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Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.

Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby GHung » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 00:04:21

Whatever happened to “peak oil” – the assertion that the rate at which oil is extracted from the Earth is nearing a maximum or peak level? With falling oil and gasoline prices and a boom of new oil development in the United States and elsewhere, concern about global oil supplies have faded from public view.

But have concerns about peak oil really disappeared? What key factors have changed in the oil industry, and what challenges remain? Are we entering a new era of “abundance” or are the risks of the world’s dependence on oil rising?

Guests:

Jeremy Gilbert – principal, Barrelmore Ltd; former chief petroleum engineer, BP
John Kingston – president, McGraw Hill Financial Global Institute; former director of news, Platts (energy information division of McGraw-Hill)
Steve Andrews – co-founder, Association for the Study of Peak Oil USA

https://energyx.org/whatever-happened-to-peak-oil/


The Energy Xchange is up and running it seems; a project of ASPO-USA (The Oil Drum and all that) being spearheaded by Jan Lars Mueller. Podcasts here: https://energyx.org/podcasts/
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby ROCKMAN » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 00:21:28

What happened to peak oil? It's alive and doing very well as witnessed by the surge in US production and the current lower oil price. And if one doesn't understand that they are wasting there time here.
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby StarvingLion » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 04:49:43

Peak Oil has been rendered irrelevant by Moore's second law: Rock's law or Moore's second law, named for Arthur Rock or Gordon Moore, says that the cost of a semiconductor chip fabrication plant doubles every four years.

Moores 2nd law, as generalized by nanotech (see bolded below)), is going to cause massive demand destruction for oil because of the digital divide.

The division of the world by information and communication technology into rich and poor parts (the digital divide) seems to be a reality and the belief that the progress of technology will remove the disparity of economically divided world seems to be less and less plausible.

• Electron equipment helps to make informed decisions. A healthy flow of
information (insider trading) separates winners from losers.
• Information technologies widen the gap between the rich and poor people.
• Information technology helps to overcome the shortage of human and
material resources.

It can hardly be assumed that in even more complex and broader field of
nanotechnology the situation will be different and that any nano-divide could
be bridged easily. Apparently, the spread of technologies from developed world is fostered and nanotechnology products do reach the developing world.
Nevertheless, the developed countries will continue to hold the cutting edge
(in the absence of this gradient the driving force would cease to exist).
Some advocates of closing the nano-divide argued that nanotechnology
facilities and laboratory equipments are relatively cheap. This is far from reality. Nowadays the nanotechnology research requires complex infrastructure including synchrotrons and top level equipment in clean laboratories. The research and production of smaller and smaller entities demands ever more complicated and expensive instruments The shift in microelectronics from diffusion furnace to ion implanter, from light lithography to its electron counterpart, from Petri dish with acid to ion beam etching confirms this statement. This shift has been discussed in the context of microelectronics as Moore’s second law.

Since the world is going to get a lot poorer by design, how can Peak Oil be responsible for any hardship? The consensus will always be: "You are uncompetitive. Its your own fault".
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby Pops » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 07:35:26

Thanks Ghung, hadn't seen that. I'm more of a blog reader than a pod person (as in podcast), but I might try out some of those. Looks like they have some interesting folks.
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby Apneaman » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 09:27:27

StarvingLion, not all that long ago the consensus was that Kings rule by divine right. Less than 10 years ago you could not find 1 expert in paleobiology, paleoanthropology or genetics who would not laugh at the notion that we were related to Neanderthals, yet today it is the consensus/fact. Flat earthers, young earthers, etc - consensus comes and goes and if all the technology is doing anything, it is turning things around in an awful hurry.
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby GHung » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 09:36:23

@Pops - They're doing regular posts and articles as well. Maybe some of us need to go over there and jump-start their comments; stir the pot a bit:) :shock:
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby ennui2 » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 10:09:32

ROCKMAN wrote:What happened to peak oil? It's alive and doing very well as witnessed by the surge in US production and the current lower oil price. And if one doesn't understand that they are wasting there time here.


So this is a hangout for people to talk about how cheap oil is? I thought it was a place to wring your hands about a Mad Max future. Learn something new every day, I guess.
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby GoghGoner » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 10:27:59

I agree with all of their points except maybe this one:

History of oil all commodity markets has been about cycles—high prices are a signal to reduce demand, pursue substitutions, and work harder and more creatively on supply, which eventually breaks back of surging commodity price. Oil, however, unlike many other commodities, cannot be farmed or manufactured.


This is a recurring theme in my posts the last year or so. Oil hasn't shown that it is any different than other commodities. The past few years with all commodities (except tea, olive oil, and uranium -- http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/) increasing supply and now decreasing supply has shown that to be unequivocally true. I guess they believe that oil is going to be different with their crystal ball. My college physics textbook said natural gas was going to peak in 2000 in the USA. I think finite resources are an insurmountable obstacle for our current way of life but I am not sure the usefulness of focusing only on a single commodity.
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby Tanada » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 10:29:43

ennui2 wrote:
ROCKMAN wrote:What happened to peak oil? It's alive and doing very well as witnessed by the surge in US production and the current lower oil price. And if one doesn't understand that they are wasting there time here.


So this is a hangout for people to talk about how cheap oil is? I thought it was a place to wring your hands about a Mad Max future. Learn something new every day, I guess.


I used to be told on occasion that while Pessimists (doomsters) are right in the long run the Optimists (cornucopians) enjoy life a lot more. After all everyone dies in the end, so how you live is what matters.

When I was growing up my mother had a plaque on the kitchen door frame that I would read frequently as I went in.
I shall pass through this world but once.
Any good that I can do
or any kindness I can show
let me do it now.
For I shall not pass this way again.
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.
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby JV153 » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 11:01:16

StarvingLion wrote:Peak Oil has been rendered irrelevant by Moore's second law: Rock's law or Moore's second law, named for Arthur Rock or Gordon Moore, says that the cost of a semiconductor chip fabrication plant doubles every four years.

Moores 2nd law, as generalized by nanotech (see bolded below)), is going to cause massive demand destruction for oil because of the digital divide.

The division of the world by information and communication technology into rich and poor parts (the digital divide) seems to be a reality and the belief that the progress of technology will remove the disparity of economically divided world seems to be less and less plausible.

• Electron equipment helps to make informed decisions. A healthy flow of
information (insider trading) separates winners from losers.
• Information technologies widen the gap between the rich and poor people.
• Information technology helps to overcome the shortage of human and
material resources.

It can hardly be assumed that in even more complex and broader field of
nanotechnology the situation will be different and that any nano-divide could
be bridged easily. Apparently, the spread of technologies from developed world is fostered and nanotechnology products do reach the developing world.
Nevertheless, the developed countries will continue to hold the cutting edge
(in the absence of this gradient the driving force would cease to exist).
Some advocates of closing the nano-divide argued that nanotechnology
facilities and laboratory equipments are relatively cheap. This is far from reality. Nowadays the nanotechnology research requires complex infrastructure including synchrotrons and top level equipment in clean laboratories. The research and production of smaller and smaller entities demands ever more complicated and expensive instruments The shift in microelectronics from diffusion furnace to ion implanter, from light lithography to its electron counterpart, from Petri dish with acid to ion beam etching confirms this statement. This shift has been discussed in the context of microelectronics as Moore’s second law.

Since the world is going to get a lot poorer by design, how can Peak Oil be responsible for any hardship? The consensus will always be: "You are uncompetitive. Its your own fault".


You and your nanotech.
..but other than that, that was a well-written post. I didn't know what a synchotron is.
As for Moore's law - unfortunately the demand for more powerful processors has also increased the TDP
of modern processors so that some PC's need 600+ W PSU's.
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby Pops » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 11:08:46

GHung wrote:Maybe some of us need to go over there and jump-start their comments; stir the pot a bit:)

Done.

GoghGoner wrote:I agree with all of their points except maybe this one:

Oil, however, unlike many other commodities, cannot be farmed or manufactured.


I noticed that too, a typical Peaker line dontcha think? The last 150 years we hunted and hunted and drilled and drilled until we hit a gusher — then we sat back and let it gush. When those kind of wells become scarce we say "we're dead!".

Thing is, syncrude and to an extent LTO are actually a lot like manufacturing (or at least mining) than the old gushers. Shale and tar deposits (not to mention the 80% of conventional oil left behind that didn't gush) are much more plentiful than the pressurized "reservoirs" of flowing crude we've burned so far. But they also involve a higher variable operating expense than the gusher so entail a different biz model.

Peakers, contrary to our self image, have a hard time adjusting our thinking away from BAU. Not saying those resources will all be extracted (or even a significant portion), just that we have proven ourselves to be way too rigid in our thinking.
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby JV153 » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 11:29:52

Pops,

There isn't good method left for extracting oil, excepting really resource heavy attempts like CO2-injection or gas-lift, or using bacteria to generate gas-lift. Conventional gas-lift requires pretty heavy compressors and gas.

As far as I know water flooding, water injection, and pump jacks are already used extensively because of loss of natural drive from almost all reservoirs.

Obviously drilling more wells would again increase production but I suspect the sweet spots have been drilled already. The fields in the Middle East have a low number of pumpjacks, but OPEC decided they want to limit their production with quotas, perhaps because of the reasonable logic that living like an American in a dry desert isn't such a good idea.

An interesting note is Russia's secondary peak 2007 after the drop off from the primary peak of 12 mb/d.
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby ennui2 » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 11:46:32

JV153 wrote:There isn't good method left for extracting oil


A lot of what's being done now would have been treated as impossible decades ago. After seeing what happened with fracking I can't discount what technology can do as far as freeing up more economically recoverable hydrocarbons, whether it's oil, gas, coal, or methane-hydrates. I also don't think fracking is "done" yet, not by a long-shot, and it hasn't even spread across the globe yet. Since people keep talking about how oil is a global commodity, even if fracking tanks in the US, if it picks up elsewhere then it continues to act as a buffer to depletion.
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby GHung » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 11:52:41

Tanada said: "I used to be told on occasion that while Pessimists (doomsters) are right in the long run the Optimists (cornucopians) enjoy life a lot more. After all everyone dies in the end, so how you live is what matters."

I'm always miffed at the implication that a high-consumption BAU lifestyle is the only way to "enjoy life a lot more". Here's the thing: Most of us (virtually all) here have lived various aspects of BAU, and some of us have worked it from various angles while trying to justify our behavior in terms of social expectations, what's good for the economy and/or our pocketbooks; accepting our roll in degrading the biosphere as inevitable; being totally reliant on complex systems we barely understand (if at all), and certainly have no control over; all-the-while listening to, and telling ourselves, stories about how this is the way things are, and it's a good thing. Trying to fit in and succeed....

It's also clear that most of the cornies here haven't tried anything else beyond finding their BAU groove. In short, when they assume that those of us who are attempting to move past what can provably be assessed as "the insanities of industrial human societies", have given up anything at all beyond being a dysfunctional member of a destructive species, they have nothing to use as a comparison. Most cornies don't have a clue what they're talking about because they've never tried anything different. Then, again, some of us, at some point, figured out that being a willing and functional part of a fucked-up system is fucked up, and it's a helluva way to waste a life.

Virtually everyone I know who has developed an alternative way of thinking, and who is attempting to live in alternative ways, wouldn't have it any other way; generally optimistic, happy, and glad they've seen the dream of wealth accumulation and consumption as the trap it is. Am I concerned for the future of our species and the rest of the biosphere? Only a sociopath or total denier wouldn't be, all evidence being considered. Does this prevent me from living a full, happy life because I'm filled with gloom and doom? Far from it. Ask those who've "made the change", like GregT, how they feel.

I again assert what I did in the "Fear The Doomer" thread (now over 140 comments): Many of those trapped in BAU-ville are threatened by those who've escaped the traps of industrialism, cleptocracy, and inevitable support for all of those things we disagree with (or are at least trying to); see us as an affront to everything they've invested their lives in, so they foment a myth that we are all unhappy, have sacrificed quality-of-life, that we all accept that utter doom is in the cards for everyone, and that we've somehow become less human. They couldn't be more wrong. The attempt to apply the overarching label of "DOOMER" to those with differing world-views and lifestyles is a dehumanising lie, generally forwarded by folks who, from my point of view, are only pretending to be happy in their traps, traps they think only so-called wealth can free them from. I posit that most don't know what true 'wealth' is, and opine that they never will.

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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby GoghGoner » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 12:01:40

Pops wrote:Thing is, syncrude and to an extent LTO are actually a lot like manufacturing (or at least mining) than the old gushers. Shale and tar deposits (not to mention the 80% of conventional oil left behind that didn't gush) are much more plentiful than the pressurized "reservoirs" of flowing crude we've burned so far. But they also involve a higher variable operating expense than the gusher so entail a different biz model.


Great point.

Another point about oil mining is that it requires the mining and manufacturing of many other resources like sand, water, steel, etc... Commodities are becoming more interconnected because of it.
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby ennui2 » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 12:55:50

GHung wrote:I'm always miffed at the implication that a high-consumption BAU lifestyle is the only way to "enjoy life a lot more".


To some people it is, and you won't be able to sell them on powerdown/austerity. The second you write out a universal prescription for what constitutes a life well lived you've gone beyond individual life choices and moved into evangelism/coercion.

People tend not to like it when others come up to them presuming to know how you can live your life better when it means they have to completely give up everything they hold dear. Feels very cult-like to most.

GHung wrote:Does this prevent me from living a full, happy life because I'm filled with gloom and doom? Far from it.


That's fine, but that's a personal anecdote. You can't presume to know what's best for everyone else.


GHung wrote:I again assert what I did in the "Fear The Doomer" thread (now over 140 comments): Many of those trapped in BAU-ville are threatened


I assert that many doomers adopt a judgmental tone towards those who won't do as they do in order to compensate for the fact that most of society thinks they're nuts.


GHung wrote:The attempt to apply the overarching label of "DOOMER"


Dude, you just went on a tear about how a BAU lifestyle is killing the planet. You're telling me that isn't labeling most of society as in some way co-conspirators of ecocide? Now, you may be right, but then what do you do with after you've put yourself on that moral high-horse? The only step beyond rhetoric would be to become some sort of Derrick Jensen style eco-terrorist. Then you've just lost the moral high-ground in favor of fanaticism.

This is what tragedy of the commons is about. Either you believe that people should have the freedom to lead whatever life they like or you don't. If you want to drag people out of their hummers and McMansions and throw them into yurts, then don't feel shocked to find that people feel this is an affront to their freedom.

There's really no bridging the gap when the rhetoric is infused with so much rage and judgmentalism.
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby GHung » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 13:08:46

Nice flip ennui; typical deflection. My posts are self-responsible, but you always pretend to take them as an affront. Thanks for making my case so well.... and no; I won't dignify any of your future comments with a response. The hotdog I'm eating deserves more consideration, on the way in and on the way out.
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby ennui2 » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 13:15:57

GHung wrote:My posts are self-responsible.


No they aren't. It's holier-than-thou and one-size-fits-all self-help advice and it's never going to fly beyond the echo-chamber.

Continuing to drum the "I'm a doomer and my lifestyle is better than yours" doesn't bridge any gaps. It just makes other people feel like you're looking down on them. For YOU, maybe it was the right choice. Don't be so arrogant to presume to know how other people can find their bliss, because there is no single pathway there.
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby Revi » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 13:25:29

I don't think it's going to be some doomer pulling people out of their lifestyle. Their lifestyle will bankrupt them. If you are a regular middle class person it will become impossible to keep giant cars and gasoline toys going. It's already pretty much impossible, but most people don't know it yet.
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Re: Whatever Happened to Peak Oil?

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Fri 04 Sep 2015, 13:26:54

ennui2 wrote:Either you believe that people should have the freedom to lead whatever life they like or you don't. If you want to drag people out of their hummers and McMansions and throw them into yurts, then don't feel shocked to find that people feel this is an affront to their freedom.

There's really no bridging the gap when the rhetoric is infused with so much rage and judgmentalism.

Excellent points.
It's a shame that education and awareness of the scientific realities (long term) won't get the vast majority of people to VOLUNTARILY live a (at least relatively) powered-down lifestyle. Given the vast propensity of people to buy everything they can afford (and borrow) to "better the life" of their families -- I just don't see that happening. Ever. No matter how bad climate change gets. (I'm not talking about the small percentage of people who actually want to do something about it -- I'm talking about that vast majority who don't care).

A small example: As a guy who is clueless about cooking beyond microwave warming, I like certain cooking reality shows like Top Chef or Hell's Kitchen as the occasional diversion. (I'm amazed what chefs can produce under pressure in a short time).

Such shows simultaneously talk about "sustainable foods", "low carbon footprint foods", etc. while ON THE SHOW, the chefs and their customers FREQUENTLY fly all over the planet and live the high life (and show off and brag about it), as though either:

1). They are completely clueless about how consumption and travel impact AGW.
2). They don't care.
3). My vote: both.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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