[gollum]

The Volt will end up like GM's EV. That was a lovely state-of-the art automobile replete with all the luxuries a discriminating buyer demands in his/her driving machine, blah blah blah. The GM EV and the Volt are PR stunts designed to placate a submissive consumer class. Incremental, incidental improvements to cloud the real issue--we are running out of suburbia and the Age of the Automobile.

I think GM is peak oil aware, and the volt is at least their partial answer. They are staking their future as a company on it and unlike the EV1 this is not a publicity stunt. Electric plug ins also take pressure off liquid fuels and hopefully keep the cost of fuel down for everyone.

[Mesuge]

These numbers are astounding. They point to a new phenomena: resources developed after the 60's do not die a lingering death. It is a catastrophic 1-2-3 punch. Massive coronary thrombosis, hyperthalmus stroke, and cerebral aneurysm, the field is dead before it's last burp.

Ah, nominated for the paragraph of the year
Sorry for pushing the doomerism string hard lately, but that all leads to a vision, I'll likely share with my nephews soon, and for real, sitting on the porch glazing into the thermo-nukes orchestra.. Homo-ape virus, bye bye, we hardly knew ya.

On the subplot, the fanboys of Volt, which have not studied the technology into any depth, just don't get it. The result, and take home message: it's just badly executed and overpriced Prius plugin hybrid. In the meantime euros and asians are selling ~70mpg econoboxes like hotcakes (which you can run on liquid propan-butan too), well not on the US market and it doesn't matter in the mid term anyways, since cars will be the overjoy for the neofeudal castes only, in the optimistic scenario..

[Newfie]

Who are you directing this post to? (sorry, it's not clear to me)

OF2 in particular, deniers in general.

[Daniel_Plainview]

Who are you directing this post to? (sorry, it's not clear to me)

OF2 in particular, deniers in general.

Thank you. That's what I figured ...

[TheDude]

Mexico is now a net IMPORTER of oil.

Qué ? 911 kb/d in Aug. U.S. Net Imports by Country. Are you talking about imports in some overarching abstract sense?

Cantarell Production figures:

Code: Select all

Year      Prod          %diff          diff
1998   1348.6   8.30%          111.9
1999   1265.6   -6.15%          -83
2000   1471.1   13.97%          205.5
2001   1731   15.01%          259.9
2002   1902.3   9.00%           171.3
2003   2122.8   10.39%           220.5
2004   2136.4   0.64%             13.6
2005   2035.3   -4.73%          -101.1
2006   1800.9   -11.52%           -234.4
2007   1496.5   -16.90%       -304.4
2008   1045.5   -30.14%   -451
2009   638.74   -38.91%   -406.76
2010   508.15   -20.45%   -130.59

2010 is average through August. The field won't keel over to nothing this year; indeed I doubt they'll ever abandon it completely, even if it's only yielding 10 kb/d.

[DoomersUnite]

There is no burger king to switch to. Discovery peaked in the 1960's. There are no supergiants available to replace the ones that are exhausted.

Says who? Do you happen to have all the seismic lines across Africa at your disposal because darn it, I don't. And your plan for developing all the worlds heavy oil, have you published it anywhere, or can we all just assume that we'll use it as well, sooner or later? How about those incremental recovery factors, maybe we can just change those a little, come up with another trillion barrels, and make this a conversation for your grandchildren?

Better yet, why not work through all THREE!

Oil is a finite resource and we've used up most of it.

Certainly actual experts in the field don't agree.

With 14 trillion in the ground, we haven't even used up a large minority of it yet, let alone "most of it". Of course, I am forced to rely on recognized experts for this information versus bloggers with no more oil experience than it takes to fill up their cars.

http://www.spe.org/spe-app/spe/jpt/2006 ... illion.htm

You are no different than climate change deniers who won't believe global warming is real until they personally suffer on account of it.

Deny it? Ruddiman wrote a perfectly reasonable book, and related peer reviewed science papers, showing how humans have been doing it for 8,000- 5,000 years now. You want to get irritated NOW over something we've been doing since before recorded history began? What for? People might as well deny that they breathe....

Adaptation to an oil free world will be a lot easier while there is still oil. If you wait until it's gone, you have collapse instead of mitigation.

Peak oil isn't about it being GONE, its about having a few trillion more barrels with which to do with whatever we wish.

[DoomersUnite]

GovMotors Volt funeral speech?

What funeral speech? The first Volts will roll off the assembly line on November 30th? Do you need them to run over your forehead before you believe people will be able to buy them?

Seems like Revi has already been EVing around his neighborhood....how long can people ignore the obvious? Nissan leaf anyone?

[DoomersUnite]

Cantarell is the post child for peak oil doom. I have been here long enough to see smartasses like DoomersUnite come and go.

Peak oil came and went as well. Some noticed. Some didn't. Make sure to post and let us know when shortages or rationing hit your neck of the woods.

Go to Las Vegas. Its the most ridiculous place in the history of the world and guess what? Its still there, traffic everywhere, gasoline less than $3/gal, shows everywhere, completely unsustainable in any reasonable peak oil scenario and guess what? Its still here! The roads aren't all that bad either...and they are clogged with those nasty things which STILL run on fossil fuels. Goodness knows how much worse this will get when everyone goes electric, then traffic jams will probably become parking lots.

This is precisely why so many educated analysts and observers are concerned for Saudi Arabia. All its big fields have been under massive secondary and tertiary production regimes for years since production began in the 60's.

You mean Simmons claiming the Saudi's were done...in 2004? The irony being, he was done before Ghawar was..who would have thought that? "Twightlight in Maine".

[Cid_Yama]

"Mexico Cantarell Oil Field Dead by End of 2010" was the title of the original article I posted that was written in 2009. The rate of decline since that time has decreased due to Pemex's efforts to squeeze the last drops out.

It will be the thinning of the oil layer that kills Cantarell, and that will happen within the next year.

Pemex engineers said at a conference last week that the oil layer of the Akal field is shrinking by at least 4 meters (13 feet) a month as gas moves downward and water moves upward in the rock formation.

Contraction of the oil layer means many of the traditional vertical wells Pemex has used to drain Cantarell since the late 1970s are getting flooded by gas or water, which forces their closure.

But this misses the point.

The lost oil production is not being, cannot be, replaced.

The supergiants are all in their senescent yrs and near death. Their production cannot be replaced, and Cantarell has demonstrated just how quickly the fast crash can proceed following enhanced recovery.

[DoomersUnite]

In what way is the Volt substantially different than the EV?

A) It won't be available to only celebrities.
B) It is being sold, not leased.
C) It is being sold outside of California.
D) And instead of rolling to a stop when it runs out of charge, it runs like a regular car until I can charge it back up.

And the value when shortages or rationing DO happen, some year/decades deep into the post peak world, when I continue to commute around town all day while others must park their gas powered cages...priceless!

[Cid_Yama]

DoomerUnite, we cannot be responsible for your ignorance of the facts concerning the state of oil discovery over the last half century.

You apparently choose not to educate yourself in this regard, so just spout nonsense that you would rather believe.

That doesn't change the facts.

[TheDude]

Alekett had a presentation last year on the Top 18 Giant Oil Fields. His Best Case scenario for them includes such eye opening notions as Manjoon cranking out 1 mb/d. Almost all of the gains needed are from Iraq.

Oh, Cantarell was "replaced" in a sense, by tar sands, new fields, infill drilling, recession. Bet I could tally up some countries for you and explain why we're not at 74 mb/d. But it was a helluva "Negaproject." Peakists have their Exhibit B. Flat production 2004-2007 is Exhibit A.

My other favorite is that 1.5 mb/d Brazil brought online, which boosted their actual output about 350 kb/d.

[dolanbaker]

This image from the wiki oil megaprojects page clearly show the decline in new oil coming on-line.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NewSu ... itions.svg

[mattduke]

The Volt will end up like GM's EV. That was a lovely state-of-the art automobile replete with all the luxuries a discriminating buyer demands in his/her driving machine, blah blah blah. The GM EV and the Volt are PR stunts designed to placate a submissive consumer class. Incremental, incidental improvements to cloud the real issue--we are running out of suburbia and the Age of the Automobile.

I think GM is peak oil aware, and the volt is at least their partial answer. They are staking their future as a company on it and unlike the EV1 this is not a publicity stunt. Electric plug ins also take pressure off liquid fuels and hopefully keep the cost of fuel down for everyone.

Where is Government Motors going to get all the rare earth elements required for the high power electric motor magnets and high capacity lightweight batteries?