by ian807 » Thu 01 Mar 2012, 15:09:39
Hello Rajat, and welcome.
I would be interested in hearing what you have to say, and getting some hints as to where accurate information might be found.
To put my prejudices right up front, my worries about peak oil are largely economic in the short to medium term, but more socially oriented in the long term.
Having examined the liquid hydrocarbon depletion situation, I've come to some tentative conclusions. Forgive me if these seem obvious to you, I'm not an economist.
1) The two key factors in liquid hydrocarbon depletion are aggregate EROEI and production price. In other words, oil must be energetically and economically profitable enough to justify its use as an energy source.
2) It won't be oil scarcity, per se that causes economic issues, but oil scarcity's impact on the interdependent supply chain ecology that provides us all with the material benefits of civilization.
3) Feedback is critical to any meaningful analysis hydrocarbon depletion. To choose an extreme example, at a certain point, the supply chains needed to maintain a self-sustaining system of oil location, extraction, refining and distribution itself breaks down. This could be initiated by a political situation as well as scarcity. We might eventually recover, somewhat, from the former.
4) The critical dependence on oil-based fuels for transportation represents a major vulnerability to human civilization.
If the aforementioned points are valid, then it should be possible to assess risks and estimate timelines for depletion, if you had access to the following accurate information:
1) Aggregate EREOI for all of the worlds liquid hydrocarbon production.
2) An accurate picture of the quantity of liquid hydrocarbons left that are likely to be energetically and economically profitable.
3) An accurate aggregate estimate of the production costs for the world's remaining liquid hydrocarbons.
Unfortunately, the information on the internet regarding all of the aforementioned varies wildly and is very likely not reliable (e.g. KSA oil reserve estimates, natural gas estimates in the USA, EROEI estimates on Canadian oil sands, and so on.) So many economic and political agendas encourage the reporting of the most palatable possible figures that reality is hard to discern. Do you have any ideas about this at all?