.

http://money.msn.com/now/post--why-are- ... ll-so-high

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Tue 23 Jul 2013, 18:35:38
by Pops
Oily, they tried TDP rendering of Tyson leftovers not far from me in Joplin but were run out of town, seems it made the "atmosphere" less than appetizing, so no drumsticks, lol

--
C8

Like Kub said it is a big problem. Oil pwers over a billion ICE vehicles, plus all ships/planes, most trains and a third or more of industrial processes.

Look around, I'll bet there's hardly a thing in your sight that isn't made from, made with or brought to you by oil. Wave it away if it makes you feel better but tie a string around your finger and whenever you are reminded, look around.

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Tue 23 Jul 2013, 18:45:10
by C8
pstarr wrote:
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)
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?

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.


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 [i]argument by assertion: where is the time-line/trends for alt fuels replacment?[/i]

The image was in fun and totally lighthearted, the "dissing" is all in your mind, the image was of a wrestler holding another wrestler in a headlock, it dramatized what I believe was his point, it didn't attack it, it just dramatized it!- Pstarr- I think you could use some light hearted fun, I notice that you read too much into too many comments by posters on this site! that's not emotionally healthy. (FWIW- I remember Pops posting an image of a dogs butt when giving his opinion of somebody's view, so I think HE knows how to have fun). the fact that is was deleted is sad- it was just funny and light hearted.

re: your other points-

The trends of:
natural gas increased use in vehicles
increase installation of renewables
nuclear growth (especially in China)

have all been well documented on PO.com, I am assuming I am talking to a well educated audience- nobody else seems to dispute these trends. Do you?

As far as charts? This is silly- the chart of US oil production looked like it was going straight down 5 years ago, now what a change! Did you predict that chart to change like that Pstarr? can you show me that you predicted this somewhere that I can verify?

What does a historical chart tell you Pstarr? It tells you history! that's all. I could show you charts of renewables that make it seem they are growing exponentially and will dominate in just 20 years- but that's not reality. I can show you charts of Chinese nuke growth that will show you it will be their only source of power in 30 years. get real- charts are helpful but things change fast and the past is not the future- that belief is what smashed the credibility of so many PO "experts".

I am asking a simple theoretical question: is the plateau allowing PO to become obsolete someday soon (10-20 years) by giving other energy sources (including natural gas!) the ability to gear up and go prime time? I am not a doomer or corny, I am not interested in anybody's hurt feelings due to their primitive tribal identification as a corny, Peak Oiler or doomer-

I think charts have a limited value in this debate, the speed of the installation of renewables and nukes, the speed of natural gas growth seem to raise the possibility that a nation can transition to new energy sources far faster than the 30 year time span that most people seem to believe is required just because that's how long it took historically- this is the big mistake many (not all) Peak Oilers keep making- the past is not the future.

I just want to know others views on the subject. I am very open minded- in fact, I can see advances in ocean oil drilling that cause an oil production boom and crash prices so that alt fuels collapse! Please don't view me through a primitive "them" vs. "us" lens- share your views. I am sure you have interesting views.

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Tue 23 Jul 2013, 22:04:24
by ralfy
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.



That's because part of GDP involves increasing credit. But credit is eventually used, which is why even as oil consumption is dropping for the U.S., the EU, and Japan, it has been rising for the rest of the world:

http://ourfiniteworld.com/2013/04/11/pe ... e-problem/


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.



That's why you need to look at it in terms of consumption. See the link above.

Also, the article

http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailycha ... onsumption

refers to consumption.


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.



That's because you are stuck with "the traditional view of economic theory." For example,


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.


And yet total consumption continued to increase even with a tripling of oil prices.

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Wed 24 Jul 2013, 10:20:57
by ROCKMAN
ralfy – your comment reminded of a thought I had last night so I did a quick search. For the last 4 or 5 years the US govt has been paying around $400 billion per year on our debt. The feds have been creating around $85 billion per month. One way to look at the accounting: about 40% of those monies being created that are supposed to be helping our economy recover are being sent to our creditors. That’s not necessarily a bad thing: imagine if we had to pay the entire $400 billion out of the govt revenue. But it may also explain why injecting about $1 trillion into the economy every year doesn’t seem to be boosting our growth very much. As you seem to imply: we’re stealing from Peter to pay Paul…but only enough to cover the interest to Paul and not the principle.

And given that most export oil is priced in US $’s and that we’ve created trillions of new $’s that has presumably helped keep the value of the $ lower, what would oil be costing today if we hadn’t been following this path?

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Thu 25 Jul 2013, 01:55:18
by ralfy
As pointed out in the meltdown thread, the U.S. is a reserve currency economy:

http://lexicon.ft.com/Term?term=Triffin-dilemma

which means incessant borrowing and spending are inevitable. But the increased money supply escalates worldwide, leading to a large amount of credit available, as seen in the liquidity chart shared here:

http://www.creditcontraction.com/

One expert argues that the level in notional value for unregulated derivatives might even be larger:

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/05/ ... arket.html

which means fallout from financial risks is a global problem.

Meanwhile, a fraction of that credit is employed for investing in increased production and consumption of goods, and enough to increase resource consumption worldwide.

As oil prices rise, more people will adjust by spending less on middle class amenities and thus consume fewer resources, but much of the growing global population will use the same resources to meet basic needs.

With that, my guess is that if the U.S. had not engaged in borrowing and spending, other economies would have done so.

In many ways, this is connected to the title thread: as one becomes a "top producer" others begin to increase consumption.

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Thu 25 Jul 2013, 06:51:59
by SeaGypsy
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.

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Thu 25 Jul 2013, 09:04:06
by John_A
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.


While I tend to agree with you on American exceptionalism, and I suppose we could talk about the foresight of politicians and oilmen of old and how they started the game up in our favor and have kept it this way for so long, the current surge in US oil production fits the same bill. Certainly they aren't going to frack the planet in Poland in any time soon, and if it wasn't for both sides of the American coin, oil and gas infrastructure, new technology and the gumption to apply it to make a buck, combined with a raging collective desire to not be as dependent on foreign liquid fuels, we provided wouldn't also be playing the other side of the conservation and efficiency coin by pioneering an electric future for the entire planet at the same time.

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Thu 25 Jul 2013, 09:29:52
by SeaGypsy
The US has done the best it could do in several incidents. The lack of clear economic objectivity with a broad focus is one problem, another is to replace fading private sector employment with crazy growth in government. The default position is what has been arrived at, the solutionless solution.

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Fri 26 Jul 2013, 01:25:56
by ralfy
QE has been taking place for decades, i.e., through increasing money supply and keeping the dollar propped up through military force and other means.

http://blogs.reuters.com/rolfe-winkler/ ... s-of-debt/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP7L8bw5QF4

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Wed 26 Mar 2014, 10:28:46
by Subjectivist
From the front page news on po dot com
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?


It all seems perfectly reasonable. Unfortunately people are not rational. The vast majority react on purely emotional terms, which is why engineers and scientists make up such a small portion of the general population.

I have reluctantly concluded h best you can do is prepare yourself to be a first responder when your neighbors and family finally recognize peak oil and its consequences. They will need help navigating the seas of reality when they realize hey need to change course.

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Fri 29 Apr 2016, 19:23:27
by Subjectivist
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



Do you think the analysts who made all these wildly wrong predictions will ever be called on the carpet for what they claimed? Or did it just get flushed down the memory hold because people love good news and ignore bad news until they are run over by the reality train?

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Mon 02 May 2016, 08:43:06
by ROCKMAN
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

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Mon 02 May 2016, 15:25:07
by hvacman
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


Speaking of gamblers and bets:

Just one year to go and - if Randy can just come back to us - he can go and rattle around CERA's office with Steve until they pay up. Unless production hits 107 million barrels/day, of course. Then CERA wins.

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2008-02-11/some-qa-about-100000-cera-bet

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Tue 03 May 2016, 07:57:27
by ROCKMAN
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.

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Tue 03 May 2016, 08:06:18
by Tanada
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.


Gee ROCKMAN, its just like farming and farm commodity prices, sometimes its up, sometimes its down, and often for no known reason. Having grown up on a tiny farm I used to listen to the 'farm report' frequently. Every rumor of dry spell/drought, hail storm/flooding rain would drive prices up, every report of perfect growing weather in a particular region known for a particular crop would drive prices down. Often the rumors were false or media hyped far beyond their real world effects, but that didn't matter because prices were not set by the actual supply and demand unless there was a real world physical shortage. Do you remember a few months ago when bird flu broke out in some major confined hen egg production barn? Prices nation wide doubled even though there was never a physical shortage outside of 10 percent of the country, and there was plenty of surplus to ship into that shortage area.

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Tue 03 May 2016, 08:27:33
by ROCKMAN
T - Excellent point: beyond the physical reality there's the psychological input. Like the so called ”Arab embargo” back in the 70’s. Lon after it had passed analysis showed that the long lines at empty gas stations had nothing to do with any shortage of oil imports. Anticipating a shortage caused folks to carry much motor fuel than normal. Those millions of bbls disappeared not in tankers sailing in circles out in the open ocean but were stored in the 100+ million gas tanks in US cars. Once folks had loaded up and the refineries replaced that fuel the lines disappeared even though the “embargo” was technically still in place.

Just like all your eggs. LOL.

Re: Saudi America Will Overtake Saudi Arabia As Top producer

Unread postPosted: Tue 03 May 2016, 11:51:14
by hvacman
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.


The Udall/Andrews bet from long ago wasn't on 2017 oil PRICE. It was on 2017 oil PRODUCTION. OK, I know that there is a complex correlation between price and production, but price is all market-driven by the balance of production, demand, and other economic/political/psychological factors. Long-term, production has an iron-clad geological component.