[celliod]

Hello, I'm a little apprehensive about my first post in this forum, I understand oil is running out and the rate at which it does so will increase as supply and demand reach an inoperable level. The changeover to some apocalyptic wasteland will not occur overnight, rather a slow decline of once active processes as the oil is drying up. My question to you is what will the general public notice first as the oil supplies decrease? Electricity, travel, food supplies etc?

[Newfie]

What will we NOTICE or what will happen? Two different questions.

What will happen is what IS happening...gas is getting more expensive, food is getting more expensive, drilling operations will become more experimental with smaller and more frequent rigs, global insecurity with wars and threats of war.

Declining resources is behind all of this.

Same with climate change, we won't notice climate change, but storms Will get worse, there will be longer droughts, more forest fires, heat waves, etc.

Welcome.

[celliod]

Ah, the thought of climate change hadn't crossed my mind until now, is this a link to man trying harder and harder to access the deeper oils that's affecting the climate or something to do with the actual reduction of the oil.

Thank you

[Pops]

Hi Cell, welcome and thanks for posting, we'll go easy on you!

Think of a business where labor is incredibly cheap, the business grows and grows because the profits are huge. But then labor demands higher wages so the profits begin to fall.

That is how we've grown so remarkably fast these last 200 years, fossil fuels are our cheap slave labor. As the energy slaves that do all the work at first cost more and eventually are less available, the surpluses of everything will become smaller. Since oil underlies everything, as it becomes more expensive, everything we need will also become more expensive.

So I don't think we'll see it in any one thing, we'll see it in every thing. Or more probably, we won't want to see it at all, we'll just see ever more expensive energy as part and parcel of the worsening of everything.

.

[ROCKMAN]

Cell - The actual process of oil/NG extraction is a very small component of GHG production. Just a WAG but I suspect just the taxi cabs in NYC put out more GHG than all the drilling activity in the state. Obviously it's the burning of all fossil fuels that impacting the climate. But as we drill in deeper waters and more severe environments there will be more environmental catastrophes as the BP blowout in the Gulf.

[Plantagenet]

The first thing we will notice is a jump in gas prices.

This has already occurred --- gas prices jumped after 2005 when conventional oil production plateaued

[ritter]

The first thing we will notice is a jump in gas prices.

This has already occurred --- gas prices jumped after 2005 when conventional oil production plateaued

And haven't really gone back down.

Also, notice the cost of food has gone up while the package size has gone down. This is directly related to oil inputs used to farm, process and transport that food. The same can be said for things like copper pipe, wire, asphalt shingles, car tires, etc. Our low-cost energy fairy has about run out of dust.

[rollin]

The public will see many indirect results on the descent. Less product lines on the shelf, more expensive imports. Food will become more expensive.
Occasional and then permanent rationing of civilian fuel.
High mpg cars will start to become popular again. Manufacturers will respond to the new demand. Ride sharing will become more popular as will public transit.
As the global economy becomes crippled, more local production of goods will be evident.
More electric trains and more natural gas powered vehicles.
Drillers are already pushing into lower profit and higher risk ventures. That trend will continue and any preserved areas will be under heavy attack.

Countries that depend upon oil export for revenue will convert electricity production away from oil, going to solar, wind and natural gas. Maybe even more nuclear. Coal burning will increase also.

As far as global warming/ climate change is concerned. The production of CO2 and other global warming gases is directly related to the burning of all fossil fuels, coal, natural gas and oil. Since reductions in oil will probably force the greater use of coal and natural gas, CO2 outputs will probably not reduce for quite a while. The effects are cumulative and long lasting so hang on for the ride into a whole new world.

[Shaved Monkey]

What you will notice is whats going on
GFC, no real recovery,lack of confidence,lack of borrowing, lack of lending, lack of growth, all the indicators you need to drive lending and borrowing.
People getting angrier as they start to get squeezed.
People blaming governments,oppositions making promises they cant deliver,short sighted governments,governments changing.
A mad last minute rush to alternatives with no regard for the EROEI.
People getting pushed out,people dropping out .
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

[Loki]

The first thing we will notice is a jump in gas prices.

This has already occurred --- gas prices jumped after 2005 when conventional oil production plateaued

This. Price signals are the only things Americans really notice (I'm assuming the OP is American, correct me if I'm wrong).

We can argue about peak oil's role in the Great Recession (small, I think), but the current historically high plateau of oil prices is THE sign that peak oil is now. I think this price spike acted as a catalyst of sorts for the Great Recession, and has played a smallish role in the rather lackluster (i.e., non-existent) "recovery" we've enjoyed thus far. But peak oil wasn't the primary cause of the crash.

There's still gasoline available at every station in the US/Europe/et al., albeit at a rather high price, but not high enough to stop recreational driving (only limit it slightly). Once we start on the downslope of Hubbert's Peak, things will get far more interesting. Shortages, rationing, black markets, permanent economic depression, social strife, etc. See Egypt.

Only then will Americans as a whole start to become dimly aware of the concept of peak oil, but the troubles will likely be blamed on liberals or conservatives, environmentalists or oil companies, etc. I doubt peak oil per se will ever enter the regular mainstream conversation, it will be lost in the mess of the Long Emergency.

[Simon_R]

Hi Loki

Interestingly, a major British Firm just upped energy prices by 8%.

Reading the comments on national news, people are blaming the Green Policies and big business.

I would say we are in transition between denial and anger

Simon

[ROCKMAN]

Pstarr – Actually it may be hard to believe but the fuel expenditure per foot of hole drilled (vertical and especially horizontal) has not increased and in many trends has decreased significantly. Unlike the rest of the economy the service companies, especially the drillers, have moved quickly to much more efficient operations. I sign our fuel invoices so I’ve seen the change of the years. One obvious metric is the almost 50% reduction in drilling time in the Eagle Ford Shale: cut the drill time in half and cut the fuel burn in half. And the expense for production equipment and its operation is the same as for a conventional well. But we are spending a lot of $’s per foot drilled/frac’d in those shale plays.

But I agree with you that the minimum EROEI will be around 6:1 but again for economic reasons. Remember even an unconventional well that nets only half of what it cost to drill can still produce much more energy than was used to drill it. For instance an EFS well might use 400,000 gallons to drill and frac including all the truck transport. That number is a good bit higher than the actual ones I’ve seen. Such a well need only produce 10k bo to get back to an EROEI of 1. Recover 60k bo and you’re at a 6 EROEI. But a 60k bo recovery would only net a company about $4 million. Given that the average EFS cost a good bit more than $4 million no company would intentionally drill such a well even with an EROEI of 6.

The oil patch has become very efficient. Otherwise you wouldn’t be seeing such a high level of activity as we have today in all those no so terrific plays.

[radon1]

Was thinking of another concept - OROI. Oil returned on oil invested.

[ROCKMAN]

OK. Since most rigs run off diesel we’ll use it as a basis. A ballpark number but about 25% of a bbl of crude yields diesel. For simplicity we’ll throw the rest of the products away. Also need to decide how to handle embedded energy. The drill rig existed whether I drilled my well or not. IOW it wasn’t built solely for my well. It will be used to drill maybe 100 wells. So whatever energy was used to build it my well gets credit for at most 1% of that energy. No idea so let’s be generous and say it took as much oil to build my 1% as I spent drilling my well…10,000 bo.

The rig I recently used to drill my latest oil well used about 110,000 gallons of diesel. So we’ll use 440,000 gallons of crude oil. Or about 10,000 bo. The trucks servicing the rig also use diesel. And then there’s the casing and other materials used in the process. This is probably too high but let’s use an equivalent amount for those components...10,000 bo. So total oil invested is around 30,000 bbls.

The well is making 400 bopd. So I will recover 100% of the oil used to drill my well in 10 weeks: 30,000 bo/400 bopd. We anticipate about 400k bo ultimate recovery. So the OROI would be around 13:1. How would the OROI look for the Eagle Ford look? Just a guess based on the numbers folks throw around and what I would guess the fuel consumption would be: somewhere between 6:1 and 10:1. The low end, which oddly enough, matches my estimate for the minimum EROEI that a company would intentional develop because anything less wouldn't be an adequate ROR even though a good bit more oil was produced than was used to drill the well.

[Loki]

Hi Loki

Interestingly, a major British Firm just upped energy prices by 8%.

Reading the comments on national news, people are blaming the Green Policies and big business.

I would say we are in transition between denial and anger

Yes, you could put it that way.

Our energy and environmental conundrums are the most complex problems the human species has ever faced. It's understandable how people react in kneejerk fashion, no one has a complete grasp of our situation. I don't know if the UK is as polarized politically as the US, but here most folks immediately blame their political opponents for all the things that go wrong in the world. It's faster, easier, and more emotionally satisfying than examining the data as objectively as possible.

I saw more than one conservative blame environmentalists for the 2010 Gulf oil spill. This leap of logic requires an unabashed lack of factual knowledge, but that never stopped anyone from spouting off

[vtsnowedin]

Apart from the ongoing price rises and the adverse effects they bring to the economy I think it comes down to a random event that causes a crisis.
Iceland residents went to the ATM one day and none of them worked. You notice things like that.
Some other possibilities:
1
A major wheat crop failure in China, say a third of their recent production would create a shortage larger then all the wheat sold for export world wide.
2
A major oilfield taps out, say KSA's Ghawar field waters out and tankers have to wait to fill up at the port.
3. Deep water wells in Bangladesh or India dry up and the irrigated fields that depend on them turn to dust.
4. Someone? Iran or Al-Qaida throws a nuke at Israel.

[JV153]

Well, I went to a WU one day and the Ingenico payment machine flashed "simulation" at me for a second. That was something I noticed.

[JV153]

re : above seems like a shot at simulation and simulacra.

[JV153]

What will we notice ?

Abandoned cars, cars sitting not moving, reduced construction projects, deteriorating road surfaces on all but the most used thoroughfares. That means roads outside major urban centres deteriorate first: the smaller ones, not the main highways. Shopping centres that are farther away from a customer base close down.