[SeaGypsy]

I've never presumed authority on hubbert or anything else, but I have worked my ass off here for 9 years trying to understand. When this site had a handful of members, when the staff was at each others throats, when it was nonfunctional, when it was overrun by spammers and only a handful of valid posts a day, when more bots were viewing than people I continued to post, because I think PO does matter.

You know I'm a fan Pops, I stuck it out here through some of those times too- though I have been spared the backroom squabbles!

The site is doing pretty ok, I just checked the stats for the first time in a while:

Total posts 986951 • Total topics 24989 • Total members 33576 •

Will hit the million posts mark in the next few months or so; not a wasted effort for the folks who have backboned the place all these years

[SeaGypsy]

Wow guys. Rockman getting swelled head with all this attention. LOL.

First, do I believe in global PO? Yeah...starting in about 1976 when my first mentor explained it to me. Can anyone here date their belief that far back? I also had a firm grasp of GHG effects and the potential for climate change back then also. Anyone else here? It's not that I don't believe in the date of global peak oil...I just don't give a crap when it has or will happen.

It is the POD that determines what we pay for oil & gasoline & diesel & fuel oil & etc. The POD also determines how much of our treasury we spend defending oil producing regions and how many thousands of lives are lost on the process. Many folks think that PO happened in 2005. Let’s accept that for the moment. If PO is the critical factor determining the price of oil why was it selling for just $40 to $50 per bbl back then? And if we were running into PO why was it selling for half that just 5 or 6 years earlier? And if oil hit $140/bbl in 2008 because we either had reached PO or were at least getting close to it than why did oil fall to $50/bbl or less during the first part of 2009? Did PO suddenly just cease to exist?

Maybe because the folks who buy/sell oil don’t make those decisions based upon whenever the heck PO may have or will occur. One more question: if oil is priced on the basis of global PO than why was there recently a $30+ spread between different oil sold in different regions? Maybe it was because of local market demand & logistics & political instability & environment policies & etc. IOW all those DYNAMIC FACTORS that impact demand and pricing. Did everyone notice that in my list of factors that global PO timing wasn’t one of them?

Folks what to think their energy future hinges on the date of global peak oil…have at it. Me, I think I’ll focus on ELM, political instability in the ME, China tightening their grip on future oil production, increased US oil production thanks to high oil prices, development of Deep Water oil fields, etc., etc. IOW I’ll stick with the POD. It explains everything we’ve seen in the past and controls all that I expect to see in the future IMHO. And that has nothing to do with the undeniable fact that one day we’ll never produce oil at a greater rate than on that day or the fact that the date of that event has little bearing on the impact of energy on society compared to all the other dynamics involved IMHO.

Nice retort! Ended up at the end of the page... coincidence I guess!
I love your way with words. This post really sums up where I thought you are at, confirming my inner sensibilities. I'm not going to argue with any of this, I think it's pretty spot on. Hard to make a buck off though Lol! I guess that's why you're still digging the black stuff

[ROCKMAN]

SG - I don't think there's much to argue about anyway. Obviously it's the POD that's important to me. But if someone wants to hang it all on PO that's OK to. It's just one's personal perspective...no right or wrong IMHO. The biggest reason I like using "POD" is that I'm a two-finger typist with limited spelling capabilities. The fewer words I need to use to get an idea across the better. LOL.

[Pops]

the date of that event has little bearing on the impact of energy on society compared to all the other dynamics involved IMHO.

IOW, 'PO doesn't matter', that's all I've been looking for.

[ROCKMAN]

Pops - That's exactly correct: peak oil isn't important to me. What I sell oil for is what's important to me. Likewise what the consumer pays for oil is important to them. In late 2008 I sold oil for $140/bbl. In early 2009 I sold oil for $55/bbl. And in 2013 I'm selling oil for $102/bbl. So did it matter if PO happened in 2005? Or will it matter if PO happens in 2018? So far when PO has or hasn't happened appears to have little to no control over what I sell my oil for or what the consumer pays for it.

[SeaGypsy]

Did anyone notice this year's Miss America:

[ROCKMAN]

Step back - I do appreciate your effort. If you're an abiotic oil believe we can end our chat here. If not let me point out some almost universally acknowledged concepts. First, all the hydrocarbons created have originated in that thinnest outer shell of yours. Perhaps no more than 10 miles thick at most. Equally important oil is not stable at the high temperatures found below that outer shell. In many areas oil can't physically exist below 15,000' or so...too hot. Oil does exist at depths of 30,000'+ in some areas such as the Deep Water Gulf of México because deposition out the was so rapid there hasn't been sufficient time for the geothermal gradient to increase.

Second, the great majority of that outer most shell is composed of igneous rock which, except for some extremely rare cases, produce no hydrocarbons. Look at the globe and focus on where even the DW oil trends are being developed: it's happening adjacent to the continental land masses. That because much of the reservoir rock were derived from the erosion of those land masses. And even the great carbonate fields in world developed in the shallow waters adjacent to the continental land masses.

But this just emphasises your point even more IMHO: there's a much smaller volume of potential oil bearing rock than your diagram represents.

[SeaGypsy]

My attempt at humor above is along the lines of the blindfolded men and the elephant. It's the same elephant. The Miss America reference- dynamics changing culture. The US now has a brown President and a brown beauty queen. Who would have predicted any of this 10 or 20 years ago? Is it just a distraction or has something deep really changed America?

Back on topic, I can't see how POD undermines PO really. One talks about the elephant- the other about everything about the elephant. Does who saw the elephant first make any difference?

[Loki]

Pops - That's exactly correct: peak oil isn't important to me. What I sell oil for is what's important to me. Likewise what the consumer pays for oil is important to them.

How about we make peace between you and Pops and agree on this: peak oil (understood as plateauing and decline of production) confounded by economic and political factors, creating a dynamic leading to uncertain results.

We can call it the PO(UPDP)CEPFCDLUR for short.

[ROCKMAN]

Loki - Well I hope you're happy. I tried to pronounce your new acronym and bit my tongue badly, you bastard! LOL.

And did I miss something...when have Pops and I not been at peace? Both PO and the POD are real. I haven't noticed anyone arguing otherwise. As I said earlier the date of PO doesn't effect me significantly so it isn't of any interest to me. The POD, OTOH, determines if I have a job, what I earn, what it costs to maintain my lifestyle, how many shinny metal boxes are shipped thru Dover and a myriad of other unpleasant developments.

[Loki]

Pops, just doesn't seem to me that your and Rockman's perspectives are all that far off. I think the PO(UPDP)CEPFCDLUR encompasses both. I formally request that we rename PO.com to http://www.poupdpcepfcdlur.com.

It's clear we've reached peak oil. In 20 years we'll be able to make a chart showing this period as a flattening, with some bumps, followed by decline. The precise date of peak oil is interesting, but largely academic. More interesting, for me at least, is when the US will start seeing an actual decline of available oil (imported or domestic). When will we start seeing actual shortages? Odd and even days, followed by ???

Simple geological extraction models could predict this, but we also have to consider confounding factors like the EPLM, China, geopolitical and regional politics (particularly in the Middle East), the general decline of the developed world's middle class due to automation/globalization/financialization, long-term demographics, etc., etc., etc. Who the hell knows what's around the corner. My Magic 8 Ball says "future is uncertain, but cheap oil is a goner, plan accordingly."

I tend to agree with Rockman that the "dynamic" of how peaking oil (verb not noun) plays out in our political and economic reality is what really matters. But I still prefer "peak oil." Call me old fashioned.

[sparky]

.
@ step back , great visual concept
Rockmam , I think you ( or me ) misunderstand the picture concept
it's not a geological representation , it's a cost quantity picture
really it should be a hollow sphere or a hollow potato
the center is oil seeping out in mesopotamia , used millenias ago
costing only the effort to bend down and take it in a bucket , paying the local big man for the privilege

good cheap oil is toward the center of the economic graph ,
as the stuff is used up one migrate to the not so good , not so cheap oil , but there is in fact more of it
at some point is the surface of the economic curve
there is still something out there but it's not accessible with reasonable efforts

Peak oil is a theoretical concept ,which anyone with more than half a brain accept
Peak Oil dynamic is how it interact with the market and society

So far the oil market respond to natural free market economics ,
to some degree the cornies are right , demand create supply , at a price .
some thinks this can extend indefinitely , infinity is a long hard place to go to

when the market balance break down , then state rationing come into play
IE what was the price of oil in 1944 in Germany ??
supply and demand didn't line up so the military demand created supply
it was a loss making exercise but there were other considerations at play .

the critical metric to follow the world market is not production
producing countries will always put internal politics first .
it's freely traded exports .

[Loki]

.
the critical metric to follow the world market is not production
producing countries will always put internal politics first .
it's freely traded exports .

Indeed, but this adds yet another layer to the already mind-boggingly complex cake. Is it peak exports, or peak oil, or the peak oil dynamic? The answer is yes, all of the above, and then some.

[godq3]

120$ per barrel because of increase in China demand, but with stable/slowly increasing world oil production, is not the same thing as 120$ per barrel because of drop in world oil production. It surely is (in short term) the same for consumers, but not for the world as a whole. The first case means that human civilisation is still expanding, but that expansion just moved from e.g. Europe to China, the second case means that generally our civilisation is shrinking. I'm on Pops side

[sparky]

.
on the complexity of the oil versus economic
a further point is that oil is priced in U.S. dollars
It has been a free ride for America ,to some degree ,
creating this currency out of thin air and having the whole world wanting more
as the world economy expand , more dollars are needed to underpin the trading
up to a point , unknown so far
should the world economy contract , a dollar surplus would lead to its devaluation.
Washington doesn't have a clear path to get out of this sugar fix .

The BRICS countries , particularly China have been sliding discretely toward the window for a quick exit
setting up a lot of bilateral trade with the balance in Yuan .

that's a very very big issue , the U.S. is running an endemic trade deficit paid for with IOU
should the Dollar hit the skid there is a high probability of the price of oil rocketing up
no because of supply and demand but because the world currency would be worth less that it did

[SeaGypsy]

Probably a good thing not all the brains around here see everything the same way- would get mighty boring pretty quick if we did. One thing's for sure- we haven't seen the end to most of the big exponential factors including economic & social complexity. There is the downslope to come in oil supply, we have consensus on that. Exponential function discontinuity is also likely taken as a given by all. How much synchronicity will occur in the eventual inevitable topping of all those graphs is going to be one of the interesting things to observe. Will this happen in our lifetimes?

[ROCKMAN]

Step back - thanks for clarifying. I didn't want to jump too hard in case you were an abiotist. LOL. I do like your sphere model a bit but I suspect it's too abstract for Joe6pack to grasp. Much easier for him to blame greedy oil companies and speculators.

[Tanada]

My biggest oil concern is that it will follow the same kind of distribution curve as other minerals like Tin or Gold or Uranium. That is the rich sources are discovered in surface formations and extracted, but in the process the people doing the extraction figure out how to recognize and use lower grade ore. The price rises a little bit but as the price goes up the lower grade ore becomes profitable for extraction and adds a huge volume to the resource base at the new higher price. The cycle repeats as lower and lower grades of ore are identified and extracted until either a cheaper substitute is discovered or the economy no longer supports extraction for some reason.

The reason I expected and hoped oil would not follow this pattern is because it is moderately mobile and will escape over geological time if it has a fault to follow to the surface. Early on it looked like that would be a successful hope because really the Bitumen sands are an example of oil seeping from source rocks deep below with no cap rock around to hold them in a geological trap. In places where there wasn't a substance like sand to hold them the seeps wash away and are turned into CO2 and H2O by bacteria using the organic chemicals as a food source.

In my mind the jury is still out on the tight oil from shale, the potential resource is absolutely tremendous if we can extract it all for $100.00/bbl. So far horizontal leg multicompletion fracked wells are getting some of it out of specific formations for that price. The question is, what percentage of the total resource can they get out of the shale doing this? 50%? 5%? 1%? It makes a huge difference in the long run where on the ultimate recovery that number falls. If its 1% we still might not cook ourselves with CO2 soon, if it is 50% then we are gonna flip the climate hard over.

[ROCKMAN]

Loki - And this is where I think some for are overthinking the discussion. Peak oil is that point in time that the world will not ever produce oil at a higher rate than seen on that date. There's nothing to debate. Folks can debate if we've reached that point yet or not. That's OK but as I've made clear I don't care much when it has or will happen. What I care about is the relationship between oil prices and drilling activity...that dynamic relationship. I care about the relationship between oil prices and economic growth...that dynamic relationship. I care about the relationship between how much oil an exporting country needs to sell to maintain it's population and how quickly their internal demand for oil is growing...that dynamic relationship. I care about the relationship between the growing consumption/control of oil by developing countries such as China and the amount of oil available to the US on the open market...that dynamic relationship. I care about the relationship between the our govt's efforts expending tax dollars and the lives of our military with efforts to stabilize oil production in the exporting regions of the world...that dynamic relationship. I care about the relationship between efforts to expand US energy production and the environmental trade off that might require...that dynamic relationship. I can on about other dynamic relationships but I'm sure everyone gets my point by now.

So everyone can prioritize their own concerns: they can assign their own level of relative importance to the date of PO compared to the dynamic relationships I just offered and any others they feel are appropriate. There are no wrong answers IMHO...just a question of what someone feels is important to them. For me you should have a clear picture of my ranking with the PO date rather low on my list.

[Pops]

ROCKs day to day budget revolves around and is affected by day to day the price of oil, so the POD - the price dynamic - is interesting to him. I assume about the way beef and grain prices affect my day to day household budget, although my budget has lots fewer zeros. Fact is, short of PO, I don't care all that much about the daily price of oil and wouldn't have spent untold hours here discussing it. Because:

Short of PO, increasing demand just leads to increasing production
Short of PO, a high price just means a glut is around the corner
Short of PO, declining production in one region just means someone else fills the void
Short of PO, China doing whatever is irrelevant long term

Short of PO.

So my whole point in this thread was not to "discredit" the POD or rag on the ROCK, just to clarify that the POD isn't really the PO Dynamic at all, it's just the Price Dynamic – short of PO.