Why the oil industry has buried the idea of "peak oil"

[rockdoc123]

No matter how expensive crude becomes the Law of Receding Horizons tells us that substitutes will always be priced just out of range. Their production is, after all, subsidized by petroleum in the form of rigs, roads, labor, and indexed to inflating petroleum costs.

Even when crude rises to $500 or $1,000 unconventionals will remain a blip, a meaningless luxury reserved for generals or billionaires perhaps.

I'd like to suggest that before you insult posters you actually understand what it is they are trying to say? The point being made was that Green River oil shale is not the same as the "shale oil" that is being referenced elsewhere. The Green River shale is what is properly referred to as Kerogen shale. It is undercooked but full of organics. The idea has always been that by mining and cooking it you will get a substantial amount of oil. The technology is there, the cost/benefit doesn't fit at current prices/costs. Shale oil is something different entirely, it is oil already generated and sitting in either a liquid or gas state within the shales. Fraccing allows this oil to flow to the wellbore and even at current prices it is quite economical. The two are completely different, the economics governing both are completely different. The poster who suggested it was stupid to combine oil shales or kerogen shales with shale oil in any discussion is completely right. You, however, continue to be uneducated in the technology/science/economics of these endeavours but still love to post about how stupid everyone else is. Sad.

[pstarr]

dude, you doth protest way too much. And I don't appreciate your lectures.

First, I did not proclaim myself "expert." That was some damn fool at the internet portal. I am just a concerned citizen who happens to have the time and interest to track the most important story of this or any historical decade.

WTF about shale oil and oil shale? I many not be a titled academician or resumeed oil pro like you, but I sure appreciate the difference between the two. One is high quality crude stuck in crappy tight shale, and the other is kerogen. Big deal. You don't need a PhD to understand that we are scraping the bottom of the geologic barrel. That much is obvious to school kids today. You might need to get out more often.

[Rune]

Guest Column: Yes, Oil Prices Are Cyclical

The latest round of briefing papers on oil published over the last week on Wall Street is a testament to how quickly things can change when it comes to oil prices. Less than a few months after Brent crude prices topped $125 a barrel, Wall Street is suddenly predicting a possible collapse in oil prices to $50 a barrel.

The forecasts, which may or may not prove to be correct, reflect more than just a cloudy economic outlook for Europe. There appears to be a definitive shift brewing in long-range perceptions about future oil supplies.

With the shale oil boom promising over one million barrels a day of new oil production within a year in the United States, analysts are coming out of the woodwork to embrace falling oil prices. The new word on the street when it comes to oil is “sell.” Already, the long oil price, that is, futures prices going out past a year, has fallen to $85 a barrel, down from over $100 a barrel earlier this year.

Citigroup Global Markets took the lead last week with predictions of a cyclical shift that could cause prices to slide in the long term to as low as $50 a barrel. In their latest publication, “Zeroing In On the Long-Term Oil Prices,” Citi analysts state: “Signs are abounding that the escalation in upstream capital spending is bearing fruit, with a surge in discoveries and reserve bookings that is already being converted into new production, particularly in North America.

“There are no reasons to believe the supply boom in Canada and the United States is about to end,” they write. “To the contrary, it appears likely to start spreading across the world.”

$50 - 80 would be good.

[seenmostofit]

I am just a concerned citizen who happens to have the time and interest to track the most important story of this or any historical decade.

You meant to add, "story of this or any historical decade as long as it has nothing to do with the difference between oil shale and shale oil."?

You don't need a PhD to understand that we are scraping the bottom of the geologic barrel. That much is obvious to school kids today. You might need to get out more often.

Might not need a PhD, but a little history goes a long way.

"While we do not know exactly how much oil remains
undiscovered, we do know that it is a limited
supply…Furthermore, the easy discoveries have already
been made and only the difficult ones remain."

M. King Hubbert. 1938

We've been running out of easy oil, scraping the bottom of the barrel for a long, LONG time apparently. Apparently, most of us have grown up in this period of difficult to extract oil, and to be honest, I can't say it has stunted my growth much, having never known was "easy" oil was like.

[pstarr]

We've been running out of easy oil, scraping the bottom of the barrel for a long, LONG time apparently. Apparently, most of us have grown up in this period of difficult to extract oil, and to be honest, I can't say it has stunted my growth much, having never known was "easy" oil was like.