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A personal overview of the peak oil theory

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.

A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby sparky » Sat 23 Nov 2019, 22:59:37

.
As I became aware of the depletion principle , peak oil took my interest

depletion , like gravity suck and cannot be avoided , long term

Marion King Hubbert seminal work struck me as prescient , jean Laherrere writting is very precise
both are professional geologist having worked at the top of the oil industry

they were right of course but for a small detail , things turned out to be different
Hubbert considered conventional fields and conventional crude
Laherrere prediction took the new offshore fields in consideration and gave larger estimates

every time some limit was in sight new technologies made new resources exploitable
Peak oiler clung to the obvious , those resources were available because the price of crude was rising
making ever greater investment necessary and decreasing the energy return trending to uneconomical

things turned out differently , the new resources could and do compete with the old conventional on price
further compounding the problem , natural gas, once commonly flared as a waste , became a major market in itself

it would seems that the exploitation went through several stage ,
accessing the easy oil then those which required a bit more nous then some really tricky tech
and finally (?) squeezing hydrocarbon from stone
at each stage the recoverable resources are larger ,
it's like digging a buried pyramid ,starting from the tip and the deeper one get the more there is

the world is now so awash with crude/gas supply ,
it can take three millions barrel of Iranian production out and still see the prices drop
now demand peak is all the rage ,

it's a good theory ...but theories can be right an reality be something else again
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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby AdamB » Sat 23 Nov 2019, 23:54:05

Each claim of running out, or peak, to date has been discredited for one obvious reason, said reason being claimed as a way to explain away the endless boy who cried wolf results. It goes something like this:

"Well, obviously they didn't know that this <fill in something now obvious> was going to take place."

The same excuse works perfectly, forever, until the broken clock analogy wins in the end.

The scientific answer, one that organizations like the EIA and the USGS (and Hubbert when he was working for them as well), was to try and account for these known unknowns. The great disappointment within the peak oil movement is to NOT be concerned with this issue, always pretending that only current production and reserves matter (missing the resource to reserve conversion rate), pretending that nothing improves (when we know just such a thing has caused the past bad claims), pretending that economics doesn't matter (when it matters as much as improved engineering techniques), etc etc.

Peak oil will one day come (be in by supply scarcity or demand scarcity), but the only thing we know for certain is that the people who have refused to learn the history of why they got it wrong in the past are unlikely to be the ones to get it right in the future.
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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby ralfy » Sun 24 Nov 2019, 02:46:45

The new resources don't compete with the old ones.

Peak oil is not a theory for obvious reasons. Otherwise, there would be no need to look for new resources.
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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby sparky » Sun 24 Nov 2019, 06:31:33

.
I have a hunch that improvement in recovery of old fields will keep trending up
here in Oz old gold mines tailings were re-processed in a profitable manner
I would keep an eye on old easily accessible wells for pushing the depletion envelop a bit further
it's probably already going on
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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby Tanada » Sun 24 Nov 2019, 06:58:50

sparky wrote:.
I have a hunch that improvement in recovery of old fields will keep trending up
here in Oz old gold mines tailings were re-processed in a profitable manner
I would keep an eye on old easily accessible wells for pushing the depletion envelop a bit further
it's probably already going on


That is one of the factors way too many discount or discounted in the past. When Oil was in the $75/bbl plus band from 2010-2014 a lot of old oil fields in my corner of Ohio suddenly went from 'depleted' to 'being reworked'. Even if you only squeeze an additional 10% out of a reservoir when prices are high it is a well paid decision to make the effort.

Personally I think the wall will be when the global demand exceeds the global supply despite all the advancements in petroleum production from natural sources. Others favor a demand peak, but I just don't see that happening with 4 BILLION people out their still lacking effective consumer driven petroleum powered devices. A billion in Africa, another Billion in India, a third Billion in China and a fourth Billion everywhere else are still hoping to get control of a personal petroleum burning vehicle that they currently lack. Even if every one of those new vehicles was a 1 cylinder minibike you would be talking a massive increase in petroleum demand from where we are today, and most of the in India and China at least are going the private car route.

I agree with the pyramid analogy, but at some point we get all the way to the bottom of the pyramid and then we have hard decisions to make. Of course being humans we will dither and not make any decisions we don't like until nature forces us to do so.
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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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby diemos » Sun 24 Nov 2019, 11:23:58

sparky wrote:.
it's a good theory ...but theories can be right an reality be something else again


uh huh.

and the amount of fossil carbon in the ground is still finite. I don't claim to know how much that is ... but it's still finite.
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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby AdamB » Sun 24 Nov 2019, 11:41:06

ralfy wrote:The new resources don't compete with the old ones.


What do you mean? What are "old" resources, or "new" ones?

We aren't talking about coal competing with crude oil and natural gas within the peak oil arena, we are talking about ALL old crude oil and natural gas resources, dating back past generation in the Devonian, unless you are claiming that abiotic oil is somehow "new" and changing the current mix?

ralfy wrote:Peak oil is not a theory for obvious reasons. Otherwise, there would be no need to look for new resources.


The definition of peak oil is axiomatic. The hysterical consequences assigned to the event down through the decades and century are most certainly theory, speculation, and conjecture. The proof of this is irrefutable by history itself, as any LATOCian should know.

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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby AdamB » Sun 24 Nov 2019, 12:08:29

sparky wrote:.
I have a hunch that improvement in recovery of old fields will keep trending up
here in Oz old gold mines tailings were re-processed in a profitable manner
I would keep an eye on old easily accessible wells for pushing the depletion envelop a bit further
it's probably already going on


Reservegrowth in existing discretely reservoired fields was being documented by Hubbert in the late 1960's. The USGS used a new method of measuring it to publish a global estimate in 2012. They published the method in 2015, if memory serves. In 2014 the EIA wrote up the idea as to exactly how the re-processing you describe can happen, and even provided an equation. In 2017 the EIA demonstrated the use of the concept within an economic modeling framework. As of September 1, 2019, it appears to have gone live within global energy modeling.

Based on their 2017 presentation at the IEW, this isn't half baked make believe thermodynamic blogger based net energy nonsense. It appears that someone has finally welded together field level technical data, geologic based resource quantities and changes, petroleum engineering oil field practice and technique, economic costs of development, investment, logistics, conversion and competition at the global level. Makes fitting bell shaped curves to aggregate production data look like a 2 year old building a sandcastle on the beach compared to CERN.

My fascination is that all this has been happening in plain view for more than half a decade now. As peak oil claimed 15 years ago has been relegated to just the most recent bad call, geoscientists built better ways of coming up with estimates. Engineers used those better estimates to create state of the art ideas to use it in a proper technical way (no thermodynamics necessary there!), economists layered on how resources compete and the costs involved, and presto....someone else now has the ability to model peak oil in the future, or not, based on multi-disciplinary science.

My question is, why in the hell is ANYONE talking about the 2 year old and their sand castle anymore?
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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby AdamB » Sun 24 Nov 2019, 12:10:33

diemos wrote:
sparky wrote:.
it's a good theory ...but theories can be right an reality be something else again


uh huh.

and the amount of fossil carbon in the ground is still finite. I don't claim to know how much that is ... but it's still finite.


Yup. And someone has figured out how to calculate it all out. I wonder what their peak oil year is, with the best information and systems available to calculate it.
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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby ralfy » Sun 24 Nov 2019, 19:37:01

Peak oil "theory" is part of diminishing returns, which means the long-term trend line is downward, and driven by gravity and physical limitations.
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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby AdamB » Sun 24 Nov 2019, 21:51:08

ralfy wrote:Peak oil "theory" is part of diminishing returns, which means the long-term trend line is downward, and driven by gravity and physical limitations.


Please reference someone equating Hubbert's seminal peak oil concept with diminishing returns.

You see, people often make things up and claim Hubbert said it in his original and seminal work. They do this in order to substantiate their own concepts. You can see the problem here, as Hubbert was a world class geoscientist who did groundbreaking work, and others pretending he substantiates their own ideas by claiming he wrote something he didn't is nothing but an attempt at name dropping in order to gain credibility.

For example, people claim Hubbert was only discussing "conventional" oil (an oil type of unknown price, composition and density) when the word was never used in his seminal work. I don't believe he ever used the term "diminishing returns" in that 1956 paper either. Are you under the impression that he did?

Certainly there is a diminishing returns within the discovery process statistics, the discovery process itself (inherently contained within Hubbert's graphs on "yet to be found" resources), was something worked on more by Arps and Roberts and refined by the USGS, but Hubbert didn't play with that math all that much. For the record, diminishing returns is about far more than things being driven "downward".
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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby Plantagenet » Mon 25 Nov 2019, 01:35:50

AdamB wrote: Hubbert didn't play with that math all that much..... .


Actually, Hubbert was an accomplished mathematician and he actually did "play with that math."

All his predictions of the timing of "peak oil" were based on a mathematical approach to analyzing oil production data that today we call "Hubbert Linearization."

Hubbert_linearization

Of course Hubbert's mathematical model has now been falsified by the current attainment of higher levels in oil production in the US then his numerical model predicted.

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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby AdamB » Mon 25 Nov 2019, 02:04:59

Plantagenet wrote:
AdamB wrote: Hubbert didn't play with that math all that much..... .


Actually, Hubbert was an accomplished mathematician and he actually did "play with that math."


Of course he played with math. But not much within discovery process modeling.

Plantagene wrote:All his predictions of the timing of "peak oil" were based on a mathematical approach to analyzing oil production data that today we call "Hubbert Linearization."


You might call it that. I have already detailed that the old mindless bell shaped curve routine doesn't cut the mustard any more. And Hubbert Linearization is just the same dog that can't hunt. A single sensitivity analysis for both all international and domestic data over 2 days was enough to sort that one out. I was amazed the eggheads at TOD fell for it like kids for Halloween candy.

Plantagenet wrote:Of course Hubbert's mathematical model has now been falsified by the current attainment of higher levels in oil production in the US then his numerical model predicted.

Cheers!


Of course it's been falsified. Duh. Two year old...building a sandcastle.....
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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby Plantagenet » Mon 25 Nov 2019, 03:15:37

AdamB wrote: Hubbert didn't play with that math all that much..... .


AdamB wrote:Of course he played with math.


Which one is it? You just switched positions and directly contradicted yourself in two successive posts.

Whats going on with you? Are you absent minded and prone to forget what you just said or are you intentionally posting self-contradictory gibberish or do you have multiple personalities who are arguing with each other? What gives?

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YES! Hubbert did math. NO! Hubbert didn't do math. Cuckoo for CocoaPuFfs! Cuckoo for Cocoapuffs!

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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby asg70 » Mon 25 Nov 2019, 13:06:40

Plantagenet wrote:Hubbert's mathematical model has now been falsified by the current attainment of higher levels in oil production in the US then his numerical model predicted.


On that score you agree with Adam so why bother attacking him? Oh, yeah, you just enjoy dishing insults...

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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby Plantagenet » Mon 25 Nov 2019, 13:53:57

asg70 wrote:
Plantagenet wrote:Hubbert's mathematical model has now been falsified by the current attainment of higher levels in oil production in the US then his numerical model predicted.


On that score you agree with Adam ...


?????

I don't think you are fully understanding the discussion here, perhaps because it involves math.

I have no idea what Adam thinks. All I see are his posts, and his posts sometimes directly contradict themselves and therefore don't make sense. Similarly, your post stating that Adam and I agree on Hubbert's mathematical model doesn't make sense either when Adam himself posted that Hubbert didn't do math. In reality Hubbert was a geophysicist and a good mathematician who developed a mathematical model to predict when peak oil would occur (although the model has since been falsified).

Clearly there is some confusion here triggered by the logical inconsistency in Adam's posts.

Thats why I'm asking him to clarify which of the two completely contradictory things he's posted represent his actual view or if perhaps he actually believes something else entirely.

Do you get it now?

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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby AdamB » Mon 25 Nov 2019, 16:43:33

Plantagenet wrote:
AdamB wrote: Hubbert didn't play with that math all that much..... .


AdamB wrote:Of course he played with math.


Which one is it? You just switched positions and directly contradicted yourself in two successive posts.


I have no objection to being called out for being wrong. I do have an objection to being trolled by cherry picked context by halfwits who hope the original author won't notice.

Here is what I said, emphasis mine.

AdamB wrote:Certainly there is a diminishing returns within the discovery process statistics, the discovery process itself (inherently contained within Hubbert's graphs on "yet to be found" resources), was something worked on more by Arps and Roberts and refined by the USGS, but Hubbert didn't play with that math all that much.


Now run along and quote others out of context to see if they notice.
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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby AdamB » Mon 25 Nov 2019, 16:48:41

asg70 wrote:
Plantagenet wrote:Hubbert's mathematical model has now been falsified by the current attainment of higher levels in oil production in the US then his numerical model predicted.


On that score you agree with Adam so why bother attacking him? Oh, yeah, you just enjoy dishing insults...


Plant has been trolling for awhile now. I recall awhile back the incinerated EV owners that didn't exist, and then there was a load of nonsense about Wolfcamp vertical wells in the Permian. Whaddaya gonna do, Monte stopped providing silly commentary years ago, now all we've got is plant and short. At least Plant hasn't been established as a welsher.
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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby rockdoc123 » Mon 25 Nov 2019, 17:02:23

Now run along and quote others out of context to see if they notice.


I'm afraid that is his modus operandi. He will pick a sentence or part of a sentence, quote it out of context and then make a big deal out of misinterpreting what was said replete with childish repetitive rants and cartoons. I'm afraid he think it makes him look intelligent. :roll:

To add my tupence worth regarding Hubbert, I know a bit about the gentleman for two reasons 1. one of my masters thesis supervisors worked for him at the Shell Research Centre and was heavily involved in Hubberts main research interest, Rock Mechanics and 2. part of my studies over the years were rock mechanic based and as a consequence I was exposed to all of the original work by Hubbert, Hubbert and Rubey and Rubey and Hubbert completed back in the fifties. Hubbert wasn't a "geophysicist" as someone here claimed, instead as was the case with scientists back then he studied numerous fields for his PhD dissertation which included geology, math and physics. He wrote on many subjects and those ignorant of the subject matter have often claimed that his work in rock mechanics was somehow "geophysics", it wasn't it was rock mechanics. His work related to the subject of Peak Oil was not a major part of his research but rather a sideline that he found interesting. It didn't really gain much popularity for many, many years. Another prof I knew at the time saw Hubberts presentation at an AAPG General meeting where he discussed the comment of Peak Oil to an audience that was only partly receptive. What did turn the needle then and still does is the work that Hubbert did with respect to pore fluid pressure and its impact on fracturing and faulting. That work was used directly to formulate the idea of artificial fracking of rocks and hence remains the background research that was done to make all of the unconventional plays possible. That piece seems to be largely forgotten, likely because most of the engineers and geos working in that area are either too young or too lazy to have availed themselves of the original research. Mores the pity, he was a brilliant researcher which doesn't come across in his publications related to Peak Oil.
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Re: A personal overview of the peak oil theory

Unread postby Plantagenet » Mon 25 Nov 2019, 17:58:33

AdamB wrote: I recall awhile back the incinerated EV owners that didn't exist


There's your problem right there.

Its impossible to recall something that didn't exist----obviously you have an overactive imagination.

Cheers! :lol: :-D :P :roll:
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