Peak Oil News and Message Boards

Tom_s2, you may well be correct about the global collapse of civilisation, but you are wrong about the decline in available fossil fuels.
As their extraction costs increase and the consumers become priced out of the market in ever increasing numbers, things WILL change.

Not a collapse in a "Mad-Max" way, but in a change of lifestyle as eventually the average man in the street on an average wage will find it increasingly harder to have the lifestyle that his parents enjoyed on the back of plentiful & cheap fossil fuel.
If you already live the "post peak" (or should that be a European urban) lifestyle, then the effects will be minimal. On the other hand if you live in a satellite town about 80 or more km from work and 30km from the shops, then the eventual price spikes will financially cripple you.

Note that I didn't say fuel shortages, high the prices will get you first.

Life will carry on after oil, it will just be different and much slower than today.

dolanbaker wrote:Tom_s2, you may well be correct about the global collapse of civilisation, but you are wrong about the decline in available fossil fuels.
As their extraction costs increase and the consumers become priced out of the market in ever increasing numbers, things WILL change.

Not a collapse in a "Mad-Max" way, but in a change of lifestyle as eventually the average man in the street on an average wage will find it increasingly harder to have the lifestyle that his parents enjoyed on the back of plentiful & cheap fossil fuel.
If you already live the "post peak" (or should that be a European urban) lifestyle, then the effects will be minimal. On the other hand if you live in a satellite town about 80 or more km from work and 30km from the shops, then the eventual price spikes will financially cripple you.

Note that I didn't say fuel shortages, high the prices will get you first.

Life will carry on after oil, it will just be different and much slower than today.

What makes you think the economy will not collapse after peak oil? It will not collapse overnight, but our life style will slowly change over time. Higher price of oil means we can drive to fewer places. The price of food will increase as the price oil increases because modern agriculture requires fossil fuel inputs.

Quick answer, there was an economy before oil and there will be one after oil, just that it will be very different to the one we have now, more like a step back in time as far as freedom of movement goes.

When commuters are priced out of their cars, the oil that those cars didn't use will go to agriculture and industry. We're seeing a mild price adjustment right now that if sustained will jeopardise future production as producers won't invest in loss making wells.

Best I can tell, we have two separate, and very serious, problems.

First, tight oil. By 2020, by all accounts, the boost we've gotten from fracking will be on the decline side.

Second, capital expenditures. The Kopits information. Failure by the majors to invest now in long-term projects is going to be a huge problem by 2020, when those long-term projects should be coming into production.

Declining fields are not going away. Easy oil is being finished up now. World population increases inexorably.

We've done a great job holding on. I'm glad we've held on. I hope we continue to hold on. Hopefully something new comes along and allows us to hold on even longer.

But the 2020s could also provide a huge and daunting challenge. Change could be Greer-like gradual. Or maybe change will be a 2 by 4 after all.

I believe the world will enter another great depression by 2020. We already reached peak oil in 2005. We will soon enter the decline phrase of Hubbert's Curve. I believe next year will be the year when the world oil production will enter a state of terminal decline. By next year, there will be a 10 million barrel per day difference between global oil demand (90 million barrels per day) and global oil production (80 million barrels per day). This difference in oil demand and oil supply will only increase as time passes by. By 2027, the world will only be able to produce enough oil to meet 1/2 of the world's oil demand. By that time, the world would be in a state of total economic collapse. Remember, you don't need to completely run out of oil for the economy to completely collapse. You only need to have a large enough difference between oil demand and oil supply for the global economy to totally collapse. When you can only produce enough oil to meet 1/2 of your oil demand, then your economy will have effectively collapsed.

From what I know, Hubbert got it right for crude oil, i.e., a peak for U.S. production in 1970 and global production peak starting 2005. The IEA confirmed the latter in 2010.

The problems with predictions probably involves pricing. On one hand, it was believed that the price would remain lower than $50 for several decades. On the other, that it would reach $200, leading to collapse.

However, it turns out that the global economy would weaken considerably even at $100.

XOVERX wrote:Best I can tell, we have two separate, and very serious, problems.

First, tight oil. By 2020, by all accounts, the boost we've gotten from fracking will be on the decline side.

Second, capital expenditures. The Kopits information. Failure by the majors to invest now in long-term projects is going to be a huge problem by 2020, when those long-term projects should be coming into production.

I wonder if your second point might mitigate your first point, at least a bit.

Say we see "low" oil prices for the next few years (unlikely, but stay with me). New tight oil projects stay on hold in the mean time. Price eventually spikes again and these projects come back online, dragging out the peak even further. Shrill voices again declare the death of peak oil.

Not saying that's how it's going to go down, but just one way it might go down. But will the declining tight oil production (due to price) continue to keep pace with declining conventional production (due to geology)?

Such a difficult dynamic to understand. Where's a Rockman when you need one? LOL

But the 2020s could also provide a huge and daunting challenge. Change could be Greer-like gradual. Or maybe change will be a 2 by 4 after all.

Agreed the 2020s will be interesting in the Chinese curse sense of the word. But maybe a combination of demand destruction on the margins, new tight oil, Arctic drilling, etc. will drag it all out even further and in 2024 we'll be talking about how interesting the 2030s will be.

Regardless, it seems highly improbable that the average household will be faring better in 2024 than they currently are in 2014. Just as the average household (in the US at least) was doing better in 2004 than they are now. Not "collapse," not TEOTWAWKI, just a slow grind down.

By the way, read Greer's latest post. He's been a doomer all along, despite his protestations. His "slow decline" is not what I think of as slow decline. I think of the Great Recession slipping into the Greater Depression for the rest of my life (2040s if I'm lucky). But Greer's talking about 1+ billion dying from Ebola in the next few years, "neofascists" taking over Europe and the US in the 2020s, another World War in the 2030s, the nuking of Washington, DC, by the US military and the break up of the US in the 2040s, etc.

Pretty doomy stuff. Thankfully it's followed by several decades of a Pax Chinensis LOL