World oil supply debate between ex-Shell chief and ASPO-USA professorVideo of a spirited debate on peak oil between John Hofmeister (Shell) and Ted Patzek (University of Texas and ASPO-USA).
The former president of Shell Oil Company debated Tad Patzek, Chair, Dept. of Petroleum Engineering, University of Texas on Feb 14 at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. The subject was: "The World Oil Supply: Looming Crisis or New Abundance?"
Gasoline will hit $5 per gallon this year predicts John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil Company, the U.S. subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell. He points to rising demand by developing countries, especially China and India, and says that the recent increase in U.S. oil supply rates and decrease in demand is not enough to offset global trends, and that prices will continue to creep upward, unless there are major changes in public policy to substantially increase domestic U.S. supply.
Gasoline prices could suddenly spike even higher, and though increases in U.S. domestic supply may be important, no realistic U.S. increase will offset declining yields from other nations, according to Professor Tadeusz Patzek, chair of the Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin and Vice-President of the ASPO-USA Board of Directors. He highlights that declining output from most oil-exporting nations over the past decade, in the face of rising global demand, is likely to create a lasting drop-off in global availability of oil-spelling serious consequences for all oil-importing nations, including the United States.
Regardless of who is right, this issue needs to be examined with seriousness and urgency, which has been the driving motivation behind the collaboration of multiple University of Wisconsin and local Madison groups that are co-sponsoring this event."
kublikhan wrote:Ok just watched it. I thought it was really good. I recommend everyone watch it.
Beery1 wrote:Personally, I didn't see much spirited debate. I saw two guys in complete agreement about what's happening and two different ways to respond to it. It made for a boring debate. If this is what passes for spirited debate these days, I'm even more sad that Christopher Hitchens is no longer with us. Now there was a guy who could always give you a spirited debate.
dinopello wrote:Beery1 wrote:Personally, I didn't see much spirited debate. I saw two guys in complete agreement about what's happening and two different ways to respond to it. It made for a boring debate. If this is what passes for spirited debate these days, I'm even more sad that Christopher Hitchens is no longer with us. Now there was a guy who could always give you a spirited debate.
That's just the point, everyone should agree on what's happening, because that is what is happening. The debate should be about how to respond to it because that is where the options lay. The problem today is that everyone doesn't have the same view of reality. Too many people think its all a conspiracy for example - its the speculators, its the oil companies, its the environmentalists - whatever. There is and there is gonna be less and less cheap energy - what should we do ?
There is nothing but “Sad News for Peak Oil Disciples” these days, according to the Financial Post.
The latest example: Leonardo Maugeri, a fellow in the Geopolitics of Energy Project at the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs—and a long-time critic of Peak Oil analysis—has just published a new report, “Oil: The Next Revolution,” in which he forecasts a sharp increase in world oil production capacity and the risk of an oil price collapse. His report has triggered a spate of press articles with titles like “No Peak Oil In Sight”, “Potential U.S. Oil Boom shakes Up Energy Politics,” and “Peak Oil Is Simply Not a Threat Anymore.”
These follow on the heels of a string of other articles touting increasing production of oil from “tight” shale deposits in the US—pieces with titles like “Has Peak Oil Peaked?” and “Is ‘Peak Oil’ Idea Dead?” And those in turn ride the slipstream of Daniel Yergin’s widely feted book The Quest, which provided last year’s fodder for an anti-Peak Oil media frenzy.
We at Post Carbon Institute [this is an article by Richard Heinberg] hope to sort out some of the technical issues related to unconventional oil in a report (forthcoming in September) by David Hughes, a follow-up to his 2011 reality check on U.S. shale gas production. But the bigger environmental and economic questions will no doubt continue to generate uncertainties for some time.
Still, there are a few observations that no serious energy analyst can dispute. Oil exploration and production costs are skyrocketing (Bernstein Research estimates that this year the industry needs prices in the range of $100 a barrel to justify new projects). The super-giant oilfields that still account for 60 percent of world crude production are aging, and so the more modest contribution of unconventionals, which are expected to be both expensive and slow to come on line, must push against a tide of depletion and decline. It’s only a question of when the overall global production decline begins, not if. Meanwhile, some of the fuels (ethanol, natural gas liquids) counted by IEA and EIA in the “all liquids” category have significantly lower energy content per unit of volume than regular crude oil; thus an increase in barrels-per-day of “all liquids” does not necessarily mean an increase in the amount of energy delivered to society.
"The cornucopian mindset is certainly rife among leaders in the oil industry (Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, recently said of climate change and energy security, “We [humans] have spent our entire existence adapting. We’ll adapt . . . it’s an engineering problem and there will be an engineering solution”)."
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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