pstarr wrote:Sounds like peak to me.
Ron @ POB has said for a while that he thinks peak is right now, I think he said in the 12 months from last to next October.
He is talking about something different than Short. Ron is talking about peak oil, which is the same as saying maximum flow rate, in other words, inability to increase or even maintain production volume, suffice to say the point never again to be exceeded, as such it would be the highest level of extraction ever attained and never to be repeated, the apogee before the long road to happy motoring nadir, the pinnacle of the oil age, the zenith of ...
The thing Short is selling (literally) is a silly "economic" model all dressed up in thermodynamic jargon. He starts with the assertion (without citation that I've found) that in 2012 to extract and refine oil required the expenditure of half the oil produced - even shales have a better return than that, maybe 5-10 at worst? Anyway, by 2020 (so says the model) all the oil produced will be used to produce oil with none left over for trips to the Quik Sac.
As if that isn't dramatic enough to sell a "report", he then charts the nominal price of oil (asserting there is no such thing as inflation) and deduces the economy will only be able to
afford $11.82/barrel in 2020. Down to the penny, baby!
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Those are 2 very different things.
Ron's is the typical PO prediction: depletion + nowhere to drill = decline. That isn't dramatic enough to make for a good "Movie Treatment" though (h/t mos). Even if there were absolutely no new wells drilled and no reworking of old wells, none, decline would "only" be in the 3-4% range, (maybe a little more the first couple of years as the shales rapidly croaked). But even that isn't going to happen since supply constraint will return the price to the edge of affordability and enable some newer fields to be developed, infill wells drilled, old ones reworked, tar mined, wet gas tapped, yada yada.
EROI by most accounts is in the 12-18 to 1 to one range, not 2:1. Does anyone remember this chart?
There is very little difference in net energy between 100:1 and 10:1 efficiency. Maybe 8-9% less energy out? Considering we have built the current economy on ICE engines that, at the theoretical maximum efficiency, waste 65% of the stuff we put in the tank (much, much more in a 3/4 ton coffee cup hauler or '72 Eldo), I'm thinking we have a ways to fall yet.
Regardless, there is very little oil that can be extracted for $11.82/bbl. That being the case, the appeal of Short's "model"—especially to us old farts, is that it predicts we do run out, and it happens quickly, before we croak! The shit of course will then hit the fan and...
we get to make fun of all the cornies and sheeple dying in the streets.
Headline reads: Peakers Vindicated!
We're the Winner!
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The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)