Your language selection of “striping” implies mining. Well, I've posted it about a zillion other times on this site, so I might as well post it once more:

Only 10% of the resource will be mined. The rest will be in-situ.

And yes, common sense does tell me (and everyone here in Alberta) that extracting (note my verb change) oil from sand is more expensive. Not only that, the rate suffers too. That’s why it isn’t the Peak Oil saviour.



As for the "massive government subsidies", please post something to back up your claim that it is "massive". Yes, the Government of Alberta has designed a royalty program which initially subsidizes oil sands producers up to the point when their costs have been recovered. After that it’s the greater of 25% of the project net revenue or 1% of the gross revenue - that's hardly a massive subsidy. As for the tax shelter argument, I don’t know where that is coming from – sounds like conjecture to me.



Fine, possibly costs will go up, most everything does. But you’re making a mountain out of a mole hill. In fact, given that 30-35% of the current costs are tied to natural gas requirements, and as NG continues what appears to be a steady upward trend in price, the producers will readily switch to other bitumen based feedstocks. Across the board costs could actually decrease.

But this is starting to diverge somewhat off-topic..

If you read back through the thread you'll see that Lynch had already posted his reply as to the problems of using Hubbert's model. (Not that I agree or disagree... but his statement is pretty explicit.)

Where is the best place to post the article, which upholds Hubbert's peak model? I assume this forum is a place for Michael Lynch to respond, is it not? Can he not respond to this recent article, with an open mind?

From the paper above:



I can accept that URR can grow. I find it much harder to accept that URR can grow at the same pace as demand. If it can't grow at the same pace as demand, the series of predictions for a peak, even if they get shifted to the future, they will get shifted less and less, until there is a point when the peak is reached. What Michael Lynch never mentions is that the series of predictions of Campbell seems to converge.

The article hurts ... Lynch is making some really good arguments against Laherrere and Campbell. Regarding the former peaker, he maintains that his "parabolic fractal" law which is basically a quadratic fit on the distribution the field size/number is essentially a law of nature.
Yet one should always dismiss "findings" which are derived from empirical fits without reference to a mechanistic model. This is sine qua non in science ... aka as the "mind projection fallacy" (i.e. an uncritical projection of our thoughts/models/ideas to the external world as ontologies that have a physical basis for their existence).
Pretty good article by Lynch (spike). Too bad that oil is about to peak
If it does in the next 10 years, we will have another wrong scientific theory to deal with.

Edit
-----
To spike: do you have any idea about the statistical methodology employed by Cam/Lah? If they solely rely on non-linear regressions ... then they'd better provide more information that the residuals or the sum-of-squares after the fit. Fitting data to logistic/Verhulst curve is a bitch. One lets the argument take one more iteration (or one less iteration) and a different picture emerges.

Ok, so what I understand from this thread is that due to minor technical flaws in the models predicting a peak, oil supply is infinite and will never peak. That's wonderful!

From previous post, article by Rafael Sandrea

Why production data? Because its the most reliable data we have and has repeatedly proven of sufficient accuracy for the predictive modeling. ASPO geophysicists have long understood the limitations and have long requested more accurate data, obviating any criticism from Lynch or others. Peak dates will be modified when and if any reputed findings of new reserves are brought into production.

I take it that Michael Lynch at least agrees that there will be a peak sometime? Even the USGS survey and IEA admit this. I too think that campbell and deffeyes are a bit too pessimistic, but i dont think they are far off the mark. 2010 seems to be a reasonable estimate to me. i do believe we shall see a plateau for a while though, especially when you take into account the fact that we can only process about 85 million barrels a day of oil at present, and refinery capacity is only inching up year on year.

Anyway, the more important point is not when it peaks, but the price of oil - in my opinion anyway. If our economies can't deal with oil at $60+ then we are in big trouble if the oil price stays high, because there are no alternatives at present. I think most people would agree that we'll never see $25 a barrel oil again and that the price of oil will in all likelihood continue to rise gradually over the coming years.

So, given that Mr Lynch said oil would be $30 this summer (? i think..), but it was actually around double this or more, what is Mr Lynch's prediction for oil going forward? Also - do you (mr Lynch) advise anyone on oil future prices? If so, you must have a lot of very unhappy investors!

Personally, i don't think oil prices can go much higher than they are right now, barring any unforeseen production outages, mainly because the world is heading into a recession shortly. I can see oil prices neared the mid 40's next summer.

linlithgowoil:

The most important point is when it peaks, because of the multitude of repercussions. From an econometric perspective, it means new oil pricing dynamics. But what about the social perspective, the farmers perspective, etc., etc? Peak oil, peak price, peak agriculture, peak civilization.

The real peak comes when mankind collectively realizes it regardless of everything else.

I think this thread turned out exactly as many suggested it would = dead.
I appreciate Mike's time yet ultimately I think we are wasting everyones time trying to understand his logic.

Bobbyboy on the other hand is quite intriguing....
SA thread

I am not talking political. Even taking out political, oil production will not peak to a higher level for these three countries. It is mostly economics that caused this, even if you do have more oil. This is why Hubbert's PO theory is so sweet and enlightening. Oil companies always drill the biggest oil fields first and always produce oil from the highest producing areas first. This causes any subsequent fields to be slower in production. You only can hit a second peak that is higher by producing in more fields. We are talking about at least doubling the amount of fields.

So in summary, you can only get a second higher peak production by having larger fields than your first peak production are produced from. This may happen, but in most places on Earth, the largest fields have already been found.



I am lost.
What you mean by "increased extraction post-peak"?
I do agree that the midpoint and peak production are not necessarily the same time. I guess you are saying increasing investment will allow peak production to happen after midpoint, right?
EIA is expecting that.
I have yet to see statistics on any oil field that increased production after reaching half way point.


I do not refute your point that we can get energy from several sources and technology might save us by providing a renewable source like agriculture or other methods.

You seem to agree with me that oil is a finite source and we must moved to other sources. You also seem to agree with me that all other sources that we do find are going to end sometime and that the ultimate solution is some kind of renewable source.

If the previous paragraph is true, then we are on the same boat. PO believers are calling for government to manage and prepare for a sustainable way to live. Many don't have faith that this will happen, so think that total chaos and world will end, but nevertheless, the key here is recognizing there will be an end to oil and other alternative sources as long as not renewable. AND right now, we don't have alternatives that can replace oil completely and keep our economies growing.

I am sure Lynch, Huber and others will agree that resources will run out, but they believed that despite the fact we don't have the technology right now to replace oil, we will be okay because with increasing investment, people will find solutions.

Does that imply that any increase in proven reserves means that peak gets postponed by the model? Uh... proven reserves are increasing every year, keeping an even pace with extraction. How did they extrapolate that trend? And what about "reserve growth"?

BTW, ASPO tries to avoid those problems in their data by using estimates of P1+P2 reserves and discounting for what ASPO asserts are "fraudulent" additions to OPEC reserves.

My point was that there's no way to "accurately project oil production" over a 20 year period without accounting for political factors, and those political factors are unpredictable. How would you check a model "taking out political" factors against the actual prices? You can't - so the charge that no one has developed a model to predict those prices is irrelevant.



Agreed. A large percentage of the oil has been found. But most of the oil that has been found has not been produced. (proven reserves >1200Gb, total cumulative production <1100Gb)



Even if prices are constant, technology gradually decreases costs. So even as your production rate declines, you can extract more total oil.
US lower-48 peak: 1970
US cumulative production, lower-48 in 1970: ~85 Gb.
Jean Laherrere's estimates of lower-48 URR: 225 Gb.

Clearly, the midpoint of US production will have happened AFTER the peak. Although actual peak US production was only 13% higher than Hubbert's prediction, production in 2000 was 250% higher, illustrating the continually accruing benefits of technology.



Yup. We agree. I think the answer will be wind and solar, with hydro and some nuclear. If carbon sequestration works, combined-cycle gas and (especially) coal will also be important. Grid-connected energy, hybrids, fuel cells... there's lots of possible futures.

The biggest disagreement between PO doomers and doubters is time frames. Given time and gradual changes, the market will respond to scarcity. Doubters think there's lots of time and the markets can respond efficiently or with minimal prodding (justifiable on other grounds, like GW); Doomers think there's insufficient time and large-scale government intervention is necessary.

I find myself saying that a lot here...

I agree with EnergySpin on this issue. Unfortunately, Lynch makes no attempt to come up with a better model and arguably spins the data to make it support his own agenda. And that is way more intellectually dishonest than trying valiantly to come up with a prediction based on bread crumbs that slip out from a largely proprietary knowledgebase.

Having studied the North Sea oil situation a bit recently, I have to thank Aaron for posting that paper. Lynch does not understand the concept of causality at all, using his own definition as some sort of blunt object.
He seems to put everything in the hands of economics in that paper. I would rather use Occam's razor and suggest that greed determines production and the human species tends to maximize greed.

http://mobjectivist.blogspot.com/2005/1 ... ation.html

In 2009, and if things stay constant, the UK production may be 1/3 of it's peak of 6 years ago.